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Books By Prof. JAMES HENRY BREASTED
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'SSONS
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION AND THOUGHT
IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
I 200
net, $1.75
A HISTORY OF EGYPT. Illustrated.
8yo
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A HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
izmo. net, $1.50
A HISTORY OF EGYPT

THE COLONNADED HALL OF THE TEMPLE OF ESNEH.
The temple is of the Græco-Roman age, but this colonnade is a fine example of the later rich and ornate plant-columns,
which owe their origin to the earlier architects of the Saitic age.
A
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
PERSIAN CONQUEST
BY
JAMES HENRY BREASTED, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY AND ORIENTAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO; DIRECTOR OF HASKELL ORIENTAL MUSEUM; CORRESPONDING
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF BERLIN
WITH TWO HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
}
SECOND EDITION, FULLY REVISED
i
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1919
GARA
DT
83
B828 h
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1905
New Edition January, 1909
Reprinted March, 1910; June, 1911
June, 1912; March, 1916; September, 1919
i
TO
MY MOTHER
4
352645
PRE FACE
The ever-increasing number of those who visit the
Nile Valley with every recurring winter should alone
form, it would seem, a sufficiently numerous public to
call for the production of a modern history of Egypt.
Besides these fortunate travellers, however, there is
another growing circle of those who are beginning to
realize the significance of the early East in the history
of man.
As the Nile poured its life-giving waters into
the broad bosom of the Mediterranean, so from the
civilization of the wonderful people who so early emerged
from barbarism on the Nile shores, there emanated and
found their way to southern Europe rich and diversified
influences of culture to which we of the western world
are still indebted. Had the Euphrates flowed into the
Mediterranean likewise, our debt to Babylon would have
been correspondingly as great as that which we owe the
Nile Valley. It is to Egypt that we must look as the
dominant power in the Mediterranean basin, whether
by force of arms or by sheer weight of superior civiliza-
tion throughout the earliest career of man in southern
Europe, and for long after the archaic age had been
superseded by higher culture. To us who are in civiliza-
tion the children ºf early Europe, it is of vital interest
to raise the curtain and peer beyond into the ages which
bequeathed our forefathers so precious a legacy. Finally,
viii
PREFACE
there is a third and possibly the most numerous class
of those who desire an acquaintance with the history of
Egypt, viz., the students of the Old Testament. All of
these readers have been remembered in the composition
of this book.
The plan adopted in the production of this history
is one which will in some measure also condition its
The sources from which our knowledge of the early
career of the Nile Valley peoples is drawn are of the
meagerest extent, and most inadequate in character.
They will be found further discussed herein (pp. 23 f.),
and in the author's Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I,
pp. 3–22. As used at the present day, in the historical
workshop of the scholar, they are accessible chiefly in
published form. These publications were in the vast
majority of cases edited before the attainment of such
epigraphic accuracy and care as are now deemed in-
dispensable in the production of such work. To copy
an inscription of any kind with accuracy is not easy.
So close and fine an observer of material documents as
Ruskin could copy a short Latin inscription with sur-
prising inaccuracy. In his incomparable Mornings in
Florence he reproduces the brief inscription on the marble
slab covering the tomb which he so admired in the
church of Santa Croce; and in his copy of these eight
short lines, which I compared with the original, he mis-
spells one word, and omits two entire words (“et magister”)
of the mediæval Latin. This experience of the great
art critic is not infrequently that of the schooled and
careful paleographer as well. The best known of the
use.
| The remainder of this paragraph is taken from the author's Ancient
Records of Egypt, Vol. I, S$ 27-8.
PREFACE
ix
Politarch inscriptions appeared in eight different publica-
tions, each of which diverges in some more or less im-
portant respect from all the rest, before a correct copy
was obtained. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on the
bronze crab from the base of the New York Obelisk
were long incorrectly read, and the mistake in the date
led Mommsen to a false theory of the early Roman
prefects of Egypt. In the early days of Egyptology,
when a reading knowledge of hieroglyphic was still
necessarily elementary, it required a copyist of ex-
ceptional ability to produce a copy upon which much
reliance can be placed at the present day. Had the
science of Egyptology rapidly outgrown this early in-
sufficiency, all would now be well; but such methods
have continued down to the present day, and although
many exhaustively accurate publications of hieroglyphic
documents now appear with every year, it is neverthe-
less true that the large majority of standard Egyptian
documents accessible in publications exhibit a degree
of incompleteness and inaccuracy not, in the author's
judgment, to be found in any other branch of epigraphic
science.
Under these circumstances the author's first obliga-
tion has been to go behind the publications to the original
monument itself in every possible instance. This task
has consumed years and demanded protracted sojourn
among the great collections of Europe. In this work
a related enterprise has been of the greatest assistance.
A mission to the museums of Europe to collect their
Egyptian monuments for a Commission of the four
Royal Academies of Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Goettingen,
and Munich), in order to make these documents available
}
X
PREFACE
for a great Egyptian Dictionary endowed by the German
Emperor, enabled the author to copy from the originals
practically all the historical monuments of Egypt in
Europe. For those still in Egypt, the author has been
able to employ his own copies of many, especially at
Thebes and Amarna, where he copied all the historical
inscriptions in the tombs there; and in the museum at
Gizeh (now Cairo). Of monuments in Egypt not in-
cluded in the author's copies, squeezes were in most
instances found in the enormous collection made by
Lepsius and now in the Berlin Museum. For others the
author was given access to the extensive collations
made for the Dictionary above referred to; now and
then a colleague furnished the necessary collation; and
where all other sources failed, I was able in all important
cases to secure large-scale photographs of the originals.
The final remainder of monuments for which the author
was dependent upon the publications alone is very small,
and in most cases the publication was one made on
modern methods, and almost as good as the original
itself. In general, therefore, it may be fairly claimed
that this account of the historical career of the Egyptians
rests upon the surviving original records themselves.
The immense progress in our knowledge of the
language achieved during the last twenty years cannot
be said to have been applied as yet to the comprehensive
study of the historical documents as a whole. Hence,
in order to utilize historically the materials thus collected,
it was essential, in the light of our improved philological
equipment, to begin the study of the documents ab ovo,
irrespective of earlier studies and results, and it was in
almost all cases only after such unbiased study that
PREFACE
si
any older translation or account of a document was
consulted. The combined results of the revised copies
from the originals and the new grammatical study of
the documents have been embodied in a series of trans-
lations of the historical documents, arranged in chrono-
logical order, beginning with the earliest surviving
records and continuing to the final loss of Egyptian
national independence at the conquest by the Persians
in 525 B.C. Supplied with historical introductions and
explanatory notes, the original documents, otherwise
scattered through hundreds on hundreds of inaccessible
publications, are thus accessible in English to the reader
who desires to know upon what documentary evidence a
particular assertion of fact rests. The numerals I, II,
III, and IV in the foot-notes in this history refer to the
volumes of these translations, and the Arabic numerals
following the four Romans designate the numbered
paragraphs into which the translations are divided,
unless the “p.,” indicating "page,” is inserted between.
It is hoped that, by this means of keeping all technical
discussion of sources in the four volumes of translated
documents, the author has succeeded in unburdening
this history of the workshop débris, which would other-
wise often encumber it; while at the same time the
advantage of close contact with the sources for every
fact adduced is not sacrificed. For the average reader, a
running fire of foot-note references to technical and
out-of-the-way publications, known only to the inner
- See Ancient Records of Egypt: The Historical Documents, by James
Henry Breasted, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1905. Volume I
The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties. Volume II, The Eighteenth Dynastı.
Volume III, The Nineteenth Dynasty. Volume IV, The Twentieth to the
Twenty-sixth Dynasties. Volume V, Indices
xij
PREFACE
circle of initiates in the science of Egyptology, would
mean absolutely nothing. On the other hand, the other
extreme, of divorcing the statements in this book from
all connection with the sources from which they are
drawn, is, in the author's opinion, almost as bad; even
though but a vanishing proportion of its readers ever
should turn to verify the references adduced. To that
small number such references are invaluable, for the
author recalls with what difficulty in his student days he
was able to trace the currently accepted facts of the sci-
ence to the original sources from which they had come.
If these studies shall be considered to have made any
contribution to modern knowledge in this field, it will be
in the reëxamination of the originals, the collection and
focussing of all related materials with each document,
and the assembly and translation of these materials
complete in convenient form for reference. Any new
results in this volume are due to this process and method. .
On the other hand, in the immense field of material
documents as contrasted with written documents, this
work has made no attempt at a reëxamination of the vast
sources available. Egyptian archæology is in its infancy,
and but few of the fundamental studies and researches
already completed in classical archæology have been
made in this province. Now and again the written
documents have thrown new and unexpected light in
this direction which I have not failed to utilize. The
man with the enviable combination of archaeological
and philological capacity would find a rich field to
cultivate, in working for the production of an Egypto-
logical Overbeck. Again in the realm of religion the
mere quantity alone of the materials made any attempt
PREFACE
xiii
at an exhaustive reëxamination of the documents im-
possible. The study of Egyptian religion has but begun,
and decades will pass before even the preliminary special
studies shall have been completed, which shall enable
the student to go forward for a general survey and
symmetrical reconstruction of the phenomena in one
comprehensive presentation, which shall be in some
measure final. Only the Amarna period and the solar
faith have been made the object of the author's special
attention. All the documents on the unparalleled religious
revolution of Ikhnaton, and all the known hymns to the
Sun, throughout Egyptian history, were collected and
examined--in the case of the former from the originals.
For Egyptian religion as a whole, however, the author
would acknowledge deep obligation to Erman's admirable
Handbuch, an obligation often indicated in the foot-notes,
and elsewhere frequently evident to the technical reader.
Although over twenty years old, Erman's Aegypten is
still the standard vade mecum on Egyptian life. It has
often been of invaluable service in the production of this
work. To Eduard Meyer's exhaustive and final Chron-
ologie I am, of course, indebted, especially in the earlier
period. I would also gratefully acknowledge the clarify-
ing influence of his incisive treatment of the Saitic age
in his Geschichte des alten Aegyptens. To the colossal
labors of Maspero and Wiedemann I have been indebted,
especially in the bibliography, as indicated in the Preface
to my Ancient Records, but I would gratefully indicate
the obligation here also. Like all who work in Egyp-
tian history, I also owe a debt to Winckler's invaluable
version of the Amarna Letters.
For the illustrative materials, besides the published
xiy
PREFACE
plates, frequently severally indicated, and his own
photographs, the author would express his thanks to
many friends and colleagues to whom he is indebted for
photographs, drawings, or restorations. He is particu-
larly indebted to his friend Schaefer, of Berlin; also to
Borchardt, Steindorff, Petrie, Zahn, Messerschmidt,
Rev. W. MacGregor of Tamworth, and Dr. Caroline
Ransom, for the unqualified use of photographs and
reconstructions. To Messrs. Underwood & Underwood
for permission to use a number of their superb stereo-
graphs of Egyptian monuments in situ, I desire to express
particular obligation. At the same time, may I add for
the benefit of those to whom a journey through the Nile
Valley is an impossibility, that the system of travel
represented in these beautiful stereographs makes possible
to every one a voyage up the Nile which falls little short
of the actual experience itself. Finally, I am not a little
indebted to the great kindness of Mr. John Ward, of
Lenoxvale, Belfast, for a magnificent series of photographs
made specially for him, of recent excavations at Karnak,
from which I was privileged to select a number, like the
avenue of rams (Fig. 129).
To Herr Karl Baedeker, of Leipzig, I owe the privilege
of inserting two maps (Nos. 6 and 11) from his un-
equalled guide-book of Egypt, deservedly the inseparable
companion of all tourists on the Nile. To the authorities
of the European museums at Berlin, London (British
Museum, University College, Petrie Collections), Paris
(Louvre, Bibliothèque Nationale, Musée Guimet), Vienna
(Hofmuseum), Leyden, Munich, Rome (Vatican and
Capitoline), Florence, Bologna, Naples, Turin, Pisa,
Geneva, Lyons, Liverpool, and some others, I would here
PREFACE
express deep appreciation of the courtesies and privileges
uniformly extended to me during the prosecution of this
work among them. I am indebted to Mr. R. S Padan
and Miss Imogen Hart for assistance in proofreading.
My wife has constantly rendered me indispensable cleri.
cal aid, and never-failing assistance in reading of proof.
It is a great pleasure here also gratefully to recognize
the coöperation and unfailing readiness of the publishers
to do all in their power to make the typographical and
illustrative side of the work all that it should be. Of
this the appearance of the finished volume is ample
evidence.
JAMES HENRY BREASTED.
WILLIAMS BAY, WISCONSIN,
September 1, 1905.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
PAGE
I. THE LAND.
3
AND Docu-
II. PRELIMINARY SURVEY, CHRONOLOGY
MENTARY SOURCES
III. EARLIEST EGYPT
13
25
BOOK TWO
THE OLD KINGDOM
IV. EARLY RELIGION
53
V. THE OLD KINGDOM: GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
INDUSTRY AND ART.
74
VI. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
111
VII. THE SIXTH DYNASTY: THE DECLINE OF THE OLD
KINGDOM
131
BOOK THREE
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE FEUDAL AGE
VIII.
THE DECLINE OF THE NORTH AND THE RISE OF
THEBES
147
IX. THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, THE FEUDAL AGE: STATE,
SOCIETY AND RELIGION
X. THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
157
.
177
Xviii
CONTENTS
BOOK FOUR
THE HYKSOS: THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
CAPTER
PAGE
211
XI. THE FALL OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: The HYKSOS
XII. THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS AND THE TRIUMPH
OF THEBES
223
BOOK FIVE
THE EMPIRE: FIRST PERIOD
233
XIII. THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
XIV. THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM: THE RISE
OF THE EMPIRE
XV. THE FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS AND THE REIGN
OF HATSHEPSUT
253
266
XVI. THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE EMPIRE: THUTMOSE
III .
284
•
322
XVII. THE EMPIRE .
XVIII. THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
355
XIX.
THE FALL OF IKHNATON AND THE DISSOLUTION OF
THE EMPIRE .
379
BOOK SIX
THE EMPIRE : SECOND PERIOD
399
XX. THE TRIUMPH OF AMON AND THE REORGANIZATION
OF THE EMPIRE
XXI. THE WARS OF RAMSES II .
XXII. THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
423
442
XXIII. THE FINAL DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE: MERNEPTAH
AND RAMSES III .
464
3
CONTENTS
xix
BOOK SEVEN
THE DECADENCE
CHAPTER
PAGE
XXIV. THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
505
522
XXV. PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE SUPREMACY OF
THE LIBYANS
XXVI. THE ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY AND THE TRIUMPH
OF ASSYRIA
537
BOOK EIGHT
THE RESTORATION AND THE END
XXVII. THE RESTORATION
565
XXVIII. THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA
582
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF KINGS .
597
INDEX
603
EXPLANATION OF FOOT-NOTES AND ABBREVIATIONS
The Roman numerals I, II, III, IV followed by Arabics refer to
the volumes and paragraphs of the author's Ancient Records of
Egypt. See Preface, p. xi.
BT = Brugsch, Thesaurus.
Rec. – Recueil de Travaux, edited by Maspero.
RIH = de Rougé, Inscriptions hiéroglyphiques.
All other abbreviations are sufficiently full to be intelligible
without further explanation.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE COLONNADED HALL OF THE TEMPLE OF ESNEH. Frontispiece
FIG.
PAGE
1. ONE OF THE CHANNELS OF THE FIRST CATARACT
6
6
2.-Thu INUNDATION SEEN FROM THE ROAD TO THE PYRAMIDS
OF GIZEH
3.-LOOKING ACROSS THE NILE TO THE WESTERN CLIFFS
NEAR THEBES
10
.
10
4.--THE HUTS AND PALM GROVES OF KARNAK, THEBES
5. THE NILE VALLEY, VIEWED ACROSS THE MODERN TOWN
OF EDFU
14.
.
6.-A TRIPLE SHADẬP
18
7.--THE CLIFFS OF THE NILE CAÑON
18
8.—THE EARLIEST KNOWN PAINTING
27
9.-FLINT KNIFE OF THE PREDYNASTIC AGE
29
10.—PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH INCISED DECORATION
30
30
11.-PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH PAINTED DESIGNS OF BOATS,
ANIMALS, MEN AND WOMEN
12.--A PREDYNASTIC GRAVE
34
13.--GOLD BAR BEARING MENES' NAME.
34
14.--ALABASTER VESSELS OF THE FIRST DYNASTY.
34
15.-CHAIR LEGS, CARVED IVORY, EARLY DYNASTIES
34
16.---COPPER VESSELS, FIRST DYNASTY
34
17.-FOUR BRACELETS ON LADY'S ARM, FIRST DYNASTY 36
18.—THE KING BREAKS GROUND FOR A NEW CANAL, FIRST
DYNASTY
36
xxii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
PAGE
19.—MAGNIFICENT CARVED CEREMONIAL PALETTE OF SLATE 36
20.-PORTRAIT HEAD OF KING KHASEKHEM: FROM Two
DIFFERENT ANGLES.
38
+
21.--STATUE OF KING KHASEKHEM: HEAD IN FIG. 20.
38
22.-BRICK-LINED WOODEN FLOORED TOMB CHAMBER OF
KING ENEZIB
38
23.-BRICK TOMB OF KING USEPHAIS
42
24.--SEALED JARS OF FOOD AND DRINK .
42
25.-EARLIEST STONE STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD
42
42
26.-IVORY TABLET OF KING USEPHAIS.
27.—EBONY TABLET OF MENES, FIRST DYNASTY, ABYDOS, ,
3400 B.C.
28.-KING SEMERKHET (FIRST DYNASTY) SMITES THE
BEDUIN OF SINAI
43
43
29.—THE PALERMO STONE.
46
30.-THE CELESTIAL Cow
55
31.—THE GODDESS OF THE HEAVENS
55
1
32.--THE CELESTIAL BARQUE OF THE SUN-GOD
57
33.-RESTORATION OF A GROUP OF OLD KINGDOM “MAST-
ABAS," OR MASONRY TOMBS
57
0
34.--GROUND PLAN OF A "MASTABA" OR MASONRY TOMB
68
35.-RESTORATION OF THE PYRAMIDS OF ABUSIR AND CON-
NECTED BUILDINGS
72
36.- COLLECTION OF TAXES BY TREASURY OFFICIALS.
79
37.–VILLA AND GARDEN OF AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE
OLD KINGDOM
90
38.-A NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM HUNTING WILD FOWL
WITH THE THROW-STICK FROM A SKIFF OF REEDS IN
THE PAPYRUS MARSHES
91
39.-AGRICULTURE IN THE OLD KINGDOM
92
ILLUSTRATIONS
xxiii
FIG.
PAGE
93
40.--A HERD IN THE OLD KINGDOM, FORDING A CANAL
41.-METALWORKERS' WORKSHOP IN THE OLD KINGDOM
94
42.--SHIPBUILDING IN THE OLD KINGDOM
95
43.—WORKMEN DRILLING OUT STONE VESSELS, OLD KING-
DOM
96
11
0
97
44.—PAPYRUS HARVEST IN THE OLD KINGDOM
45.-Two COLUMNS FROM AN OLD KINGDOM LEGAL DOCU-
MENT
98
46.-SCENES AT AN OLD KINGDOM MARKET
98
47.--THIRD DYNASTY ARCH
100
48.—DIORITE STATUE OF KHEPHREN
100
49.- LIMESTONE STATUE OF RANOFER
100
50.-
LIMESTONE STATUE OF HEMSET
102
51.-HEAD OF THE WOODEN STATUE OF THE SHEKH EL-
BELED.
102
52.- LIMESTONE STATUE OF AN OLD KINGDOM SCRIBE
102
53.---LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF PEPI I, WITH FIGURE OF His Son;
BOTH OF BEATEN COPPER
104
54.-HEAD OF THE COPPER STATUE OF PEPI I, SHOWING
EYES OF INLAID ROCK CRYSTAL
104
55.-PAINTING OF GEESE FROM
AT MEDÛM.
AN OLD KINGDOM TOMB
104
+
56.- RELIEFS FROM THE INTERIOR OF AN OLD KINGDOM
MASTABA CHAPEL, DEPICTING HERDS AND Flocks. 106
57.-DECORATIVE HEAD OF LION, IN GRANITE
106
58.-GOLDEN HAWK OF HIERACONPOLIS.
106
59.-WOODEN PANEL OF HESIRE
106
60.-FIFTH DYNASTY COLUMNS. CLUSTER OF PAPYRUS STEMS
AND PALM CAPITAL
106
xxiv
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
PAGE
61.-ELEVATION OF PART OF THE COLONNADE SURROUNDING
THE COURT OF THE PYRAMID TEMPLE OF NUSERRE,
FIFTH DYNASTY
108
62.--BRICK MASTABA OF ZOSER'S REIGN AT BET KHALLAF 110
116,
63.—THE “TERRACED PYRAMID” OF ZOSER AT SAKKARA
64.–PYRAMID ATTRIBUTED TO SNEFRU AT MEDÜM.
110
65.–Rock INSCRIPTIONS OF AMENEMHET III, IN WADI
MAGHARA, SINAI, INCLUDING SNEFRU AMONG THE
LOCAL GODS.
114
春 ​*
66.—CASING BLOCKS AT THE BASE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.
JOINTS OTHERWISE UNDISCERNABLE INDICATED BY
CHARCOAL LINES
114
年
​67.--THE GREAT PYRAMID OF KHUFU (CHEOPS) AT GIZEH . 116
68.--THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH
118
69.-A GRANITE HALL IN THE GREAT MONUMENTAL GATE
OF KHAFRE
· 118
70.---THE GREAT SPHINX OF GIZEH.
122
71.-RESTORATION OF THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT
ABUSIR
124
.
本
​72.-RELIEF SCENES FROM THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT
ABUSIR
125
.
73.- RUINED PYRAMID OF UNIS (FIFTH DYNASTY) AT SAK-
KARA
128
74.-ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE, THE HOME OF THE LORDS OF
THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER
128
75.-STATUE OF AN OLD EMPIRE DWARF
140
76.-TOMB OF HARKHUF AT ASSUAN
· 142
77.--HEAD OF KING MERNERE
142
78.-WESTERN CLIFFS OF SIUT
.
142
79.-OFFICES OF THE NOMARCH KNUMHOTEP AT BENIHASAN 158
ILLUSTRATIONS
XXV
FIG.
PAGE
80.-A COLOSSUS OF ALABASTER ABOUT TWENTY-TWO FEET
High TRANSPORTED ON A SLEDGE BY ONE HUNDRED
AND SEVENTY-TWO MEN IN FOUR DOUBLE LINES AT
THE ROPES
159
81.-A MIDDLE KINGDOM COFFIN AND MORTUARY FURNITURE 170
82.--MORTUARY BOAT OF SESOSTRIS III .
170
83.-RESTORATION OF THE FORTRESS OF SEMNEH AND KUM-
MEH.
185
84.-THE NUBIAN NILE FROM THE RUINED MOSLEM STRONG-
HOLD ON THE HEIGHTS OF IBRIM
186
85.--RUINS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MINING SETTLEMENT AT
SARBUT EL-KHADEM, SINAI
186
86.-VIEW ACROSS THE BIRKET EL-KURÛN IN THE NORTH-
WESTERN FAYUM
192
87.- OBELISK OF SESOSTRIS I AT HELIOPOLIS
192
88.-WOODEN STATUE OF PRINCE EWIBRE
192
89.—HEAD OF AMENEMHET III, FROM A SPHINX FOUND AT
TANIS
196
90.--BUST OF A STATUE OF AMENEMHET III
196
91.–BRICK PYRAMID OF SESOSTRIS II, AT ILLAHUN
196
92.--SECTION OF THE BURIAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF
HAWARA
199
+
93.-LOOKING DOWN THE AXIS OF THE TEMPLE AT TANIS 202
94.—CAPSTONE OF THE PYRAMID OF AMENEMHET III, AT
DASHUR
202
95.-THREE OF THE TEN STATUES OF AMENEMHET I, FOUND
AT HIS PYRAMID OF LISHT
202
96.—THE HARPER SINGING TO THE BANQUETERS .
208
97.-DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS FOUND IN
HER TOMB AT DASHUR
208
98.-DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS, FOUND IN
HER TOMB AT DASHUR
208
.
XXvi
ILLUSTRATIONS
POS
99.—EXCAVATION OF STATUE OF NEFERKHERE-SEBEKHO-
TEP, ON ISLAND OF ARKO, ABOVE THIRD CATARACT. 216
100.-BODY OF ONE OF THE SEKENENRES, SHOWING WOUND IN
SKULL.
216
101.-FRAGMENT OF A SITTING COLOSSUS OF KHIAN, IN GRAN-
216
.
ITE
102.-WALLED CITY OF EL KAB, SEEN THROUGH A TOMB DOOR
IN THE EASTERN CLIFFS FLANKING THE TOWN 226
103.-BRONZE WEAPONS OF AHMOSE I
226
104.-A BODY OF SPEARMEN OF THE EMPIRE .
234
105.-A CHARIOT OF THE EMPIRE
234
106.—“USHEBTI" OR RESPONDENT STATUETTES
250
107.-HEART SCARAB OF THE "FIRST OF THE SACRED WOMEN
OF AMON, ISIMKHEB'
250
108.PART OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS' TOMBS, THEBES. 250
1
109.-GROUND PLAN OF THE TOMB OF SETI I
251
110.-ENTRANCE GALLERY OF THE TOMB OF RAMSES V, THEBES 260
111.-SITTING STATUE OF SENMUT, THE FAVOURITE OF HAT-
260
SHEPSUT
112.-SCENES FROM THE GREAT SERIES OF RELIEFS IN THE DER
EL BAHRI TEMPLE AT THEBES
275
113.—NORTHERN COLONNADES ON THE MIDDLE TERRACE OF
HATSHEPSUT'S TERRACED TEMPLE OF DER EL BAHRI,
THEBES
280
114. OBELISKS OF HATSHEPSUT AT KARNAK
280
115.-VIEW ACROSS THE AMON-OASIS, OR SIWA
294
116.-OBELISK OF THUTMOSE III
294
117.-LISTS OF TOWNS IN ASIA TAKEN BY THUTMOSE III
294
118.----A PHARAOH OF THE EMPIRE RECEIVING ASIATIC ENVOYS
BEARING TRIBUTE
300
ILLUSTRATIONS
xxvii
FIG.
PAGE
.
119.-ASIATIC PRISONERS IN EGYPT UNDER THE EMPIRE 308
120.--HEAD OF THUTMOSE III
326
121.-HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, SON OF THUTMOSE III . 326
122.-HEAD OF THUTMOSE IV, SON OF AMENHOTEP II 326
123.-AMARNA LETTER, No. 296.
326
124.-COSTUMES OF THE EMPIRE
340
125.--THE PERIPTERAL CELLA-TEMPLE
341
126.-PERSPECTIVE AND SECTION OF A TYPICAL PYLON TEMPLE
OF THE EMPIRE
342
127.-FRAGMENT OF CARVED STONE VASE FOUND IN CRETE 342
128.--AMENHOTEP III's COURT OF CLUSTERED PAPYRUS BUD
COLUMNS
342
•
129.-AVENUE OF RAM-SPHINXES BEFORE THE GREAT KARNAK
TEMPLE
346
130.-COLUMNS OF THE NAVE OF AMENHOTEP III's UNFIN-
ISHED HALL
350
131.-COLOSSAL GRITSTONE STATUES OF AMENHOTEP III (MEM-
NON Colossi)
354
132.—PART OF A FUNERAL PROCESSION OF A HIGH PRIEST OF
MEMPHIS
358
#
133.---LION FROM AMENHOTEP III's TEMPLE AT SOLEB
362
134.A STOOL OF THE EMPIRE
362
362
135.-FRONT OF THE STATE CHARIOT OF THUTMOSE IV .
136.-ROYAL PORTRAIT OF THE EMPIRE
366
137.-PORTRAIT OF AMENHOTEP, SON OF HAPI
366
.
138.-DUCKS SWIMMING AMONG LOTUS FLOWERS
366
139.-IKHNATON AND HIS QUEEN DECORATE THE PRIEST EYE
AND HIS WIFE
368
140..GREAT BOUNDARY STELA OF AMARNA
370
141.-IKHNATON RECEIVING FLOWERS FROM HIS QUEEN
370
xxviii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG,
PAGE
142.-LIMESTONE TORSO OF IKHNATON'S DAUGHTER
376
.
143.-HEAD OF IKHNATON
376
+
144. MARSH LIFE.
376
145.----HITTITE SOLDIER ARMED WITH AN AXE
382
146.—HITTITE KING BEARING SPEAR AND SCEPTER
382
147.--EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL RECEIVING SEMITIC IMMIGRANTS
382
148.—HARMHAB AS AN OFFICIAL REWARDED WITH GOLD BY
THE KING
386
149.- SOUTHERN PYLONS OF HARMHAB AT KARNAK
390
150.—HARMHAB AS A PEASANT IN THE HEREAFTER
390
151.-BUST OF KHONSU
390
152.BATTLE RELIEFS OF SETI I AT KARNAK
396
153.—SETI I OFFERING AN IMAGE OF TRUTH TO OSIRIS.
402
154.-SETI I AS A YOUTH OFFERING THE IMAGE OF TRUTH
406
155.-CATTLE INSPECTION
412
156.-SWAMP HUNTING IN A REED Boat.
418
157.--SECTION OF ONE OF SETI I's RELIEFS AT KARNAK
419
158.--HEAD OF SETI I
424
159.-STELÆ OF RAMSES II AND ESARHADDON IN PHENICIA . 424
160.-SCENE FROM THE RELIEFS OF THE BATTLE OF KADESH . 434
161.-FRAGMENTS OF THOUSAND-TON COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II 442
162.-STORE CHAMBERS AT PITHOM
442
163.—HEAVY-ARMED SHERDEN OF RAMSES II's MERCENARY
BODYGUARD
448
164.-RESTORATION OF THE GREAT HALL AT KARNAK 448
165.-NAVE OF THE GREAT HALL OF KARNAK
448
166.- THE RAMESSEUM, MORTUARY TEMPLE OF RAMSES II . 450
167.-THE CLIFF TEMPLE OF ABU SIMBEL
450
ILLUSTRATIONS
xxix
FIG.
PAGE
168.BLACK GRANITE STATUE OF RAMSES II.
450
169.-BATTLE SCENE FROM THE GREAT SERIES OF RELIEFS OF
RAMSES II ON THE WALLS OF THE RAMESSEUM
452
170.—HEAD OF RAMSES II
464
171.--VICTORIOUS HYMN OF MERNEPTAH
464
172.—PELESET OR PHILISTINE PRISONERS OF RAMSES III 464
173.-NAVAL VICTORY OF RAMSES III OVER NORTHERN MEDI-
TERRANEAN PEOPLES
480
492
174.-RAMSES III'S MEDINET HABU TEMPLE
175.—RAMSES III's MEDINET HABU TEMPLE
492
176.- RAMSES III HUNTING THE WILD BULL .
. 492
177.—THE HIGH PRIEST OF AMON AMENHOTEP DECORATED BY
RAMSES IX
510
178.-SCRIBE'S NOTES ON COFFIN OF SETI I
510
179.--THE DER EL BAHRI HIDING-PLACE.
510
180.--"THE FIELD OF ABRAM'
. 536
181.–SENJIRLI STELA OF ESARHADDON
536
182.-SERAPEUM STELA OF PSAMTIK I
536
183.--GENERAL VIEW OF KARNAK FROM THE SOUTH
560
184.-ALABASTER STATUE OF AMENARDIS, SISTER OF PIANKHI 576
590
185.--BRONZ IBEX FROM THE PROW OF A SHIP
186.--PORTRAIT HEAD OF THE SAITE AGE
590
MAPS
21
PAGE
1. -The TOWN OF ILLAHÛN, SHOWING THE CROWDED QUAR-
TERS OF THE Poor
87
2.--THE FOURTH DYNASTY CEMITERY AT GIZEH .
122
3. -THE FAYUM
192
286
4.-THE CARMEL RIDGE, SHOWING MEGIDDO
5.—THE MODERN TELL-NERI-MINDOH, ANCIENT KADESH
300
6.-THEBES
348
7.-THE ASIATIC EMPIRE OF EGYPT.
384
8.—THE VICINITY OF KADESH
426
9.—THE BATTLE OF KADESH
428
10.--THE BATTLE OF KADESH
430
11.-PLAN OF THE KARNAK TEMPLES
444
12.- EGYPT AND THE ANCIENT WORLD
476
13.-GENERAL MAP OF EGYPT AND NUBIA
At end of Volume
BOOK I
INTRODUCTION
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
CHAPTER I
THE LAND
THE roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in
the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into
power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern
Mediterranean, and the adjacent regions on the east of it.
Had the Euphrates finally found its way into the Mediter-
ranean, toward which, indeed, it seems to have started, both
the early civilizations, to which we refer, might then have
been included in the Mediterranean basin. As it is, the scene
of early oriental history does not fall entirely within that
basin, but must be designated as the eastern Mediterranean
region. It lies in the midst of the vast desert plateau, which,
beginning at the Atlantic, extends eastward across the entire
northern end of Africa, and continuing beyond the depres-
sion of the Red Sea, passes northeastward, with some inter-
ruptions, far into the heart of Asia. . Approaching it, the
one from the south and the other from the north, two great
river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro-
Euphrates valley; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these
two valleys that the career of man may be traced from
the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than
anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of
the human race that the influences which emanated from
their highly developed but differing cultures, can now be
more and more clearly traced as we discern them converging
upon the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern
Europe.
主
​3
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
The Nile, which created the valley home of the early
Egyptians, rises three degrees south of the equator, and
flowing into the Mediterranean at over thirty one and a half
degrees north latitude, it attains a length of some four thou-
sand miles, and vies with the greatest rivers of the world in
length, if not in volume. In its upper course the river,
emerging from the lakes of equatorial Africa, is known as the
White Nile. Just south of north latitude sixteen at Khar-
tum, about thirteen hundred and fifty miles from the sea,
it receives from the east an affluent known as the Blue Nile,
which is a considerable mountain torrent, rising in the lofty
highlands of Abyssinia. One hundred and forty miles
below the union of the two Niles the stream is joined by its
only other tributary, the Atbara, which is a freshet not
unlike the Blue Nile. It is at Khartum, or just below it,
that the river enters the table land of Nubian sandstone,
underlying the Great Sahara. Here it winds on its tortuous
course between the desert hills (Fig. 84), where it returns
upon itself, often flowing due south, until after it has finally
pushed through to the north, its course describes a vast S.
In six different places throughout this region the current
has hitherto failed to erode a perfect channel through the
stubborn stone, and these extended interruptions, where the
rocks are piled in scattered and irregular masses in the
stream, are known as the cataracts of the Nile; although
there is no great and sudden fall such as that of our cataract
at Niagara (Fig. 1). These rocks interfere with navigation
most seriously in the region of the first, second and fourth
cataracts; otherwise the river is navigable almost throughout
its entire course. At Elephantine it passes the granite bar-
rier which there thrusts up its rough shoulder, forming the
first cataract, and thence emerges upon an unobstructed
course to the sea.
It is the valley below the first cataract which constituted
Egypt proper. The reason for the change which here gives
the river a free course is the disappearance of the sandstone,
sixty eight miles below the cataract, at Edfu, where the num-
1
THE LAND
5
mulitic limestone which forms the northern desert plateau,
offers the stream an easier task in the erosion of its bed. It
has thus produced a vast cañon or trench (Figs. 3 and 7),
cut across the eastern end of the Sahara to the northern sea.
From cliff to cliff, the valley varies in width, from ten or
twelve, to some thirty one miles. The floor of the cañon is
covered with black, alluvial deposits, through which the
river winds northward. It cuts a deep channel through the
alluvium, flowing with a speed of about three miles an hour;
in width it only twice attains a maximum of eleven hundred
yards. On the west the Bahr Yusuf, a second, minor chan-
nel some two hundred miles long, leaves the main stream
near Siut and flows into the Fayum. In antiquity it flowed
thence into a canal known as the “North,” which passed
northward west of Memphis and reached the sea by the site
of later Alexandria.1 A little over a hundred miles from the
sea the main stream enters the broad triangle, with apex
at the south, which the Greeks so graphically called the
“Delta.” This is of course a bay of prehistoric ages, which
has been gradually filled up by the river. The stream once
divided at this point and reached the sea through seven
mouths, but in modern times there are but two main
branches, straggling through the Delta and piercing the
coast-line on either side of the middle. The western branch
is called the Rosetta mouth; the eastern that of Damiette.
The deposits which have formed the Delta, are very deep,
and have slowly risen over the sites of the many ancient
cities which once flourished there. The old swamps which
must once have rendered the regions of the northern Delta
a vast morass, have been gradually filled up, and the fringe
of marshes pushed further out. They undoubtedly occupied
in antiquity a much larger proportion of the Delta than they
do now. In the valley above the depth of the soil varies
from thirty three to thirty eight feet, and sometimes reaches
a maximum of ten miles in width. The cultivable area thus
formed, between the cataract and the sea, is less than ten
* IV, 224, I. 8, note.
6
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
cut its way.
thousand square miles in extent, being roughly equal to the
area of the state of Maryland, or about ten per cent less than
that of Belgium. The cliffs on either hand are usually but a
few hundred feet in height, but here and there they rise into
almost mountains of a thousand feet (Fig. 3). They are of
course flanked by the deserts through which the Nile has
On the west the Libyan Desert or the Great
Sahara rolls in illimitable, desolate hills of sand, gravel and
rock, from six hundred and fifty to a thousand feet above
the Nile. Its otherwise waterless expanse is broken only
by an irregular line of oases, or watered depressions, roughly
parallel with the river, and doubtless owing their springs
and wells to infiltration of the Nile waters. The largest of
these depressions is situated so close to the valley that the
rock wall which once separated them has broken down, pro-
ducing the fertile Fayum, watered by the Bahr Yusuf.
Otherwise the western desert held no economic resources for
the use of the early Nile-dwellers. The eastern or Arabian
Desert is somewhat less inhospitable, and capable of yield-
ing a scanty subsistence to wandering tribes of Ababdeh.
A range of granite mountains parallel with the coast of the
Red Sea contains gold-bearing quartz veins, and here and
there other gold-producing mountains lie between the Nile
and the Red Sea. Deposits of alabaster and extensive
masses of various fine, hard igneous rocks led to the exploit-
ation of quarries here also, while the Red Sea harbours
could of course be reached only by traversing this desert,
through which established routes thither were early traced.
Further north similar mineral resources led to an acquaint-
ance with the peninsula of Sinai and its desert regions, at
a very remote date.
The situation afforded by this narrow valley was one of
unusual isolation; on either hand vast desert wastes, on the
north the harbourless coast-line of the Delta, and on the south
the rocky barriers of successive cataracts, preventing fusion
with the peoples of inner Africa. It was chiefly at the two
northern corners of the Delta, that outside influences and

Fig. 1.-ONE OF THE CHANNELS OF THE FIRST CATARACT.
Looking northward from the Island of Philæ; ruins on Philæ in the foreground.

Fig. 2.-THE INUNDATION SEEN FROM THE ROAD TO THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH.
The road is on the right; in the distance the desert plateau on which the pyramids stand. Before them the village
of Kafr.
THE LAND
7
foreign elements, which were always sifting into the Nile
valley, gained access to the country. Through the eastern
corner it was the prehistoric Semitic population of neigh-
bouring Asia, who forced their way in across the dangerous
intervening deserts; while the Libyan races, of possibly
European origin, found entrance at the western corner. The
products of the south also, in spite of the cataracts, filtered
in ever increasing volume into the regions of the lower river
and the lower end of the first cataract became a trading
post, ever after known as “Suan" (Assuan) or “market,”
where the negro traders of the south met those of Egypt.
The upper Nile thus gradually became a regular avenue of
commerce with the Sudan. The natural boundaries of
Egypt, however, always presented sufficiently effective bar-
riers to would-be invaders, to enable the natives slowly to
assimilate the new comers, without being displaced.
It will be evident that the remarkable shape of the country
must powerfully influence its political development. Except
in the Delta it was but a narrow line, some seven hundred
and fifty miles long. Straggling its slender length along the
river, and sprawling out into the Delta, it totally lacked the
compactness necessary to stable political organization. A
given locality has neighbours on only two sides, north and
south, and these their shortest boundaries; local feeling was
strong, local differences were persistent, and a man of the
Delta could hardly understand the speech of a man of the
first cataract region. It was only the ease of communication
afforded by the river which in any degree neutralized the
effect of the country's remarkable length.
The wealth of commerce which the river served to carry,
it was equally instrumental in producing. While the climate
of the country is not rainless, yet the rare showers of the
south, often separated by intervals of years, and even the
more frequent rains of the Delta, are totally insufficient to
maintain the processes of agriculture. The marvellous pro-
ductivity of the Egyptian soil is due to the annual inundation
of the river, which is caused by the melting of the snows,
8
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and by the spring rains at the sources of the Blue Nile.
Freighted with the rich loam of the Abyssinian highlands,
the rushing waters of the spring freshet hurry down the
Nubian valley, and a slight rise is discernible at the first
cataract in the early part of June. The flood swells rapidly
and steadily, and although the increase is usually inter-
rupted for nearly a month from the end of September on,
it is usually resumed again, and the maximum level con-
tinues until the end of October or into November. The
waters in the region of the first cataract are then nearly fifty
feet higher than at low water; while at Cairo the rise is
about half that at the cataract. A vast and elaborate system
of irrigation canals and reservoirs first receives the flood,
which is then allowed to escape into the fields as needed.
Here it rests long enough to deposit its burden of rich, black
earth from the upper reaches of the Blue Nile. At such
times the appearance of the country is picturesque in the
extreme, the glistening surface of the waters being dotted
here and there by the vivid green of the waving palm groves,
which mark the villages, now accessible only along the dykes
belonging to the irrigation system (Fig. 2). Thus year by
year, the soil which would otherwise become impoverished
in the elements necessary to the production of such prodi-
gious harvests, is invariably replenished with fresh resources.
As the river sinks below the level of the fields again, it is
necessary to raise the water from the canals by artificial
means, in order to carry on the constant irrigation of the
growing crops in the outlying fields, which are too high to
be longer refreshed by absorption from the river (Fig. 6).1
Thus a genial and generous, but exacting soil, demanded
for its cultivation the development of a high degree of skill
* The device used (called a “shadüf”) resembles the well-sweep of our
grandfathers. Fig. 6 shows the leathern bucket suspended from one end of the
sweep, while at the other end a huge lump of dried mud serves as a counter-
poise. When the water is very low, as many as three or even four such
“ shadüfs" are necessary to raise the water from level to level until that of
the field is reached. A single crop requires the lifting of 1,600 to 2,000 tous
of water per acre in a hundred days.
THE LAND
9
in the manipulation of the life-giving waters, and at a very
early day the men of the Nile valley had attained a sur-
prising command of the complicated problems involved in
the proper utilization of the river. If Egypt became the
mother of the mechanical arts, the river will have been one
of the chief natural forces to which this fact was due. With
such natural assets as these, an ever replenished soil, and
almost unfailing waters for its refreshment, the wealth of
Egypt could not but be chiefly agricultural, a fact to which
we shall often recur. Such opulent fertility of course sup-
ported a large population--in Roman times some seven mil-
lion soulst - while in our own day it maintains over nine
million, a density of population far surpassing that to be
found anywhere in Europe. The other natural resources of
the valley we shall be better able to trace as we follow their
exploitation in the course of the historical development.
In climate Egypt is a veritable paradise, drawing to its
shores at the present day an 'ever increasing number of
winter guests. The air of Egypt is essentially that of the
deserts within which it lies, and such is its purity and
dryness, that even an excessive degree of heat occasions but
slight discomfort, owing to the fact that the moisture of the
body is dried up almost as fast as it is exhaled. The mean
temperature of the Delta in winter is 56° Fahrenheit, and
in the valley above it is ten degrees higher. In summer the
mean in the Delta is 83°; and although the summer tempera-
ture in the valley is sometimes as high as 122°, the air is
far from the oppressiveness accompanying the same degree
of heat in other lands. The nights even in summer are
always cool, and the vast expanses of vegetation appreciably
reduce the temperature. In winter just before dawn the
extreme cold is surprising, as contrasted with the genial
warmth of midday at the same season.
To the absence of
rain we have already adverted. The rare showers of upper
Egypt occur only when cyclonic disturbances in the southern
Mediterranean or northern Sahara force undischarged
1 Diodorus I, 31.
10
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
clouds into the Nile valley from the west; from the east they
can not reach the valley, owing to the high mountain ridge
along the Red Sea, which forces them upward and discharges
them. The lower Delta, however, falls within the zone of
the northern rainy season. In spite of the wide extent of
marshy ground, left stagnating by the inundation, the dry
airs of the desert, blowing constantly across the valley,
quickly dry the soil, and there is never any malarial infection
in Upper Egypt. Even in the vast morass of the Delta,
malaria is practically unknown. Thus, lying just outside
of the tropics, Egypt enjoyed a mild climate of unsurpassed
salubrity, devoid of the harshness of a northern winter, but
at the same time sufficiently cool to escape those enervating
influences inherent in tropical conditions.
The prospect of this contracted valley spread out before
the Nile dweller, was in antiquity, as it is to-day, somewhat
monotonous. The level Nile bottoms, the gift of the river,
clad in rich green, shut in on either hand by the yellow cliffs,
are unrelieved by any elevations or by any forests, save the
occasional groves of graceful palms, which fringe the river
banks or shade the villages of sombre mud huts (Fig. 4),
with now and then a sycamore, a tamarisk or an acacia. A
network of irrigation canals traverses the country in every
direction like a vast arterial system. The sands of the deso-
late wastes which lie behind the cañon walls, drift in athwart
the cliffs, and often invade the green fields so that one
may stand with one foot in the verdure of the valley, and
the other in the desert sand. Thus sharply defined was the
Egyptian's world: a deep and narrow valley of unparalleled
fertility, winding between lifeless deserts, furnishing a
remarkable environment, not to be found elsewhere in all
the world. Such surroundings reacted powerfully upon the
mind and thought of the Egyptian, conditioning and deter-
mining his idea of the world and his notion of the mysterious
powers which ruled it. The river, the dominant feature of
his valley, determined his notion of direction: his words for
north and south were “down-stream" and "up-stream”;

FIG. 3.-LOOKING ACROSS THE NILE TO THE WESTERN CLIFFS NEAR THEBES.
The low shores mark the level of the alluvium extending back to the cliffs.

Fig. 4.-THE HUTS AND PALM GROVES OF KARNAK, THEBES.
Seen from the roof of the temple of Khonsu. In the foreground is the gate or propylon of Euergetes I (Ptolemy
III, 247-222 B.C.). Leading up to it is the avenue of sphinxes made by Amenhotep III, connecting Karnak and
Luxor.
THE LAND
11
and when he broke through the barriers which separated
him from Asia, and reached the Euphrates, he called it “that
inverted water which goes down stream in going up stream"
(southward). For him the world consisted of the “Black
Land” and the “Red Land," the black soil of the Nile valley
and the reddish surface of the desert; or again of the "plain'
and the “highlands,” meaning the level Nile “bottoms"
and the high desert plateau. “Highlander” was synonymous
with foreigner, to go up" was to leave the valley, while to
“descend” was the customary term for returning home from
abroad. The illimitable solitudes of the desert, which thrust
itself thus insistently upon his vision and his whole economy
of life, and formed his horizon toward both suns, tinctured
with sombreness his views of the great gods who ruled such
a world.
Such was in brief the scene in which developed the people
of the Nile, whose culture dominated the basin of the eastern
Mediterranean in the age when Europe was emerging into
the secondary stages of civilization, and coming into intimate
contact with the culture of the early east. Nowhere on earth
have the witnesses of a great, but now extinct civilization,
been so plentifully preserved as along the banks of the Nile.
Even in the Delta, where the storms of war beat more fiercely
than in the valley above, and where the slow accumulations
from the yearly flood have gradually entombed them, the
splendid cities of the Pharaohs have left great stretches,
cumbered with enormous blocks of granite, limestone and
sandstone, shattered obelisks, and massive pylon bases, to
proclaim the wealth and power of forgotten ages; while an
ever growing multitude of modern visitors are drawn to the
upper valley by the colossal ruins that greet the wondering
traveller almost at every bend in the stream. Nowhere else
in the ancient world were such massive stone buildings
erected, and nowhere else has a dry atmosphere, coupled
with an almost complete absence of rain, permitted the sur-
vival of such a wealth of the best and highest in the life of
*II, 72.
12
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
an ancient people, in so far as that life found expression in
material form. In the plenitude of its splendour, much of it
thus survived into the classic age of European civilization,
and hence it was, that as Egypt was gradually overpowered
and absorbed by the western world, the currents of life from
west and east commingled here, as they have never done else-
where. Both in the Nile valley and beyond it, the west
thus felt the full impact of Egyptian civilization for many
centuries, and gained from it all that its manifold culture
had to contribute. The career which made Egypt so rich a
heritage of alien peoples, and a legacy so valuable to all later
ages, we shall endeavour to trace in the ensuing chapters.
CHAPTER II
PRELIMINARY SURVEY, CHRONOLOGY AND
DOCUMENTARY SOURCES
A RAPID survey of the purely external features which serve
to demark the great epochs in the career of the Nile valley
people, will enable us the more intelligently to study those
epochs in detail, as we meet them in the course of our
progress. In such a survey, we sweep our eyes down a
period of four thousand years of human history, from a time
when the only civilization known in the basin of the Mediter-
ranean is slowly dawning among a primitive people on the
shores of the Nile. We can cast but a brief glance at the
outward events which characterized each great period, espe-
cially noting how foreign peoples are gradually drawn within
the circle of Egyptian intercourse from age to age, and
reciprocal influences ensue; until in the thirteenth century
B. C. the peoples of southern Europe, long discernible in
their material civilization, emerge in the written documents
of Egypt for the first time in history. It was then that the
fortunes of the Pharaohs began to decline, and as the civili-
zation and power, first of the East and then of classic
Europe, slowly developed, Egypt was finally submerged in
the great world of Mediterranean powers, first dominated
by Persia, and then by Greece and Rome.
The career of the races which peopled the Nile valley falls
into a series of more or less clearly marked epochs, each of
which is rooted deeply in that which preceded it, and itself
contains the germs of that which is to follow. A more or
less arbitrary and artificial but convenient sub-division of
these epochs, beginning with the historic age, is furnished
by the so-called dynasties of Manetho. This native historian
事
​13
14
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of Egypt, a priest of Sebennytos, who flourished under
Ptolemy I (305–285 B. C.), wrote a history of his country
in the Greek language. The work has perished, and we only
know it in an epitome by Julius Africanus and Eusebius,
and extracts by Josephus. The value of the work was slight,
as it was built up on folk-tales and popular traditions of the
early kings. Manetho divided the long succession of Phar-
aohs as known to him, into thirty royal houses or dynas-
ties, and although we know that many of his divisions are
arbitrary, and that there was many a dynastic change where
he indicates none, yet his dynasties divide the kings into
convenient groups, which have so long been employed in
modern study of Egyptian history, that it is now impossible
to dispense with them.
After an archaic age of primitive civilization, and a period
of small and local kingdoms, the various centres of civiliza-
tion on the Nile gradually coalesced into two kingdoms: one
comprising the valley down to the Delta; and the other
made up of the Delta itself. In the Delta, civilization rap-
idly advanced, and the calendar year of 365 days was intro-
duced in 4241 B. C., the earliest fixed date in the history of
the world as known to us. A long development, as the
"Two Lands," which left their imprint forever after, on
the civilization of later centuries, preceded a united Egypt,
which emerged upon our historic horizon at the consoli-
dation of the two kingdoms into one nation under Menes
about 3400 B. C. His accession marks the beginning of the
dynasties, and the preceding, earliest period may be conve-
niently designated as the predynastic age. In the excava-
tions of the last ten years, the predynastic civilization has
been gradually revealed in material documents exhibiting
the various stages in the slow evolution which at last pro-
duced the dynastic culture.
A uniform government of the whole country was the secret
of over four centuries of prosperity under the descendants
of Menes at Thinis, near Abydos, close to the great bend of
11, 44-45.

boet
4241
1962
6203
Fig. 5.—THE NILE VALLEY, VIEWED ACROSS THE MODERN TOWN OF EDFU.
Beyond the town the river winds through the “bottoms,” behind which rise the eastern cliffs.
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
15
the Nile below Thebes, and probably also at or near later
Memphis. The remarkable development of these four cen-
turies in material civilization led to the splendour and power
of the first great epoch of Egyptian history, the Old King-
dom. The seat of government was at Memphis, where four
royal houses, the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties,
ruled in succession for five hundred years (2980-2475 B. C.).
Art and mechanics reached a level of unprecedented excel-
lence never later surpassed, while government and adminis-
tration had never before been so highly developed. Foreign
enterprise passed far beyond the limits of the kingdom; the
mines of Sinai, already operated in the First Dynasty, were
vigourously exploited; trade in Egyptian bottoms reached
the coast of Phænicia and the Islands of the North, while in
the south, the Pharaoh's fleets penetrated to the Somali coast
on the Red Sea; and in Nubia his envoys were strong enough
to exercise a loose sovereignty over the lower country, and
by tireless expeditions to keep open the trade routes leading
to the Sudan. In the Sixth Dynasty (2625-2475 B. C.)
the local governors of the central administration, who had
already gained hereditary hold upon their offices in the
Fifth Dynasty (2750–2625 B. C.), were able to assert them-
selves as landed barons and princes, no longer mere func-
tionaries of the crown. They thus prepared the way for
an age of feudalism.
The growing power of the new landed nobility finally
caused the fall of the Pharaonic house, and after the close
of the Sixth Dynasty, about 2400 B. C., the supremacy of
Memphis waned. In the internal confusion which followed,
we can discern nothing of Manetho's ephemeral Seventh
and Eighth Dynasties at Memphis, which lasted not more
than thirty years; but with the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties
the nobles of Heracleopolis gained the throne, which was
occupied by eighteen successive kings of the line. It is now
that Thebes first appears as the seat of a powerful family
of princes, by whom the Heracleopolitans and the power of
the North are gradually overcome till the South triumphs.
16
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
The exact lapse of time from the fall of the Old Kingdom
to the triumph of the South is at present indeterminable, but
it may be estimated roughly at two hundred and seventy five
to three hundred years, with a margin of uncertainty of
possibly a century either way.
With the restoration of a united Egypt under the Theban
princes of the Eleventh Dynasty about 2160 B. C., the issue
of the tendencies already discernible at the close of the Old
Kingdom is clearly visible. Throughout the land the local
princes and barons are firmly seated in their domains, and
with these hereditary feudatories the Pharaoh must now
reckon. The system was not fully developed until the
advent of a second Theban family, the Twelfth Dynasty, the
founder of which, Amenemhet I, probably usurped the
throne. For over two hundred years (2000–1788 B. C.) this
powerful line of kings ruled a feudal state. This feudal
age is the classic period of Egyptian history. Literature
flourished, the orthography of the language was for the first
time regulated, poetry had already reached a highly artistic
structure, the earliest known literature of entertainment was
produced, sculpture and architecture were rich and prolific,
and the industrial arts surpassed all previous attainments.
The internal resources of the country were elaborately devel-
oped, especially by close attention to the Nile and the inun-
dation. Enormous hydraulic works reclaimed large tracts
of cultivable domain in the Fayum, in the vicinity of which
the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Amenemhets and the
Sesostrises, lived. Abroad the exploitation of the mines in
Sinai was now carried on by the constant labour of permanent
colonies there, with temples, fortifications and reservoirs for
the water supply. A plundering campaign was carried into
Syria, trade and intercourse with its Semitic tribes were con-
stant, and an interchange of commodities with the early
Mycenæan centres of civilization in the northern Mediter-
ranean is evident. Traffic with Punt and the southern coasts
of the Red Sea continued, while in Nubia the country between
11, 53,
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
17
the first and second cataracts, loosely controlled in the Sixth
Dynasty, was now conquered and held tributary by the
Pharaoh, so that the gold mines on the east of it were a con-
stant resource of his treasury.
The fall of the Twelfth Dynasty in 1788 B. C. was followed
by a second period of disorganization and obscurity, as the
feudatories struggled for the crown. Now and then an
aggressive and able ruler gained the ascendency for a brief
reign, and under one of these the subjugation of Upper
Nubia was carried forward to a point above the third cat-
aract; but his conquest perished with him. After possibly
a century of such internal conflict, the country was entered
and appropriated by a line of rulers from Asia, who had
seemingly already gained a wide dominion there. These
foreign usurpers, now known as the Hyksos, after Manetho's
designation of them, maintained themselves for perhaps a
century. Their residence was at Avaris in the eastern Delta,
and at least during the later part of their supremacy, the
Egyptian nobles of the South succeeded in gaining more or
less independence. Finally the head of a Theban family
boldly proclaimed himself king, and in the course of some
years these Theban princes succeeded in expelling the
Hyksos from the country, and driving them back from the
Asiatic frontier into Syria.
It was under the Hyksos and in the struggle with them
that the conservatism of millennia was broken up in the
Nile valley. The Egyptians learned aggressive war for the
first time, and introduced a well organized military system,
including chariotry, which the importation of the horse by
the Hyksos now enabled them to do. Egypt was trans-
formed into a military empire. In the struggle with the
Hyksos and with each other, the old feudal families perished,
or were absorbed among the partisans of the dominant
Theban family, from which the imperial line sprang. The
great Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty thus became
emperors, conquering and ruling from northern Syria and
the upper Euphrates, to the fourth cataract of the Nile on
2
18
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the south. Amid unprecedented wealth and splendour, they
ruled their vast dominions, which they gradually welded
together into a compact empire, the first known in the early
world. Thebes grew into a great metropolis, the earliest mon-
umental city. Extensive trade relations with the East and the
Mediterranean world developed; Mycenæan products were
common in Egypt, and Egyptian influences are clearly dis-
cernible in Mycenæan art. For two hundred and thirty years
(1580-1350 B. C.) the Empire flourished, but was wrecked at
last by a combination of adverse influences both within and
without. A religious revolution by the young and gifted
king Ikhnaton, caused an internal convulsion such as the
country had never before experienced; while the empire in
the north gradually disintegrated under the aggressions of
the Hittites, wlio pushed in from Asia Minor. At the same
time in both the northern and southern Asiatic dominions
of the Pharaoh, an overflow of Beduin immigration, ainong
which were undoubtedly some of the tribes which later
coalesced with the Israelites, aggravated the danger, and
together with the persistent advance of the Hittites, finally
resulted in the complete dissolution of the Asiatic empire of
Egypt, down to the very frontier of the northeastern Delta.
Meanwhile the internal disorders had caused the fall of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, an event which terminated the First
Period of the Empire (1350 B. C.).
Harmhab, one of the able commanders under the fallen
dynasty, survived the crisis and finally seized the throne.
Under his vigourous rule the disorganized nation was grad-
ually restored to order, and his successors of the Nineteenth
Dynasty (1350–1205 B. C.) were able to begin the recovery
of the lost empire in Asia. But the Hittites were too
firmly entrenched in Syria to yield to the Egyptian onset.
The assaults of Seti I, and half a generation of persistent
campaigning under Ramses II, failed to push the northern
frontier of the Empire far beyond the limits of Palestine.
Here it remained and Syria was never permanently recov-
ered. Semitic influences now powerfully affected Egypt.

Fig. 6.-A TRIPLE SHADÛF.
A device for raising the Nile water in order to irrigate the fields (see p. 8)
(Stereograph copyright Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)

Fig. 7.—THE CLIFFS OF THE NILE CAÑON.
Looking down the valley from a point west of Thebes. (Stereograph
copyright Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
19
At this juncture the peoples of southern Europe emerge
for the first time upon the arena of oriental history and
together with Libyan hordes, threaten to overwhelm the
Delta from the west. They were r. 'vertheless beaten back
by Merneptah. After another periud of internal confusion
and usurpation, during which the Nineteenth Dynasty fell
(1205 B. C.), Ramses III, whose father, Setnakht founded
the Twentieth Dynasty (1200–1090 B. C.), was able to main-
tain the Empire at the same limits, against the invasions of
restless northern tribes, who crushed the Hittite power; and
also against repeated immigrations of the Libyans. With
his death (1167 B. C.) the empire, with the exception of
Nubia which was still held, rapidly fell to pieces.
Thus,
about the middle of the twelfth century B. C. the Second
Period of the imperial age closed with the total dissolution
of the Asiatic dominions.
Under a series of weak Ramessids, the country rapidly
declined and fell a prey first to the powerful high priests of
Amon, who were obliged almost immediately to yield to
stronger Ramessid rivals in the Delta at Tanis, forming
the Twenty First Dynasty (1090-945 B. C.). By the middle
of the tenth century B. C. the mercenaries, who had formed
the armies of the second imperial period, had founded pow-
erful families in the Delta cities, and among these the
Libyans were now supreme. Sheshonk I, a Libyan mercenary
commander, gained the throne as the founder of the Twenty
Second Dynasty in 945 B. C. and the country enjoyed
transient prosperity, while Sheshonk even attempted the
recovery of Palestine. But the family was unable to control
the turbulent mercenary commanders, now established as
dynasties in the larger Delta towns, and the country grad-
ually relapsed into a series of military principalities in
constant warfare with each other. Through the entire
Libyan period of the Twenty Second, Twenty Third and
Twenty Fourth Dynasties (945–712 B. C.) the unhappy
nation groaned under such misrule, constantly suffering
economic deterioration.
J
20
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Nubia had now detached itself and a dynasty of kings,
probably of Theban origin had arisen at Napata, below the
fourth cataract. These Egyptian rulers of the new Nubian
kingdom now invaded Egypt, and although residing at
Napata, maintained their sovereignty in Egypt with varying
fortune for two generations (722–663 B. C.). But they were
unable to suppress and exterminate the local dynasts, who
ruled on, while acknowledging the suzerainty of the Nubian
overlord. It was in the midst of these conflicts between the
Nubian dynasty and the mercenary lords of Lower Egypt,
that the Assyrians finally entered the Delta, subdued the
country and placed it under tribute (670-662 B. C.). At this
juncture Psamtik I, an able dynast of Sais, in the western
Delta, finally succeeded in overthrowing his rivals, expelled
the Ninevite garrisons, and as the Nubians had already been
forced out of the country by the Assyrians, he was able to
found a powerful dynasty, and usher in the Restoration.
His accession fell in 663 B. C., and the entire period of
nearly five hundred years from the final dissolution of the
Empire about 1150 to the dawn of the Restoration in 663 B.
C., may be conveniently designated the Decadence. After
1100 B. C. the Decadence may be conveniently divided into
the Tanite-Amonite Period (1090–945 B. C.), the Libyan
Period (945–712 B. C.), the Ethiopian Period (722-663 B.
C.), and the Assyrian Period, which is contemporary with
the last years of the Ethiopian Period.
Of the Restoration, like all those epochs in which the seat
of power was in the Delta, where almost all monuments have
perished, we learn very little from native sources; and all
too little also from Herodotus and later Greek visitors in
the Nile valley. It was outwardly an age of power and
splendour, in which the native party endeavoured to restore
the old glories of the classic age before the Empire; while the
kings depending upon Greek mercenaries, were modern poli-
ticians, employing the methods of the new Greek world,
mingling in the world-politics of their age, and showing little
sympathy with the archaizing tendency. But their combi-
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
21
nations failed to save Egypt from the ambition of Persia,
and its history under native dynasties, with unimportant
exceptions, was concluded with the conquest of the country
by Cambyses in 525 B. C.
Such, in mechanical review, were the purely external
events which marked the successive epochs of Egypt's his-
tory as an independent nation. With their dates, these
epochs may be summarized thus:
Introduction of the Calendar, 4241 B. C.
Predynastic Age, before 3400 B. C.
The Accession of Menes, 3400 B. C.
The first Two Dynasties, 3400-2980 B. C.
The Old Kingdom: Dynasties Three to Six, 2980–2475
B. C.
Eighteen Heracleopolitans, 2445–2160 B. C.
The Middle Kingdom: Dynasties Eleven and Twelve,
2160–1788 B. C.
,
The Hyksos,
The Empire: First Period, The Eighteenth Dynasty, 1580-
1350 B. C.
The Empire: Second Period, The Nineteenth and part of
the Twentieth Dynasty, 1350-1150 B. C.
Last Two Generations of Twentieth Dy-
nasty, about 1150 to 1090 B. C.
Tanite-Amonite Period, Twenty First Dy-
nasty, 1090-945 B. C.
The Decadence { Libyan Period, Dynasties Twenty Two to
Twenty Four, 945–712 B. C.
Ethiopian Period, 722–663 B. C. (Twenty
Fifth Dynasty, 712-663 B. C.).
Assyrian Supremacy, 670-662 B. C.
The Restoration, Saite Period, Twenty Sixth Dynasty,
663-525 B. C.
Persian Conquest, 525 B. C.
The reader will find at the end of the volume a fuller
table of reigns. The chronology of the above table is
22
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
obtained by two independent processes: first by “dead reck-
oning,” and second by astronomical calculations based on the
Egyptian calendar. By “dead reckoning" we mean simply
the addition of the known minimum length of all the kings'
reigns, and from the total thus obtained, the simple compu-
tation (backward from a fixed starting point) of the date
of the beginning of the series of reigns so added. Employ-
ing all the latest dates from recent discoveries, it is mathe-
matically certain that from the accession of the Eighteenth
Dynasty to the conquest of the Persians in 525 B. C. the
successive Pharaohs reigned at least 1052 years in all. The
Eighteenth Dynasty therefore began not later than 1577 B.
C. Astronomical calculations based on the date of the rising
of Sirius, and of the occurrence of new moons, both in terms
of the shifting Egyptian calendar, place the date of the
accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty with fair precision in
1580 B. C. For the periods earlier than the Eighteenth
Dynasty, we can no longer employ the method of dead reck-
oning alone, because of the scantiness of the contemporary
documents. Fortunately another date of the rising of
Sirius, fixes the advent of the Twelfth Dynasty at 2000 B.
C., with a margin of uncertainty of not more than a year
or two either way. From this date the beginning of the
Eleventh Dynasty is again only a matter of “dead reckon-
The uncertainty as to the duration of the Heracleo-
politan supremacy makes the length of the period between
the Old and Middle Kingdoms very uncertain. If we give the
eighteen Heracleopolitans sixteen years each, which, under
orderly conditions, is a fair average in the orient, they will
have ruled 288 years. In estimating their duration at 285
years, we may err possibly as much as a century either way.
The computation of the length of the Old Kingdom is based
on contemporary monuments and early lists, in which the
margin of error is probably not more than a generation or
two either way, but the uncertain length of the Heracleo-
politan rule affects all dates back of that age, and a shift
*I, 47-51.
* I, 38-46.
* I, 53.
ing."
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
23
of a century either way in the years B. C. is not impossible.
The ancient annals of the Palermo Stone establish the length
of the first two dynasties at roughly 420 years,' and the date
of the accession of Menes and the union of Egypt as 3400
B. C.; but we carry back with us, from the Heracleopolitan
age, the same wide margin of uncertainty as in the Old
Kingdom. The reader will have observed that this system
of chronology is based upon the contemporary monuments
and lists dating not later than 1200 B. C. The extremely
high dates for the beginning of the dynasties current in
some histories are inherited from an older generation of
Egyptologists; and are based upon the chronology of
Manetho, a late, careless and uncritical compilation, which
can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in
the vast majority of cases, where such monuments have sur-
vived. Its dynastic totals are so absurdly high throughout,
that they are not worthy of a moment's credence, being often
nearly or quite double the maximum drawn from contem-
porary monuments, and they will not stand the slightest
careful criticism. Their accuracy is now maintained only
by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern
scholars.
Like our chronology our knowledge of the early history
of Egypt must be gleaned from the contemporary native
monuments. Monumental sources even when full and com-
plete are at best but insufficient records, affording data for
only the meagrest outlines of great achievements and iinpor-
tant epochs. While the material civilization of the country
found adequate expression in magnificent works of the artist,
craftsman and engineer, the inner life of the nation, or even
the purely external events of moment could find record only
incidentally. Such documents are sharply differentiated
from the materials with which the historian of European
nations deals, except of course in his study of the earliest
ages. Extensive correspondence between statesmen, jour-
nals and diaries, state documents and reports—such mate-
II, 84-85.
II, 1-37.
24
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
rials as these are almost wholly wanting in monumental
records. Imagine writing a history of Greece from the few
Greek inscriptions surviving. Moreover, we possess no his-
tory of Egypt of sufficiently early date by a native Egyptian;
the compilation of puerile folk-tales by Manetho, in the third
century B. C. is hardly worthy of the name history. But
an annalist of the remote ages with which we are to deal,
could have had little conception of what would be important
for future ages to know, even if he had undertaken a full
chronicle of historical events. Scanty annals were indeed
kept from the earliest times, but these have entirely perished
with the exception of two fragments, the now famous
Palermo Stone,' which once bore the annals of the earliest
dynasties from the beginning down into the Fifth Dynasty;
and some extracts from the records of Thutmose III's cam-
paigns in Syria. Of the other monuments of incidental
character, but the merest fraction has survived. Under
these circumstances we shall probably never be able to offer
more than a sketch of the civilization of the Old and Middle
Kingdoms, with a hazy outline of the general drift of events.
Under the Empire the available documents, both in quality
and quantity for the first time approach the minimum, which
in European history would be regarded as adequate to a
moderately full presentation of the career of the nation.
Scores of important questions, however, still remain unan-
swered, in whatever direction we turn. Nevertheless a
rough frame-work of the governmental organization, the
constitution of society, the most important achievements of
the emperors, and to a limited extent the spirit of the age,
may be discerned and sketched in the main outlines, even
though it is only here and there that the sources enable us
to fill in the detail. In the Decadence and the Restoration,
however, the same paucity of documents, so painfully appar-
ent in the older periods, again leaves the historian with a
long series of hypotheses and probabilities. For the reserve
with which the author has constantly treated such periods,
he begs the reader to hold the scanty sources responsible.
See Fig. 29 and I, 76–167.
CHAPTER III
EARLIEST EGYPT
On the now bare and windswept desert plateau, through
which the Nile has hollowed its channel, there once dwelt a
race of men. Plenteous rains, now no longer known there,
rendered it a fertile and productive region. The geological
changes which have since made the country almost rainless,
denuded it of vegetation and soil, and made it for the most
part uninhabitable, took place many thousands of years
before the beginning of the Egyptian civilization, which we
are to study; but the prehistoric race, who before these
changes, peopled the plateau, left behind them as the sole
memorial of their existence vast numbers of rude flint imple-
ments, now lying scattered about upon the surface of the
present desert exposed by the denudation. These men of
the paleolithic age were the first inhabitants of whom we
have any knowledge in Egypt. They can not be connected
in any way with the historic or prehistoric civilization of
the Egyptians, and they fall exclusively within the province
of the geologist and anthropologist.
The forefathers of the people with whom we shall have
to deal were related to the Libyans or north Africans on the
one hand, and on the other to the peoples of eastern Africa,
now known as the Galla, Somali, Bega and other tribes. An
invasion of the Nile valley by Semitic nomads of Asia,
stamped its essential character unmistakably upon the lan-
guage of the African people there. The earliest strata of
the Egyptian language accessible to us, betray clearly this
composite origin. While still coloured by its African ante-
cedents, the language is in structure Semitic. It is more-
over a completed product as observable in our earliest pre-
served examples of it; but the fusion of the Libyans and
25
26
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
east Africans with the Nile valley peoples continued far into
historic times, and in the case of the Libyans may be traced
in ancient historical documents for three thousand years or
more. The Semitic immigration from Asia, examples of
which are also observable in the historic age, occurred in an
epoch that lies far below our remotest liistorical horizon.
We shall never be able to determine when, nor with cer-
tainty through what channels it took place, although the
most probable route is that along
similar influx from the deserts of Arabia in historic times,
the isthmus of Suez, by which the Mohammedan invasion
entered the country. While the Semitic language which
they brought with them, left its indelible impress upon the
old Nile valley people, the nomadic life of the desert which
the invaders left behind them, evidently was not so persis-
tent, and the religion of Egypt, that element of life which
always receives the stamp of its environment, shows no trace
of desert life. The affinities observable in the language are
confirmed in case of the Libyans, by the surviving products
of archaic civilization in the Nile valley, such as some of the
early pottery, which closely resembles that still made by the
Libyan Kabyles. Again the representations of the early
Puntites, or Somali people, on the Egyptian monuments,
show striking resemblances to the Egyptians themselves.
The examination of the bodies exhumed from archaic burials
in the Nile valley, which we had hoped might bring further
evidence for the settlement of the problem, has, however,
produced such diversity of opinion among the physical
anthropologists, as to render it impossible for the historian
to obtain decisive results from their researches. The conclu-
sion once maintained by some historians, that the Egyptian
was of African negro origin, is now refuted; and evidently
indicated that at most he may have been slightly tinctured
with negro blood, in addition to the other ethnic elements
already mentioned.
As found in the earliest burials to-day, the predynastic
Egyptians were a dark-haired people, already possessed of
EARLIEST EGYPT
27
Serien
FIG. 8. THE EARLIEST KNOWN PAINTING.
Done in Water Colours on the Wall of a Predynastic Tomb. It represents boats, wild animals, men hunting,
(From Quibell, Hieraconpolis.)
and the like.
the rudiments of civili-
zation. The men wore a
skin over the shoulders,
sometimes skin drawers,
and again only a short
white linen kilt; while
the women were clothed
in long garments of
some textile, probably
linen, reaching from the
shoulders to the ankles.
Statuettes of both sexes
without clothing what-
ever are, however, very
common. Sandals were
not unknown. They oc-
casionally tattooed their
bodies, and they also
wrought ornaments such
as rings, bracelets and
pendants of stone, ivory
and bone; with beads of
flint, quartz, carnelian,
agate and the like. The
women dressed their
hair with ornamented
ivory combs and pins.
For the eye- and face-
paint necessary for the
toilet, they had palettes
of carved slate on which
the green colour was
ground. They were able
to build dwellings of
wattle,sometimes smear-
ed with mud, and prob-
ably later of sun-dried
تمہ
.
sh
2
28
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
brick. In the furnishing of these houses they displayed con-
siderable mechanical skill, and a rudimentary artistic taste.
They ate with ivory spoons, sometimes even richly carved with
figures of animals in the round, marching along the handle.
Although the wheel was at first unknown to them, they pro-
duced fine pottery of the most varied forms in vast quan-
tities. The museums of Europe and America are now filled
with their polished red and black ware, or a variety with in-
cised geometrical designs, sometimes in basket patterns, while
another style of great importance to us is painted with rude
representations of boats, men, animals, birds, fish or trees
(Fig. 11). While they made no objects of glass, they under-
stood the art of glazing beads, plaques and the like. Crude
statuettes in wood, ivory, or stone, represent the beginnings
of that plastic art, which was to achieve such triumphs in
the early dynastic age; and three large stone statues of
Min, found by Petrie at Coptos, display the rude strength
of the predynastic civilization of which we are now speak-
ing. The art of the prolific potter was obliged to give way
slowly to the artificer in stone, who finally produced excel-
lent stone vessels, which he gradually improved toward the
end of predynastic period, when his bowls and jars in the
hardest stones, like the diorites and porphyries, display mag-
nificent work. The most cunningly wrought flints that have
ever been found among any people belong to this age. The
makers were ultimately able to affix carved ivory hafts, and
with equal skill they put together stone and flint axes, flint-
headed fish-spears and the like. The war mace with pear-
shaped head, as found also in Babylonia, is characteristic of
the age. Side by side with such weapons and implements
they also produced and used weapons and implements of
copper. It is indeed the age of the slow transition from
stone to copper. Gold, silver and lead, while rare, were
in use.
In the fruitful Nile valley we can not think of such
a people as other than chiefly agricultural; and the fact
that they emerge into historical times as agriculturalists,


11
1)))
0, "iil) 01
- 0))
ITUT
D);
111
2)}ū7! Trenia
)))) ** ))))
077
mult, it inn
TTI )))
D1)2 ►
111
她
​11)
FIG. 9. FLINT KNIFE OF THE PREDYNASTIC AGE.
With Sheet Gold Handle, ornamented with Designs in Repoussée.
(After de Morgan.)
29
30
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
with an ancient religion of vastly remote prehistoric origin,
whose symbols and outward manifestations clearly betray
the primitive fancies of an agricultural and pastoral peo-
ple--all this would lead to the same conclusion. In the
unsubdued jungles of the Nile, animal life was of course
much more plentiful at that time than now; for example,
the great quantities of ivory employed by this people, and
the representations upon their pottery, show that the
elephant was still among them; likewise the giraffe, the
hippopotamus and the strange okapi, which was deified as
the god Set, wandered through the jungles, though all these
animals were later extinct. These early men were therefore
great hunters, as well as skillful fishermen. They pursued
the most formidable game of the desert, like the lion, or
the wild ox with bows and arrows; and in light boats they
attacked the hippopotamus and the crocodile with harpoons
and lances. They commemorated these and like deeds in
rude graffiti on the rocks, which are still found in the Nile
valley, covered with a heavy brown patina of weathering,
such as historic sculptures never display; thus showing their
vast age.
Their industries may have resulted in rudimentary com-
merce, for besides their small hunting-boats they built vessels
of considerable size on the Nile, apparently propelled by
many oars and guided by a large rudder. Sailing ships
were rare, but they were not unknown. Their vessels bore
standards, probably indicating the place from which each
hailed, for among them appear what may be the crosseå
arrows of the goddess Neit of Sais, while an elephant imme-
diately suggests the later Elephantine, which may, ever
before the extinction of the elephant in Egypt, have been
known for the great quantities of ivory from the south
marketed there. These ensigns are, in some cases, strikingly
similar to those later employed in hieroglyphic as the stan-
dards of the local communities, and their presence on the
early ships suggests the existence of such communities in
those prehistoric days. Hence traces of these prehistoric
0

Fig. 10.-PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH INCISED DECORATION.
(Photograph by Petrie.)

2222
The
Fig. 11.-PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH PAINTED DESIGNS OF BOATS, ANIMALS,
MEN AND WOMEN.
(From de Morgan, Origines, I, pl. X.)
EARLIEST EGYPT
31
petty states should perhaps be recognized in the said admin-
istrative or feudal divisions of the country in historic times,
the nomes, as the Greeks called them, to which we shall often
have occasion to refer. If this be true, there were probably
some twenty such states distributed along the river in Upper
Egypt. However this may be, these people were already at a
stage of civilization where considerable towns appear and
city-states, as in Babylon, must have developed, each with its
chief or dynast, its local god, worshipped in a crude sanc-
tuary; and its market to which the tributary, outlying coun-
try was attracted. The long process by which such commu-
nities grew up can be only surmised from the analogy of
similar developments elsewhere, but the small kingdoms and
city-states, out of which the nation was ultimately consoli-
dated, do not fall within the historic age, as in Babylon.
The gradual fusion which finally merged these petty states
into two kingdoms: one in the Delta, and the other com-
prising the states of the valley above, is likewise a process
of which we shall never know the course. Of its heroes
and its conquerors, its wars and conquests, not an echo will.
ever reach us; nor is there the slightest indication of the
length of time consumed by this process. It will hardly
have been concluded, however, before 4000 B. C. Our
knowledge of the two kingdoms which emerged at the end
of this long prehistoric age, is but slightly more satisfactory.
The Delta was, throughout the historic age, open to inroads
of the Libyans who dwelt upon the west of it; and the
constant influx of people from this source gave the western
Delta a distinctly Libyan character which it preserved even
down to the time of Herodotus. At the earliest moment
when the monuments enable us to discern the conditions in
the Delta, the Pharaoh is contending with the Libyan
invaders, and the earlier kingdom of the North will there-
fore have been strongly Libyan, if indeed it did not owe its
origin to this source. The temple at Sais, in the western
Delta, the chief centre of Libyan influence in Egypt, bore
the name "House of the King of Lower Egypt” (the Delta),
32
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and the emblem of Neit, its chief goddess was tattooed by
the Libyans upon their arms. It may possibly therefore
have been an early residence of a Libyan king of the Delta.
Reliefs recently discovered in Sahure's pyramid-temple
at Abusir show four Libyan chiefs wearing on their brows
the royal uræus serpent of the Pharaohs, to whom it there-
fore descended from some such early Libyan king of the
Delta. As its coat of arms or symbol the Northern Kingdom
employed a tuft of papyrus plant, which grew so plentifully
in its marshes as to be distinctive of it. The king himself was
designated by a bee, and wore upon his head a red crown,
both in colour and shape peculiar to his kingdom. All of
these symbols are very common in later hieroglyphic. Red
was the distinctive colour of the northern kingdom and its
treasury was called the "Red House."
Unfortunately the Delta is so deeply overlaid with deposits
of Nile mud, that the material remains of its earliest civili-
zation are buried forever from our reach. That civiliza-
tion was probably earlier and more advanced than that of
the valley above. Already in the forty third century B. C.
the men of the Delta had discovered the year of three hun-
dred and sixty five days and they introduced a calendar
year of this length beginning on the day when Sirius rose
at sunrise, as determined in the latitude of the southern
Delta, where these earliest astronomers lived, in 4241 B. C.
It is the civilization of the Delta, therefore, which furnishes
us with the earliest fixed date in the history of the world.
The invention and introduction of this calendar is surprising
evidence of the advanced culture of the age and locality to
which it belongs. No nation of antiquity, from the earliest
times through classic European history, was able to devise
a calendar which should evade the inconvenience resulting
from the fact that the lunar month and the solar year are
incommensurable quantities, the lunar months being incon-
stant and also not evenly dividing the solar year. This
earliest known calendar, with an amazingly practical insight
into the needs to be subserved by a calendar, abandoned the
EARLIEST EGYPT
33
lunar month altogether and substituted for it a conventional
month of thirty days. Its devisers were thus the first people
to perceive that a calendar must be an artificial device, en-
tirely divorced from nature save in the acceptance of the day
and the year. They therefore divided the year into twelve of
these thirty day months, and a sacred period of five feast-
days, intercalated at the end of the year. The year began
on that day when Sirius first appeared on the eastern horizon
at sunrise, which in our calendar was on the nineteenth of
July. But as this calendar year was in reality about a
quarter of a day shorter than the solar year, it therefore
gained a full day every four years, thus slowly revolving
on the astronomical year, passing entirely around it once in
fourteen hundred and sixty years, only to begin the revolu-
tion again. An astronomical event like the heliacal rising
of Sirius, when dated in terms of the Egyptian calendar,
may therefore be computed and dated within four years in
terms of our reckoning, that is, in years B. C. This remark-
able calendar, already in use at this remote age, is the one
introduced into Rome by Julius Cæsar, as the most con-
venient calendar then known, and by the Romans it was
bequeathed to us. It has thus been in use uninterruptedly
over six thousand years. We owe it to the men of the
Delta kingdom, who lived in the forty third century B. C.;
and we should notice that it left their hands in much more
convenient form, with its twelve thirty-day months, than
after it had suffered irregular alteration in this respect at
the hands of the Romans.
The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more distinctively
Egyptian than that of the Delta. It had its capital at
Nekheb, modern El Kab, and its standard or symbol was
a lily plant, while another southern plant served as the
ensign of the king, who was further distinguished by a tall
white crown, white being the colour of the Southern Kingdom.
Its treasury was therefore known as the “White House."
There was a royal residence across the river from Nekheb,
called Nekhen, the later Hieraconpolis, while corresponding
1 Julian.
3
34
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
to it in the northern kingdom was a suburb of Buto, called
Pe. Each capital had its patroness or protecting goddess :
Buto, the serpent-goddess, in the North; and in the South
the vulture-goddess, Nekhbet. But at both capitals the
hawk-god Horus was worshipped as the distinctive patron
deity of both kings. The people of the time believed in a
life hereafter, subject to wants of the same nature as those
of the present life. Their cemeteries are widely distributed
along the margin of the desert in Upper Egypt, and of late
years thousands of interments have been excavated. The
tomb is usually a flat bottomed oval or rectangular pit, in
which the body, doubled into the “contracted" or "embry-
onic” posture, lies on its
side (Fig. 12). In the
earliest burials it is wrap-
ped in a skin, but later
also in woven fabric;
there is no trace of em-
balmment. Beneath the
body is frequently a mat
of plaited rushes; it often
has in the hand or at the
breast a slate palette for
grinding face-paint, the
green malachite for which
lies near in a small bag.
The body is besides ac-
companied by other arti-
FIG. 12. A PREDYNASTIC GRAVE.
cles of toilet or of adorn-
ment and is surrounded by jars of pottery or stone con-
taining ash or organic matter, the remains of food, drink
and ointment for the deceased in the hereafter. Not only
were the toilet and other bodily wants of the deceased thus
provided for, but he was also given his flint weapons or
bone tipped harpoons that he might replenish his larder
from the chase. Clay models of objects which he might
need were also given him, especially boats. The pits are


FIG. 13.-GOLD BAR BEARING MENE'S NAME.
(3400 B.C.)
Earliest known inscribed piece of jewelry,
Museum.
FIG. 14.-ALABASTER VESSELS.
First Dynasty. (Petrie, Royal Tombs.)



Fig. 15.-CHAIR LEGS, CARVED IVORY.
Early Dynasties. Berlin Museum.
FIG. 16.COPPER VESSELS.
First Dynasty. (Petrie, Royal Tombs.)
EARLIEST EGYPT
35
sometimes roughly roofed over with branches, covered with
a heap of desert sand and gravel, forming rudimentary
tombs, and later they came to be lined with crude, sun-
dried brick. Sometimes a huge, roughly hemispherical bowl
of pottery was inverted over the body as it lay in the pit.
These burials furnish the sole contemporary material for
our study of the predynastic age. The gods of the here-
after were appealed to in prayers and magical formulæ,
which eventually took conventional and traditional form in
writing. A thousand years later in the dynastic age frag-
ments of these mortuary texts are found in use in the pyra-
mids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. Pepi I, a king of
the Sixth Dynasty, in his rebuilding of the Dendereh temple,
claimed to be reproducing a plan of a sanctuary of the pre-
dynastic kings on that spot. Temples of some sort they
therefore evidently had.
While they thus early possessed all the rudiments of
material culture, the people of this age developed a system
of writing also. The computations necessary for the dis-
covery and use of the calendar show a use of writing in the
last centuries of the fifth millennium B. C. It is shown also
by the fact that nearly a thousand years later the scribes of
the Fifth Dynasty were able to copy a long list of the kings
of the North, and perhaps those of the South also (Fig. 29);
while the mortuary texts to which we have referred will not
have survived a thousand years without having been com-
mitted to writing in the same way. The hieroglyphs for the
Northern Kingdom, for its king, and for its treasury can not
have arisen at one stroke with the first king of the dynastic
age; but must have been in use long before the rise of the
First Dynasty; while the presence of a cursive linear hand
at the beginning of the dynasties is conclusive evidence that
the system was not then a recent innovation.
Of the deeds of these remote kings of the North and South,
who passed away before three thousand four hundred B. C.
we know nothing. Their tombs have never been discovered,
a fact which accounts for the lack of any written monuments
36
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
among the contemporary documents, all of which come from
tombs of the poorer classes, such as contain no writing even
in the dynastic age. Seven names of the kings of the Delta,
like Seka, Khayu, or Thesh, alone of all the line have sur-
vived; but of the southern kingdom not even a royal name
has descended to us, unless it be that of the Scorpion, which,
occurring on some few remains of this early age, has been
conjectured to be that of one of the powerful chieftains of the
South. The scribes of the Fifth Dynasty who drew up this
list of kings, some eight hundred years after the line had
passed away, seem to have known only the royal names, and
were unable to, or at least did not record, any of their
achievements. As a class these kings of the North and
South were known to their posterity as the "worshippers of
Horus”; and as ages passed they became half mythic figures,
gradually to be endowed with semi-divine attributes, until
they were regarded as the demi-gods who succeeded the
divine dynasties, the great gods who had ruled Egypt in the
beginning. Their original character as deceased kings, as
known to the earlier dynasties, led to their being considered
especially as a line of the divine Dead, who had ruled over
the land before the accession of human kings; and in the his-
torical work of Manetho they appear simply as “the Dead.'
Thus their real historical character was finally completely
sublimated, then to merge into unsubstantial myth, and the
ancient kings of the North and the South were worshipped
in the capitals where they had once ruled.
The next step in the long and slow evolution of national
unity was the union of the North and South. The tradition
which was still current in the days of the Greeks in Egypt, to
the effect that the two kingdoms were united by a king
named Menes, is fully confirmed by the evidence of the early
monuments. The figure of Menes, but a few years since
as vague and elusive as those of the "worshippers of Horus,"
who preceded him, has now been clothed with unmistakable
1 Another possibly on the Palermo Stone and in the tomb of Methen; see
I, 166.
I, 90.


FIG. 17.--FOUR BRACELETS ON LADY'S ARM.
First Dynasty. Found at Abydos by Petrie. Cairo
Museum. (See p. 50.)
Fig. 18.-THE KING BREAKS GROUND FOR
A NEW CANAL.
Early Dynasties. (From Quibell, Hieraconpolis, I, 260, 4.)


De
Fig. 19.-MAGNIFICENT CARVED CEREMONIAL PALETTE OF SLATE.
Dedicated by King Narmer (First Dynasty) in the temple of Hieraconpolis. See pp. 40 and 47.
(Quibell, Hieraconpolis, I, 29.)
EARLIEST EGYPT
37
reality, and he at last steps forth into history to head the
long line of Pharaohs, who have yet. to pass us in review.
It must have been a skilful warrior and a vigourous admin-
istrator, who thus gathered the resources of the Southern
Kingdom so well in hand that he was able to invade and
conquer the Delta, and thus merge the two kingdoms into
one nation, completing the long process of centralization
which had been going on for many centuries. His native
city was Thinis, an obscure place in the vicinity of Abydos,
which was not near enough to the centre of his new kingdom
to serve as his residence, and we can easily credit the nar-
rative of Herodotus that he built a great dam, diverting the
course of the Nile above the site of Memphis that he might
gain room there for a city. This stronghold, perhaps not yet
called Memphis, was probably known as the “White Wall,”
in reference of course to the White Kingdom, whose power it
represented. If we may believe the tradition of Herodotus'
time, it was from this place, situated so favourably on the
border between the two kingdoms, that Menes probably gov-
erned the new nation which he had created. He carried his
arms also southward against northern Nubia,' which then ex-
tended below the first cataract as far northward as the nome
of Edfu. According to the tradition of Manetho, he was
blessed with a long reign, and the memory of his great
achievement was imperishable, as we have seen.
He was
buried in Upper Egypt, either at Abydos near his native
Thinis, or some distance above it near the modern village
of Negadeh, where a large brick tomb, probably his, still
survives. In it and similar toinbs of his successors at
Abydos, written inonuments of his reign have been found,
and the reader may see in the accompanying illustration,
even a piece of his royal adorninents, bearing his name, which
this ancient founder of the Egyptian state wore upon his
person (Fig. 13).
The kings of this remote protodynastic age are no longer
merely a series of names as but a few years since they still
Newberry-Garstang, History, 20 (from unpublished evidence ?).
38
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
were.
As a group at least, we know much of their life and
its surroundings; although we shall never be able to discern
them as possessed of distinguishable personality. They
blend together without distinction as children of their age.
The outward insignia which all alike employed were now
accommodated to the united kingdom. The king's favourite
title was “Horus,” by which he identified himself as the
successor of the great god, who had once ruled over the
kingdom. Everywhere, on royal documents, seals and the
like, appeared the Horus-hawk as the symbol of royalty. He
was mounted upon a rectangle representing the facade of a
building, probably the king's palace, within which was
written the king's official name. The other or personal
name of the ruler was preceded by the bee of the North
and the plant of the southern king, to indicate that he had
now absorbed both titles; while with these two symbols
there often appeared also Nekhbet, the vulture-goddess of
El Kab, the southern capital, side by side with Buto, the
serpent-goddess of the northern capital. On the sculptures
of the time, the protecting vulture lovers with outspread
wings over the head of the king, but as he felt himself
still as primarily king of Upper Egypt, it was not until
later that he wore the serpent of the North, the sacred
uræus upon his forehead. Similarly Set sometiines appears
with Horus, preceding the king's personal name, the two
gods thus representing the North and the South, dividing
the land between them in accordance with the myth which
we shall later have occasion to discuss. The monarch wore
the crown of either kingdomn, and he is often spoken of as
the "double lord.” Thus his dominion over a united Egypt
was constantly proclaimed. We see the king on ceremonious
occasions appearing in some state, preceded by four stan-
dard-bearers and accompanied by his chancellor, personal
attendants, or a scribe, and two fan-bearers. He wore the
white crown of Upper or the red crown of Lower Egypt, or
even a curious combination of the crowns of both kingdoms,
and a simple garment suspended by a strap over one


Fig. 20.--PORTRAIT HEAD OF KING
KHASEKHEM; FROM TWO DIF-
FERENT ANGLES.
Early Dynasties (Quibell, Hierac., I, 39).
Fig. 21.-STATUE OF KING KHASEKHEM.
HEAD IN FIG. 20.
Early Dynasties (ibid.). See translation, p. 47.

FIG. 22.- BRICK-LINED WOODEN FLOORED TOMB CHAMBER OF KING
ENEZIB.
(First Dynasty, Abydos. From Petrie, Royal Tombs, I, 66, 1.)
EARLIEST EGYPT
39
shoulder, to which a lion's tail was appended behind. So
dressed and so attended he conducted triumphant celebra-
tions of his victories, or led the ceremonies at the opening of
canals (Fig. 18), or the inauguration of public works. On
the thirtieth anniversary of his appointment by his father as
crown-prince to the heirship of the kingdom, the king cele-
brated a great jubilee called the “Feast of Sed," a word
meaning “tail," and perhaps commemorating his assump-
tion of the royal lion's tail at his appointment thirty years
before. He was a mighty hunter, and recorded with pride
an achievement like the slaying of a hippopotamus. His
weapons were costly and elaborate as we shall see. His sev-
eral palaces each bore a name, and the royal estate possessed
gardens and vineyards, the latter being also named and
carefully administered by officials who were responsible for
the income therefrom. The furniture of such a palace, even
in this remote age was magnificent and of fine artistic
quality. Among it were vessels exquisitely wrought in some
eighteen or twenty different varieties of stone, especially
alabaster (Fig. 14); even in such refractory material as
diorite, superb bowls were ground to translucent thinness,
and jars of rock crystal were carved with matchless precision
to represent natural objects. The pottery, on the other hand,
perhaps because of the perfection of the stone vessels, is
inferior to that of the predynastic age. The less substantial
furniture has for the most part perished, but chests of ebony
inlaid with ivory and stools with legs of ivory magnificently
carved to represent bull's legs (Fig. 15), have survived in
fragments. Glaze was now more thoroughly mastered than
before, and incrustation with glazed plaques and ivory
tablets was practiced. The coppersmith furnished the pal-
ace with finely wrought bowls, ewers and other vessels of
copper (Fig. 16); while he materially aided in the perfec-
tion of stone vase-making by the production of excellent
copper tools. The goldsmith combined with a high degree
of technical skill also exquisite taste, and produced for the
king's person and for the ladies of the royal household mag-
40.
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
nificent regalia in gold and precious stones (Figs. 13, 17),
involving the most delicate soldering of the metal, a process
accomplished with a skill of which even a modern workman
would not be ashamed.. While the products of the industrial
craftsman had thus risen to a point of excellence, such that
they claim a place as works of art, we find that the rude
carvings and drawings of the predynastic people have now
developed into reliefs and statues which clearly betray the
professional artist. The kings dedicated in the temples,
especially in that of Horus at Hieraconpolis, ceremonial
slate palettes, maces and vessels, bearing reliefs which dis-
play a sure and practiced hand (Fig. 19). The human and
animal figures are done with surprising freedom and vigour,
proclaiming an art long since conscious of itself and cen-
turies removed from the naive efforts of a primitive people.
By the time of the Third Dynasty the conventions of civi-
lized life had laid a heavy hand upon this art; and although
finish and power of faithful delineation had reached a level
far surpassing that of the Hieraconpolis slates, the old
freedom had disappeared. In the astonishing statues of
king Khasekhem at Hieraconpolis (Figs. 20-21), the rigid
canons which ruled the art of the Old Kingdom are already
clearly discernible.
The wreck of all this splendour, amid which these antique
kings lived, has been rescued by Petrie with the most con-
scientious and arduous devotion, from their tombs at Abydos.
These tombs are the result of a natural evolution from the
pits in which the predynastic people buried their dead. The
i The bracelets of l'ig. 17 are of amethyst and turquoise mounted in gold.
The uppermost has a rosette of gold, of exquisite workmanship. The purpose
of the gold bar (Fig. 13) is unknown.
a Fig. 19 shows both sides of the greatest of these palettes. In the top
row (left) the king, followed by his sandal bearer and preceded by four
standard bearers and his vizier, inspects the decapitated bodies of his fallen
enemies. The middle row contains two fantastic animals of uncertain
meaning, and in the bottom row, the king as a bull, breaches a walled city,
and tramples down his enemy. The other side (right) shows the king
smiting a fallen foe, while as a Horus hawk he also leads captive the sign of
the North, bearing a head with the rope in its mouth. At the bottom are
fallen foes.
EARLIEST EGYPT
41
pit has now been elaborated and enlarged and has become
rectangular. It is brick lined and also frequently has a
second lining of wood; while the surrounding jars of food
and drink have developed into a series of small chambers
surrounding the central room or pit, in which doubtless the
body lay, although the tombs had been so often plundered
and wasted that no body has ever been found in them (Figs.
22-25). The whole was roofed with heavy timbers and
planking, probably surmounted by a heap of sand, and on
the east front were set up two tall narrow stelæ bearing
the king's name. Access to the central chamber was had
by a brick stairway descending through one side (Fig. 23).
The king's toilet furniture, a rich equipment of bowls, jars
and vessels, metal vases and ewers, his personal ornaments,
and all that was necessary for the maintenance of royal state
in the hereafter were deposited with his body in this tomb;
while the smaller surrounding chambers were filled with a
liberal supply of food and wine in enormous pottery jars,
sealed with huge cones of Nile mud mixed with straw, and
impressed while soft with the name of the king, or of the
estate or vineyard from which they came. The revenue in
food and wine from certain of the king's estates was diverted
and established as permanent income of the tomb to maintain
for all time the table supply of the deceased king and of his
household and adherents, whose tombs to the number of one
or two hundred were grouped about his own. Thus he was
surrounded in death by those who had been his companions
in life; his women, his body-guard, and even the dwarf,
whose dances had diverted his idle hours, all sleep beside
their lord that he may continue in the hereafter the state
with which he had been environed on earth. Thus early
began the elaborate arrangements of the Egyptian upper
classes for the proper maintenance of the deceased in the
life hereafter.
This desire to create a permanent abiding place for the
royal dead exerted a powerful influence in the development
of the art of building. Already in the First Dynasty we find
42
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
a granite floor in one of the royal tombs, that of Usephais,
and toward the end of the Second Dynasty the surrounding
brick chambers of king Khasekhemui's tomb enclose a
chamber built of hewn limestone, the earliest stone masonry
structure known in the history of man (Fig. 25). His pred-
ecessor, probably his father, had already built a stone temple
which he recorded as a matter of note,' and Khasekhemui
himself built a temple at Hieraconpolis, of which a granite
doorpost has survived.
Such works of the skilled artificer and builder (for a
number of royal architects were already attached to the
court) indicate a well-ordered and highly organized state;
but of its character little can be discerned from the scanty
materials at our command. The king's chief assistant and
minister in government seems to have been a chancellor,
whom we have seen attending him on state occasions. The
officials whom we later find as nobles with judicial functions,
attached to the two royal residences of the North and Soutlı,
Pe and Nekhen, already existed under these earliest ynas-
ties, indicating an organized administration of judicial and
juridical affairs. There was a body of fiscal officials, whose
seals we find upon payments of naturalia to the royal tombs,
impressed upon the clay jar-sealings; while a fragment of
a scribe's accounts evidently belonging to such an adminis-
tration, was found in the Abydos royal tombs. The endow-
ment of these tombs with a regularly paid income clearly
indicates an orderly and effective fiscal organization, of
which several offices, like the “provision office,
tioned on the seals. This department of the state was but
a union of the two treasuries of the old kingdoms of the
North and South, the “Red House" and the “White
House”; hence we find among the seals in the royal tombs
the “Vineyard of the Red House of the King's Estate."
Evidently the union of the two kingdoms consisted only in
the person of the king. The "Red House,” however, soon
disappeared, the double administration became one of termi-
'I, 134.
are men-


FIG. 23.-BRICK TOMB OF KING USEPHAIS.
First Dynasty, Abydos. (From Petrie, Royal Tombs, II, 56, 5.)
Fig. 24.-SEALED JARS OF FOOD AND DRINK.
Tomb of Merneit, First Dynasty, Abydos. (From Petrie, Royal
Tombs, I, 38, 7.)
FIG. 25.-EARLIEST STONE STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD.
Limestone chamber, Tomb of King Khasekhemui, Second Dynasty,
Abydos. (From Petrie, Royal Tombs, II, 57, 5.)
FIG. 26.-IVORY TABLET OF KING USEPHAIS.
(First Dynasty.) Smiting an "Easterner." MacGregor Collection.


2
q 查
​00
El a
2000
DO
H
DOI
ihre
00
0000980
À
被
​DX
OD
OD
2
VES
0
QOQL
Fig. 27. EBONY TABLET OF MENES, FIRST DYNASTY, ABYDOS, 3400 B. C.
One of the earliest known examples of hieroglyphics. Top row: At the
left the royal hawk of Menes; on the right a chapel with the symbols of the
goddess Neit in the court, over which is a boat. Second row: At the left the
king holds a vessel marked “Electrum” (silver-gold alloy), and offers a
libation 4 times"; on the right a bull is caught in an enclosure before a
shrine bearing a phoenix. Third row: The Nile with boats, towns, and
islands, Fourth row: Unintelligible archaic hieroglyphis.
81
FIG. 28. KiNG SEMERKIIET. (First DYNASTY.) SMITES TIIE BEDUIN OF SINAI.
Relief on the rocks of the Wadi Maghar, Sinai, the earliest monument
there, and the earliest known large sculpture. (Fron Weill, Sinai.)
(43)
1
44
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
nology and theory only, and the “White House” of the
southern kingdom survived throughout Egyptian history as
the sole treasury of the united kingdom. This history of
the early treasury is instructive as showing that tlie amalga-
mation of the administrative machinery of the two kingdoms
was a slow process which Menes was unable to complete.
In all probability the land all belonged to the estate of the
king, by whom it was entrusted to a noble class. There were
large estates conducted by these nobles, as in the period
which immediately followed; but on what terms they were
held we can not now determine. The people, with the pos-
sible exception of a free class of artificers and tradesmen,
will have been slaves on these estates. They lived also in
cities protected by heavy walls of sun-dried brick, and under
the command of a local governor. The chief cities of the
time were the two capitals, El Kab and Buto, with their
royal suburbs of Nekhen or Hieraconpolis, and Pe; the
"White Wall,” the predecessor of Memphis; Thinis, the
native city of the first two dynasties; the neighbouring
Abydos; Heliopolis, Heracleopolis and Sais; while a number
of less importance appear in the Third Dynasty.
Every two years a "numbering" of the royal possessions
was made throughout the land by the officials of the treas-
ury, and these “numberings” served as a partial basis for
the chronological reckoning. The years of a king's reign
were called, “Year of the First Numbering," "Year after
the First Numbering,” “Year of the Second Numbering'
and so on. An earlier method was to name the year after
some important event which occurred in it, thus: “Year of
Smiting the Troglodytes," a method found also in early
Babylonia. But as the “numberings” finally became an-
nual, they formed a more convenient basis for designating the
year, as habit seemed to have deterred the scribes from num-
bering the years themselves. Side by side with this official
year, there was doubtless a civil year which followed the sea-
sons, and the lunar months continued to be the basis of tem-
ple payments and of many business transactions, although
EARLIEST EGYPT
45
it is not probable that a lunar year had ever existed. Such
a system of government and administration as this of course
could not operate without a method of writing, which we find
in use both in elaborate hieroglyphics (Fig. 27) and in the
rapid cursive hand of the accounting scribe. It already pos-
sessed not only phonetic signs representing a whole syllable
or group of consonants but also the alphabetic signs, each
of which stood for one consonant; true alphabetic letters
having thus been discovered in Egypt two thousand five
hundred years before their use by any other people. Had
the Egyptian been less a creature of habit, he might have
discarded his syllabic signs 3,500 years before Christ, and
have written with an alphabet of twenty four letters. In
the documents of these early dynasties the writing is in such
an archaic form that many of the scanty fragments which
we possess from this age are as yet unintelligible to us.
Yet it was the medium of recording medical and religious
texts, to which in later times a peculiar sanctity and effect-
iveness were attributed. The chief events of each year were
also recorded in a few lines under its name, and a series of
annals covering every year of a king's reign and showing
to a day how long he reigned, was thus produced. A small
fragment only of these annals has escaped destruction, the
now famous Palermo Stone, so called because it is at present
in the museum of Palermo (Fig. 29).2
Already a state form of religion was developing, and it
is this form alone of which we know anything; the religion
of the people having left little or no trace. Even in the
later dynasties we shall find little to say of the folk-religion,
which was rarely a matter of permanent record. The royal
temple of Menes's time was still a simple structure, being
little more than a shrine or chapel of wood, with walls of
'I, 76–167.
& The front of the fragment is shown in Fig. 29. After the first row, each
rectangle contains a year, and in the space over each row, was written the
name of the king to whom the row of years belonged. The front contained
the predynastic kings (top row) and dynasties one to three; the rest extending
into the Fifth Dynasty was on the back.
46
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
plaited wattle (Fig. 27). There was an enclosed court before
it, containing a symbol or emblem of the god mounted on a
standard; and in front of the enclosure was a pair of poles,
perhaps the forerunners of the pair of stone obelisks which in
historic times were erected at the entrance of a temple. By
the second half of the Second Dynasty, liowever, stone tem-
ples were built," as we have seen. The kings frequently
record in their annals2 the draughting of a temple plan, or
their superintendence of the ceremonious inauguration of
the work when the ground was measured and broken. The
great gods were those familiar in later times, whom we shall
yet have occasion briefly to discuss; we notice particularly
Osiris and Set, Horus and Anubis, Thoth, Sokar, Min, and
Apis a form of Ptah; while among the goddesses, Hathor
and Neit are very prominent. Several of these, like Horus,
were evidently the patron gods of prehistoric kingdoms, pre-
ceding the kingdoms of the North and South, and thus going
back to a very distant age. Horus, as under the predynastic
kings, was the greatest god of the united kingdom, and occu-
pied the position later held by Re. His temple at Hiera-
conpolis was especially favoured, and an old feast in his
honour, called the “Worship of Horus," celebrated every two
years, is regularly recorded in the royal annals (Fig. 29):2
The kings therefore continued without interruption the tra-
ditions of the “Worshippers of Horus," as the successors of
whom they regarded themselves. As long as the royal suc-
cession continued in the Thinite family the worship of Horus
was carefully observed; but with the ascendancy of the
Third Dynasty, a Memphite family, it gradually gave way
and was neglected. The priestly office was maintained of
course as in the Old Kingdom by laymen, who were divided,
as later, into four orders or phyles.
The more than four hundred years during which the first
two dynasties ruled must have been a period of constant
and vigourous growth. Of the seven kings of Menes's line,
who followed him during the first two centuries of that devel-
11, 134.
* I, 91-167.

h
S111
000 An
SI
A
0]=03:03
0 X
Ango
FIG. 29.-THE PALERMO STONE.
Fragment of a copy of the annals of the earliest kings, from predynastic times to the middle of the Fifth Dynasty,
when the copy was made. See pp. 35, 36, 109,
EARLIEST EGYPT
47
opment, we can identify only two with certainty: Miebis
and Usephais; but we have contemporary monuments from
twelve of the eighteen kings who ruled during this period.
The first difficulty which confronted them was the reconcilia-
tion of the Northern Kingdom and its complete fusion with
the larger nation. We have seen how, in administration, the
two kingdoms remained distinct, and hinted that the union
was a merely personal bond. The kings on ascending the
throne celebrated a feast called “Union of the Two Lands,"
by which the first year of each king's reign was character-
ized and named. This union, thus shown to be so fresh in
their minds, could not at first be made effectual. The North
rebelled again and again. King Narmer, who probably
lived near the beginning of the dynastic age, was obliged
to punish the rebellious Libyan nomes in the western Delta.
He took captives to the number of "one hundred and twenty
thousand,” which deed must have involved the deportation
of a whole district, whence he also plundered no less than
"one million four hundred and twenty thousand small, and
four hundred thousand large cattle.” In the temple at Hiera-
conpolis he left a magnificent slate palette (Fig. 19) accom-
panied by a ceremonial mace-head, both of which bear scenes
commemorating his victory. Later king Neterimu smote the
northern cities of Shemre and "House of the North."'2 As
late as the Third Dynasty a war with the North gave king
Khasekhem occasion to name a year of his reign the “Year
of Fighting and Smiting the North," a war in which he
took captive “forty seven thousand two hundred and nine
rebels." He likewise commemorated his victory in the
temple of Horus at Hieraconpolis, dedicating there a great
alabaster vase bearing his name and that of the triumphant
year, besides two remarkable statues 4 (Figs. 20-21) of him-
self, inscribed with the number of the captives. The later
mythology attributed a lasting reconciliation of the two king-
doms to Osiris.
5
*I, 140,
'I, 124.
* Ibid., pl. XXXIX-XLI.
• Hierac. I, pl. XXXVI-VIII.
& Louvre Stela C. 2.
48
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
While the severe methods employed against the North
must have seriously crippled its economic prosperity, that
of the nation as a whole probably continued to increase.
The kings were constantly laying out new estates and build-
ing new palaces, temples and strongholds. Public works,
like the opening of irrigation canals (Fig. 18) or the wall
of Menes above Memphis, show their solicitude for the eco-
nomic resources of the kingdoin, as well as a skill in engi-
neering and a high conception of government such as we
can not but greatly admire in an age so remote. They were
able also to undertake the earliest enterprises of which
we know in foreign lands. King Semerkliet, early in the
dynastic age, and probably during the First Dynasty, car-
ried on mining operations in the copper regions of the
Sinaitic peninsula, in the Wadi Maghâra. His expedition
was exposed to the depredations of the wild tribes of
Beduin, who already in this remote age, peopled those dis-
tricts; and he recorded his punishment of them in a relief
upon the rocks of the Wadi (Fig. 28). Usephais, of the
First Dynasty, must have conducted similar operations
there; for he has left a memorial of his victory over the
same tribes in a scene carved upon an ivory tablet, showing
him striking down a native whom he has forced to the knees
(Fig. 26). It is accompanied by the inscription: “First
occurrence of smiting the Easterners." This designation
of the event as the “first occurrence” would indicate that it
was a customary thing for the kings of the time to chastise
these barbarians, and that therefore he was expecting a
"second occurrence," as a matter of course. A “siniting
of the Troglodytes,” the same people, recorded on the Pa-
lermo Stone in the First Dynasty, doubtless falls in the
reign of king Miebis. Indeed there are indications that the
kings of this time maintained foreign relations with far
renioter peoples. In their tombs have been found fragments
of a peculiar, non-Egyptian pottery, closely resembling the
1 Weill, Rev. Arch., 1903, II, p. 281; and Recueil des Inscr. Égypt. du
Sinai, p. 96.
* I., 104
EARLIEST EGYPT
49
ornamented Egean ware produced by the island peoples
of the northern Mediterranean in pre-Mycenæan times.
If
this pottery was placed in these tombs at the time of the
original burials, there were commercial relations between
Egypt and the northern Mediterranean peoples in the fourth
millennium before Christ. Besides the aggressive foreign
policy in the east, and this foreign connection in the north,
we find that an occasional campaign was necessary to
restrain the Libyans on the west. In the temple at Hiera-
conpolis Narmer left an ivory cylinder commemorating his
victory over them, an event which is doubtless to be con-
nected with the same king's chastisement of the Libyan
nomes in the western Delta, to which we have already
adverted. In the south at the first cataract, where, as late
as the Sixth Dynasty, the Troglodyte tribes of the neigh-
bouring eastern desert made it dangerous to operate the quar-
ries there, king Usephais of the First Dynasty was able to
maintain an expedition for the purpose of securing granite
to pave one of the chambers of his tomb at Abydos.
Thus this strong Thinite line gradually built up a vig-
ourous nation of rich and prolific culture and consolidated its
power within and without. Scanty as are its surviving mon-
uments, we see now gradually taking form the great state
which is soon to emerge as the Old Kingdom. These earliest
Pharaohs were buried, as we have seen, at Abydos or in the
vicinity, where nine of their tombs are known. A thousand
years after they had passed away, these tombs of the
founders of the kingdom were neglected and forgotten, and
as early as the twentieth century before Christ that of king
Zer was mistaken for the tomb of Osiris. When found in
modern times it was buried under a mountain of potsherds,
the remains of votive offerings left there by centuries of
Osiris-worshippers. Its rightful occupants had long been
torn from their resting places, and their limbs, heavy with
gold and precious stones, had been wrenched from the
sockets to be carried away by greedy violators of the dead.
1 Hierac. I, pl. XV, No. 7.
'], 662.
4
50
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
It was on some such occasion that one of these thieves
secreted in a hole in the wall of the tomb the desiccated arm
of Zer's queen, still bearing under the close wrappings its
splendid regalia (Fig. 17). Perhaps slain in some brawl,
the robber, fortunately for us, never returned to recover his
plunder, and it was found there and brought to Petrie intact
by his well trained workmen in 1902.
BOOK II
THE OLD KINGDOM
CHAPTER IV
EARLY RELIGION
THERE is no force in the life of ancient man, the influence
of which so pervades all his activities as does that of the
religious faculty. Its fancies explain for him the world
about him, its fears are his hourly master, its hopes his con-
stant Mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward
usages are to a large extent the education and the motive
toward the gradual evolution of art, literature and science.
As among all other early peoples, it was in his surroundings
that the Egyptian saw his gods. The trees and springs, the
stones and hill-tops, the birds and beasts were creatures like
himself, or possessed of strange and uncanny powers of
which he was not master. Among this host of spirits ani-
mating everything around him, some were his friends, ready
to be propitiated and to lend him their aid and protection;
while others with craft and cunning lowered about his path-
way, awaiting an opportunity to strike him with disease and
pestilence, and there was no misfortune in the course of
nature but found explanation in his mind as coming from
one of these evil beings about him. Such spirits as these
were local, each known only to the dwellers in a given
locality, and the efforts to serve and propitiate them were of
the humblest and most primitive character. Of such worship
we know little or nothing in the Old Kingdom, but during
the Empire we shall be able to gain fleeting glimpses into
this naive and long forgotten world. But the Egyptian peo-
pled not merely the local circle about him with such spirits;
the sky above him and earth beneath his feet were equally
before him for explanation. Long ages of confinement to
his elongated valley, with its monotonous, even if sometimes
53
54
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
grand scenery, had imposed a limited range upon his imagi-
nation; neither had he the qualities of mind which could
be stirred by the world of nature to such exquisite fancies
as those with which the natural beauties of Hellas inspired
the imagination of the Greeks. In the remote ages of that
earliest civilization, which we have briefly surveyed in the
preceding chapter, the shepherds and plowmen of the Nile
valley saw in the heavens a vast cow, which stood athwart
the vault, with head in the west, the earth lying between
fore and hind feet, while the belly of the animal, studded
with stars, was the arch of heaven. The people of another
locality however, fancied they could discern a colossal female
figure standing with feet in the east and bending over the
earth, till she supported herself upon her arms in the far
west. To others the sky was a sea, supported high above
the earth, with a pillar at each of its four corners. As these
fancies gained more than local credence and came into
contact with each other, they mingled in inextricable con-
fusion. The sun was born every morning as a calf or as a
child according to the explanation of the heavens as a cow
or a woman, and he sailed across the sky in a celestial
barque, to arrive in the west and descend as an old man tot-
tering into the grave. Again the lofty flight of the hawk,
which seemed a very comrade of the sun, led them to believe
that the sun himself must be such a hawk, taking his daily
flight across the heavens, and the sun-disk, with the out-
spread wings of the hawk, became the commonest symbol
of their religion.
The earth, or as they knew it, their elongated valley, was
to their primitive fancy, a man lying prone, upon whose
back the vegetation grew, the beasts moved and man lived.
If the sky was a sea upon which the sun and the heavenly
lights sailed westward every day, there must then be a water-
way by which they could return; so there was beneath the
earth another Nile, flowing through a long dark passage with
successive caverns, through which the celestial barque took
its way at night, to appear again in the east at early morn-
+
L La
old
***********
i
DH
AN
353/ AZUJE
Fig. 30. THE CELESTIAL Cow.
Various genii support her limbs, while in the middle, Shu, the god of the
atmosphere upholds her. Along her belly which forms the heavens, and
bears the stars, moves the celestial barque of the sun-god, who wears the sun-
disk on his head.
*
* *
*
* * *
* * * * * * * *
YY
YY
Ś
Fig. 31. TuE GODDESS OF TIIE HEAVEXS.
Her body is studded with stars, Shu, the god of the air, supports her, while
prone beneath her is the earth-god, Keb.
(55)
56
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ing. This subterranean stream was connected with the Nile
at the first cataract, and thence issued from two caverns,
the waters of their life-giving river. It will be seen that
for the people among whom this myth arose, the world
ended at the first cataract; all that they knew beyond
was a vast sea. This was also connected with the Nile
in the south, and the river returned to it in the north,
for this sea, which they called the “Great Circle” sur-
rounded their earth. It is the idea inherited by the Greeks,
who called the sea Okeanos, or Ocean. In the beginning
only this ocean existed, upon which there then appeared
an egg, or as some said a flower, out of which issued the
sun-god. From himself he begat four children, Shu and
Tefnut, Keb and Nut. All these, with their father, lay
upon the ocean of chaos, when Shu and Tefnut, who repre-
sent the atmosphere, thrust themselves between Keb and
Nut. They planted their feet upon Keb and raised Nut on
high, so that Keb became the earth and Nut the heavens.
Keb and Nut were the father and mother of the four divin-
ities, Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys; together they
formed with their primeval father the sun-god, a circle of
nine deities, the “ennead" of which each temple later pos-
sessed a local form. This correlation of the primitive divin-
ities as father, mother and son, strongly influenced the
theology of later times until each temple possessed an arti-
ficially created triad, of purely secondary origin, upon which
an “ennead” was then built up. Other local versions of
this story of the world's origin also circulated. One of
them represents Re as ruling the earth for a time as king
over men, who plotted against him, so that he sent a god-
dess, Hathor, to slay them, but finally repented and by a
ruse succeeded in diverting the goddess from the total exter.
mination of the human race, after she had destroyed them
in part. The cow of the sky then raised Re upon her back
that he might forsake the ungrateful earth and dwell in
heaven.
* II, 661.
+
EARLY RELIGION
57
(0)
FIG. 32. THE CELESTIAL BARQUE OF THE SUN-GOD.
The ram-headed god, wearing the sun-disk is enthroned in a chapel; the
ibis-headed Thoth, his vizier, stands in the royal presence and addresses him
like an earthly king.
LE
NONTO
nonn.
Moinnin
16
NY
பயாயன் பாய
ht
MTV
itu.
7.
HER
tro
Fig. 33. RESTORATION OF A GROUP OF OLD KINGDOM "MASTABAS," OR
MASONRY TOMBS. (After Perrot-Chipiez.)
The door of the chapel is visible in front, and on the roof may be seen the
top of the shaft which descends through the superstructure to the subter-
ranean sepulchre chamber containing the mummy.
58
EARLY RELIGION
Besides these gods of the earth, the air and the heavens,
there were also those who had as their domain the nether
world, the gloomy passage, along which the subterranean
stream carried the sun from west to east. Here, according
to a very early belief, dwelt the dead, whose king was Osiris.
He had succeeded the sun-god as king on earth, aided in
his government by his faithful sister-wife, Isis. A bene-
factor of men, and beloved as a righteous ruler, he was
nevertheless craftily misled and slain by his brother Set.
When, after great tribulation, Isis had gained possession
of her lord's body, she was assisted in preparing it for burial
by one of the old gods of the nether world, Anubis, the
jackal-god, who thereafter became the god of embalmment.
So powerful were the charms now uttered by Isis over the
body of her dead husband that it was reanimated, and
regained the use of its limbs; and although it was impos
sible for the departed god to resume his earthly life, he
passed down in triumph as a living king, to become lord of
the nether world. Isis later gave birth to a son, Horus,
whom she secretly reared among the marshy fastnesses of
the Delta as the avenger of his father. Grown to manhood,
the youth pursued Set and in the ensuing awful battle,
which raged from end to end of the land, both were fear-
fully mutilated. But Set was defeated, and Horus tri-
umphantly assumed the earthly throne of his father. There-
upon Set entered the tribunal of the gods, and charged that
the birth of Horus was not without stain, and that his claim
to the throne was not valid. Defended by Thoth, the god
of letters, Horus was vindicated and declared "true in
speech," or "triumphant." According to another version
it was Osiris himself who was thus vindicated.
Not all the gods who appear in these tales and fancies
became more than mythological figures. Many of them con-
tinued merely in this role, without temple or form of wor-
ship; they had but a folk-lore or finally a theological exist-
ence. Others became the great gods of Egypt. In a land
where a clear sky prevailed and rain was rarely seen, the
EARLY RELIGION'
59
incessant splendour of the sun was an insistent fact, which
gave him the highest place in the thought and daily life of
the people. His worship was almost universal, but the chief
centre of his cult was at On, the Delta city, which the Greeks
called Heliopolis. Here he was known as Re, which was the
solar orb itself; or as Atum, the name of the decrepit sun,
as an old man tottering down the west; again his name
Khepri, written with a beetle in hieroglyphic, designated him
in the youthful vigour of his rising. He had two barques
with which he sailed across the heavens, one for the morning
and the other for the afternoon, and when in this barque he
entered the nether world to return to the east he brought
light and joy to its disembodied denizens. The symbol of
his presence in the temple at Heliopolis was an obelisk, while
at Edfu, on the upper river, which was also an old centre
of his worship, he appeared as a hawk, under the name
Horus.
The Moon as the measurer of time furnished the god of
reckoning, of letters, and of wisdom, whose chief centre was
at Shmûn, or Hermopolis, as the Greeks who identified him
with Hermes, called the place. He was identified with the
ibis. The Sky, whom we have seen as Nut, was worshipped
throughout the land, although Nut herself continued to play
only a mythological role. The sky-goddess became the type
of woman and of woman's love and joy. At the ancient
shrine of Dendereh she was the cow-goddess, Hathor; at Sais
she was the joyous Neit; at Bubastis, in the form of a cat,
she appeared as Bast; while at Memphis her genial aspects
disappeared and she became a lionness, the goddess of storm
and terror. The myth of Osiris, so human in its incidents
and all its characteristics, rapidly induced the wide propa-
gation of his worship, and although Isis still remained chiefly
a figure in the myth, she became the type of wife and mother,
upon which the people loved to dwell. Horus also, although
he really belonged originally to the sun-myth and had
nothing to do with Osiris, was for the people the embodi-
ment of the qualities of a good son, and in him they constantly
60
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
saw the ultimate triumph of the just cause. The immense
influence of the Osiris-worship on the life of Egypt we shall
have occasion to notice further in discussing mortuary
beliefs. The original home of Osiris was at Dedu, called
by the Greeks Busiris, in the Delta; but Abydos, in Upper
Egypt, early gained a reputation of peculiar sanctity,
because the head of Osiris was buried there. He always
appeared as a closely swathed figure, enthroned as a
Pharaoh or merely a curious pillar, a fetish surviving from
his prehistoric worship. Into the circle of nature-divinities
it is impossible to bring Ptah of Memphis, who was one of
the early and great gods of Egypt. He was the patron of
the artisan, the artificer and artist, and his High Priest was
always the chief artist of the court. Such were the chief
gods of Egypt, although many another important deity pre-
sided in this or that temple, whom it would be impossible
for us to notice here, even with a word.
The external manifestations and the symbols with which
the Egyptian clothed these gods are of the simplest char-
acter and they show the primitive simplicity of the age in
which these deities arose. They bear a staff like a Beduin
native of to-day, or the goddesses wield a reed-stem; their
diadems are of woven reeds or a pair of ostrich feathers, or
the horns of a sheep. In such an age, the people frequently
saw the manifestations of their gods in the numerous ani-
mals with which they were surrounded, and the veneration
of these sacred beasts survived into an age of high civiliza-
tion, when we should have expected it to disappear. But
the animal-worship, which we usually associate with ancient
Egypt, as a cult, is a late product, brought forward in the
decline of the nation at the close of its history. In the
periods with which we shall have to deal, it was unknown;
the hawk, for example, was the sacred animal of the sun-god,
and as such a living hawk might have a place in the temple,
where he was fed and kindly treated, as any such pet might
be; but he was not worshipped, nor was he the object of an
elaborate ritual as later.1
* Erman, Handbuch, p. 25.
EARLY RELIGION
61
In their elongated valley the local beliefs of the earliest
Egyptians could not but differ greatly among themselves,
and although for example there were many centres of sun-
worship, each city possessing a sun-temple regarded the sun
as its particular god, to the exclusion of all the rest; just
as many a town of Italy at the present day would not for a
moment identify its particular Madonna with the virgin of
any other town. As commercial and administrative inter-
course were increased by political union, these mutually con-
tradictory and incompatible beliefs could not longer remain
local. They fused into a complex of tangled myth, of which
we havo already offered some examples and shall yet see
more.
Neither did the theologizing priesthoods ever reduce
this mass of belief into a coherent system; it remained as
accident and circumstance brought it together, a chaos of
contradictions. Another result of national life was, that as
soon as a city gained political supremacy its gods rose with
it to the dominant place among the innumerable gods of
the land.
The temples in which the earliest Egyptian worshipped
we have already had occasion to notice. He conceived the
place as the dwelling of his god, and hence its arrangement
probably conformed with that of a private house of the pre-
dynastic Egyptian. We have seen how the gradual evolu-
tion of a nation has left the prehistoric temple of woven
wattle far behind, putting in its place at last a structure of
stone in which doubtless the main features of the primitive
arrangement survived. It was still the house of the god,
although the Egyptian himself may have long since for-
gotten its origin. Behind a forecourt open to the sky rose
a colonnaded hall, beyond which was a series of small cham-
bers containing the furniture and implements for the temple
services. Of the architecture and decoration of the building
we shall later have occasion to speak further (pp. 106 f.).
The centre of the chambers in the rear was occupied by a
small room, the holy of holies, in which stood a shrine hewn
from one block of granite. It contained the image of the god,
62
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
a small figure of wood from one and a half to six feet high,
elaborately adorned and splendid with gold, silver and costly
stones. The service of the divinity who dwelt here consisted
simply in furnishing him with those things which formed
the necessities and luxuries of an Egyptian of wealth and
rank at that time: plentiful food and drink, fine clothing,
music and the dance. The source of these offerings was the
income from an endowment of lands established by the
throne, as well as various contributions from the royal rev.
enues in grain, wine, oil, honey and the like. These contribu-
tions to the comfort and happiness of the lord of the temple,
while probably originally offered without ceremony, gradually
became the occasion of an elaborate ritual which was essen-
tially alike in all temples. Outside in the forecourt was the
great altar, where the people gathered on feast days, when
they were permitted to share the generous food offerings,
which ordinarily were eaten by the priests and servants of
the temple, after they had been presented to the god. These
feasts, besides those marking times and seasons, were fre-
quently commemorations of some important event in the
story or myth of the god, and on such occasions the priests
brought forth the image in a portable shrine, having the
form of a small Nile boat.
The earliest priesthood was but an incident in the duties
of the local noble, who was the head of the priests in the
community; but the exalted position of the Pharaoh as the
nation developed, made him the sole official servant of the
gods, and there arose at the beginning of the nation's his-
tory a state form of religion, in which the Pharaoh played
the supreme role. In theory, therefore, it was he alone who
worshipped the gods; in fact, however, he was of necessity
represented in each of the many temples of the land by a
high priest, by whom all offerings were presented “for the
sake of the life, prosperity and health" of the Pharaoh.
Some of these high priesthoods were of very ancient origin:
particularly that of Heliopolis, whose incumbent was called
*I, 153–167; 213.
EARLY RELIGION
63
“Great Seer”; while he of Ptah at Memphis was called
“Great Chief of Artificers." Both positions demanded two
incumbents at once and were usually held by men of high
rank. The incumbents of the other high priesthoods of
later origin all bore the simple title of “overseer or chief
of priests." It was the duty of this man not merely to
conduct the service and ritual of the sanctuary, but also to
administer its endowment of lands, from the income of which
it lived, while in time of war he might even command the
temple contingent. He was assisted by a body of priests,
whose sacerdotal service was with few exceptions merely
incidental to their worldly occupations. They were laymen,
who from time to time served for a stated period in the
temple; thus in spite of the fiction of the Pharaoh as the
sole worshipper of the god, the laymen were represented in
its service. In the same way the women of the time were
commonly priestesses of Neit or Hathor; their service con-
sisted in nothing more than dancing and jingling a sistrum
before the god on festive occasions. The state fiction had
therefore not quite suppressed the participation of the indi-
vidual in the service of the temple. In harmony with the
conception of the temple as the god's dwelling the most fre-
quent title of the priest was “servant of the god."
Parallel with this development of a state religion, with its
elaborate equipment of temple, endowment, priesthood and
ritual, the evolution of the provision for the dead had kept
even pace. In no land, ancient or modern, has there ever
been such attention to the equipment of the dead for their
eternal sojourn in the hereafter. The beliefs which finally
led the Egyptian to the devotion of so much of his wealth
and time, his skill and energy to the erection and equipment
of the “eternal house" are the oldest conceptions of a real
life hereafter of which we know. He believed that the body
was animated by a vital force, which he pictured as a coun-
terpart of the body, which came into the world with it,
passed through life in its company, and accompanied it into
the next world. This he called a "ka,” and it is often
64
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
spoken of in modern treatises as a “double,” though this
designation describes the form of the ka as represented on
the monuments, rather than its real nature. Besides the ka
every person possessed also a soul, which he conceived in
the form of a bird flitting about among the trees; though
it might assume the outward semblance of a flower, the lotus,
a serpent, a crocodile sojourning in the river, or of many
other things. Even further elements of personality scemed
to them present, like the shadow possessed by every one,
but the relations of all these to each other were very vague
and confused in the mind of the Egyptian; just as the
average Christian of a generation ago, who accepted the
doctrine of body, scul and spirit, would have been unable to
give any lucid explanation of their interrelations. Like the
varying explanations of the heavens and the world there were
many once probably local notions of the place to which the
dead journeyed; but these beliefs, although mutually irrec-
oncilable, continued to enjoy general acceptance, and no one
was troubled by their incompatibility, even if it ever
occurred to them. There was a world of the dead in the
west, where the sun-god descended into his grave every
night, so that “westerners” was for the Egyptian a term
for the departed; and wherever possible the cemetery was
located on the margin of the western desert. There was
also the nether world where the departed lived awaiting the
return of the solar barque every evening, that they might
bathe in the radiance of the sun-god, and seizing the bow-
rope of his craft draw him with rejoicing through the long
caverns of their dark abode. In the splendour of the nightly
heavens the Nile-dweller also saw the host of those who had
preceded him; thither they had flown as birds, rising above
all foes of the air, and received by Re as the companions
of his celestial barque, they now swept across the sky as
eternal stars. Still more commonly the Egyptian told of
a field in the northeast of the heavens, which he called the
"field of food," or the “field of Yaru,” the lentil field,
where the grain grew taller than any ever seen on the banks
EARLY RELIGION
65
of the Nile, and the departed dwelt in security and plenty.
Besides the bounty of the soil he received too, from the
earthly offerings presented in the temple of his god: bread
and beer and fine linen. It was not every one who suc-
ceeded in reaching this field of the blessed; for it was sur-
rounded by water. Sometimes the departed might induce
the hawk or the ibis to bear him across on their pinions;
again friendly spirits, the four sons of Horus, brought him
a craft upon which he might float over; sometimes the sun-
god bore him across in his barque; but by far the majority
depended upon the services of a ferryman called “Turn-
face” or “Look-behind,” because his face was ever turned
to the rear in poling his craft. He will not receive all into
his boat, but only him of whom it was said, “there is no
evil which he has done,” or “the just who 'hath no boat,"
or him who is “righteous before heaven and earth and before
the isle,”l where lies the happy field to which they go.
These are the earliest traces in the history of man of an
ethical test at the close of life, making the life hereafter
dependent upon the character of the life lived on earth. It
was at this time, however, chiefly ceremonial rather than
moral purity which secured the waiting soul passage across
the waters. Yet a noble of the Fifth Dynasty desires it
known that he has never defrauded ancient tombs, and says
in his mastaba, “I have made this tomb as a just possession,
and never have I taken a thing belonging to any person.
Never have I done aught of violence toward any person.
Another, perhaps a private citizen, says, “Never was I
beaten in the presence of any official since my birth; never
did I take the property of any man by violence; I was doer
of that which pleased all men." Nor was it always nega-
tive virtues which they claimed; a noble of Upper Egypt
at the close of the Fifth Dynasty says, “I gave bread to the
hungry of the Cerastes-Mountain (the district he governed);
* Pyramid of Pepi I, 400; Mernere 570, Erman, Zeitschrift für Aegyptische
Sprache, XXXI, 76–77.
& I, 252.
* I, 279.
3
5
66
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
72
I clothed him who was naked therein. . . . I never oppressed
one in possession of his property, so that he complained of
me because of it to the god of my city; never was there
one fearing because of one stronger than he, so that he com-
plained because of it to the god."?
Into these early beliefs, with which Osiris originally had
nothing to do, the myth which told of his death and depar-
ture into the nether world, now entered, to become the
dominating element in Egyptian mortuary belief. He had
become the “first of those in the west” and “king of the
glorified”; every soul that suffered the fate of Osiris might
also experience his restoration to life; might indeed become
an Osiris. So they said: "As Osiris lives, so shall he also
live; as Osiris died not, so shall he also not die; as Osiris
perished not, so shall he also not perish.' As the limbs
of Osiris were again imbued with life, so shall the gods
raise him up and put him among the gods. "The door of
heaven is open to thee, and the great bolts are drawn back
for thee. Thou findest Re standing there; he takes thee by
the hand and leads thee into the holy place of heaven, and
sets thee upon the throne of Osiris, upon this thy brazen
throne, that thou mayest reign over the glorified. . . .The
servants of the god stand behind thee and the nobles of
the god stand before thee and cry, 'Come thou god! Come
thou god! Come thou possessor of the Osiris throne!' Isis
speaks with thee, and Nephthys salutes thee. The glorified
come to thee and bow down, that they may kiss the earth
at thy feet. So art thou protected and equipped as a god,
endowed with the form of Osiris, upon the throne of the
'First of the Westerners.' Thou doest what he did among
the glorified and imperishable. ... Thou makest thy house
to flourish after thee, and protectest thy children from sor-
row.''3 Believing thus that all might share the goodly des-
tiny of Osiris, or even become Osiris himself, they contem-
plated death without dismay, for they said of the dead,
II, 281.
* Pyramids, Chap. 15.
Erman, Handbuch, pp. 96-09.
EARLY RELIGION
67
ܙ ܕ
993
“They depart not as those who are dead, but they depart
as those who are living." Here there entered, as a salutary
influence also the incident of the triumphant vindication
of Osiris when accused; for there is a hint of a similar justi-
fication for all, which, as we shall yet see, was the most fruit-
ful germ in Egyptian religion. The myth of Osiris thus in-
troduced an ultimately powerful ethical element, which, while
not altogether lacking before, needed the personal factor
supplied by the Osiris myth to give it vital force. Thus sev-
eral nobles of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties threaten those
who in the future would appropriate their tombs, that“judg-
ment shall be liad with them for it by the great god”;2 and
another says that he never slandered others, for “I desired
that it might be well with me in the great god's presence.
These views are chiefly found in the oldest mortuary liter-
ature of Egypt which we possess, a series of texts supposed
to be effective in securing for the deceased the enjoyment
of a happy life, and especially the blessed future enjoyed
by Osiris. They were engraved upon the passages of the
Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids, where they have been
preserved in large numbers, and it is largely from them that
the above sketch of the early Egyptian's notions of the
hereafter has been taken. From the place in which they
are found, they are usually called the “Pyramid Texts.”
Many of these texts grew up in the predynastic age and
some have therefore been altered to accommodate them to
the Osiris faith, with which they originally had no connec-
tion--a process which has of course resulted in inextricable
confusion of originally differing mortuary beliefs.
So insistent a belief or set of beliefs in a life beyond the
grave necessarily brought with it a mass of mortuary usages
with which in the earliest period of Egypt's career we have
already gained some acquaintance. It is evident that how-
ever persistently the Egyptian transferred the life of the
departed to some distant region, far from the tomb where
1
1 Ibid.
*I, 253, 330, 338, 357.
* See Erman, Handbuch.
• I, 331.
68
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the body lay, he was never able to detach the future life
entirely from the body. It is evident that he could conceive
of no survival of the dead without it. Gradually he had
developed a more and more pretentious and a safer repos-
itory for his dead, until, as we have seen, it had become a
vast and massive structure of stone. In all the world no such
colossal tombs as the pyramids are to be found; while the
tombs of the nobles grouped about have in the Old Kingdom
become immense masonry structures, which but a few cen-
turies before, a king would have been proud to own. Such a
tomb as that of Pepi I's vizier in the Sixth Dynasty contained
no less than thirty one rooms. The superstructure of such
0
DO
la
FIG. 34. GROUND PLAN OF A MASTABA
OR MASONRY TOMB.
a is the chapel; 6 is the “serdab " (cellar), the secret chamber containing
the portrait statue; c is the shaft leading down to the subterranean chamber
containing the mummy. For the elevation see Fig. 33.
a tomb was a massive rectangular oblong of masonry, the
sides of which slanted inward at an angle of roughly
seventy five degrees. It was, with the exception of its room
or rooms, solid throughout, reminding the modern natives
of the “mastaba,” the terrace, area or bench on which they
squat before their houses and shops. Such a tomb is there-
fore commonly termed a "mastaba.” The simplest of such
mastabas has no rooms within, and only a false door in the
east side, by which the dead, dwelling in the west, that is,
behind this door, might enter again the world of the living.
EARLY RELIGION
69
This false door was finally elaborated into a kind of chapel-
chamber in the mass of the masonry, the false door now
being placed in the west wall of the chamber. The inner
walls of this chapel bore scenes carved in relief, depicting
the servants and slaves of the deceased at their daily tasks
on his estate (Figs. 44, 56); they plowed and sowed and
reaped; they pastured the herds and slaughtered them for
the table, they wrought stone vessels or they built Nile boats
-in fact they were shown in field and workshop producing
all those things which were necessary for their lord's welfare
in the hereafter, while here and there his towering figure
appeared superintending and inspecting their labours as he
had done before he "departed into the West.” It is these
scenes which are the source of our knowledge of the life and
customs of the time. Far below the massive mastaba was a
burial chamber in the native rock reached by a shaft which
passed down through the superstructure of masonry. On the
day of burial the body, now duly embalmed, was subjected to
elaborate ceremonies embodying occurrences in the history of
Osiris. It was especially necessary by potent charms to open
the mouth and ears of the deceased that he might speak and
hear in the hereafter. The mummy was then lowered down
the shaft and laid as of old upon its left side in a fine rec-
tangular cedar coffin, which again was deposited in a massive
sarcophagus of granite or limestone. Food and drink were
left with it, besides some few toilet articles, a magic wand
and a number of amulets for protection against the enemies
of the dead, especially serpents. The number of serpent-
charms in the Pyramid Texts, intended to render these foes
harmless, is very large. The deep shaft leading to the burial
chamber was then filled to the top with sand and gravel,
and the friends of the dead now left him to the life in the
liereafter, which we have pictured.
Yet their duty toward their departed friend had not yet
lapsed. In a tiny chamber beside the chapel they masoned
up a portrait statue of the deceased, sometimes cutting small
channels, which connected the two rooms, the chapel and
70
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the statue-chamber, or “serdab,” as the modern natives
call it. As the statue was an exact reproduction of the
deceased's body, his ka might therefore attach itself to this
counterfeit, and through the connecting channels enjoy the
food and drink placed for it in the chapel. The offerings to
the dead, originally only a small loaf in a bowl, placed by
a son, or wife, or brother on a reed mat at the grave, have
now become as elaborate as the daily cuisine once enjoyed
by the lord of the tomb before he forsook his earthly house.
But this labour of love, or sometimes of fear, has now
devolved upon a large personnel, attached to the tomb, some
of whom, as its priests, constantly maintained its ritual.
Very specific contracts were made with these persons,
requiting them for their services with a fixed income drawn
from endowments legally established and recorded for this
purpose by the noble himself, in anticipation of his death.
The tomb of Prince Nekure, son of king Khafre of the
Fourth Dynasty, was endowed with the revenues from
twelve towns.2 A palace-steward in Userkaf's tiine ap-
pointed eight mortuary priests for the service of his tomb ;3
and a nomarch of Upper Egypt endowed his tomb with
income from eleven villages and settlements. The income
of a mortuary priest in such a tomb was in one instance
sufficient to enable him to endow the tomb of his daughter
in the same way.5 Such endowments and the service thus
maintained were intended to be permanent, but in the course
of a few generations the accumulated burden was intol-
erable, and ancestors of a century before, with rare excep-
tions, were necessarily neglected in order to maintain those
whose claims were stronger and more recent. Or, as in the
temples the offerings after having been presented to the
gods were employed in the maintenance of the people
attached to the temple, so now a favourite noble of the king
might be rewarded by the diversion to his tomb of a certain
portion of the plentiful income which had already been pre-
* I, 200–209, 231-5.
I, 191.
* I, 226–7.
•I, 379.
* Erman, Handbuch, p. 123.
2
EARLY RELIGION
71
sented at the tomb of some royal ancestor or other relative
of the king's house. It had now become so customary for
the king to assist his favourite lords and nobles in this way?
that we find a frequent mortuary prayer beginning “An
offering which the king gives," and as long as the number
of those whose tombs were thus maintained was limited to
the noble and official circle around the king, such royal
largesses to the dead were quite possible. But in later
times, when the mortuary practices of the noble class had
spread to the masses, they also employed the same prayer,
although it is impossible that the royal bounty could have
been so extended. Thus this prayer is to-day the most fre-
quent formula to be found on the Egyptian monuments,
occurring thousands of times on the tombs or tomb-stones
of people who had no prospect of enjoying such royal dis-
tinction; and in the same tomb it is always repeated over
and over again. In the same way the king also assisted his
favourites in the erection of their tombs, and the noble often
records with pride that the king presented him with the
false door, or the sarcophagus, or detailed a body of royal
artificers to assist in the construction of his tomb.3
If the tomb of the noble had now become an endowed
institution, we have seen that that of the king was already
such in the First Dynasty. In the Third Dynasty, at least,
the Pharaoh was not satisfied with one tomb, but in his
double capacity as king of the Two Lands he erected tuo,
just as the palace was double for the same reason. We find
the monarch's tomb now far surpassing that of the noble
in its extent and magnificence. The mortuary service of
the Pharaoh's lords might be conducted in the chapel in
the east side of the mastaba ; but that of the Pharaoh himself
required a separate building, a splendid mortuary temple
on the east side of the pyramid. A richly endowed priest-
hood was here employed to maintain its ritual and to fur
*1, 173, 1. 5, 241.
* I, 204, 207, 209, 213-227, 242-249, 274–7, 370.
* I, 210-212, 237-40, 242–9, 274–7, 308.
72
A HISTORY OF EGYPT

bershop
FIG. 35. RESTORATION OF THE PYRAMIDS OF ABUSIR AND CONNECTED BUILD-
INGS. (After Borchardt.)
Close to each pyramid on the hither side is the pyramid-temple. From
two of these, covered masonry causeways lead down to the edge of the desert
plateau, where each terminates in a monumental gate of massive masonry
(see Fig. 69). Before the gate is a landing platform with steps leading
down to the water, where boats may land during the inundation.
nish the food, drink and clothing of the departed king. Its
large personnel demanded many outbuildings, and the whole
group of pyramid, temple and accessories was surrounded
by a wall. All this was on the edge of the plateau overlook-
ing the valley, in which, below the pyramid, there now grew
up a walled town. Leading up from the town to the pyramid
enclosure was a massive causeway of stone which terminated
at the lower or townward end in a large and stately struc-
ture of granite or limestone sometimes with floors of alabas-
ter, the whole forming a superb portal, a worthy entrance
to so impressive a tomb (Figs. 35, 69). Through this portal
passed the white-robed procession on feast days, moving from
the town up the long white causeway to the temple, above
EARLY RELIGION
73
which rose the mighty mass of the pyramid. The populace
in the city below probably never gained access to the pyra-
mid-enclosure. Over the town wall, through the waving
green of the palms, they saw the gleaming white pyramid,
where lay the god who had once ruled over them; while
beside it rose slowly year by year another mountain of
stone, gradually assuming pyramid form, and there, would
some time rest his divine son, of whose splendour they had
now and then on feast days caught a fleeting glimpse. While
the proper burial of the Pharaoh and his nobles had now
become a matter seriously affecting the economic conditions
of the state, such elaborate mortuary equipment was still
confined to a small class, and the common people continued
to lay away their dead without any attempt at embalmment
in the pit of their prehistoric ancestors on the margin of the
western desert.
CHAPTER V
THE OLD KINGDOM: GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY,
INDUSTRY AND ART ,
THE origins of the kingship and of the customs which
made it so peculiar in ancient Egypt, as the reader has
already observed, are rooted in a past so remote that we can
discern but faint traces of the evolution of the office. With
the consolidation under Menes it was already an institu-
tion of great age, and over four centuries of developinent
which then followed, had at the dawn of the Old Kingdom
already brought to the office a prestige and an exalted
power, demanding the deepest reverence of the subject
whether high or low. Indeed the king was now officially a
god, and one of the most frequent titles was the “Good
God''; such was the respect due him that there was reluc-
tance to refer to him by name. The courtier might desig-
nate him impersonally as “one,” and “to let one know"
becomes the official phrase for “report to the king." His
government and ultimately the monarch personally were
called the “Great House,” in Egyptian Per-o, a term which
has descended to us through the Hebrews as “Pharaoh.'
There was also a number of other circumlocutions, which
the fastidious courtier might employ in referring to his
divine lord. When he died he was received into the circle
of the gods, to be worshipped like them ever after in the
temple before the vast pyramid in which he slept.
Court customs had gradually developed into an elaborate
official etiquette, for the punctilious observance of which,
already in this distant age, a host of gorgeous marshals and
court chamberlains were in constant attendance at the palace.
There had thus grown up a palace life, not unlike that of
74
THE OLD KINGDOM
75
modern times in the East, a life into which we gain obscure
glimpses in the numerous titles borne by the court lords of
the time. With ostentatious pride they arrayed these titles
on the walls of their tombs, mingled with sounding predi-
cates indicating their high duties and exalted privileges in
the circle surrounding the king. There were many ranks,
and the privileges of each, with all possible niceties of pre-
cedence, were strictly observed and enforced by the court
marshals at all state levees and royal audiences. Every
need of the royal person was represented by some palace
lord, whose duty it was to supply it, and who bore a corre-
sponding title, like the court physician or the leader of the
court music. Although the royal toilet was comparatively
simple, yet a small army of wig-makers, sandal-makers, per-
fumers, launderers, bleachers and guardians of the royal
wardrobe, filled the king's chambers. They record their
titles upon their tomb-stones with visible satisfaction. Thus
to take an example at random, one of them calls himself
“Overseer of the cosmetic box . . . doing in the matter of
cosmetic art to the satisfaction of his lord; overseer of the
cosmetic pencil, sandal-bearer of the king, doing in the
matter of the king's sandals to the satisfaction of his lord.
The king's favourite wife became the official queen, whose
eldest son usually received the appointment as crown prince
to succeed his father. But as at all oriental courts, there
was also a royal harem with numerous inmates. Many sons
usually surrounded the monarch, and the vast revenues of
the palace were liberally distributed among them. A son
of king Khafre in the Fourth Dynasty left an estate of
fourteen towns, besides a town house and two estates at
the royal residence, the pyramid city. Besides these, the
endowment of his tomb comprised twelve towns more. But
these princes assisted in their father's government, and did
not live a life of indolence and luxury. We shall find them
occupying some of the most arduous posts in the service of
the state.
1
* Cairo stela, 1787.
* I, 190–9.
76
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
However exalted may have been the official position of the
Pharaoh as the sublime god at the head of the state, he never-
theless maintained close personal relations with the more
prominent nobles of the realm. As a prince he had been
educated with a group of youths from the families of these
nobles, and together they had been instructed in such
manly arts as swimming. The friendships and the inti-
macies thus formed in youth must have been a powerful
influence in the later life of the monarch. We see the
Pharaoh giving his daughter in marriage to one of these
youths with whom he had been educated, and the severe
decorum of the court was violated in behalf of this favour-
ite, who was not permitted on formal occasions to kiss
the dust before the Pharaoh, but enjoyed the unprec-
edented privilege of kissing the royal foot. On the part
of his intimates such ceremonial was purely a matter of
official etiquette; in private the monarch did not hesitate to
recline familiarly in complete relaxation beside one of his
favourites, while the attending slaves anointed them both.
The daughter of such a noble might become the official queen
and mother of the next king. We see the king inspecting
a public building with his chief architect, the vizier. As
he admires the work and praises his faithful minister, he
notices that the latter does not hear the words of royal
favour. The king's exclamation alarms the waiting cour-
tiers, the stricken minister is quickly carried to the palace
itself, where the Pharaoh hastily summons the priests and
chief physicians. He sends to the library for a case of
medical rolls, but all is in vain. The physicians declare
his condition hopeless. The king is smitten with sorrow
and retires to his chamber to pray to Re. He then makes
all arrangements for the deceased noble's burial, ordering
an ebony coffin, and having the body anointed in his own
presence. The eldest son of the dead was then empowered
to build the tomb, the king furnishing and endowing it.
*I, 256.
* I, 254 ff.
* I, 260.
'I, 270.
* I, 344.
'I, 242-9.
6
THE OLD KINGDOM
77
It is evident that the most powerful lords of the kingdom
were thus bound to the person of the Pharaoh by close per-
sonal ties of blood and friendship. These relations were
carefully fostered by the monarch, and in the Fourth and
early Fifth Dynasty, there are aspects of this ancient state
in which its inner circle at least reminds one of a great
family, so that, as we have observed, the king assisted all
its members in the building and equipment of their tombs,
and showed the greatest solicitude for their welfare, both
here and in the hereafter.
At the head of government there was theoretically none
to question the Pharaoh's power. In actual fact he was as
subject to the demands of policy toward this or that class,
powerful family, clique or individual, or toward the harem,
as are his successors in the oriental despotisms of the present
day. These forces, which more or less modified his daily
acts, we can follow at this distant day only as we see the
state slowly moulded in its larger outlines by the impact
of generation after generation of such influences from the
Pharaoh's environment. In spite of the luxury evident in
the organization of his court, the Pharaoh did not live the
life of a luxurious despot, such as we frequently find among
the Mamlukes of Moslem Egypt. In the Fourth Dynastyl
at least, he had as prince already seen arduous service in the
superintendence of quarrying and mining operations, or he
had served his father as vizier or prime minister, gaining
invaluable experience in government before his succession
to the throne. He was thus an educated and enlightened
monarch, able to read and write, and not infrequently taking
his pen in hand personally to indite a letter of thanks and
appreciation to some deserving officer in his government."
He constantly received his ministers and engineers to dis-
cuss the needs of the country, especially in the conservation
of the water supply and the development of the system of
irrigation. His chief architect sent in plans for laying out
the royal estates, and we see the monarch discussing with
*I, 268-270, 271.
78
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
him the excavation of a lake two thousand feet long in one
of them. He read many a weary roll of state papers, or
turned from these to dictate dispatches to his commanders
in Sinai, Nubia and Punt, along the southern Red Sea. The
briefs of litigating heirs reached his hands and were prob-
ably not always a matter of mere routine to be read by sec-
retaries. When such business of the royal offices had been
settled the monarch rode out in his palanquin, accompanied
by his vizier and attendants, to inspect his buildings and
public works, and his hand was everywhere felt in all the
important affairs of the nation.
The location of the royal residence was largely determined
by the pyramid which the king was building. As we have
remarked, the palace and the town formed by the court and
all that was attached to it, probably lay in the valley below
the margin of the western desert-plateau, on which the pyr-
amid rose. From dynasty to dynasty, or sometimes from
reign to reign, it followed the pyramid, the light construc-
tion of the palaces and villas not interfering seriously with
such mobility. After the Third Dynasty the residence was
always in the vicinity of later Memphis. The palace itself
was double, or at least it possessed two gates in its front,
corresponding to the two ancient kingdoms, of which it was
now the seat of government. Each door or gate had a
name indicating to which kingdom it belonged; thus Snefru
named the two gates of his palace “Exalted is the White
Crown of Snefru upon the Southern Gate,” and “Exalted
is the Red Crown of Snefru upon the Northern Gate.
Throughout Egyptian history the facade of the palace was
called the “double front,” and in writing the word “palace"
the scribe frequently placed the sign of two houses after it.
The royal office was also termed the “double cabinet,'
although it is not likely that there were two such bureaus,
one for the South and one for the North; the division prob-
ably went no further than the purely external symbolism of
the two palace gates. The same was doubtless true of the
2
!1, 148.
1 Ibid.
THE OLD KINGDOM
79
central administration as a whole. We thus hear of a
“double granary” and a "double white house” as depart-
ments of the treasury. These doubtless no longer corre-
sponded to existing double organizations; they have become
a fiction surviving from the first two dynasties; but such
double names were always retained in the later terminology
of the government. Adjoining the palace was a huge court,
connected with which were the halls' or offices of the cen-
tral government. The entire complex of palace and adjoin-
ing offices was known as the “Great House,” which was
ŠLIR
Biss
DEL
M
照
​Dhe
၆၉
Fig. 30. COLLECTION OF TAXES BY TREASURY OFFICIALS.
On the right the scribes and fiscal officers keep record, while deputies with
staves bring in the taxpayers. Over these are the words: Seizing the town.
rulers for a reckoning."
thus the centre of administration as well as the dwelling of
the royal household. Here was focussed the entire system
of government, which ramified throughout the country.
For purposes of local government, Upper Egypt was
divided into some twenty administrative districts, and later
we find as many more in the Delta. These “nomes” were
presumably the early principalities, from which the local
princes who ruled them in prehistoric days, had long dis-
appeared. At the head of such a district or nome there was
in the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties an official appointed by
the crown, and known as “First under the King.” Besides
his administrative function as “local governor” of the nome,
he also served in a judicial capacity, and therefore bore also
the title of “judge.” In Upper Egypt these “local gov-
ernors” were also sometimes styled magnates of the
80
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Southern Ten," as if there were a group among them enjoy-
ing higher rank and forming a college or council of ten.
While we are not so well informed regarding the government
of the North, the system there was evidently very similar,
although there were perhaps fewer local governors. Within
the nome which he administered the “local governor” had
under his control a miniature state, an administrative unit
with all the organs of government: a treasury, a court of
justice, a land-office, a service for the conservation of the
dykes and canals, a body of militia, a magazine for their
equipment; and in these offices a host of scribes and record-
ers, with an ever growing mass of archives and local records.
The chief administrative bond which coordinated and cen-
tralized these nomes was the organization of the treasury,
by the operation of which there annually converged upon the
magazines of the central government the grain, cattle, poul-
try and industrial products, which in an age without coinage,
were collected as taxes by the local governors. The local
registration of land, or the land-office, the irrigation service,
the judicial administration, and other administrative func-
tions were also centralized at the Great House; but it was
the treasury which formed the most tangible bond between
the palace and the nomes. Over the entire fiscal adminis-
tration there was a “Chief Treasurer,” residing of course
at the court. In a state in which buildings and extensive
public works demanded so much attention, the labour of
obtaining such enormous quantities of materials from the
mines and quarries required the oversight of two important
treasury officials, whom we would call assistant treasurers.
These the Egyptian styled “Treasurers of the God," mean-
ing of the king. They were the men who superintended the
quarrying and transportation of the stone for the temples
and the massive pyramids of the Old Kingdom; besides
leading many an expedition into Sinai to exploit the mines
there.
As the reader may have already inferred, the judicial
functions of the local governors were merely incidental to
THE OLD KINGDOM
81
their administrative labours. There was therefore no clearly
defined class of professional judges, but the administrative
officials were learned in the law and assumed judicial duties.
Like the treasury, the judicial administration also converged
in one person, for the local judges were organized into six
courts and these in turn were under a chief justice of the
whole realm. Many of the judges bore the additional pred-
icate "attached to Nekhen” (Hieraconpolis), an ancient
title descended from the days when Nekhen was the royal
residence of the Southern Kingdom. There was a body of
highly elaborated law, which has unfortunately perished
entirely. The local governors boast of their fairness and
justice in deciding cases, often stating in their tombs:
“Never did I judge two brothers in such a way that a son
was deprived of his paternal possession."ı The system of
submitting all cases to the court in the form of written
briefs, a method so praised by Diodorus,? seems to have
existed already in this remote age, and the Berlin Museum
possesses such a legal document pertaining to litigation
between an heir and an executor.3 It is the oldest document
of the kind in existence. Special cases of private nature
were “heard” by the chief justice and a judge "attached
to Nekhen,"4 while in a case of treason in the harem, the
accused queen was tried before a court of two judges
"attached to Nekhen,” especially appointed by the crown
for that purpose, the chief justice not being one of them."
It is a remarkable testimony to the Pharaoh's high sense of
justice, and to the surprisingly judicial temper of the time,
that in this distant age such a suspected conspirator in the
royal harem was not immediately put to death without more
ado. Summary execution, without any attempt legally to
establish the guilt of the accused, would not have been con-
sidered unjustifiable in times not a century removed from
our own in the same land. Under certain circumstances,
not yet clear to us, appeal might be made directly to the
1
1 I, 331, 357.
* Pap. des Kgl. Mus., 82-3.
* Book I, 75–76.
* I, 310.
I, 307.
6
82
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
king, and briefs in the case submitted to him. Such a brief
is the document from the Old Kingdom now in Berlin, above
noticed (Fig. 45).
The immediate head of the entire organization of govern-
ment was the Pharaoh's prime minister, or as he is more
commonly called in the east, the vizier. At the same time
he also regularly served as chief justice; he was thus the
most powerful man in the kingdom, next to the monarch
himself, and for that reason the office was held by the crown
prince in the Fourth Dynasty. His “hall” or office served
as the archives of the government, and he was the chief
archivist of the state. The state records were called “king's
writings."'1 Here all lands were registered, and all local
archives centralized and coordinated; here wills were re-
corded, and when executed the resulting new titles were
issued. The will of a king's son in the Fourth Dynasty
has been preserved practically complete, and another from
the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty,4 both having been cut
in hieroglyphs on the stone wall of the tomb-chapel, where
they could defy the lapse of nearly five thousand years,
while the papyrus archives of the vizier perished thousands
of years ago. Several other similar mortuary enactments
have also survived. All lands presented by the Pharaoh
were conveyed by royal decree, recorded in the "king's
writings” at the vizier's offices.
All administration like the palace was in theory at least
twofold: a fiction surviving from the predynastic times,
before the union of the two kingdoms. We thus hear of
a “double granary” in the treasury, or a “double cabinet,
the office of the king. And these terms, which perhaps cor-
respond to existing realities in some cases, were retained in
the later terminology of the government, long after such
division into two departments had ceased to exist. Over
the vast army of scribes and officials of all possible ranks
11, 268 ff.; 273.
?I, 175 11. 14-16.
* I, 190-199.
*1, 213-217.
* I, 231 ff. and others throughout Fifth and Sixth Dynasty records.
* I, 173,
THE OLD KINGDOM
83
from high to low, who transacted the business of the Great
House, the vizier was supreme. When we add, that besides
some minor offices, he was also often the Pharaoh's chief
architect, or as the Egyptian said, “Chief of all Works of
the King," we shall understand that this great minister
was the busiest man in the kingdom. All powerful as he
was, the people appealed to him in his judicial capacity, as
to one who could right every wrong, and the office was tradi-
tionally the most popular in the long list of the Pharaoh's
servants. It was probably this office which was held by the
great wise man, Imhotep, under king Zoser, and the wisdom
of two other viziers of the Third Dynasty, Kegemne and
Ptah-hotep, committed to writing, survived for many cen-
turies after the Old Kingdom was a memory. Such was the
reverence with which the incumbents of this exalted office
were regarded, that the words, “Life, Prosperity, Health,"
which properly followed only the name of the king or a
royal prince, were sometimes added to that of the vizier.
Such was the organization of this remarkable state, as
we are able to discern it during the first two or three cen-
turies of the Old Kingdom. In the thirtieth century
before Christ it had reached an elaborate development of
state functions under local officials, such as was not found
in Europe until far down in the history of the Roman
Empire. It was, to sum up briefly, a closely centralized body
of local officials, each a centre for all the organs of the local
government, which in each nome were thus focussed in the
local governor before converging upon the palace. A
Pharaoh of power, force and ability, and loyal governors in
the nomes, meant a strong state; but let the Pharaoh betray
signs of weakness and the governors might gain an inde-
pendence which would threaten the dissolution of the whole.
It was the maintenance of the nomes each as a separate unit
of government, and the interposition of the governor at its
head between the Pharaoh and the nome, which rendered
the system dangerous. These little states within the state,
each frequently having its own governor, might too easily
84
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
become independent centres of political power. How this
process actually took place we shall be able to observe as
we follow the career of the Old Kingdom in the next chapter.
Such a process was rendered the more easy because the
government did not maintain any uniform or compact mili-
tary organization. Each nome possessed its militia, com-
manded by the civil officials, who were not necessarily
trained soldiers; there was thus no class of exclusively mili-
tary officers. The temple estates likewise maintained a body
of such troops. They were for the most part employed in
mining and quarrying expeditions, supplying the hosts nec-
essary for the transportation of the enormous blocks often
demanded by the architects. In such work they were under
the command of the "treasurer of the God." In case of
serious war, as there was no standing army, this militia from
all the nomes and temple estates, besides auxiliaries levied
among the Nubian tribes, were brought together as quickly
as possible and the command of the motley host, without
any permanent organization, was entrusted by the monarch
to some able official. As the local governors commanded
the militia of the nomes, they held the sources of the
Pharaoh's dubious military strength in their own hands.
The land which was thus administered must to a large
extent have belonged to the crown. Under the oversight
of the local governors' subordinates it was worked and made
profitable by slaves or serfs, who formed the bulk of the
population. They belonged to the ground and were be-
queathed with it. We have no means of determining how
large this population was, although, as we have before
stated, it had reached the sum of seven million by Roman
times. The descendants of the numerous progeny of older
kings, with possible remnants of the prehistoric landed
nobility, had created also a class of land-holding nobles,
whose great estates must have formed a not inconsiderable
fraction of the available lands of the kingdom. Such lords
did not necessarily enter upon an official career or partici-
* I, 171.
Diodorus I, 31.
THE OLD KINGDOM
85
pate in the administration. But the nobles and the peasant
serfs, as the highest and the lowest, were not the only classes
of society. There was a free middle class, in whose hands
the arts and industries had reached such a high degree of
excellence; but of these people we know almost nothing.
They did not build imperishable tombs, such as have fur-
nished us with all that we know of the nobles of the time;
and they transacted their business with documents written
on papyrus, which have all perished, in spite of the enormous
mass of such materials which must have once existed. Later
conditions would indicate that there undoubtedly was a class
of industrial merchants in the Old Kingdom who produced
and sold their own wares. That there were free land-
holders not belonging to the ranks of the nobles is also highly
probable.
The social unit was as in later human history, the family.
A man possessed but one legal wife, who was the mother of
his heirs. She was in every respect his equal, was always
treated with the greatest consideration, and participated in
the pleasures of her husband and her children; the affection-
ate relations existing between a noble and his wife are con-
stantly and noticeably depicted on the monuments of the time.
Such relations had often existed from the earliest childhood
of the pair; for it was customary in all ranks of society for
a youth to marry his sister. Besides the legitimate wife,
the head of his household, the man of wealth possessed also
a harem, the inmates of which maintained no legal claim
upon their lord. The harem was already at this early day a
recognized institution in the East, and nothing immoral was
thought of in connection with it. The children of the time
show the greatest respect for their parents, and it was the
duty of every son to maintain the tomb of his father. The
respect and affection of one's parents and family were highly
valued, and we often find in the tombs the statement, “ I was
one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, whom his
brothers and sisters loved." As among many other peoples,
*I, 357.
.
86
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the natural line of inheritance was through the eldest daugh-
ter, though a will might disregard this. The closest ties of
blood were through the mother, and a man's natural pro-
tector, even in preference to his own father, was the father of
his mother. The debt of a son to the mother who bore and
nourished him, cherished and cared for him while he was
being educated, is dwelt upon with emphasis by the wise men
of the time. While there was probably a loose form of mar-
riage which might be easily dissolved, a form presumably
due to the instability of fortune among the slaves and the
poorer class, yet immorality was strongly condemned by the
best sentiment. The wise man warns the youth,
66 Beware
of a woman from abroad, who is not known in her city. Look
not upon her when she comes, and know her not. She is like
the vortex of deep waters, whose whirling is unfathomable.
The woman, whose husband is far away, she writes to thee
every day. If there is no witness with her she arises and
spreads her net. O deadly crime, if one hearkens!”1 To
all youths marriage and the foundation of a household are
recommended as the only wise course. Yet there is no
doubt that side by side with these wholesome ideals of the
wise and virtuous, there also existed wide-spread and gross
immorality.
The outward conditions of the lower class were not such as
would incline toward moral living. In the towns their low
mud-brick, thatch-roofed houses were crowded into groups
and masses, so huddled together that the walls were often
contiguous. A rough stool, a rude box or two, and a few
crude pottery jars constituted the furniture of such a hovel.
The barracks of the workmen were an immense succession of
small mud-brick chambers under one roof, with open pas-
sages between long lines of such rooms. Whole quarters for
the royal levies of workmen were erected on this plan, in the
pyramid-towns, and near the pyramids. On the great
estates, the life of the poor was freer, less congested and
promiscuous, and undoubtedly more stable and wholesome.
Pap. de Boulaq I, 16, 13 ff.; Erman, Aegypten, 223.
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(After Petrie.)
88
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
The houses of the rich, the noble and official class were
large and commodious. Methen, a great noble of the third
dynasty, built a house over three hundred and thirty feet
square. The materials were wood and sun-dried brick, and
the construction was light and airy as suited the climate.
There were many latticed windows, on all sides the walls of
the living rooms were largely a mere skeleton, like those of
many Japanese houses. Against winds and sandstorms,
they could be closed by dropping gaily coloured hangings.
Even the palace of the king, though of course fortified, was
of this light construction; hence the cities of ancient Egypt
have disappeared entirely or left but mounds containing a
few scanty fragments of ruined walls. Beds, chairs, stools
and chests of ebony, inlaid with ivory in the finest workman-
ship, formed the chief articles of furniture. Little or no use
was made of tables, but the rich vessels of alabaster, and
other costly stones, of copper, or sometimes of gold and
silver, were placed upon bases and standards which raised
them from the floor. The floors were covered with heavy
rugs, upon which guests, especially ladies, frequently sat, in
preference to the chairs and stools. The food was rich and
varied; we find that even the dead desired in the hereafter,
"ten different kinds of meat, five kinds of poultry, sixteen
kinds of bread and cakes, six kinds of wine, four kinds of
beer, eleven kinds of fruit, besides all sorts of sweets and
many other things."2 The costume of these ancient lords
was simple in the extreme; it consisted merely of a white
linen kilt, secured above the hips with a girdle or band, and
hanging often hardly to the knees, or again in another style,
to the calf of the leg. The head was commonly shaven, and
two styles of wig, one short and curly, the other with long
straight locks parted in the middle, were worn on all state
occasions. A broad collar, often inlaid with costly stones,
generally hung from the neck, but otherwise the body was
bare from the waist up. With long staff in hand, the gentle-
II, 173.
* Dümichen Grabpalast, 18-26; Erman, Aegypten, 265.
THE OLD KINGDOM
89
man of the day was ready to receive his visitors, or to make
a tour of inspection about his estate. His lady and her
daughters all appeared in costumes even more simple. They
were clothed in a thin, close-fitting, sleeveless, white linen gar-
ment hanging from the breast to the ankles, and supported
by two bands passing over the shoulders. The skirt, as a
modern modiste would say “ lacked fullness," and there was
barely freedom to walk. A long wig, a collar and necklace,
and a pair of bracelets completed the lady's costume.
Neither she nor her lord was fond of sandals; although they
now and then wore them. While the adults thus dispensed
with all unnecessary clothing, as we should expect in such a
climate, the children were allowed to run about without any
clothing whatever. The peasant wore merely a breech-clout,
which he frequently cast off when at work in the fields; his
wife was clad in the same long close-fitting garment worn by
the wife of the noble; but she too when engaged in heavy
work, such as winnowing grain, cast aside all clothing.
The Egyptian was passionately fond of nature and of out-
door life. The house of the noble was always surrounded by
a garden, in which he loved to plant figs and palms and
sycamores, laying out vineyards and arbours, and excavating
before the house a pool, lined with masonry coping, and filled
with fish. A large body of servants and slaves were in at-
tendance, both in house and garden; a chief steward had
charge of the entire house and estate, while an upper
gardener directed the slaves in the care and culture of the
garden. This was the noble's paradise; here he spent his
leisure hours with his family and friends, playing at
draughts, listening to the music of harp, pipe and lute, watch-
ing his women in the slow and stately dance of the time, while
his children sported about among the trees, splashed in the
pool, or played with ball, doll or jumping-jack. Again in a
light boat of papyrus reeds, accompanied by his wife and
sometimes by one of his children, the noble delighted to float
about in the shade of the tall rushes, in the inundated marshes
and swamps. The myriad life that teemed and swarmed all
90
A HISTORY OF EGYPT

CROWN
11
са
FIG. 37.
VILLA AND GARDEN OF AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM.
(After Perrot and Chipiez.)
about his frail craft gave him the keenest pleasure. While
the lady plucked water-lilies and lotus flowers, and the lad
could try his skill at catching hoopoe birds, my lord launched
his boomerang among the flocks of wild fowl that fairly
darkened the sky above him, finding his sport in the use of
the difficult weapon, which for this reason, he preferred to
the more effective and less difficult bow. Or again he seized
his double-pointed fish-spear, and tried his skill in the stream,
endeavouring if possible to transfix two fish at once, one on
THE OLD KINGDOM
91
each of the two prongs. Sometimes an aggressive hippo-
potamus, or a troublesome crocodile demanded the long har-
poon with rope attached, and the fishers and hunters of the
marshes were summoned to assist in dispatching the dan-
gerous brute.
Not infrequently the noble undertook the
more arduous sport of the desert, where he might bring
down the huge wild ox with his long bow; capture alive
numbers of antelopes, gazelles, oryxes, ibexes, wild oxen, wild
**218
FIG. 38. A NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM HUNTING WILD FOWL WITH THE
THROW-STICK FROM A SKIFF OF REEDS IN THE PAPYRUS MARSHES.
asses, ostriches and hares; or catch fleeting glimpses of the
strange beasts, with which his fancy peopled the wilderness :
the gryphon, a quadruped with head and wings of a bird,
or the Sag, a lioness with the head of a hawk, and a tail
which terminated in a lotus flower! In this lighter side of
the Egyptian's life, his love of nature, his wholesome and
sunny view of life, his never failing cheerfulness in spite
of his constant and elaborate preparation for death, we find
a pervading characteristic of his nature, which is so evident
>
92
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
in his art, as to raise it far above the sombre heaviness that
pervades the contemporary art of Asia.
Some five centuries of uniform government, with central-
ized control of the inundation, in the vast system of dykes
and irrigation canals, had brought the productivity of the
nation to the highest level; for the economic foundation of
this civilization in the Old Kingdom, as in all other periods
of Egyptian history, was agriculture. It was the enormous
929
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4
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30
الاص%=
هاهاهاهاه *
FIG. 39. AGRICULTURE IN THE OLD KINGDOM.
Above: are plowing, breaking clods, and sowing; below: the sheep are being
driven across the sown fields in order to trample in the seed. As the leading
shepherd wades through the marshy field he sings to the sheep: "The shepherd
is in the water among the fish; he talks with the nar-fish, he passes the time
of day with the west-fish.
The song is written over his flock.
harvests of wheat and barley gathered by the Egyptian
from the inexhaustible soil of his valley, which made pos-
sible the social and political structure which we have been
sketching. Besides grain, the extensive vineyards and wide
fields of succulent vegetables, which formed a part of every
estate, greatly augmented the agricultural resources of the
land. Large herds of cattle, sheep, goats, droves of donkeys
(for the horse was unknown), and vast quantities of poultry,
THE OLD KINGDOM
93
wild fowl, the large game of the desert already noticed and
innumerable Nile fish, added not inconsiderably to the pro-
duce of the field, in contributing to the wealth and prosperity
which the land was now enjoying. It was thus in field and
pasture that the millions of the kingdom toiled to produce
the annual wealth by which its economic processes continued.
Other sources of wealth also occupied large numbers of
workmen. There were granite quarries at the first cataract,
sandstone was quarried at Silsileh, the finer and harder
stones chiefly at Hammamat between Coptos and the Red
Sea. Alabaster at Hatnub behind Amarna, and limestone
at many places, particularly at Ayan or Troia opposite Mem-
front fort and SPA 0000 4K !
ତୁ QumLTI
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FIG. 40.
A HERD IN THE OLD KINGDOM, FORDING A CANAL.
phis. They brought from the first cataract granite blocks
twenty or thirty feet long and fifty or sixty tons in weight.
They drilled the toughest of stone, like diorite, with tubular
drills of copper, and the massive lids of granite sarcophagi
were sawn with long copper saws which, like the drills, were
reinforced by sand or emery. Miners and quarrymen were
employed in large numbers during the expeditions to Sinai,
for the purpose of procuring copper, the green and blue
malachite used in fine inlays, the turquoise and lapis-lazuli.
The source of iron, which was already used for tools to a
limited extent, is uncertain. Bronze was not yet in use.
The smiths furnished tools of copper and iron: bolts, nails,
hinges and mountings of all sorts for artisans of all classes;
94
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
they also wrought fine copper vessels for the tables of the
rich, besides splendid copper weapons. They achieved mar-
vels also in the realm of plastic art, as we have yet to see.
Silver came from abroad, probably from Cilicia in Asia
Minor; it was therefore even more rare and valuable than
gold. The quartz-veins of the granite mountains along the
Red Sea were rich in gold, and it was taken out in the Wadi
Foakhir, on the Coptos road. It was likewise mined largely
by foreigners and obtained in trade from Nubia, in the east-
ern deserts of which it was also found. Of the jewelry worn
by the Pharaoh and his nobles, in the Old Kingdom, almost
AFA MBA
MAM 000
lan
规
​2
pol
16V
SI
AI
CA
Rio
每​BA盘
​Fig. 41. METALWORKERS' WORKSHOP IN THE OLD KINGDOM.
Above: at the left, weighing of precious metals and malachite; in the
middle, the furnace with men at blow-pipes; at the right, casting and hammer-
ing. Below: putting together necklaces and costly ornaments. Note the
dwarves employed on this work.
nothing has survived, but the reliefs in the tomb-chapels
often depict the gold-smith at his work, and his descendants
in the Middle Kingdom have left works which show that the
taste and cunning of the first dynasty had developed without
cessation in the Old Kingdom.
For the other important industries the Nile valley fur-
nished nearly all materials indispensable to their develop-
ment. In spite of the ease with which good building stone
was procured, enormous quantities of sun-dried bricks were
turned out by the brick-yards, as they still are at the present
THE OLD KINGDOM
95
day, and, as we have seen, the masons erected whole quarters
for the poor, villas of the rich, magazines, store-houses, forts
and city walls of these cheap and convenient materials. In
the forestless valley the chief trees were the date palm, the
sycamore, tamarisk and acacia, none of which furnished
good timber. Wood was therefore scarce and expensive, but
the carpenters, joiners and cabinet makers flourished never-
theless, and those in the employ of the palace or on the
estates of the nobles wrought wonders in the cedar, imported
from Syria, and the ebony and ivory which came in from
the south. In every town and on every large estate ship-
building was constant. There were many different styles of
craft from the heavy cargo-boat for grain and cattle, to the
@
IAI
sh
Logo
元​。
FIG. 42.
SHIPBUILDING IN THE OLD KINGDOM.
gorgeous many-oared “dahabiyeh,” of the noble, with its
huge sail.
We shall find these shipwrights building the
earliest known sea-going vessels, on the shores of the Red
Sea.
While the artistic craftsman in stone still produced mag-
nificent vessels, vases, jars, bowls and platters in alabaster,
diorite, porphyry and other costly stones, yet his work was
gradually giving way to the potter, whose rich blue- and
green-glazed fayence vessels could not but win their way.
He produced also vast quantities of large coarse jars for
the storage of oils, wines, meats and other foods in the
magazines of the nobles and the government; while the use
of smaller vessels among the millions of the lower classes
96
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
made the manufacture of pottery one of the chief indus-
tries of the country. The pottery of the time is without
decoration, and is hardly a work of art. Glass was still
chiefly employed as glaze and had not yet been developed
as an independent material. In a land of pastures and
herds, the production of leather was of course understood.
The tanners had thoroughly mastered the art of curing the
hides, and produced fine soft skins, which they dyed in all
colours, covering stools and chairs, beds and cushions, and
furnishing gay canopies and baldachins. Flax was plen-
tifully cultivated, and the Pharaoh's harvest of flax was
under the control of a noble of rank.1 The women of the
A
9
♡
wun
Fig. 43.
WORKMEN DRILLING OUT STONE VESSELS.
One says,
“ This is a very beautiful vessel"; his comrade replies, “It is in-
deed.” Their conversation is recorded before them.
serfs on the great estates were the spinners and weavers.
Even the coarser varieties for general use show good quality,
but surviving specimens of the royal linens are of such
exquisite fineness that the ordinary eye requires a glass to
distinguish them from silk, and the limbs of the wearer could
be discerned through the fabric. Other vegetable fibres fur-
nished by the marshes supported a large industry in coarser
textiles. Among these, the papyrus was the most useful.
*I, 172, 1. 5.
THE OLD KINGDOM
97
Broad, light skiffs were made of it by binding together long
bundles of these reeds; rope was twisted from them, as also
from palm-fibre; sandals were plaited, and mats woven of
them; but above all, when split into thin strips, it was pos-
sible to join them into sheets of tough paper. That the
writing of Egypt spread to Phænicia and furnished the
classic world with an alphabet, is in a measure due to this
convenient writing material, as well as to the method of
writing upon it with ink. While a royal dispatch in cunei-
form on clay often weighed eight or ten pounds, and could
not be carried on the person of the messenger, a papyrus-roll
of fifty times the surface afforded by the clay tablet might
ग्राम
Fig. 44. PAPYRUS HARVEST IN THE OLD KINGDOM.
On the left the stalks are plucked by two men; next two more bind them in
bundles, and four men then carry the bundles away.
be conveniently carried about in the bosom, employed in
business, or used as a book. That its importation into Phe-
nicia was already in progress in the twelfth century B. C.1
is therefore quite intelligible. The manufacture of papyrus-
paper had already grown into a large and flourishing indus-
try in the Old Kingdom.
The Nile was alive with boats, barges, and craft of all
descriptions, bearing the products of these industries, and
of field and pasture, to the treasury of the Pharaoh, or to
the markets where they were disposed of. Here barter was
the common means of exchange: a crude pot for a fish, a
bundle of onions for a fan; a wooden box for a jar of oint-
ment (Fig. 46). In some transactions, however, presumably
those involving larger values, gold and copper in rings of
a fixed weight, circulated as money, and stone weights were
1 IV, 582; see below p. 517.
7
98
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
wt
infeng 性 ​rese
*1*31#arteak
SN
already marked with their equivalence in such rings. This
ring-money is the oldest currency known. Silver was rare
and more valuable than gold. Business
had already reached a high degree of
development; books and accounts were
kept; orders and receipts were given;
Let
wills and deeds were made; and written
contracts covering long periods of time
RE
AL
were entered upon. Every noble had his
3) at
corps of clerks and secretaries and the
不 ​h
exchange of letters and official documents
with his colleagues was incessant. Under
the scanty remnants of the sun-dried
brick houses on the island of Elephan-
al
tine, inhabited by the nobles of the south-
Zdz
ern border in the twenty sixth century B.
2 428 C., the modern peasants recently found
the remnants of the household papers
and business documents which were once
Loire
filed in the great man's office. But the
ignorant finders so mutilated the pre-
cious records that only fragments have
now survived (Fig. 45). The letters,
records of legal proceedings, and memo-
Written in Hier-
atic on Papyrus. randa, still recognizable among them, are
See p. 81. (Orig-
inal in Berlin.)
now being published by the Berlin Mu-
seum, where the papyri are preserved.
Under such circumstances, an education in the learning
of the time was indispensable to an official career. Con-
nected with the treasury, for whose multifold records so
many skilled scribes were necessary, there were schools
where lads received the education and the training which
fitted them for the scribal offices. Learning possessed but
one aspect for the Egyptian, namely: its practical useful-
An ideal pleasure in the search for truth, the pursuit
of science for its own sake, were unknown to him. The
learned equipment was an advantage which lifted a youth
FIG. 45. Two COL-
UMNS FROM AN
OLD KINGDOM
LEGAL Docu-
MENT.
ness.

|
女
​ל *
4A 人​。
p
以
​WWW
了​。
20
Fig. 46.-SCENES AT AN OLD KINGDOM MARKET.
(After Lepsius, Denkmaeler.)

THE OLD KINGDOM
99
above all other classes in the opinion of the scribe, and for
that reason, the boy must be early put into the school and
diligently kept to his tasks. While precept was incessantly
in the lad's ears, the master did not stop with this; his prin-
ciple was, “A boy's ears are on his back, and he hearkens
when he is beaten."'1 The content of the instruction, besides
innumerable moral precepts, many of them most wholesome
and rational, was chiefly the method of writing. The elabo-
rate hieroglyphic with its numerous animal and human
figures, such as the reader has doubtless often seen on the
monuments in our museums, or in works on Egypt, was too
slow and labourious a method of writing for the needs of
everyday business. The attempt to write these figures rap-
idly with ink upon papyrus had gradually resulted in reduc-
ing each sign to a mere outline, much rounded off and abbre-
viated. This cursive business hand, which we call “hier-
atic,” had already begun under the earliest dynasties, and
by the rise of the Old Kingdom, it had developed into a
graceful and rapid system of writing, which showed no
nearer resemblance to the hieroglyphic than does our own
hand-writing to our print. The introduction of this system
into the administration of government and the transaction
of every day business, produced profound changes in gov-
ernment and society, and created for all time the class dis-
tinction between the illiterate and the learned, which is still
a problem of modern society. It was the acquirement of
this method of writing which enabled the lad to enter upon
the coveted official career as a scribe or overseer of a maga-
zine, or steward of an estate. Hence the master put before
the boy model-letters, proverbs, and literary compositions,
which he labouriously copied into his roll, the copy-book of
this ancient school-boy. A large quantity of these copy-
books from the Empire, some fifteen hundred years after the
fall of the Old Kingdom, has been found; and many a com-
position which would otherwise have been lost, has thus sur-
vived, in the uncertain hand of a pupil in the scribal schools.
* Pap. Anast. 3.3 = Ibid. 5, 8.
100
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
They can easily be identified by the corrections of the master
on the margin. When he could write well, the lad was
placed in charge of some official, in whose office he assisted,
gradually learning the routine and the duties of the scribe's
life, until he was himself competent to assume some office at
the bottom of the ladder.
Education thus consisted solely of the practically useful
equipment for an official career. Knowledge of nature and
of the external world as a whole was sought only as necessity
prompted such search. As we have already intimated, it never
occurred to the Egyptian to enter upon the search for truth
for its own sake. Under these circumstances, the science
of the time, if we may speak of it as such at all, was such a
knowledge of natural conditions as enabled the active men
of this age to accomplish those practical tasks with which
they were daily confronted. They had much practical ac-
quaintance with astronomy, developed out of that knowl-
edge which had enabled their ancestors to introduce a
rational calendar nearly thirteen centuries before the rise of
the Old Kingdom. They had already mapped the heavens,
identified the more prominent fixed stars, and developed a
system of observation with instruments sufficiently accurate
to determine the positions of stars for practical purposes;
but they had produced no theory of the heavenly bodies as
a whole, nor would it ever have occurred to the Egyptian
that such an attempt was useful or worth the trouble. In
mathematics all the ordinary arithmetical processes were
demanded in the daily transactions of business and govern-
ment, and had long since come into common use among the
scribes. Fractions, however, caused difficulty. The scribes
could operate only with those having one as the numerator,
and all other fractions were of necessity resolved into a
series of several, each with one as the numerator. The only
exception was two thirds, which they had learned to use
without so resolving it. Elementary algebraic problems were
also solved without difficulty. In geometry they were able
to master the simpler problems, though the area of a trape-

Fig. 47.-THIRD DYNASTY ARCH.
FIG. 48.-DIORITE STATUE OF KHEPHREN.
FIG. 49.-LIMESTONE STATUE OF RANOFER.
From a Tomb at Bet Khallâf, found by Garstang.
(Cairo Museum.)
(Cairo Museum.)
THE OLD KINGDOM
101
man.
zoid caused some difficulties and errors, while the area of
the circle had been determined with close accuracy. The
necessity of determining the content of a pile of grain had
led to a roughly approximate result in the computation of
the content of the hemisphere, and a circular granary to
that of the cylinder. But no theoretical problems were dis-
cussed, and the whole science attempted only those problems
which were continually met in daily life. The laying out
of a ground-plan like the square base of the Great Pyramid
could be accomplished with amazing accuracy, and the
orientation displays a nicety that almost rivals the results of
modern instruments. A highly developed knowledge of me-
chanics was thus at the command of the architect and crafts-
The arch was employed in masonry and can be dated
as far back as the thirtieth century B. C., the oldest dated
arches known (Fig. 47). In the application of power to the
movement of great monuments, only the simplest devices
were employed; the pulley was unknown and probably the
roller also. Medicine was already in possession of much
empirical wisdom, displaying close and accurate observa-
the calling of the physician already existed and the
court physician of the Pharaoh was a man of rank and in-
fluence. His recipes were many of them rational and useful;
others were naively fanciful, like the prescription of a decoc-
tion of the hair of a black calf to prevent gray hair. They
had already been collected and recorded in papyrus rolls,
and the recipes of this age were famous for their virtue in
later times. Some of them finally crossed with the Greeks
to Europe, where they are still in use among the peasantry
of the present day. That which precluded any progress
toward real science was the belief in magic, which later
began to dominate all the practice of the physician. There
was no great distinction between the physician and the
magician. All remedies were administered with more or
less reliance upon magical charms; and in many cases the
magical "hocus pocus" of the physician was thought to be
11, 246.
tion;
1
102
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of itself more effective than any remedy that could be admin-
istered. Disease was due to hostile spirits, and against
these only magic could avail.
Art flourished as nowhere else in the ancient world. Here
again the Egyptian's attitude of mind was not wholly that
which characterized the art of the later Greek world. Art
as the pursuit and the production exclusively of the ideally
beautiful, was unknown to him. He loved beauty as found
in nature, his spirit demanded such beauty in his hoine and
surroundings. The lotus blossomed on the handle of his
spoon, and his wine sparkled in the deep blue calyx of the
same flower; the muscular limb of the ox in carved ivory
upheld the couch upon which he slept, the ceiling over his
head was a starry heaven resting upon palm trunks, each
crowned with its graceful tuft of drooping foliage; or papy-
rus-stems rose from the floor to support the azure roof upon
their swaying blossoms; doves and butterflies fitted across
his in-door sky; his floors were frescoed with the opulent
green of rich marsh-grasses, with fish gliding among their
roots, where the wild ox tossed his head at the birds twit-
tering on the swaying grass-tops, as they strove in vain to
drive away the stealthy weasel creeping up to plunder their
nests. Everywhere the objects of every day life in the
homes of the rich showed unconscious beauty of line and fine
balance of proportion, while the beauty of nature and of
out-of-door life which spoke to the beholder in the decora-
tion on every hand, lent a certain distinction even to the
most commonplace objects. The Egyptian thus sought to
beautify and to make beautiful all objects of utility, but all
such objects served some practical use. He was not inclined
to make a beautiful thing solely for its beauty. In sculpture,
therefore, the practical dominated. The splendid statues
of the Old Kingdom were not made to be erected in the
market place, but solely to be masoned up in the mastaba-
tomb, that they might be of practical advantage to the de-
ceased in the hereafter, as we have seen in the preceding
chapter. It was this motive chiefly to which the marvellous

FIG. 50.-LIMESTONE STATUE OF HEMSET.
(Louvre; after Capart, Recueil des Monuments.)

FIG. 52.--LIMESTONE STATUE OF AN OLD KINGDOM SCRIBE.
FIG. 51.-HEAD OF THE WOODEN STATUE OF THE SHEKH
EL-BELED.
(Louvre.)

(Cairo Museum.)
THE OLD KINGDOM
103
development of portrait sculpture in the Old Kingdom was
due.
The sculptor might either model his subject with faith-
ful delineation, an intimate, personal style; or again depict
him as a conventional type, a formal, typical style. Both
styles, representing the same man, though strikingly dif-
ferent, may appear in the same tomb. Every device was
adopted to increase the resemblance to life. The whole
statue was colored in the natural hues, the eyes were inlaid
in rock-crystal, and the vivacity with which these Memphite
sculptures were instinct, has never been surpassed. The
finest of the sitting statues is the well-known portrait of
Khafre (Fig. 48), the builder of the second pyramid of
Gizeh. The sculptor has skilfully met the limitations im-
posed upon him by the intensely hard and refractory material
(diorite), and while obliged, therefore, to treat the subject
summarily, has slightly emphasized salient features, lest the
work should lack pronounced character. The unknown mas-
ter, who must take his place among the world's great sculp-
tors, while contending with technical difficulties which no
modern sculptor attempts, has here given a real king imper-
ishable form, and shown us with incomparable skill the
divine and impassive calm with which the men of the time
had endued their sovereign. In softer material, the sculptor
gained a freer hand, of which one of the best examples is the
sitting figure of Hemset in the Louvre (Fig. 50). It is
surprisingly vivacious, in spite of the summarization of the
body, an insufficiency which is characteristic of all Old King-
dom sculpture in the round. It is the lead which appeals
to the artist as the most individual element in his model, and
on the head therefore he exhausts all his skill. These forms
of kings and nobles show little variety in attitude; indeed
there is but one other posture in which a person of rank
could be depicted. Perhaps the best example of it is the
figure of the priest Ranofer, a speaking likeness of the proud
noble of the time (Fig. 49). While the character of the
subject does not appeal to us, nevertheless one of the most
remarkable portraits of the Old Kingdom is the sleek, well-
104
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
fed, self-satisfied old overseer, whose wooden statue, like all
those that we have thus far noticed, is in the Cairo Museum
(Fig. 51). As every one now knows, he has been dubbed
the “Shekh el-beled” or “Sheik of the village,” because the
natives who excavated the figure, discovered in the face such
a striking resemblance to the sheik of their village, that they
all cried out with one accord, “Shekh el-beled!" In depict-
ing the servants, who were to accompany the deceased noble
into the hereafter, the sculptor was freed from the most
tyrannical of the conventions which governed the posture of
the noble himself. With great life-likeness he has wrought
the miniatures of the household servants, as they continue in
the tomb the work which they had been accustomed to do
for their lord in his home. Even the noble's secretary must
accompany him into the next world, and such is the vivacity
with which the sculptor has fashioned the famous “Louvre
scribe” (Fig. 52), that as one looks into the shrewd, hard-
featured countenance, it would hardly be a surprise if the
reed pen should begin to move nimbly across the papyrus-
roll upon his knees, as he resumes the dictation of his master,
interrupted now these five thousand years. Superb animal
forms, like the granite lion's-head from the sun-temple of
Nuserre (Fig. 57) were also wrought in the hardest stone.
It had never been supposed that the artists of this remote
age would attempt so ambitious a task as the production of
a life-size statue in metal; but the sculptors and copper-
smiths of the court of Pepi I, in celebration of the king's
first jubilee, accomplished even this (Figs. 53-54). Over a
wooden core they wrought the face and figure of the king,
in beaten copper, inserting eyes of obsidian and white lime-
stone. In spite of the ruinous state in which it now is, in
spite of fracture and oxidation, the head is still one of the
strongest portraits which have survived from antiquity.
The gold-smith also invaded the realm of plastic art. In
the "gold-house" as his workshop was called, he turned
sculptor, and produced for the temples such cultus-statues
of the gods as the magnificent figure of the sacred hawk of

Fig. 53.-LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF PEPI I, WITH FIGURE OF HIS SON; BOTH OF BEATEN
COPPER.
(Cairo Museum.)

Fig. 54.-HEAD OF THE COPPER STATUE OF PEPI I,
SHOWING EYES OF INLAID ROCK CRYSTAL.
(Cairo Museum.)

Fig. 55.-PAINTING OF GEESE FROM AN OLD KINGDOM TOMB AT MEDÛM.
(The panel has been cut in the middle; the two geese eating should face each other. Cairo Museum.)
THE OLD KINGDOM
105
Hieraconpolis (Fig. 58), of which Quibell found the head
in the temple at that place. The body of beaten copper had
perished; but the head, crowned with a circlet and sur-
mounted by two tall feather-plumes, the whole wrought in
beaten gold, was practically intact. The head is of one piece
of metal, and the eyes are the two polished ends of a single
rod of obsidian, which passes through the head from eye
to eye.
In relief, now greatly in demand for temple decoration,
and the chapel of the mastaba-tomb, the Egyptian was con-
fronted by the problem of foreshortening and perspective.
He must put objects having roundness and thickness, upon
a flat surface. How this should be done had been deter-
mined for him before the beginning of the Old Kingdom. A
conventional style had already been established before the
third dynasty, and that style was now sacred and inviolable
tradition. While a certain freedom of development sur-
vived, that style in its fundamentals persisted throughout
the history of Egyptian art, even after the artist had learned
to perceive its shortcomings. The age which produced it
had not learned to maintain one point of view in the drawing
of any given scene or object; two different points of view
were combined in the same figure: in drawing a man a front
view of the eyes and shoulders was regularly placed upon a
profile of the trunk and legs. This unconscious incongruity
was afterward also extended to temporal relations, and suc-
cessive instants of time were combined in the same scene.
Accepting these limitations, the reliefs of the Old Kingdom,
which are really slightly modelled drawings, are often sculp-
tures of rare beauty (Fig. 56). It is from the scenes which
the Memphite sculptor placed on the walls of the mastaba-
chapels that we learn all that we know of the life and cus-
toms of the Old Kingdom. The exquisite modelling, of
which such a sculptor was capable, is perhaps best exhib-
ited in the wooden doors of Hesire (Fig. 59). All such
reliefs were coloured, so that when completed, we may call
them raised and modelled paintings; at least they do not
106
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
fall within the domain of plastic art, as do Greek reliefs.
Painting was also practiced independently, and the familiar
line of geese from a tomb at Medum (Fig. 55) well illustrates
the strength and freedom with which the Memphite of the
time could depict the animal forms with which he was famil-
iar. The characteristic poise of the head, the slow walk,
the sudden droop of the neck as the head falls to seize the
worm, all these are the work of a strong and confident
draughtsman, long schooled in his art.
The sculpture of the Old Kingdomn may be characterized
as a natural and unconscious realism, exercised with a tech-
nical ability of the highest order. In the practice of this
art, the sculptor of the Old Kingdom compares favourably
even with modern artists. He was the only artist in the
early orient who could put the human body into stone, and
living in a society such that he was daily familiarized with
the nude form, he treated it with sincerity and frankness. I
cannot forbear quoting the words of an unprejudiced clas-
sical archæologist, M. Charles Perrot, who says of the Mem-
phite sculptors of the Old Kingdom, “It must be acknowl-
edged that they produced works which are not to be sur-
passed in their way by the greatest portraits of modern
The sculpture of the Old Kingdom, however,
was superficial; it was not interpretative, did not embody
ideas in stone, and shows little contemplation of the emotions
and forces of life. It is characteristic of the age that we must
speak of this Memphite art as a whole. We know none of its
greatest masters, and only the names of an artist or two
during the whole period of Egyptian history.
It is only very recently that we have been able to discern
the fundamentals of Old Kingdom architecture. Too little
has been preserved of the house and palace of the time to
permit of safe generalizations upon the light and airy style
of architecture which they represent. It is only the mas-
sive stone structures of this age which have been preserved.
Besides the mastabas and pyramids, which we have already
* Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, II, p. 194.
Europe."1

WWW
MWAREKIN
m
Fig. 56.-RELIEFS FROM THE INTERIOR OF AN OLD KINGDOM MASTABA CHAPEL,
DEPICTING HERDS AND FLOCKS. (Berlin Museum.)


Fig. 57.-DECORATIVE HEAD OF LION, IN
GRANITE. (Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 58.-GOLDEN HAWK OF
HIERACONPOLIS. (Cairo
Museum.)

WAN
FIG. 59.-WOODEN PANEL OF HESIRE.
(Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 60.-FIFTH DYNASTY COL-
UMNS. CLUSTER OF PAPYRUS
STEMS (left) AND PALM CAPI-
TAL (right). Berlin Museum.
THE OLD KINGDOM
107
briefly noticed, the temple is the great architectural achieve-
ment of the Old Kingdom. Its arrangement has been
touched upon in the preceding chapter. The architect em-
ployed only straight lines, these being perpendiculars and
horizontals, very boldly and felicitously combined. The arch,
although known, was not employed as a member in archi-
tecture. In order to carry the roof across the void, either
the simplest of stone piers, a square pillar of a single block
of granite was employed, or an already elaborate and beau-
tiful monolithic column of granite supported the architrave.
These columns, the earliest known in the history of archi-
tecture, must have been employed before the Old Kingdom,
for they are fully developed in the Fifth Dynasty. They
represent a palm-tree (Fig. 60), the capital being the crown
of foliage; or they are conceived as a bundle of papyrus
stalks, bearing the architrave upon the cluster of buds at the
top, which form the capital (Figs. 60, 61). The proportions
are faultless, and surrounded with such exquisite colonnades
as these, flanked by brightly coloured reliefs, the courts of
the Old Kingdom temples belong to the noblest architectural
conceptions bequeathed to us by antiquity. Egypt thus
became the source of columned architecture. While the
Babylonian builders displayed notable skill in giving varied
architectural effect to great masses, they were limited to this,
and the colonnade was unknown to them; whereas the
Egyptian already at the close of the fourth millennium before
Christ had solved the fundamental problem of great architec-
ture, developing with the most refined artistic sense and the
greatest mechanical skill the treatment of voids, and thus
originating the colonnade.
The age was dealing with material things and developing
material resources, and in such an age literature has little
opportunity; it was indeed hardly born as yet. The sages
of the court, the wise old viziers, Kegemne, Imhotep, and
Ptahhotep, had put into proverbs the wholesome wisdom of
life, which a long career had taught them, and these were
probably already circulating in written form, although the

Bad
名為​是​場​Q174AFS
略
​) dh_s中
​協​OE
DY/AFP44
FIG. 61. ELEVATION OF PART OF THE COLONNADE SURROUNDING THE COURT OF
THE PYRAMID TEMPLE OF NUSEBRE (Fifth Dynasty). (After Borchardt.)
108
THE OLD KINGDOM
109
oldest manuscript of such lore which we possess, dates from
the Middle Kingdom. The priestly scribes of the Fifth
Dynasty compiled the annals of the oldest kings, from the
bare names of the kings, who ruled the two prehistoric king-
doms, to the Fifth Dynasty itself; but it was a bald catalogue
of events, achievements and temple donations, without lit-
erary form. It is the oldest surviving fragment of royal
annals. As the desire to perpetuate the story of a dis-
tinguished life increased, the nobles began to record in their
tombs simple narratives characterized by a primitive direct-
ness, in long successions of simple sentences, each showing
the same construction, but lacking expressed connectives.
Events and honours common to the lives of the leading nobles
were related by them all in the identical words, so that con-
ventional phrases had already gained place in literature not
unlike the inviolable canons of their graphic art. There is no
individuality. The mortuary texts in the pyramids display
sometimes a rude force, and an almost savage fire. They
contain scattered fragments of the old myths but whether
these had then enjoyed more than an oral existence we
do not know. Mutilated religious poems, exhibiting in form
the beginnings of parallelism, are imbedded in this literature,
and are doubtless examples of the oldest poetry of earliest
Egypt. All this literature, both in form and content, betrays
its origin among men of the early world. Folk songs, the
offspring of the toiling peasant's flitting fancy, or of the per-
sonal devotion of the household servant, were common then
as now, and in two of them which have survived, we hear
the shepherd talking with the sheep,2 or the bearers of the
sedan-chair assuring their lord in song that the vehicle is
lighter to them when he occupies it, than when it is empty.3
Music also was cultivated; and there was a director of the
royal music at the court. The instruments were a small
harp, on which the performer played sitting, and two kinds
of flute, a larger and a smaller. Instrumental music was
* I, 292-4, 306-315, 319–324.
· See infra, Fig. 39.
* Zeitschrift 38, 65; Davies, Der el-Gebrawi, II, pl. VIII.
110
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
always accompanied by the voice, reversing modern custom,
and the full orchestra consisted of two harps and two flutes,
a large and a small one. Of the character and nature of
the music played or to what extent the scale was understood,
we can say nothing.
Such, in so far as we have been able to condense our
present knowledge, was the active and aggressive age which
unfolds before us, as the kings of the Thinite dynasties give
way to those of Memphis. It now remains for us to trace
the career of this, the most ancient state, whose constitution
is still discernible.

Fig. 62.- BRICK MASTABA OF ZOSER'S REIGN AT BET KHALLÂF.
Excavated by Garstang.
Fig. 64. - PYRAMID ATTRIBUTED TO SNEFRU AT MEDÛM.


FIG. 63.-THE “TERRACED PYRAMID” OF ZOSER AT SAKKARA.
CHAPTER VI
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
At the close of the so-called Second Dynasty, early in the
thirtieth century B. C., the Thinites were finally dislodged
from the position of power which they had maintained so
well for over four centuries, according to Manetho, and a
Memphite family, whose home was the “White Wall” gained
the ascendancy. But there is evidence that the sharp dynas-
tic division recorded by Manetho never took place, and this
final supremacy of Memphis may have been nothing more
than a gradual transition thither by the Thinites themselves.
In any case the great queen, Nemathap, the wife of King
Khasekhemui, who was probably the last king of the Second
Dynasty, was evidently the mother of Zoser, with whose
accession the predominance of Memphis becomes apparent.
During this Memphite supremacy, the development which
the Thinites had pushed so vigourously, was skilfully and
ably fostered. For over five hundred years the kingdom
continued to flourish, but of these five centuries only the last
two have left us even scanty literary remains, and we are
obliged to draw our meagre knowledge of its first three cen-
turies almost entirely from material documents, the monu-
ments which it has left us. In some degree such a task is
like attempting to reconstruct a history of Athens in the age
of Pericles, based entirely upon the temples, sculptures, vases,
and other material remains surviving from his time. While
the rich intellectual, literary, and political life which was
then unfolding in Athens involved a mental endowment and
a condition of state and society which Egypt, even at her
best, never knew, yet it must not be forgotten that, tremen-
dous as is the impression which we receive from the monu-
111
112
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ments of the Old Kingdom, they are but the skeleton, upon
which we might put flesh, and endue the whole with life, if
but the chief literary monuments of the time had survived.
It is a difficult task to see behind these Titanic achievements,
the busy world of commerce, industry, administration, so-
ciety, art, and literature out of which they grew. Of half a
millennium of political change, of overthrow and usurpation,
of growth and decay of institutions, of local governors, help-
less under the strong grasp of the Pharaoh, or shaking off
the restraint of a weak monarch, and developing into inde-
pendent barons, so powerful at last as to bring in the final
dissolution of the state; -of all this we gain but fleeting and
occasional glimpses, where more must be guessed than can
be known.
The first prominent figure in the Old Kingdom is that of
Zoser, with whom as we have said the Third Dynasty arose.
It was evidently his forceful government which firmly estab-
lished Memphite supremacy. He continued the exploitation
of the copper mines in Sinai, while in the south he extended
the frontier. If we may credit a late tradition of the priests,
the turbulent tribes of northern Nubia, who for centuries
after Zoser's reign continued to make the region of the first
cataract unsafe, were so controlled by him that he could grant
to Khnum, the god of the cataract at least nominal posses-
sion of both sides of the river from Elephantine at the lower
end of the cataract up to Takompso, some seventy five or
eighty miles above it. As this tradition was put forward
by the priests of Isis in Ptolemaic times as legal support of
certain of their claims, it is not improbable that it contains
a germ of fact.
The success of Zoser's efforts was perhaps in part due to
the counsel of the great wise man, Imhotep, who was one of
his chief advisers. In priestly wisdom, in magic, in the
formulation of wise proverbs, in medicine and architecture,
this remarkable figure of Zoser's reign left so notable a
reputation that his name was never forgotten. He was the
1 Sethe, Untersuchungen, II, 22-26.
1
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
113
patron spirit of the later scribes, to whom they' regularly
poured out a libation from the water jar of their writing-
outfit before beginning their work. The people sang of his
proverbs centuries later, and two thousand five hundred years
after his death he had become a god of medicine, in whom
the Greeks who called him Imouthes, recognized their own
Asklepios. A temple was erected to him near the Serapeum
at Memphis, and at the present day every museum possesses
a bronze statuette or two of this apotheosized wise man, the
proverb-maker, physician and architect of Zoser. The
priests who conducted the rebuilding of the temple of Edfu
under the Ptolemies, claimed to be reproducing the structure
formerly erected there after plans of Imhotep; and it may
therefore well be that Zoser was the builder of a temple there.
Manetho records the tradition that stone building was first
introduced by Zoser, whom he calls Tosorthros, and although,
as we have seen, stone structures of earlier date are now
known, yet the great reputation as a builder ascribed to
Zoser's counsellor Imhotep is no accident, and it is evident
that Zoser's reign marked the beginning of extensive build-
ing in stone. Until his reign the royal tombs were built of
sun-dried bricks, only containing in one instance a granite
floor and in another a chamber of limestone. This brick
tomb was greatly improved by Zoser, in whose time there
was built at Bet Khallâf, near Abydos, a massive brick mas-
taba (Fig. 62), through one end of which a stairway de-
scended, and passing into the gravel beneath the superstruc-
ture, merged into a descending passage, which terminated
in a series of mortuary chambers. The passage was closed
in five places by heavy portcullis stones. This was the
first of the two royal tombs now usually erected (see p. 71).
In all probability Zoser himself never used this tomb, built
so near those of his ancestors; but assisted by Imhotep under-
took the construction of a mausoleum on a more ambitious
1 Schaefer, Zeitschrift, 1898, 147–8; Gardiner, ibid., 40, 146.
Sethe, Untersuchungen, II.
3 Garstang, Mahasna and Bet Khallaf, London, 1902.
8
114
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
plan than any of his ancestors had ever attempted. In the
desert behind Memphis he laid out a tomb (Fig. 63), very
much like that at Bet Khallâf, but the mastaba was now
built of stone; it was nearly thirty eight feet high, some two
hundred and twenty seven feet wide, and an uncertain
amount longer from north to south. As his reign continued
he enlarged it upon the ground, and increased its height also
by building five rectangular additions superimposed upon
its top, each smaller than its predecessor. The result was a
terraced structure, one hundred and ninety five feet high,
in six stages, the whole roughly resembling a pyramid. It
is often called the “terraced pyramid," and does indeed
constitute the transitional forin between the flat-topped rec-
tangular superstructure or mastaba first built by Zoser at
Bet Khallâf and the pyramid of his successors, which imme-
diately followed. It is the first large structure of stone
known in history.
The wealth and power which enabled Zoser to erect so
imposing and costly a tomb were continued by the other
kings of the dynasty, whose order and history it is as yet
impossible to reconstruct. We now know that we should
attribute to them the two great stone pyramids of Dashur.
These vast and splendid monuments, the earliest pyramids,
are a striking testimony to the prosperity and power of this
Third Dynasty. Such colossal structures make a powerful
appeal to the imagination, but we cannot picture to our-
selves save in the vaguest terms the course of events that
produced them. They leave a host of questions unan-
swered. At the close of the dynasty, the nation was enjoy-
ing wide prosperity under the vigourous and far-seeing
Snefru. He built vessels nearly one hundred and seventy
feet long, for traffic and administration upon the river;
he continued the development of the copper mines in Sinai,
where he defeated the native tribes and left a record of his
triumph. He placed Egyptian interests in the peninsula
upon such a permanent basis that he was later looked upon
as the founder and establisher of Egyptian supremacy there;
*), 146-7.
* I, 168-9.
1

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FEATHERS
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a Heti i Dos Anze
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---HTURE----
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Fig. 65.-ROCK INSCRIPTIONS OF AMENEMHET III, IN WADI MAGHARA, SINAI,
INCLUDING SNEFRU AMONG THE LOCAL GODS.
(Ordnance Survey Photo.)

Fig. 66.-CASING BLOCKS AT THE BASE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. JOINTS OTHER-
WISE UNDISCERNIBLE INDICATED BY CHARCOAL LINES.
(Photograph by L. D. Covington.)
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
115
5
one of the mines was named after him;' a thousand years
later it is his achievements in this region, with which the
later kings compared their own, boasting that nothing like
it had been done there “since the days of Snefru";2 and
together with the local divinities, Hathor and Soped, his
protection was invoked as a patron god of the region by the
venturesome officials who risked their lives for the Pharaoh
there 3 (Fig. 65). He regulated the eastern frontier, and it
is not unlikely that we should attribute to him the erection
of the fortresses at the Bitter Lakes in the Isthmus of Suez,
which existed already in the Fifth Dynasty. Roads and
stations in the eastern Delta still bore his name fifteen hun-
dred years after his death. In the west it is not improb-
able that he already controlled one of the northern oases.
More than all this, he opened up commerce with the north
and sent a fleet of forty vessels to the Phænician coast to
procure cedar logs from the slopes of Lebanon. Following
the example of Zoser, he was equally aggressive in the south,
where he conducted a campaign against northern Nubia,
bringing back seven thousand prisoners, and two hundred
thousand large and small cattle.
Snefru, powerful and prosperous, as “Lord of the Two
Lands," also erected two tombs. The earlier is situated at
Medûm, between Memphis and the Fayum. It was begun,
like that of Zoser, as a mastaba of limestone, with the tomb
chamber beneath it. Following Zoser, the builder enlarged
it seven times to a terraced structure, the steps in which
were then filled out in one smooth slope from top to bottom
at a different angle, thus producing the first pyramid (Fig.
64). Snefru's other pyramid, far larger and more impos-
ing, now dominates the group at Dashur. It was the great-
est building thus far attempted by the Pharaohs and is an
impressive witness to the rapid progress made by the
Third Dynasty in the arts. A newly found inscription
7
* I, 731.
31, 722.
I LD, II, 137 g.
. 1, 165, 5; 312, 1. 21.
SI, 174, 1. 9.
6 I, 146.
q I, 146.
116
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
shows that: Snefru's mortuary endowments here were still
respected three hundred years later.
With Snefru the rising tide of prosperity and power has
reached the high level which made the subsequent splendour
of the Old Kingdom possible. With him there had also
grown up the rich and powerful noble and official class,
whose life we have already sketched, - a class who are no
longer content with the simple brick tombs of their ancestors
at Abydos and vicinity. Their splendid mastabas of hewn
limestone are still grouped as formerly about the tomb of
the king whom they served. It is the surviving remains in
these imposing cities of the dead, dominated by the towering
mass of the pyramid which has enabled us to gain a picture
of the life of the great kingdom, the threshold of which we
have now crossed. Behind us lies the long slow develop-
ment which contained the promise of all that is before us;
but that development also we were obliged to trace in the
tomb of the early Egyptians, as we have followed him from
the sand-heap that covered his primitive ancestor to the
colossal pyramid of the Pharaoh.
The passing of the great family of which Snefru was the
most prominent representative, did not, as far as we can now
see, effect any serious change in the history of the nation.
Indeed Khufu, the great founder of the so-called Fourth
Dynasty, may possibly have been a scion of the Third. He
had in his harem at least a lady who had also been a favourite
of Snefru. But it is evident that Khufu was not a Mem-
phite. He came from a town of middle Egypt near modern
Beni Hasan, which was afterward, for this reason, called
“Menat-Khufu,” “Nurse of Khufu"; and his name in its
full form, “Khnum-khufu,” which means “Khnum protects
me,” is a further hint of his origin, containing as it does the
name of Khnum, the ram-headed god of Menat-Khufu.
Likewise, after his death, one of his mortuary priests was
also priest of Khnum of Menat-Khufu. We have no means
of knowing how the noble of a provincial town succeeded in
1 Mariette, Les Mastabas B 1= Rougé, Inscriptions Hiérogl., 78.

FIG. 67.—THE GREAT PYRAMID OF KHUFU (CHEOPS) AT GIZEH.
Seen from the northwest; the Nile valley in the background.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
117
supplanting the powerful Snefru and becoming the founder
of a new line. We only see him looming grandly from the
obscure array of Pharaohs of his time, his greatness pro-
claimed by the noble tomb which he erected at Gizeh, oppo-
site modern Cairo. It has now become the chief project of
the state to furnish a vast, impenetrable and indestructible
resting place for the body of the king, who concentrated upon
this enterprise the greatest resources of wealth, skill and
labour at his command. How strong and effective must have
been the organization of Khufu's government we appreciate
in some measure when we learn that his pyramid contains
some two million three hundred thousand blocks, each weigh-
ing on the average two and a half tons. The mere organiza-
tion of labour involved in the quarrying, transportation and
proper assembly of this vast mass of material is a task which
in itself must have severely taxed the public offices. Herod-
otus relates a tradition current in his time that the pyramid
had demanded the labour of a hundred thousand men during
twenty years, and Petrie has shown that these numbers are
quite credible. The maintenance of this city of a hundred
thousand labourers, who were non-producing and a constant
burden on the state, the adjustment of the labour in the quar-
ries so as to ensure an uninterrupted accession of material
around the base of the pyramid, will have entailed the devel-
opment of a small state in itself. The blocks were taken
out of the quarries on the east side of the river south of
Cairo, and at high water, when the flats were flooded, they
were floated across the valley to the base of the pyramid hill.
Here an enormous stone ramp or causeway had been erected,
a labour of ten years if we may believe Herodotus, and up this
incline the stones were dragged to the plateau on which the
pyramid stands. Not merely was this work quantitatively
so formidable but in quality also it is the most remarkable
material enterprise known to us in this early world, for the
most ponderous masonry in the pyramid amazes the modern
beholder by its fineness. It was but five centuries since the
1
Petrie, Gizeh.
118
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
crude granite floor of the tomb of Usephais at Abydos was
laid, and perhaps not more than a century since the earliest
stone structure now known, the limestone chamber in the
tomb of Khasekhemui at the same place was erected. The
pyramid is or was about four hundred and eighty one feet
high, and its square base measured some seven hundred and
fifty five feet on a side, but the average error is “less than a
ten thousandth of the side in equality, in squareness and in
level”;1 although a rise of ground on the site of the monu-
ment prevented direct measurements from corner to corner.
Some of the masonry finish is so fine that blocks weighing
tons are set together with seams of considerable length, show-
ing a joint of one ten thousandth of an inch, and involving
edges and surfaces “equal to optician's work of the present
day, but on a scale of acres instead of feet or yards of mate-
rial.''2 The entire monument is of limestone, except the
main sepulchral chamber and the construction chambers
above it, where the workmanship distinctly deteriorates.
The latter part, that is the upper portion, was evidently built
with greater haste than the lower sections. The passages
were skilfully closed at successive places by plug-blocks and
portcullisses of granite; while the exterior, clothed with an
exquisitely fitted casing of limestone (Fig. 66), which has
since been quarried away, nowhere betrayed the place of
entrance, located in the eighteenth course of masonry above
the base near the centre of the north face. It must have
been a courageous monarch who from the beginning planned
this the greatest mass of masonry ever put together by
human hands, and there are evidences in the pyramid of at
least two changes of plan. Like all the pyrainidoid monu-
ments which precede it, it was therefore probably projected
on a smaller scale, but before the work had proceeded too
far to prevent, by complication of the interior passages, the
plan was enlarged to the present enormous base, covering
an area of thirteen acres. Three small pyramids, built for
members of Khufu's family, stand in a line close by on the
* Petrie, History of Egypt, 1, p. 40.
* Ibid.
1
.

Fig. 68.-THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH.
From the desert on the southwest: Khufu (right); Khafre (middle): Menkure (left).

Bonsole
1037 UTENT
FIG. 69.-A GRANITE HALL IN THE GREAT MONUMENTAL GATE OF KHAFRE.
The entrance of the causeway (see Fig. 37) leading up to Khafre's (the second) Pyramid at Gizeh (see p. 120).
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
119
.
east. The pyramid was surrounded by a wide pavement of
limestone, and on the east front was the temple for the mor-
tuary service of Khufu, of which all but portions of a splen-
did basalt pavement has disappeared. The remains of the
causeway leading up from the plain to the temple still rise
in sombre ruin, disclosing only the rough core masonry,
across which the modern village of Kafr is now built.
Further south is a section of the wall which surrounded the
town on the plain below, probably the place of Khufu's resi-
dence, and perhaps the residence of the dynasty. In leaving
the tomb of Khufu our admiration for the monument,
whether stirred by its vast dimensions or by the fineness of
its masonry should not obscure its real and final significance;
for the great pyramid is the earliest and most impressive
witness surviving from the ancient world to the final emer-
gence of organized society from prehistoric chaos and local
conflict, thus coming for the first time completely under
the power of a far-reaching and comprehensive centraliza-
tion effected by one controlling mind.
Khufu's name has been found from Desuk in the north-
western and Bubastis in the eastern Delta, to Hieraconpolis
in the south, but we know almost nothing of his other
achievements. He continued operations in the peninsula of
Sinai;1 perhaps opened for the first time, and in any case
kept workmen in the alabaster quarry of Hatnub; and Ptole-
maic tradition also made him the builder of a Hathor temple
at Dendera.2 It will be evident that all the resources of the
nation were completely at his disposal and under his control;
his eldest son, as was customary in the Fourth Dynasty,
was vizier and chief judge; while the two "treasurers of
the God,” who were in charge of the work in the quarries,
were undoubtedly also sons of the king, as we have seen.
The most powerful offices were kept within the circle of the
royal house, and thus a great state was swayed at the mon-
arch's slightest wish, and for many years held to its chief
task, the creation of his tomb. An obscure king, Dedefre or
11, 176.
* Dümichen Dendera, p. 15.
-
120
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Radedef, whose connection with the family is entirely uncer-
tain, seems to have succeeded Khufu. His modest pyramid
has been found at Aburoâsh, on the north of Gizeh, but
Dedefre himself remains with us only a name, and it is pos-
sible that he belongs near the close of the dynasty.
It is uncertain whether his successor, Khafre, was his son
or not. But the new king's name, which means “His Shin-
ing is Re,” like that of Dedefre, would indicate the political
influence of the priests of Re at Heliopolis. He built a
pyramid (Figs. 68, 70) beside that of Khufu, but it is some-
what smaller and distinctly inferior in workmanship. It was
given a sumptuous appearance by making the lowermost
section of casing of granite from the first cataract. Scanty
remains of the pyramid-temple on the east side are still in
place, from which the usual causeway leads down to the
margin of the plateau and terminates in a splendid granite
building (Fig. 69), which served as the gateway to the cause-
way and the pyramid enclosure above. Its interior surfaces
are all of polished red granite and translucent alabaster. In
a well in one hall of the building seven statues of Khafre
were found by Mariette. We have had occasion to examine
the best of these in the preceding chapter. This splendid
entrance stands beside the Great Sphinx, and is still usually
termed the "temple of the sphinx," with which it had, how-
ever, nothing to do. Whether the sphinx itself is the work
of Khafre is not yet determined. In Egypt the sphinx is
an oft recurring portrait of the king, the lion's body sym-
bolizing the Pharaoh's power. The Great Sphinx is there-
fore the portrait of a Pharaoh, and an obscure reference to
Khafre in an inscription between its forepaws dated fourteen
hundred years later in the reign of Thutmose IV,? perhaps
shows that in those times he was considered to have had
something to do with it. Beyond these buildings we know
nothing of Khafre's deeds, but these show clearly that the
great state which Khufu had done so much to create was
still firmly controlled by the Pharaoh.
* Fig. 48 and p. 103.
II, 815.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
121
Under Khafre's successor, Menkure, however, if the size
of the royal pyramid is an adequate basis for judgment, the
power of the royal house was no longer so absolute. Moreover,
the vast pyramids which his two predecessors had erected
may have so depleted the resources of the state that Menkure
was not able to extort more from an exhausted nation. The
third pyramid of Gizeh which we owe to him, is less than
half as high as those of Khufu and Khafre; its ruined temple
recently excavated by Reisner, unfinished at his death, was
faced with sun-dried brick, instead of sumptuous granite,
by his successor. Of his immediate successors, we possess
contemporary monuments only from the reign of Shepse-
skaf. Although we have a record that he selected the site
for his pyramid in his first year, he was unable to erect a
monument sufficiently large and durable to survive, and we
do not even know where it was located; while of the achieve-
ments of this whole group of kings at the close of the
Fourth Dynasty, including several interlopers, who may
now have assumed the throne for a brief time, we know
nothing whatever.
The century and a half during which the Fourth Dynasty
maintained its power was a period of unprecedented splen-
dour in the history of the Nile valley people, and as we have
seen, the monuments of the time were on a scale of grandeur
which was never later eclipsed. It reached its climacteric
point in Khufu, and after probably a slight decline in the
reign of Khafre, Menkure was no longer able to command the
closely centralized power which the family had so success-
fully maintained up to that time. It passed away, leaving
the group of nine pyramids at Gizeh as an imperishable
witness of its greatness and power. They were counted in
classic times among the seven wonders of the world, and
they are to-day the only surviving wonder of the seven.
The cause of the fall of the Fourth Dynasty, while not clear
in the details, is in the main outlines tolerably certain. The
priests of Re at Heliopolis, whose influence is also evident
'I, 151.
122
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
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THE FOURTH DYNASTY CEMETERY AT GIZEII.
in the names of the kings following Khufu, had succeeded
in organizing their political influence, becoming a clique of
sufficient power to overthrow the old line. The state theol-
ogy had always represented the king as the successor of
the sun-god and he had borne the title “Horus," a sun-god,
from the beginning; but the priests of Heliopolis now de-
manded that he be the bodily son of Re, who henceforth
would appear on earth to become the father of the Pharaoh.
A folk-tale of which we have a copy1 some nine hundred
years later than the fall of the Fourth Dynasty, relates how
* Papyrus Westcar.

Fig. 70.-THE GREAT SPHINX OF GIZEH.
In the background the Pyramids of Khafre (Chephren right) and Menkure (Mycerinus left).
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
123
Khufu was enjoying an idle hour with his sons, while they
narrated wonders wrought by the great wise men of old.
When thereupon prince Harzozef told the king that there
still lived a magician able to do marvels of the same kind,
the Pharaoh sent the prince to fetch the wise man. The
latter, after he had offered some examples of his remarkable
powers, reluctantly told the king in response to questions,
that the three children soon to be born by the wife of a cer-
tain priest of Re were begotten of Re himself, and that they
should all become kings of Egypt. Seeing the king's sadness
at this information the wise man assured him that there was
no reason for his melancholy, saying, “Thy son, his son, and
then one of them,” meaning "Thy son shall reign; then thy
grandson, and after that one of these three children.” The
conclusion of the tale is lost, but it undoubtedly went on
to tell how the three children finally became Pharaohs, for
it narrates with many picturesque details and remarkable
prodigies how the children were born wearing all the insignia
of royalty. The names given these children by the disguised
divinities who assisted at their birth were: Userkaf, Sahure
and Kakai, the names of the first three kings of the Fifth
Dynasty. Although the popular tradition knew of only two
kings of the Fourth Dynasty after Khufu, having never
heard of Dedefre, Shepseskaf and others whose reigns had
left no great pyramids, it nevertheless preserved the essen-
tial contention of the priests of Re and in kernel at least the
real origin of the Fifth Dynasty. In this folk-tale we have
the popular form of what is now the state fiction: every
Pharaoh is the bodily son of the sun-god, a belief which was
thereafter maintained throughout the history of Egypt
The kings of the Fifth Dynasty, who continued to reside in
the vicinity of Memphis, began to rule about 2750 B. C.
They show plain traces of the origin ascribed to them by the
popular tradition; the official name which they assume at
the coronation must invariably contain the name of Re, a
custom which the Heliopolitan priests had not been able
1 II, 187-212.
1
124
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
strictly to enforce in the Fourth Dynasty. Before this name
must now be placed a new title, “Son of Re.” Besides the
old “Horus” title and a new title representing Horus tram-
pling upon the symbol of Set, this new designation “Son of
Re” was the fifth title peculiar to the Pharaohs, later produc-
ing the complete Pharaonic titulary as it remained through-
out their history. Their adherence to the cult of Re as the
state religion par excellence found immediate and practical
در کره
ردرا

.
s
mumdunum
Fig. 71. RESTORATION OF THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT ABUSIR.
(After Borchardt.)
expression in the most splendid form. By the royal residence
near later Memphis each king erected a magnificent temple
to the sun, each bearing a name like “Favourite place of Re,”
or “Satisfaction of Re." These sanctuaries are all of the
same essential plan: a large fore-court with cultus chambers
on each side, and a huge altar; while in the rear, rising from
a mastaba-like base was a tall obelisk (Fig. 71). This was
the symbol of the god, standing exposed to the sky, and there
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
125
was therefore no holy of holies. There are reasons for sup-
posing that the obelisk and connected portions of the build-
ing were but an enlargement of the holy of holies in the
temple at Heliopolis. The interior of the walls was covered
with sculptured representations of the production of life,
with scenes from the river, swamps and marshes, the fields
and the desert, and ceremonies from the state cult (Fig. 72);
while the outside of the temple bore reliefs depicting the
warlike achievements of the Pharaoh. On either side of
'Till
A
dir
MU
Ois
quote
11
IN
Fig. 72. RELIEF SCENES FROM THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT ABUSIR.
In the upper right hand corner, the anointing of the Pharaoh's foot.
the sanctuary on a brick foundation were set up two ships
representing the two celestial barques of the sun-god, as he
sailed the heavens morning and evening. The sanctuary
was richly endowed? and its service was maintained by a
corps of priests of five different ranks, besides an "over-
seer" who had charge of the temple property. As the line
of kings grew, and with it the number of temples increased,
'I, 159, 8.
126
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the priesthood of the old temple assumed functions likewise
in the new one. We can follow these temples one for each
king at least into the reign of Isesi, the eighth monarch of
the line. Enjoying wealth and distinction such as had been
possessed by no official god of earlier times, Re gained a
position of influence which he never again lost. Through
him the forms of the Egyptian state began to pass over into
the world of the gods, and the myths from now on were domi-
nated and strongly coloured by him, if indeed some of them
did not owe their origin to the exalted place which Re now
occupied. In the sun-myth he became king of Upper and
Lower Egypt and, like a Pharaoh, he had ruled Egypt with
Thoth as his vizier.
The change in the royal line is also evident in the organi-
zation of the government. The eldest son of the king is
no longer the most powerful officer in the state, but the posi-
tion which he held in the Fourth Dynasty as vizier and chief
judge is now the prerogative of another family, with whom
it remains hereditary. Each incumbent, through five gen-
erations, bore the name Ptahhotep. It would almost seem
as if the priests of Ptah and the priests of Heliopolis had
made common cause, dividing the power between them, so
that the high priest of Re became Pharaoh, and the followers
of Ptah received the viziership. In any case the Pharaoh
was now obliged to reckon with a family of his lords as
successive viziers. This hereditary succession, so striking
in the highest office of the central government, was now com-
mon in the nomes, and the local governors were each gaining
stronger and stronger foothold in his nome as the generations
passed, and son succeeded father in the same nome. That
the new dynasty was obliged to consider the nobles who had
assisted in its rise to power, is also to be discerned in the
appointment by Userkaf, the first of the line, of his palace
steward to the governorship of a district in middle Egypt
called the “New Towns,"2 to which office he added the
income of two priesthoods in the vicinity, which had been
i Borchardt, Festschr. f. Ebers, p. 13.
: 1, 213 ff.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
127
established by Menkure, and probably previously held by a
favourite of the Fourth Dynasty. But the endowment estab-
lished by the Fourth Dynasty was respected.
While Userkaf, as the founder of the new dynasty, may
have had enough to do to make secure the succession of his
line, he has left his name on the rocks at the first cataract,
the earliest of the long series of rock-inscriptions there, which
from now on will furnish us many hints of the career of the
Pharaohs in the south. Sahure, who followed Userkaf, con-
tinued the development of Egypt as the earliest known naval
power in history. He dispatched a fleet against the Phæni-
cian coast, and a relief just discovered in his pyramid
temple at Abusir, shows four of the ships with Phænician
captives among the Egyptian sailors. This is the earliest
surviving representation of sea-going ships (c. 2750 B. C.),
and the oldest known picture of Semitic Syrians. Another
fleet was sent by Sahure to still remoter waters, on a voy-
age to Punt, as the Egyptian called the Somali coast at
the south end of the Red Sea, and along the south side
of the gulf of Aden. From this region, which like the
whole east, he termed the “God's-Land,” he obtained the
fragrant gums and resins so much desired for the incense
and ointments indispensable in the life of the oriental.
Voyages to this country may have been made as early as the
First Dynasty, for at that time the Pharaohs already used
myrrh in considerable quantities, although this may have
been obtained in trade with the intermediate tribes who
brought it overland, down the Blue Nile, the Atbara and the
Upper Nile. In the Fourth Dynasty a son of Khufu had
possessed a Puntite slave, but Sahure was the first Pharaoh
whose records 4 show direct communication with the coun-
try of Punt for this purpose. His expedition brought back
80,000 measures of myrrh, probably 6,000 weight of elec-
trum (gold-silver alloy), besides 2,600 staves of some costly
wood, presumably ebony. We find his officials' at the first
1 Mariette, Mon. div., 54 e.
SLD, II, 23, Erman, Aegypten, 670.
* De Morgan, Catalogue de Monuments, I, 88.
91, 161, 7; 236.
* I, 161, 8.
128
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
cataract also, one of whom left the earliest of the long series
of inscriptions on the rocks, doubtless an indication of expe-
ditions into Nubia.
We can only discern enough of the next four reigns to gain
faint impressions of a powerful and cultured state, conserv-
ing all its internal wealth and reaching out to distant regions
around it for the materials which its own natural resources
do not furnish. Toward the end of the dynasty, in the
second half of the twenty seventh century B. C., Isesi
opened the quarries of the Wadi Hammamat in the eastern
desert three days' journey from the Nile. These quarries
had perhaps already furnished the materials for the numer-
ous breccia vases of the earlier kings, but Isesi was the first
of the Pharaohs to leave his namel there. As the Nile at
this point approaches most closely to the Red Sea in all its
upper course, caravans leaving Coptos and passing by the
Hammamat quarries, could reach the sea in five days. It
was therefore the most convenient route to Punt; it was
probably along this route that the expedition of Sahure,
already mentioned, had passed, while Isesi, who now also
sent his "treasurer of the God," Burded, in command of an
expeditionthither, must also have used it. His successor,
Unis, must have been active in the south, for we find his
name at the frontier of the first cataract, followed by the
epithet “lord of countries. "'3
There is now further evidence that the overshadowing
greatness of the Pharaohs as felt and acknowledged by the
official class was in some measure paling. To none of the
earlier victorious records left by the Pharaohs in Sinai had
the officials who led these expeditions presumed to affix their
names, or in any way to indicate their connection with the
enterprise. In relief after relief upon the rocks we see the
Pharaoh smiting his enemies, as if he had suddenly appeared
there, like the god they believed he was; and there is not
the slightest hint that each expedition was in reality led
*LD, II, 115 1.
21, 351, 353.
* Petrie, Season, XII, No. 312.

Fig. 73.-RUINED PYRAMID OF UNIS (FIFTH DYNASTY)
AT SAKKARA.
Earliest pyramid containing religious inscriptions.

Fig. 74.-ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE, THE HOME OF THE LORDS OF THE SOUTHERN
FRONTIER
Their tombs are in the cliffs on the farther shore.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS
129
by some noble functionary of the government. Under Isesi,
however, the self consciousness of the official can no longer
be completely repressed, and for the first time we find under
the usual triumphant relief a single line stating that the
expedition was carried out under the command of a certain
officer. It is but a hint of the rising power of the officials,
who from now on never fail to make themselves increasingly
prominent in all records of the royal achievements. It is a
power with which the Pharaoh will find more and more diffi-
culty in dealing as time passes. There is perhaps another
evidence that the Fifth Dynasty kings no longer possessed
the unlimited power enjoyed by their predecessors of the
Fourth Dynasty. Their limestone pyramids ranged along
the desert margin south of Gizeh, at Abusir and Sakkara,
are small, --less than half as high as the great pyramid, and
the core is of such poor construction, being largely loose
blocks, or even rubble and sand, that they are now in com-
plete ruin, each pyramid being a low mound with little sem-
blance of the pyramid form. The centralized power of the
earlier Pharaohs was thus visibly weakening, and it was
indeed in every way desirable that there should be a reaction
against the totally abnormal absorption by the Pharaoh's
tomb of such an enormous proportion of the national wealth.
The transitional period of the Fifth Dynasty, lasting prob-
ably a century and a quarter, during which nine kings
reigned was therefore one of significant political develop-
ment, and in material civilization one of distinct progress.
Art and industry flourished as before, and great works of
Egyptian sculpture were produced; while in literature king
Isesi's vizier and chief judge composed his proverbial wis-
dom, which we have already discussed. The state religion
received a form worthy of so great a nation, the temples
throughout the land enjoyed constant attention, and the
larger sanctuaries were given endowments commensurate
with the more elaborate daily offerings on the king's behalf.
It is this period which has preserved our first religious liter-
11, 264, 266.
SI, 154-167.
9
130
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ature of any extent, as well as our earliest lengthy example
of the Egyptian language. In the pyramid of Unis (Fig.
73), the last king of the dynasty, is recorded the collection
of mortuary ritualistic utterances, the so-called Pyramid
Texts which we have before discussed. As most of them
belong to a still earlier age and some of them originated in
predynastic times, they represent a much earlier form of lan-
guage and belief than those of the generation to which the
pyramid of Unis belongs.
CHAPTER VII
THE SIXTH DYNASTY: THE DECLINE OF THE OLD
KINGDOM
In the fullest of the royal lists, the Turin Papyrus, there
is no indication that the line of Menes was interrupted until
the close of the reign of Unis. That a new dynasty arose
at this point there can be no doubt. As the reader has
already perceived, the movement which brought in this new
dynasty was due to a struggle of the local governors for a
larger degree of power and liberty. The establishment of
the Fifth Dynasty by the influence of the Heliopolitan party
had given them the opportunity they desired. They gained
hereditary hold upon their offices, and the kings of that
family had never been able to regain the complete control
over them maintained by the Fourth Dynasty. Gradually
the local governors had then shaken off the restraint of the
Pharaoh; and when about 2625 B. C., after the reign of
Unis, they succeeded in overthrowing the Fifth Dynasty,
they became landed barons, each firmly entrenched in his
nome, or city, and maintaining an hereditary claim upon
it. The old title of “local governor” disappeared as a mat-
ter of course, and the men who had once borne it now called
themselves “great chief" or "great lord” of this or that
nome. They continued the local government as before, but
as princes with a large degree of independence, not as
officials of the central government. We have here the first
example traceable in history of the dissolution of a central-
ized state by a process of aggrandizement on the part of
local officials of the crown, like that which resolved the Car-
lovingian empire into duchies, landgraviates or petty prin-
cipalities. The new lords were not able to render their
6
܀
131
132
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
tenure unconditionally hereditary, but here the Pharaoh still
maintained a powerful hold upon them; for at the death of a
noble his position, his fief and his title must be conferred upon
the inheriting son by the gracious favour of the monarch.
These nomarchs or “great lords” are loyal adherents of the
Pharaoh, executing his commissions in distant regions, and
displaying the greatest zeal in his cause; but they are no
longer his officials merely; nor are they so attached to the
court and person of the monarch as to build their tombs
around his pyramid. They now have sufficient indepen-
dence and local attachment to locate their tombs near their
homes. We find them excavated in the cliffs at Elephan-
tine, Kasr-Sayyâd, Shekh-Sa'îd and Zâwiyet el-Mêtîn, or
built of masonry at Abydos. They devote much attention
to the development and prosperity of their great domains,
and one of them even tells how he brought in emigrants from
neighbouring nomes to settle in the feebler towns and infuse
new blood into the less productive districts of his own nome.
The chief administrative bond which united the nomes to
the central government of the Pharaoli will have been the
treasury as before; but the Pharaoh found it necessary to
exert general control over the great group of fiefs, which
now comprised his kingdom, and already toward the end of
the Fifth Dynasty he had therefore appointed over the whole
of the valley above the Delta a “governor of the South,
through whom he was able constantly to exert governmental
pressure upon the southern nobles; there seems to have been
no corresponding “governor of the North,” and we may
infer that the lords of the North were less aggressive. More-
over the kings still feel themselves to be kings of the South
governing the North.
The seat of government, the chief royal residence, as before
in the vicinity of Memphis, was still called the “White
Wall,” but after the obscure reign of Teti II, the first king
of the new dynasty, the pyramid-city of his successor, the
powerful Pepi I, was so close to the “White Wall” that
?I, 281.
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
133
the name of his pyramid, “Men-nofer,” corrupted by the
Greeks to Memphis, rapidly became the name of the city and
“White Wall” survived only as an archaic and poetic desig-
nation of the place. The administration of the residence
had become a matter of sufficient importance to demand the
attention of the vizier himself. He henceforth assumed its
immediate control, receiving the title “governor of the pyra-
mid-city” or “governor of the city” merely, for it now
became customary to speak of the residence as the “city.
Notwithstanding thorough-going changes, the new dynasty
continued the official cult maintained by their predeces-
sors. Re remained supreme and the old foundations were
respected.
In spite of the independence of the new nobles, it is evident
that Pepi I possessed the necessary force to hold them well
in hand. His monuments, large and small, are found
throughout Egypt. Now began also the biographies of the
officials of the time, affording us a picture of the busy life
of the self-satisfied magnates of that distant age; while to
these we may fortunately add also their records at the mines
and in the quarries. Loyalty now demands no more than
a relief showing the king as he worships his gods or smites
his enemies; and this done the vanity of the commander of
the expedition and his fellows may be gratified in a record
of their deeds or adventures, which becomes longer and
longer as time passes. Pepi I sent his chief architect and
the two “treasurers of the God," besides the master builder
of his pyramid, and a body of artisans, to the quarries at
Hammamat to procure the necessary fine stone for his pyra-
mid, and they left in the quarry, besides two royal reliefs,
three other inscriptions, giving a full list of their names and
titles. At the alabaster quarry of Hatnub the governor of
the South, who was also “great lord of the Hare-nome,
recorded his execution of a commission there for Pepi 1;2
while a military commander perpetuates his achievement of
a similar commission for the same king in the Wadi
'I, 295–301.
a 1, 304-5.
134
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Maghara in Sinai.' The pride of office among the official
class is undiminished. So many titles have now become
purely honourary,-high sounding predicates worn by nobles,
who performed none of the duties once devolving upon the
incumbents, that the actual administrators of many offices
added the word “real” after such titles. We have a very
interesting and instructive example of this official class
under the new regime, in Uni, a faithful adherent of the
royal house, who has fortunately left us his biography.
Under king Teti II he had begun his career at the bottom
as an obscure under-custodian in the royal domains.” Pepi
I now appointed him as a judge, at the same time giving
him rank at the royal court, and an income as a priest of the
pyramid-temple. He was soon promoted to a superior cus-
todianship of the royal domains, and in this capacity he
had so gained the royal favour that when a conspiracy against
the king arose in the harem he was nominated with one col-
league to prosecute the case. Pepi I thus strove to single
out men of force and ability with whom he might organize
a strong government, closely attached to his fortunes and to
those of his house. In the heart of the southern country he
set up among the nobles the great lord of the Hare-nome,
and made him governor of the South; while he married as
his official queens the two sisters of the nomarch of Thinis,
both bearing the same name, Enekhnes-Merire, and they
became the mothers of the two kings who followed him."
The foreign policy of Pepi I was more vigourous than that
of any Pharaoh of earlier times. In Nubia he gained such
control over the negro tribes that they were obliged to con-
tribute quotas to his army in case of war, and when such war
was in the north, where safety permitted, these negro levies
were freely employed. The Beduin tribes of the north,
having become too bold in their raiding of the eastern Delta,
or having troubled his mining expeditions in Sinai, Pepi
commissioned Uni to collect such an army among the negroes,
supplemented by levies throughout Egypt. The king over-
II, 302–3. * I, 294.
3 1, 307. · I, 310. 5 I, 344-0.
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
135
looked many men of much higher rank, and placing Uni in
command of this army, sent him against the Beduin. He
of course scattered them without difficulty, and having devas-
tated their country, returned home. On four more such
punitive expeditions Pepi I sent him against the tribes of
this country; and a final show of hostility on their part
at last called him further north than the region on the east
of the Delta. Embarking his force, he carried them in troop-
ships along the coast of southern Palestine, and punished
the Beduin as far north as the highlands of Palestine. This
inarks the northernmost advance of the Pharaohs of the Old
Kingdom, and is in accordance with the discovery of a
Sixth Dynasty scarab at Gezer below Jerusalem, in strata
below those dated in the Middle Kingdom. The naive ac-
count of these wars left by Uni in his biography is one of
the most characteristic evidences of the totally unwarlike
spirit of the early Egyptian.
Having thus firmly established his family at the head of the
state, the fact that Pepi I's death, after a reign of probably
twenty years, left his son, Mernere, to administer the king-
dom as a mere youth, seems not in the least to have shaken
its fortunes. Mernere immediately appointed Uni, the old
servant of his house, as governor of the South, under whose
trusty guidance all went well. The powerful nobles of the
southern frontier were also zealous in their support of the
young king. They were a family of bold and adventurous
barons, living on the island of Elephantine (Fig. 74) just
below the first cataract. The valley at the cataract was now
called the “Door of the South” and its defense against the
turbulent tribes of northern Nubia was placed in their hands,
so that the head of the family bore the title “Keeper of the
Door of the South.” They made the place so safe that when
the king dispatched Uni to the granite quarries at the head
of the cataract to procure the sarcophagus and the finer
fittings for his pyramid, the noble was able to accomplish
his errand with “only one warship,” an unprecedented feat.
II, 311-313.
81, 314-315.
SI, 320.
* I, 322.
136
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
The enterprising young monarch then commissioned Uni to
establish unbroken connection by water with the granite
quarries by opening a succession of five canals through the
intervening granite barriers of the cataract; and the faithful
noble completed this difficult task, besides the building of
seven boats, launched and laden with great blocks of granite
for the royal pyramid in only one year.
The north was too difficult of access, too distinctly sep-
arated by natural limits from the valley of the Nile for
the Pharaohs of this distant age to attempt more in Asia
than the defense of their frontier and the protection of their
mining enterprises in Sinai. The only barrier between
them and the south, however, was the cataract region. Mer-
nere had now made the first cataract passable for Nile boats
at high water, and a closer control, if not the conquest of
northern Nubia was quite feasible. It was not of itself a
country which the agricultural Egyptian could utilize. The
strip of cultivable soil between the Nile and the desert on
either hand was in Nubia so scanty, even in places disap-
pearing altogether, that its agricultural value was slight.
But the high ridges and valleys in the desert on the east con-
tained rich veins of gold-bearing quartz, and iron ore’ was
plentiful also, although no workings of it have been found
there. The country was furthermore the only gateway to
the regions of the south, with which constant trade was now
maintained. Besides gold, the Sudan sent down the river
ostrich feathers, ebony logs, panther skins and ivory; while
along the same route, from Punt and the countries further
east, came myrrh, fragrant gums and resins and aromatic
woods. It was therefore an absolute necessity that the
Pharaoh should command this route. We know little of the
negro and negroid tribes who inhabited the cataract region
at this time. Immediately south of the Egyptian frontier
dwelt the tribes of Wawat, extending well toward the second
cataract, above which the entire region of the upper cataracts
II, 324.
2 Rössing, Geschichte der Metalle., pp. 81, 83 sq.
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
137
was known as Kush, although the name does not commonly
occur on the monuments until the Middle Kingdom. In the
upper half of the huge “S” formed by the course of the Nile
between the junction of the two Niles and the second catar-
act, was included the territory of the powerful Mazoi, who
afterward appeared as auxiliaries in the Egyptian army in
such numbers that the Egyptian word for soldier ultimately
became “Matoi," a late (Coptic) form of Mazoi. Probably
on the west of the Mazoi was the land of Yam, and between
Yam and Mazoi on the south and Wawat on the north were
distributed several tribes, of whom Irthet and Sethut were
the most important. The last two, together with Wawat,
were sometimes united under one chief. All these tribes
were still in the barbarous stage. They dwelt in squalid
settlements of mud huts along the river, or beside wells in
the valleys running up country from the Nile; and besides
the flocks and herds which they maintained, they also lived
upon the scanty produce of their small grain-fields.
Doubtless utilizing his new canal, Mernere now devoted
special attention to the exploitation of these regions. His
power was so respected by the chiefs of Wawat, Irthet, Mazoi
and Yam that they furnished the timber for the heavy cargo-
boats built by Uni for the granite blocks which he took out
at the first cataract.2 In his fifth year Mernere did what
no Pharaoh before him had ever done, in so far as we are
informed. He appeared at the first cataract in person to
receive the homage of the southern chiefs, and left upon the
rocks a record of the event,-a relief depicting the Pharaoh
leaning upon his staff, while the Nubian chiefs bow down in
his presence. The unprecedented nature of the event is inti-
mated in the accompanying inscription:“The coming of the
king himself, appearing behind the hill-country [of the cat-
aract], that he might see that which is in the hill-country,
while the chiefs of Mazoi, Irthet and Wawat did obeisance
and gave great praise."4
Mernere now utilized the services of the Elephantine
*I, 336.
* I, 324.
* I, 316-318.
• Ibid.
中
​138
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
nobles in tightening his hold upon the southern chiefs.
Harkhuf, who was then lord of Elephantine, was also ap-
pointed governor of the South,' perhaps as the successor of
Uni, who was now too old for active service, or had meantime
possibly died; although the title had now become an honour-
able epithet or title of honour worn by more than one desery-
ing noble at this time. It was upon Harkhuf and his relatives,
a family of daring and adventurous nobles, that the Pharaoh
now depended as leaders of the arduous and dangerous expe-
ditions which should intimidate the barbarians on his fron-
tiers and maintain his prestige and his trade connections in
the distant regions of the south. These men are the earliest
known explorers of inner Africa and the southern Red Sea.
At least two of the family perished in executing the
Pharaoh's hazardous commissions in these far off lands, a
significant hint of the hardships and perils to which they
were all exposed. Besides their princely titulary as lords
of Elephantine they all bore the title “caravan-conductor,
who brings the products of the countries to his lord,” which
they proudly display upon their tombs, excavated high in
the front of the cliffs facing modern Assuan, where they still
look down upon the island of Elephantine, the one time home
of the ancient lords who occupy them. Here Harkhuf has
recorded how Mernere dispatched him on three successive
expeditions to distant Yam. On the first, as he was still
young, he was therefore accompanied by his father Iri. He
was gone seven months. On the second journey he was
allowed to go alone and returned in safety in eight months.
His third expedition was more adventurous and correspond-
ingly more successful. Arriving in Yam, he found its chief
engaged in a war with the southernmost settlements of the
Temehu, tribes related to the Libyans, on the west of Yam.
Harkhuf immediately went after him and had no difficulty
in reducing him to subjection. The tribute and the products
of the south obtained in trade during his stay were loaded
upon three hundred asses, and with a heavy escort furnished
II, 332.
2 Fig. 74.
31, 333-0. See also Fig. 70.
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
139
by the chief of Yam, Harkhuf set out for the north. The
chief of Irthet, Sethu and Wawat, awed by the large force
of Egyptians, and the escort of Yamites accompanying
Harkhuf, made no effort to plunder his richly laden train,
but brought him an offering of cattle and gave him guides.
He reached the cataract with his valuable cargo in safety,
and was met there by a messenger of the Pharaoh, with a
Nile boat full of delicacies and provisions from the court,
dispatched by the king for the refreshment of the now weary
and exhausted noble.
These operations for the winning of the extreme south
were interrupted by the untimely death of Mernere. He
was buried behind Memphis in the granite sarcophagus pro-
cured for him by Uni, in the pyramid for which Uni had
likewise laboured so faithfully, and here his body survived
(Fig. 77), in spite of vandals and tomb-robbers, until its
removal to the museum at Gizeh in 1881. As Mernere
reigned only four years and died early in his fifth year
without issue, the succession devolved upon his half-brother,
who, although only a child, ascended the throne as Pepi II.
His accession and successful rule speak highly for the sta-
bility of the family, and the faithfulness of the influential
nobles attached to it. Pepi II was the son of Enekhnes-
Merire, the second sister of the Thinite nomarch, whom Pepi
I first had taken as his queen. Her brother Zau, Pepi II's
uncle, who was now nomarch of Thinis, was appointed by
the child-king as vizier, chief judge and governor of the resi-
dence city. He thus had charge of the state during his
royal nephew's minority, and as far as we can now discern,
the government proceeded without the slightest disturbance.
Pepi II, or in the beginning, of course, his ministers, imme-
diately resumed the designs of the royal house in the south.
In the young king's second year, Harkhuf was for the fourth
time dispatched to Yam, whence he returned bringing a
rich pack train and a dwarf (Figs. 41, 75) from one of the
pigmy tribes of inner Africa. These uncouth, bandy-legged
*I, 344-9.
140
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
creatures were highly prized by the noble class in Egypt; they
were not unlike the merry genius Bes in appearance, and
they executed dances in which the Egyptians took the great-
est delight. The land from which they came was connected
by the Nile-dwellers with the mysterious region of the west,
the sojourn of the dead, which they called the “land of
spirits,” and the dwarfs from this sacred land were espe-
cially desired for the dances
with which the king's leisure
hours were diverted. The
child-king was so delighted
on receiving news of Hark-
huf's arrival at the frontier
with one of these pigmies
that he wrote the fortunate
noble a long letter of instruc-
tions, cautioning him to have
it closely watched lest any
harm should come to it, or
it should fall into the Nile;
and promising Harkhuf a
greater reward than king
Isesi had given to his “treas-
urer of the God,” Burded,
when he brought home a
dwarf from Punt. Harkhuf
was so proud of this letter
that he had it engraved on
the front of his tomb (Fig.
FIG. 75. STATUE OF AN OLD EMPIRE 76), as an evidence of the
(From Maspero's
great favour which he en-
Archaeology.)
joyed with the royal house.
Not all of these hardy lords of Elephantine, who adven-
tured their lives in the tropical fastnesses of inner Africa
in the twenty sixth century before Christ were as fortunate
as Harkhuf. One of them, a governor of the South, named
Sebni, suddenly received news of the death of his father,

DWARF.
11, 350-354.
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
141
prince Mekhu, while on an expedition south of Wawat.
Sebni quickly mustered the troops of his domain, and with
a train of a hundred asses marched rapidly southward, pun-
ished the tribe to whom Mekhu's death was presumably due,
rescued the body of his father, and loading it upon an ass,
returned to the frontier. He had before dispatched a mes-
senger to inform the Pharaoh of the facts, sending a tusk of
ivory five feet long, and adding that the best one in his cargo
was ten feet long. On reaching the cataract he found that this
messenger had returned, bearing a gracious letter from the
Pharaoh, who had also sent a whole company of royal em-
balmers, undertakers, mourners and mortuary priests, with
a liberal supply of fine linen, spices, oils and rich perfumes,
that they might immediately embalm the body of the de-
ceased noble and proceed to the interment. Sebni then went
to Memphis to pay his respects to the Pharaoh and deliver
the rich cargo which his father had collected in the south.
He was shown every mark of royal favour for his pious deed
in rescuing his father's body. Splendid gifts and the “gold
of praise” were showered upon him, and later an official
communication from the vizier conveyed to him a parcel
of land.1
A loose sovereignty was now extended over the Nubian
tribes, and Pepinakht, one of the Elephantine lords, was
placed in control with the title “governor of foreign coun-
tries."'2 In this capacity Pepi II sent him against Wawat
and Irthet, whence he returned after great slaughter among
the rebels, with numerous captives and children of the chiefs
as hostages. A second campaign there was still more suc-
cessful, as he captured the two chiefs of these countries them-
selves, besides their two commanders and plentiful spoil
from their herds. Expeditions were pushed far into the
upper cataract region, which is once called Kush in the Ele-
phantine tombs," and, in general, the preliminary work was
done which made possible the complete conquest of lower
Nubia in the Middle Kingdom. Indeed that conquest would
'I, 362-74, * I, 358. * I, 358.
* I, 359. * I, 361.
142
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
now have been begun had not internal causes produced the
fall of the Sixth Dynasty.
The responsibility for the development of Egyptian com-
merce with the land of Punt and the region of the southern
Red Sea also fell upon the lords of Elephantine. Evidently
they had charge of the whole south from the Red Sea to the
Nile. Not less dangerous than their exploits in Nubia were
the adventures of the Elephantine commanders who were
sent to Punt. There was no water way connecting the Nile
with the Red Sea, and these leaders were obliged to build
their ships at the eastern terminus of the Coptos caravan
route from the Nile, on the shore of the sea in one of the
harbours like Kosêr or Leucos Limên. Sailing vessels were
much improved in the Sixth Dynasty by the mounting of the
ancient steering oar on a kind of rudder post and the attach-
ment of a tiller. While so engaged, Enenkhet, Pepi II's
naval commander, was fallen upon by the Beduin, who slew
him and his entire command. Pepinakht was immediately
dispatched by the Pharaoh to rescue the body of the unfor-
tunate noble. He accomplished his dangerous errand suc-
cessfully, and having punished the Beduin, he returned in
safety." In spite of these risks, the communication with
Punt was now active and frequent. A subordinate official
of the Elephantine family boasts in his lord's tomb that he
accompanied him to Punt no less than probably eleven times
and returned in safety. It will be seen that the usually
accepted seclusion of the Old Kingdom can no longer be
maintained. Far from allowing himself to be isolated by
the deserts which enveloped his land on east and west, or
the cataract which had once formed his southern boundary,
the Pharaoh was now maintaining an active and flourishing
commerce with the south; while the royal fleets brought cedar
from the heights of Lebanon on the north. Under these cir-
cumstances direct commercial intercourse with the distant
island civilization which preceded the Mycenaan culture in
*I, 360.
* I, 361.

Fig. 76.-TOMB OF HARKHUF AT ASSUAN.
The end of the letter of p. 140 is discernible on the right edge. (From
stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)


FIG. 77.-HEAD OF KING MERNERE.
(Cairo Museum)
Fig. 78.-WESTERN CLIFFS OF SIUT.
Containing tombs of Ninth and Tenth Dynasty Nom-
archs. (From stereograph copyright by Underwood
& Underwood, N. Y.)
THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM
143
the north would have been nothing remarkable, and archæo-
logical evidence now shows that it existed.
Pepi II, having ascended the throne as a mere child, doubt-
less born just before his father's death, enjoyed the longest
reign yet recorded in history. The tradition of Manetho
states that he was six years old when he began to reign, and
that he continued until the hundredth year, doubtless mean-
ing of his life. The list preserved by Eratosthenes avers
that he reigned a full century. The Turin Papyrus of kings
supports the first tradition, giving him over ninety years,
and there is no reason to doubt its truth. His was thus the
longest reign in history. Several brief reigns followed,
among them possibly that of the queen Nitocris, to whose
name were attached the absurdest legends. Two kings, Iti
and Imhotep, whose officials visited Hammamat to secure
the stone for their pyramids and statues,' may possibly
belong in this time, though they may equally well have ruled
at the close of the Fifth Dynasty; but after the death of
Pepi II all is uncertain, and impenetrable obscurity veils
the last days of the Sixth Dynasty. When it had ruled some-
thing over one hundred and fifty years the power of
the landed barons became a centrifugal force, which the
Pharaohs could no longer withstand, and the dissolution of
the state resulted. The nomes gained their independence,
the Old Kingdom fell to pieces, and for a time was thus
resolved into the petty principalities of prehistoric times.
Nearly a thousand years of unparalleled development since
the rise of a united state, thus ended, in the twenty fifth
century B. C., in political conditions like those which had pre-
vailed in the beginning.
It had been a thousand years of inexhaustible fertility
when the youthful strength of a people of boundless energy
had for the first time found the organized form in which it
could best express itself. In every direction we see the
products of a national freshness and vigour which are never
spent; the union of the country under a single guiding hand
which had quelled internal dissensions and irected the com-
bined energies of a great people toward harmonious effort,
II, 386–390.
144
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
had brought untold blessing. The Pharaohs to whom the
unparalleled grandeur of this age was due not only gained
a place among the gods in their own time, but two thousand
years later, at the close of Egypt's history as an independent
nation, in the Twenty Sixth Dynasty, we still find the priests
who were appointed to maintain their worship. And at the
end of her career, when the nation had lost all that youthful
elasticity and creative energy which so abounded in the Old
Kingdom, the sole effort of her priests and wise men was
to restore the unsullied religion, life and government which
in their fond imagination had existed in the Old Kingdom,
as they looked wistfully back upon it across the millennia.
To us it has left the imposing line of temples, tombs and
pyramids, stretching for many miles along the margin of the
western desert, the most eloquent witnesses to the fine intel-
ligence and titanic energies of the men who made the Old
Kingdom what it was; not alone achieving these wonders
of mechanics and internal organization, but building the
earliest known sea-going ships and exploring unknown
waters, or pushing their commercial enterprises far up the
Nile into inner Africa. In plastic art they had reached the
highest achievement; in architecture their tireless genius
had created the column and originated the colonnade; in
government they had elaborated an enlightened and highly
developed state, with a large body of law; in religion they
were already dimly conscious of a judgment in the hereafter,
and they were thus the first men whose ethical intuitions
made happiness in the future life dependent upon character.
Everywhere their unspent energies unfolded in a rich and
manifold culture which left the world such a priceless heri-
tage as no nation had yet bequeathed it. It now remains to
be seen, as we stand at the close of this remarkable age,
whether the conflict of local with centralized authority shall
exhaust the elemental strength of this ancient people; or
whether such a reconciliation can be effected as will again
produce harmony and union, permitting the continuance of
the marvellous development of which we have witnessed the
first fruits.
BOOK III
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
THE FEUDAL AGE
CHAPTER VIII
THE DECLINE OF THE NORTH AND THE RISE OF
THEBES.
The internal struggle which caused the fall of the Old
Kingdom developed at last into a convulsion, in which the
destructive forces were for a time completely triumphant.
Exactly when and by whom the ruin was wrought is not now
determinable, but the magnificent mortuary works of the
greatest of the Old Kingdom monarchs fell victims' to a car-
nival of destruction in which many of them were annihilated.
The temples were not merely pillaged and violated, but their
finest works of art were subjected to systematic and deter-
mined vandalism, which shattered the splendid granite and
diorite statues of the kings into bits, or hurled them into the
well in the monumental gate of the pyramid-causeway.
Thus the foes of the old regime wreaked vengeance upon
those who had represented and upheld it. The nation was
totally disorganized. From the scanty notes of Manetho it
would appear that an oligarchy, possibly representing an
attempt of the nobles to set up their joint rule, assumed
control for a brief time at Memphis. Manetho calls them
the Seventh Dynasty. He follows them with an Eighth
Dynasty of Memphite kings, who are but the lingering
shadow of ancient Memphite power. Their names as pre-
served in the Abydos list show that they regarded the Sixth
Dynasty as their ancestors; but none of their pyramids has
ever been found, nor have we been able to date any tombs
of the local nobility in this dark age. In the mines and
quarries of Sinai and Hammamat, where records of every
prosperous line of kings proclaim their power, not a trace
of these ephemeral Pharaohs can be found. It was a period
147
148
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of such weakness and disorganization that neither king nor
noble was able to erect monumental works which might have
survived to tell us something of the time. How long this
unhappy condition may have continued it is now quite impos-
sible to determine. In the alabaster quarries at Hatnub
quantities of inscriptions nevertheless record work there by
the lords of the Hare-nome, thus indicating the gathering
power of the noble houses who disregard the king and date
events in years of their own rule. One of these dynasts even
records with pride his repulse of the king's power, saying:
“I rescued my city in the day of violence from the terrors
of the royal house."1 A generation after the fall of the
Sixth Dynasty'a family of Heracleopolitan nomarchs wrested
the crown from the weak Memphites of the Eighth Dynasty,
who may have lingered on, claiming royal honours for nearly
another century.
Some degree of order was finally restored by the triumph
of the nomarchs of Heracleopolis. This city, just south of
the Fayum, had been the seat of a temple and cult of Horus
from the earliest dynastic times, and the princes of the town
now succeeded in placing one of their number on the throne.
Akhthoes, who, according to Manetho, was the founder of
the new dynasty, must have taken grim vengeance on his
enemies, for all that Manetho knows of him is that he was
the most violent of all the kings of the time, and that, having
been seized with madness, he was slain by a crocodile. The
new house is known to Manetho as the Ninth and Tenth
Dynasties, but its kings were still too feeble to leave any
enduring monuments; neither have any records contem-
porary with the family survived except during the last three
generations when the powerful nomarchs of Siut were able to
excavate cliff-tombs (Fig. 78) in which they fortunately left
records of the active and successful career of their family.
They offer us a hint of what the state of the country had
been when the Heracleopolitan princes restored order, for
the nobles of Siut say of their own domains: “Every official
'I, 690.
?I, 301-414.
DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OF THEBES 149
was at his post, there was no one fighting, nor any shooting
an arrow. The child was not smitten beside his mother, nor
the citizen beside his wife. There was no evil-doer
nor any one doing violence against his house." When
night came, he who slept on the road gave me praise, for he
was like a man in his house; the fear of my soldier was his
protection.' 2
These Siut nomarchs enjoyed the most intimate relations
with the royal house at Heracleopolis; we first find the king
attending the burial of the head of their noble house; and
while the daughter of the deceased prince ruled in Siut, her
son, Kheti, then a lad, was placed with the children of the
royal household to be educated. 3 When old enough, he
relieved his mother of the regency, and if we may judge of
the entire country from the administration of this Siut noble,
the land must have enjoyed prosperity and plenty. He dug
canals, reduced taxation, reaped rich harvests, and main-
tained large herds; while he had always in readiness a body
of troops and a fleet. Such was the wealth and power of
these Siut nobles that they soon became a buffer state on
the south of inestimable value to the house of Heracleopolis,
and Kheti was made military "commander of Middle
Egypt.”+
Meantime among the nobles of the South a similar pow-
erful family of nomarchs was slowly rising into notice.
Some four hundred and forty miles above Memphis, and
less than one hundred and forty miles below the first cat-
aract, along the stretch of Nile about forty miles above the
great bend, where the river approaches most closely to the
Red Sea before turning abruptly away from it, the scanty
margin between river and cliffs expands into a broad and
fruitful plain in the midst of which now lie the mightiest
ruins of ancient civilization to be found anywhere in the
world. They are the wreck of Thebes, the world's first great
monumental city. At this time it was an obscure provincial
town and the neighbouring Hermonthis was the seat of a
11, 404.
* I, 305, 1. 10. S1, 413.
* I, 410.
150
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
family of nomarchs, the Intefs and Mentuhoteps. Toward
the close of the Heracleopolitan supremacy, Thebes had
gained the leading place in the South, and its nomarch, Intef,
was “keeper of the Door of the South."1 The South stood
together and in time of scarcity we see the nomes aiding each
other with grain and provisions. Intef was soon able to
organize the whole South in rebellion, mustering his forces
from the cataract northward at least as far as Thebes. He
and his successors finally wrenched the southern confedera-
tion from the control of Heracleopolis, and organized an
independent kingdom, with Thebes at its head. This Intef
was ever after recognized as the ancestor of the Theban line,
and the monarchs of the Middle Kingdom set up his statue
in the temple at Thebes among those of their royal prede-
cessors who were worshipped there.3
At this juncture, the unshaken fidelity of the Siut princes
was the salvation of the house of Heracleopolis; for Tefibi
of Siut, perhaps a son of the nomarch Kheti, whom we first
found there, now placed his army in the field against the
aggression of Thebes. He marched southward to stem an
invasion of the southerners, and meeting them on the west
shore of the river, drove them back, recovering lost territory
as far south as "the fortress of the Port of the South," prob-
ably Abydos. A second army which was advancing to meet
him on the east shore was likewise defeated; the ships of a
southern fleet were forced ashore, their commander driven
into the river and the ships apparently captured by Tefibi."
His son Kheti was now appointed as "military commander
of the whole land,” and “great lord of Middle Egypt.
continued loyal support of his sovereign, Merikere of Hera-
cleopolis, and was the veritable "king-maker” of that now
tottering house. He suppressed an insurrection on the
southern frontier, and brought the king southward, appar-
ently to witness the submission of the rebellious districts.
Returning northward with the king, Kheti narrates with
11, 420.
? 1, 457-0.
: 1, 419.
* I, 396.
* Ibid.
* I, 398, 403, 1, 23.
198 He
DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OF THEBES 151
pride how his (Kheti's) enormous fleet stretched for miles
up the river as he passed his home. At Heracleopolis, where
they landed in triumph, Kheti says, “the city came, rejoic-
ing over her lord ... women mingled with men, old men
and children.” Thus in the tomb inscriptions (Fig. 78) of
these Siut lords we gain a fleeting glimpse of the Heracle-
opolitan kings, just as they are about to disappear finally
from the scene.
Meanwhile the fortunes of Thebes have been constantly
rising. Intef, the nomarch, had been succeeded (whether
immediately or not is uncertain) by another Intef, who was
the first of the Thebans to assume royal honours and titles,
thus becoming Intef I, the first king of the dynasty. He
pressed the Heracleopolitans vigourously, pushed his frontier
northward, and captured Abydos and the entire Thinite
He made its northern boundary the “Door of the
North,''2 that is, the northern frontier of his kingdom, as
Elephantine at the first cataract was the “Door of the South.''
His “Door of the North” was in all probability Tefibi of
Siut's “fortress of the Port of the South.'3 His long reign
of over fifty years ended, he was followed by his son, Intef
II, of whom we know little beyond the fact of his succes-
sion. It was now that the accession of a line of Mentuho-
teps, probably a collateral branch of the Theban family,
established the universal supremacy of Thebes. Mentuho-
tep II evidently brought the war with the North to a trium-
phant close. He boasted with impunity of his victories over
his countrymen and on the walls of his temple at Gebelên
he depicted himself striking down Egyptian and foreigner
together, while the accompanying inscription designates the
scene as the “binding of the chiefs of the Two Lands, cap-
turing the South and Northland, the foreign countries and
the two regions [Egypt], the Nine Bows [foreigners], and
the Two Lands” [Egypt]. About the middle of the twenty
second century B. C., therefore, the Heracleopolitan power,
'I, 401.
nome.
* I, 422, 423 D, I. 4.
See above, p. 150.
* I, 423 G.
* I, 423 H.
152
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
never very vigourous, completely collapsed, the supremacy
passed from the North to the South, and thus, perhaps nearly
three centuries after the fall of the Sixth Dynasty and the
close of the Old Kingdom, Egypt was reunited under a
strong and vigourous line of princes, capable of curbing in
a measure the powerful and refractory lords, who are now
firmly entrenched in the nomes all over the land. Nothing
is certainly known of the family relations of this new Theban
house. The kingship presumably passed from father to son,
but there are clear evidences of rival claims to the sceptre,
nor is the order of the kings entirely certain.
Royal expeditions abroad, long interrupted, were now
resumed. Nibtowere-Mentuhotep III's vizier, Amenemhet
left a series of very interesting inscriptions in the Hamma-
mat quarries, telling of his twenty five days' sojourn there
for the purpose of procuring the blocks for the king's
sarcophagus and lid, with an expedition of ten thousand
men, the largest thus far known in the history of Egypt.
Min, the god of the region, granted them the greatest mar-
vels in furthering their work; a gazelle ran before the work-
men and dropped her young upon the very block which
they were able to use for the sarcophagus-lid; and later a
rain-storm filled the neighbouring well to the brim. The
work was thus speedily completed, and Amenemhet boasks
“My soldiers returned without loss; not a man perished,
not a troop was missing, not an ass died, not a workman
was enfeebled." The men for these expeditions were
drawn from all parts of the kingdom; it is thus evident
that the last three Mentuhoteps controlled the whole coun-
try, and that they had restored the power and prestige
of the Pharaoh's office. Its relation to the local lords and
nomarchs we shall soon be able to discern more clearly, as
the Theban family known as the Twelfth Dynasty presently
emerges into view.
The forces of expansion, latent for several centuries, now
found opportunity in Nubia again, as in the Sixth Dy-
'I, 434-453,
DECLINE OF NORTIT AND RISE OF THEBES 153
nasty, before the fall of the Old Kingdom. Nibhepetre-
Mentuhotep IV was so fully in control of the country
that he could resume the designs of the Sixth Dynasty
for the conquest of Nubia, and dispatched his treasurer
Kheti with a fleet into Wawat in his forty-first year.
Building enterprises, so long interrupted, were again under-
taken, and on the western plain of Thebes Mentuhotep IV
erected a small terraced temple under the cliffs, which after-
ward served as the model for queen Hatshepsut's beautiful
sanctuary beside it at Dêr el-Bahri. Its ruins, recently dis-
covered, constitute the oldest building at Thebes. It was
evidently of mortuary character, and the reliefs on the walls
depicted foreign peoples bringing tribute to the Pharaoh.
Mentuhotep IV's long reign of at least forty six years gave
him ample opportunity to solidify and organize his power,
and he was regarded in after centuries as the great founder
and establisher of Theban supremacy. His successor, Men-
tuhotep V, was also able to continue the long interrupted
foreign enterprises of the Old Kingdom Pharaohs. He
united the responsibility for all commerce with the southern
countries in the hands of a powerful official, already exist-
ent in the Sixth Dynasty, under the old title “keeper of the
Door of the South.” Mentuhotep V's chief treasurer ,
Henu, who bore this important office, was dispatched to the
Red Sea by the Hammamat road with a following of three
thousand men. Such was the efficiency of his organization
that each man received two jars of water and twenty small
biscuit-like loaves daily, involving the issuance of six thou-
sand jars of water and sixty thousand such loaves by the
commissary every dayº during the desert march and the stay
in the quarries of Hammamat. Everything possible was
done to make the desert route thither safe and passable.
Henu dug fifteen wells and cisterns,' and settlements of colo-
nists were afterward established at the watering stations.
Arriving at the Red Sea end of the route, Henu built a ship
which he dispatched to Punt, while he himself returned by
i I, 426.
* I, 430.
'I, 431.
* I, 456.
154
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
A
way of Hammamat, where he secured and brought back with
him fine blocks for the statues in the royal temples. Men-
tuhotep V ruled at least eight years.?
After this succession of five Mentuhoteps, we find that
the Eleventh Dynasty was then displaced by a new and
vigourous Theban family with an Amenemhet at its head.
We have already seen one powerful Amenemhet at Thebes
as the vizier of Mentuhotep III. This new Amenemhet was
able to supplant the last son of the Eleventh Dynasty, and
assume the throne as first king of the Twelfth Iynasty.
It is very probable also that the new king had royal blood
in his veins; in any case his family always regarded the
nomarch Intef as their ancestor; they paid him honour and
placed his statue in the Karnak temple of Thebes. After
a rule of a little over one hundred and sixty years the
Eleventh Dynasty was thus brought to a close about 2000
B. C. They left few monuments; their modest pyramids of
sun-dried brick on the western plain of Thebes were in a
perfect state of preservation a thousand years later, but
they barely survived into modern times and their vanish-
ing remains were excavated by Mariette. Nevertheless they
laid the foundations of Theban power and prepared the
way for the vigourous development which now followed
under their successors.
It was not without hostilities that Amenemhet gained his ex-
alted station. We hear of a campaign on the Nile with a fleet
of twenty ships of cedar, followed by the expulsion of some
unknown enemy from Egypt. Victorious in these conflicts,
Amenemhet was confronted by a situation of the greatest
difficulty. Everywhere the local nobles, the nomarchs whose
gradual rise we witnessed in the Old Kingdom, were now
ruling their great domains like independent sovereigns.
They looked back upon a long line of ancestry reaching
into the generations of their fathers, whose power had caused
the fall of the Old Kingdom; and we find them repairing
' I, 432-433.
il, 418.
? I, 418.
S;!', 514.
* I, 410.
• i, 405.
DECLINE OF NORTII AND RISE OF THEBES 155
the fallen tombs of these founders of their houses. While
the Eleventh Dynasty kings had evidently curbed these am-
bitious lords to some extent, Amenemhet was obliged to go
about the country and lay a strong hand upon them one
after another. Here and there some aggressive nomarch
had seized the territory and towns of a neighbour, thus gain-
ing dangerous power and wealth. It was necessary for the
safety of the crown in such cases to restore the balance of
power. “He established the southern landmark, perpet-
uating the northern like the heavens; he divided the great
river along its middle; its eastern side of the 'Horizon of
Horus' was as far as the eastern highland; at the coming
of his majesty to cast out evil shining like Atum himself;
when he restored that which he found ruined ; that which a
city had taken from its neighbour; while he caused city to
know its boundary with city, establishing their landmarks
like the heavens, distinguishing their waters according to
that which was in the writings, investigating according to
that which was of old, because he so greatly loved justice."2
Thus the nomarch of the Oryx-nome relates how Amenemhet
proceeded at the installation of his grandfather as nomarch
there.
To suppress the landed nobles entirely and to reëstablish
the bureaucratic state of the Old Kingdom, with its local gov-
ernors, was however quite impossible. The development
which had become so evident in the Fifth Dynasty had now
reached its logical issue; Amenemhet could only accept the
situation and deal with it as best he might. He had achieved
the conquest of the country and its reorganization only by
skilfully employing in his cause those noble families whom
he could win by favour and fair promises. With these he must
now reckon, and we see him rewarding Khnumhotep, one
of his partisans, with the gift of the Oryx-nome, the boun-
daries of a part of which he established as we have already
learned from the above record in a famous tombs of the
family at Benihasan. The utmost that Amenemhet could
* I, 688-9.
I, 025.
'I, 619-639.
156
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
accomplish, therefore, was the appointment in the nomes of
nobles favourably inclined toward his house. The state
which the unprecedented vigour and skill of this great states-
man finally succeeded in thus erecting, again furnished
Egypt with the stable organization, which enabled her about
2000 B. C. to enter upon her second great period of produc-
tive development, the Middle Kingdom.
CHAPTER IX
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE: STATE,
SOCIETY AND RELIGION.
It had been but natural that the kings of the Eleventh
Dynasty should reside at Thebes, where the founders of the
family had lived during the long war for the conquest of
the North. But Amenemhet was evidently unable to con-
tinue this tradition. It is easy to imagine reasons why he
concluded that his presence was necessary to maintain his
position among the Northern nomarchs, who may still have
felt leanings toward the fallen house of Heracleopolis.
Moreover all the kings of Egypt since the passing of the
Thinites a thousand years before had lived there, except the
Eleventh Dynasty which he had supplanted. The location
which he selected was on the west side of the river some
miles south of Memphis. The exact spot cannot now be iden-
tified, but it was probably near the place now called Lisht,
where the ruined pyramid of Amenemhet has been discov-
ered. The name given to the residence city was signifi-
cant of its purpose; Amenemhet named it Ithtowe, which
means “Captor of the Two Lands." In hieroglyphic the
name is always written enclosed within a square fortress
with battlemented walls; from this stronghold Amenemhet
swayed the destinies of a state which required all the skill
and political sagacity of a line of unusually strong rulers
in order to maintain the prestige of the royal house.
The nation was made up of an aggregation of small states
or petty princedoms, the heads of which owed the Pharaoh
their loyalty, but they were not his officials or his servants.
Some of these local nobles were “great lords" or nomarchs,
ruling a whole nome; others were only "counts” of a smaller
157
158
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
domain with its fortified town. It was thus a feudal state
not essentially different from that of later Europe which
Amenemhet had organized. It was a state which could exist
only as long as there was a strong man like himself in the
palace at Ithtowe; and the slightest evidence of weakness
meant its rapid dissolution. We are dependent for our
knowledge of these barons upon their surviving tombs and
mortuary monuments. All such remains in the Delta have
perished, so that we can speak with certainty only of the
conditions in the South, and even here it is only in Middle
Egypt that we are adequately informed.
The noble families of the provincial aristocracy, as we
have seen, could in some cases look back upon a line of an-
cestry reaching into the Old Kingdom, four or five centuries
earlier;' they had thus gained a strong foothold in their bar-
EE
RA
81
BABA
FIG. 79. OFFICES OF THE NOMARCH KANUMHOTEP AT BENIIASAN.
On the left is the chief treasurer before whom gold and silver are being
weighed; in the middle is the steward of the estate, who records the amount
of grain brought in and deposited in the granary on the right.
onies and domains. We recall also that under the weak
Pharaohs of the decadence following the Old Kingdom they
had ruled as almost independent dynasts, dating events in
years of their own rule and no longer in those of the reign
of the Pharaoh, whom in some cases they had defied and
even successfully resisted. The nomarch had indeed be-
come a miniature Pharaoh in his little realm, and such he
continued to be under the Twelfth Dynasty. On a less
sumptuous scale his residence was surrounded by a personnel
not unlike that of the Pharaonic court and harem; while his
government demanded a chief treasurer, a court of justice,
11, 688-9.
*I, 600.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
159
with offices (Fig. 79), scribes and functionaries, and all the
essential machinery of government which we find at the
royal residence. The nomarch by means of this organiza-
tion himself collected the revenues of his domain, was high
priest or head of the sacerdotal organization, and com-
manded the militia of his realm which was permanently
organized. His power was considerable; the nomarch of the
Oryx-nome led four hundred of his own troops into Nubia
and six hundred through the desert to the gold mines on the
Coptos road. The nomarch at Coptos was able to send an
段 ​AR
iii
AAA
X
WATATU
AN
084
VHA
W
FIG. 80. A Colossus OF ALABASTER ABOUT TWENTY-TWO FEET HIGH TRANS-
PORTED ON A SLEDGE BY 172 MEN IN FOUR DOUBLE LINES AT THE
ROPES. (From a Middle Kingdom Tomb at El Bersheh.)
expedition of his own to the Hammamat quarries which
brought back two blocks seventeen feet long, and a second
expedition which returned with a block twenty feet six inches
long drawn by nearly two hundred men along the desert road
over fifty miles to the Nile. The people of the nomarch of the
Hare-nome dragged from the quarry of Hatnub ten miles to
the river a huge block of alabaster weighing over sixty tons
and large enough for a statue of the nomarch some twenty
two feet high. Such lords were able to build temples ' and
11, 520-521,
: I, p. 225, note c.
31, 004-706.
* I, 403; 637, and note a.
160
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
erect public buildings in their principal towns.' They taught
the crafts and encouraged industries and their immediate
interest and direct personal oversight resulted in a period of
unprecedented economic development. One of the Siut
nomarchs of the Heracleopolitan domination furnishes a hint
of what was to follow, saying:“I was rich in grain. When
the land was in need I maintained the city with kha and
heket (grain-measures], I allowed the citizen to fetch for
himself grain; and his wife, the widow and her son. I
remitted all imposts (unpaid arrears] which I found counted
by my fathers. I filled the pastures with cattle, every man
had many breeds, the cows brought forth twofold, the folds
were full of calves." A new irrigation canal which he made
doubtless contributed much to the productivity of his do-
mains.4 Faithful officials of the nomarch show the same
solicitude for the welfare of the community over which they
were placed ; thus an assistant treasurer in the Theban nome
residing at Gebelen in the Eleventh Dynasty tells us: “I
sustained Gebelen during unfruitful years, there being four
hundred men in distress. But I took not the daughter of
a man, I took not his field. I made ten herds of goats, with
people in charge of each herd; I made two herds of cattle
and a herd of asses. I raised all kinds of small cattle. I
made thirty ships, then thirty more ships, and I brought
grain for Esneh and Tuphium, after Gebelen was sustained.
The nome of Thebes went up stream [to Gebelen for sup-
plies]. Never did Gebelen send up-stream or down-stream
to another district [for supplies]."5 The nomarch thus
devoted himself to the interests of his people, and was con-
cerned to leave to posterity a reputation as a merciful and
beneficent ruler. All the above records are taken from tomb-
inscriptions, records designed to perpetuate such a memory
among the people. Still more positive in the same direc-
tion is a passage in the biography of Ameni, nomarch of the
Oryx-nome, as inscribed in his tomb at Benihasan: “There
11, 637.
PI, 638.
31, 408.
* I, 407.
SI, 459.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
161
was no citizen's daughter whom I misused, there was no
widow whom I oppressed, there was no peasant whom I re-
pulsed, there was no herdsman whom I repelled, there was no
overseer of serf-labourers, whose people I took for (unpaid]
imposts, there was none wretched in my community, there
was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came
I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx-nome, as far as its
southern and northern boundary, preserving its people alive,
and furnishing its food, so that there was none hungry
therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband;
I did not exalt the great above the small in all I gave.
Then came great Niles, rich in grain and all things, but I did
not collect the arrears of the field." After making all due
allowance for the natural desire of the nomarch to record
the most favourable aspects of his government, it is evident
that the paternal character of his local and personal rule, in
a community of limited numbers, with which he was ac-
quainted by almost daily contact, had proved an untold bless-
ing to the country and population at large.
The domains over which the nomarch thus ruled were not
all his unqualified possessions. His wealth consisted of
lands and revenues of two classes: the "paternal estate,
received from his ancestors and entailed in his line; and the
"count's estate," over which the dead hand had no control;
it was conveyed as a fief by the Pharaoh anew at the
nomarch's death. It was this fact which to some extent
enabled the Pharaoh to control the feudatories and to secure
the appointment of partisans of his house throughout the
country. Nevertheless he could not ignore the natural line of
succession, which was through the eldest daughter; and as
we have observed at Siut, she might even rule the domain
after the death of her father until her son was old enough
to assume its government. The magnificent tombs of the
lords of the Oryx-nome at Benihasan reveal very clearly the
influence of these customs in the fortunes of this family. At
the triumph of Amenemhet I, as we have seen, he appointed
II, 523.
2 I, 536.
s I, 414.
11
162
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
one of his partisans, a certain Khnumbotep, as count of
Menet-Khufu, chief city of the “Horizon of Horus," an
appanage of the Oryx-nome, to which Khnumhotep also soon
succeeded as nomarch. As a special favour of Sesostris I,
after Amenemhet I's death, Khnumhotep's two sons inher-
ited their father's fiefs, Nakht being appointed count of
Menet-Khufu, and Ameni, of whose beneficent rule we have
just read, receiving the Oryx-nome.
Their sister Beket
married a powerful official at the court, the vizier and gov-
ernor of the residence-city, Nehri, who was nomarch of the
neighbouring Hare-nome; and the son of this union, a second
Khnumhotep, thereupon by succession through his mother,
was appointed to succeed his uncle Nakht as count of Menet-
Khufu. Observing the value in the Pharaoh's eyes of being
the son of a nomarch's daughter, this second Khnumhotep
himself married Kheti, the eldest daughter of his neighbour
on the north, the nomarch of the Jackal-nome. Thus the
eldest son of Khnumhotep the second had a claim through
his mother upon the Jackal-nome, to which in due course
the Pharaoh appointed him; while the second son of the mar-
riage, after honours at court, received his father's fief of
Menet-Khufu. The history of this line through four gen-
erations thus shows that the Pharaoh could not overlook the
claims of the heir of a powerful family, and the deference
which he showed them evidently limited the control which
he might exert over a less formidable dynasty of nobles.
To what extent these lords felt the restraint of the royal
hand in their government and administration it is not now
possible to determine. A royal commissioner, whose duty
it was to look to the interests of the Pharaoh, seems to
have resided in the nome, and there were “overseers of the
crown-possessions” (probably under him) in charge of the
royal herds in each nome;2 but the nomarch himself was the
medium through whom all revenues from the nome were con-
veyed to the treasury. "All the imposts of the king's house
passed through my hand,” says Ameni of the Oryx-nome.
*1, 619 ff.
'I, 522.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
163
The treasury was the organ of the central government, which
gave administrative cohesion to the otherwise loose aggre-
gation of nomarchies. It had its income paying property
in all the nomes. Some of this property, as we have ob-
served, seems to have been administered by government
overseers, while to a large extent it was entrusted to the
noble, probably as part of the count's estate.” The gang-
overseers of the crown possessions of the Oryx-nome'' gave
to Ameni three thousand bulls, of which he rendered an
annual account to the Pharaoh, saying, “I was praised on
account of it in the palace [of the Pharaoh]. I carried all
their dues to the king's house; there were no arrears against
me in any office of his."'1 Thuthotep, the nomarch of the
Hare-nome, depicted with great pride in his tomb at El
Bersheh “great numbers of his cattle from the king and his
cattle of the (paternal] estate in the districts of the Hare-
nome."2 We have no means of even conjecturing the amount
or proportion of property held by the crown in the nomes
and “count's estates,” but it is evident that the claims of
these powerful feudatories must have seriously curtailed the
traditional revenues of the Pharaoh. He no longer had the
resources of the country at his unconditional disposal as in
the Old Kingdom, even though it was officially only by the
king's grace that his lords held their fiefs. Other resources
of the treasury were, however, now available, and if not en-
tirely new, were henceforth more energetically exploited.
Besides his internal revenues, including the tribute of the
nomes and the Residence, the Pharaoh received a regular
income from the gold-mines of Nubia, and those on the
Coptos road to the Red Sea. The traffic with Punt and the
southern coasts of the Red Sea seems to have been the exclu-
sive prerogative of the crown, and must have brought in a
considerable return; while the mines and quarries of Sinai,
and perhaps also the quarries of Hammamat, had also been
developed as a regular source of profit. The conquest of
Nubia, and now and then a plundering expedition into Syria-
*1, 522.
2 I, 522, note a.
164
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Palestine, also furnished not unwelcome contributions to
the treasury.
The central office of the treasury was still the “White
House," which through its sub-departments of the granary,
the herds, the “double gold-house," the "double silver-
house," and other produce of the country, collected into
the central magazines and stock-yards the annual revenues
due the Pharaoh. Whole fleets of transports 1 upon the river
were necessary for the conveyance of the great quantities
of commodities involved. The head of the “White House'
was as before, the chief treasurer, with his assistant, the
"treasurer of the God," and the vigourous administration
of the time is evident in the frequent records of these active
officials, showing that notwithstanding their rank, they often
personally superintended the king's interests in Sinai, Ham-
mamat, or on the shores of the Red Sea at the terminus of
the Coptos road. It is evident that the treasury had become
a more highly developed organ since the Old Kingdom. The
army of subordinates, stewards, overseers and scribes filling
the offices under the heads of sub-departments was obviously
larger than before. They began to display an array of
titles, of which many successive ranks, heretofore unknown,
were being gradually differentiated. Among these appear
more prominently than heretofore the engineers and skilled
artisans who were exploiting the mines and quarries under
the administrative officials. Such conditions made possible
the rise of an official middle class.
Justice, as in the Old Kingdom, was still dispensed by
the administrative officials; thus a treasurer of the god boasts
that he was one “knowing the law, discreet in exercising
it."2 The six “Great Houses” or courts of justice, with
the vizier at their head, sat in Ithtowe.3 There was besides
a “House of Thirty," which evidently possessed judicial
functions, and was also presided over by the vizier, but its
relation to the six “Great Houses" is not clear. There was
1 Tombstone of a commander of one of these fleets, Cairo, No. 20,143.
* I, 618.
* Sharpe, Eg. Inscr. I, 100.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
165
1
now more than one “Southern Ten,” and “Magnates of the
Southern Tens” were frequently entrusted with various
executive and administrative commissions by the king. As
we shall see, they had the census and tax records in charge;
but their connection with the judicial administration cannot
be determined with clearness. Magistrates with the sole
title of "judge," whose tomb-stones are occasionally found,
may have been well-to-do middle class citizens who assumed
judicial functions within a restricted local jurisdiction. The
law which they administered, while it has not survived, had
certainly attained a high development, and was capable of
the finest distinctions. A nomarch at Siut makes a contract
between himself as count, and himself as high priest in the
temple of his city, showing the closest differentiation of the
rights which he possessed in these two different capacities.
The scanty records of the time throw but little light upon
the other organs of government, like the administration of
lands, the system of irrigation and the like. For the pur-
pose of carrying on public works, as well as for taxation and
census records, the country was divided into two adminis-
trative districts of the South and the North, and the “Mag-
nates of the Southern Tens" served in both districts, showing
that they were not confined to the South alone. The office
of the governor of the South had disappeared, and already
before the close of the Old Kingdom the title had become
merely an honourable predicate, if used at all. An elaborate
system of registration was in force. Every head of a family
was enrolled as soon as he had established an indepen-
dent household, with all the members belonging to it, includ-
ing serfs and slaves. His oath to the correctness of the
registration-list was taken by a “Magnate of the Southern
Tens” in the land office, one of the bureaus of the vizier's
department, where all this registration was filed. These
enrollments probably occurred at fixed intervals of some
years and there are some indications that the period may
* I, 508 ff.
166
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
have been fifteen years. The office of the vizier was thus
the central archives of the government as before, and all
records of the land-administration with census and tax reg-
istration were filed in his bureaus. Thus he calls himself
one “confirming the boundary records, separating a land-
owner from his neighbour." As formerly, he was also head
of the judicial administration, presiding over the six “Great
Houses" and the “House of Thirty"; and when he also held
the office of chief treasurer, as did the powerful vizier Men-
tuhotep under Sesostris I, the account which he could give of
himself on his tomb-stone read like the declaration of a king's
powers. That he might prove dangerous to the crown was
evident in the history of Amenemhet I's probable rise from
the viziership. His high office brought with it the rank of
prince and count and in some instances he ruled a nome.
It was now more necessary than ever that the machinery
of government should be in the hands of men of unques-
tioned loyalty. Young men were brought up in the circle
of the king's house that they might grow up in attachment
to it. Thus Sesostris III wrote entrusting a commission to
his chief treasurer, Ikhernofret: “My inajesty sendeth thee,
my heart being certain of thy doing everything according
to the desire of my majesty; since thou hast been brought
up in the teaching of my majesty; thou hast been in the
training of my majesty and the sole teaching of my palace." 4
Even then the closest surveillance was constantly necessary
to ensure the king's safety and prevent the ambitious noble
in the Pharaoh's service from gaining dangerous power.
We shall discover the officials of Amenemhet I abusing his
confidence and attempting his life; in far off Nubia Men-
tuhotep, Sesostris I's commander there, like Cornelius Gallus
under Augustus, made himself so prominent upon the tri-
umphal monuments of the king that his figure had to be
erased, and in all likelihood the noble himself was dismissed
in disgrace. Discreet conduct toward the Pharaoh was the
1 Kahun Papyri, pl. IX-X, pp. 19–29.
* I, 531.
'I, 530-534. + I, 665.
61, 514.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
167
condition of a career, and the wise praise him who knows
how to be silent in the king's service.' Sehetepibre, a mag-
nate of Amenemhet III's court, left upon his tomb-stone an
exhortation to his children that they serve the king with
faithfulness, saying among many other things: “Fight for
his name, purify yourselves by his oath, and ye shall be free
from trouble. The beloved of the king shall be blessed; but
there is no tomb for one hostile to his majesty; and his body
shall be thrown to the waters.” 2
Under such conditions the Pharaoh could not but surround
himself with the necessary power to enforce his will when
obliged to do so. A class of military “attendants” or liter-
ally “followers of his majesty” therefore arose. They were
professional soldiers, the first of whom we have any knowl-
edge in ancient Egypt. In companies of a hundred men
each they garrisoned the palace and the strongholds of the
royal house from Nubia to the Asiatic frontier. How numer-
ous they may have been, it is now impossible to determine.
They formed at least the nucleus of a standing army,
although it is evident that they were not as yet in sufficient
numbers to be dignified by this term. Whence they were
drawn is also uncertain, but their commanders at least were
of higher birth than the middle class. We shall find them
as the most prominent force in all the Pharaoh's wars, espe-
cially in Nubia, and also in charge of royal expeditions to
the mines, quarries and Red Sea ports. Nevertheless the
great mass of the army employed by the Pharaoh at this
time was composed of the free born citizens of the middle
class, forming the militia or the permanent force of the
nomarch, who at the king's summons placed himself at their
head and led them in the wars of his liege-lord. The army
in time of war was therefore made up of contingents fur-
nished and commanded by the feudatories. In peace they
were also frequently drawn upon to furnish the intelligent
power applied to the transportation of great monuments or
employed in the execution of public works. All free citizens,
II, 532.
' I, 748.
168
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
whether priests or not, were organized and enrolled in “gen-
erations,” a term designating the different classes of youth,
which were to become successively liable to draught for mili-
tary or public service. As in the Old Kingdom, war con-
tinues to be little more than a series of loosely organized
predatory expeditions, the records of which clearly display
the still unwarlike character of the Egyptian.
The detachment of the nobles from the court since the
Sixth Dynasty had resulted in the rise of a provincial so-
ciety, of which we gain glimpses especially at Elephantine,
Bersheh, Benihasan and Siut, where the tombs of the nom-
archs are still preserved, and at Abydos, where all other
classes now desired to be buried or to erect a memorial stone.
The life of the nobles therefore no longer centred in the
court, and the aristocracy of the time, being scattered
throughout the country, took on local forms. The nomarch,
with his large family circle, his social pleasures, his hunting
and his sports, is an interesting and picturesque figure of
the country nobleman, with whom we would gladly tarry if
space permitted. Characteristic of this age is the promi-
nence of the middle class. To some extent this prominence
is due to the fact that a tomb, a tomb-stone and mortuary
equipment have become a necessity also for a large propor-
tion of this class, who felt no such necessity and left no such
memorial of their existence in the Old Kingdom. In the
cemetery at Abydos, among nearly eight hundred men of the
time buried there, one in four bore no title either of office or
of rank.' They sometimes designate themselves as “citi-
zens of the town,''2 but ordinarily the name stands alone
on the tomb-stone, with no hint of the owner's station. Some
of these men were tradesmen, some land-owners, others arti-
sans and artificers; but among them were men of wealth and
luxury. In the Art Institute at Chicago there is a fine coffin
belonging to such an untitled citizen which he had made of
costly cedar imported from Lebanon. To such we should
undoubtedly add those who occasionally prefix to their names
* Catalogue Cairo, Nos. 20,001-20,780.
* Ibid. passim.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
169
an indication of their calling, like “master sandal-maker,"
“gold-smith” or “copper-smith,” without other designa-
tion of their station in life. Of the people bearing titles of
office on these Middle Kingdom tomb-stones of Abydos, the
vast majority were small office-holders, displaying no title
of rank and undoubtedly belonging to this same middle class.
The government service now offered a career to the youth
of this station in life; the assistant treasurer, who, as the
reader will recall, was so solicitous for the maintenance of
the Theban nome in time of famine, expressly refers to
himself as a "citizen." The inheritance by the son of his
father's calling, already not uncommon in the Old Kingdom,
was now general. The tomb-stones of the time exhort the
passers-by, as they would that their children should inherit
their offices, to pray for the deceased. Such a custom must
necessarily lead to the formation of an official middle class.
Their ability to read and write also raised them above those
of their own station who were illiterate. A father bringing
his son to be educated as a scribe at the court-school exhorts
him to industry, and taking up calling after calling, shows
that every handicraft abounds in difficulties and hardships;
while that of the scribe alone brings honour, ease and wealth.?
Although the state of the arts shows clearly that the crafts-
men of the time were often men of the finest ability, whose
station in life could not have been undesirable, the scribal and
official middle class thus looked down upon them, and exalted
the calling of the scribe above all others. From this time on
we shall find the scribe constantly glorying in his knowl-
edge and his station. While the monuments of the Old
Kingdom revealed to us only the life of the titled nobility
at the court and the serfs on their estates, in the Middle
Kingdom we thus discern a prosperous and often well-to-do
middle class in the provinces, sometimes owning their own
slaves and lands and bringing their offerings of first fruits
to the temple of the town as did the nomarch himself. The
nomarch showed great concern for the welfare of this class
I See above, p. 160.
2 Pap. Sallier II.
SI, 536.
170
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and the reader will recall his gifts of grain to them in time
of famine. One of them has left a short record of his
pros-
perity on his tomb-stone, saying: “I was one having goodly
gardens and tall sycamores; I built a wide house in my city,
and I excavated a tomb in my cemetery-cliff. I made a
canal for my city and I ferried (people] over it in my boat.
I was one ready [for service], leading my peasants until the
coming of the day when it was well with me [day of death],
when I gave it [his wealth] to my son by will.” At the
bottom of the social scale were the unnamed serfs, the “peas-
ants” of the inscription just read, the toiling millions who
produced the agricultural wealth of the land,--the despised
class whose labour nevertheless formed the basis of the eco-
nomic life of the nation. In the nomes they were also taught
handicrafts and we see them depicted in the tombs at Beni-
hasan and elsewhere engaged in the production of all sorts
of handiwork. Whether their output was solely for the use
of the nomarch's estates or also on a large scale for traffic in
the markets with the middle class throughout the country,
is entirely uncertain.
In no element of their life are there clearer evidences of
change and development than in the religion of the Middle
Kingdom Egyptians. Here again we are in a new age.
The official supremacy of Re, so marked since the rise of the
Fifth Dynasty, had continued through the internal conflicts
which followed at the fall of the Old Kingdom and at the
rise of the Twelfth Dynasty his triumph was complete. The
other priesthoods, desirous of securing for their own, per-
haps purely local deity, a share of the sun-god's glory, grad-
ually discovered that their god was but a form and name of
Re; and some of them went so far that their theologizing
found practical expression in the god's name.
Thus, for
example, the priests of Sobk, a crocodile god, who had no
connection with the sun-god in the beginning, now called
him Sobk-Re. In like manner, Amon, hitherto an obscure
local god of Thebes, who had attained some prominence by
i Florence, Stela 1774, from my own photograph.

Fig. 81.-A MIDDLE KINGDOM COFFIN AND MORTUARY FURNITURE.
Including boats, servants preparing food and beer, and a house (in the middle). Berlin Museum.

Ft
。
ALGOVE 670
FIG. 82.-MORTUARY BOAT OF SESOSTRIS III.
From his pyramid at Dashur. It is 30 feet long, 8 feet wide, 4 feet deep, of cedar of Lebanon. (Field Columbian
Museum, Chicago.)
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
171
the political rise of the city, was from now on a solar god,
and was commonly called by his priests Amon-Re. There
were in this movement the beginnings of a tendency toward
a pantheistic solar monotheism, which we shall yet trace to
its remarkable culmination.
While the temples had probably somewhat increased in
size, the official cult was not materially altered, and there
was still no large class of priests. Sesostris II's temple of
Anubis at Kahun by the Fayum had over it only a noble
with the office of woverseer of the temple," assisted by a
“chief lector," with nine subordinates. Only the “overseer
of the temple””' and the “lector” were constantly in service
at the sanctuary, the nine subordinates being laymen, who
served the temple only one inonth in the year, giving place
each month to a new nine, to whom they turned over the
temple property each time. Besides these, the menial duties
of the sanctuary demanded six door-keepers and two ser-
vants.
The triumph of Osiris was not less sweeping than that of
Re, although for totally different reasons. The supremacy
of
Re was largely due to his political prominence, added to the
prestige which the sun-god had always enjoyed in the Nile
valley; while that of Osiris had no connection with the state,
but was a purely popular victory. That his priests contrib-
uted to his triumph by persistent propaganda is nevertheless
probable, but their field of operations will have been among
the people. At Abydos the Osiris-myth was wrought into
a series of dramatical presentations in which the chief inci-
dents of the god's life, death and final triumph were annually
enacted before the people by the priests. Indeed in the pres-
entation of some portions of it the people were permitted
to participate; and the whole was unquestionably as impres-
sive in the eyes of the multitude as were the miracle and
passion plays of the Christian age. We find upon their
tomb-stones not uncommonly the prayer that in the future
· Borchardt, Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1000, 94.
' I, 662, 669.
172
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
they may be able to come forth from the tomb and view these
festal presentations. Among the incidents enacted was the
procession bearing the god's body to his tomb for burial. It
was but natural that this custom should finally result in iden-
tifying as the original tomb of Osiris the place on the desert
behind Abydos, which in this scene served as the tomb.
Thus the tomb of king Zer of the First Dynasty, who had
ruled over a thousand years before, was in the Middle King-
dom already regarded as that of Osiris. As veneration for
the spot increased, it became a veritable holy sepulchre, and
Abydos gained a sanctity possessed by no other place in
Egypt. All this wrought powerfully upon the people; they
came in pilgrimage to the place and the ancient tomb of Zer
was buried deep beneath a mountain of jars containing the
votive offerings which they brought. If possible the Egyp-
tian was now buried at Abydos within the wall which
enclosed the god's temple until the tombs began to encroach
upon the temple area, and the priests found it necessary to
erect a wall around them, cutting them off from further
absorption of the sacred enclosure. From the vizier himself
down to the humblest cobbler, we find them crowding this
most sacred cemetery of Egypt. Where burial at Abydos
was impossible, however, as in the case of the nomarch, the
dead of the noble class were at least carried thither after
embalmment to associate with the great god and participate
for a time in his ceremonies; after which they were then
carried back to be interred at home. But the masses to
whom even this was impossible erected memorial tablets
there for themselves and their relatives, calling upon the
god in prayer and praise to remember them in the here-
after. Royal officials and emissaries of the government,
whose business brought them to the city, failed not to im-
prove the opportunity to erect such a tablet, and the date
and character of their commissions which they sometimes
add, furnish us with invaluable historical facts, of which we
should otherwise never have gained any knowledge.?
: E. g. 1, 671-2.
i Ibid.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
173
As the destiny of the dead became more and more closely
identified with that of Osiris, the judgment which he had
been obliged to undergo was supposed to await also all who
departed to his realms. Strangely enough it is Osiris him-
self who presides over the ordeal to which every arrival in
the nether world was now supposed to be subjected. He
had already been known as a judge in the Old Kingdom, but
it was not until the Middle Kingdom that this idea was
clearly developed and took firm hold upon the mortuary
beliefs of the time. Before Osiris, enthroned with forty
two assistant judges, hideous demons, each representing one
of the nomes into which Egypt was divided, the deceased
was led into the judgment-hall. Here he addressed his
judges, and to each one of the forty two assistants he pleaded
not guilty to a certain sin, while his heart was weighed in
the balances over against a feather, the symbol of truth,
in order to test the truth of his plea. The forty two sins,
of which he says he was not guilty, are those which are con-
demned as well by the modern conscience of the world.
They may be summed up as murder, stealing, especially
robbing minors, lying, deceit, false witness and slander, revil-
ing, eaves-dropping, sexual impurity, adultery, and trespass
against the gods or the dead as in blasphemy or stealing of
mortuary offerings. It will be seen that the ethical standard
was high; moreover in this judgment the Egyptian intro-
duced for the first time in the history of man the fully
developed idea that the future destiny of the dead must
be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the earthly
life, the idea of future accountability,-of which we found
the first traces in the Old Kingdom. The whole concep-
tion is notable; for a thousand years or more after this no
such idea was known among other peoples, and in Babylonia
and Israel good and bad alike descended together at death
into gloomy Sheol, where no distinction was made between
them. Those who failed to sustain the ordeal before Osiris
successfully were condemned to hunger and thirst, lying in
the darkness of the tomb, from which they might not come
174
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
forth to view the sun. There were also frightful execu-
tioners, one of which, a hideous combination of crocodile,
lion and hippopotamus, was present at the judgment, and
to her the guilty were delivered to be torn in pieces. In
harmony with the triumph of the notion of judgment, it is
noticeable in the Middle Kingdom that the desire to enjoy
at least the reputation of a benevolent and blameless life
was more general than before. We now more often read
upon the tomb-stones such words as we noticed in the Old
Kingdom, “I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty,
clothing to the naked and a ferry-boat to the boatless''; or
“I was father to the orphan, husband to the widow, and a
shelter to the shelterless." We have already referred to
the benevolence of the feudal lords of the time.
The blessed dead, who successfully sustained the judgment
each received the predicate "true of speech," a term which
was interpreted as meaning “triumphant,” and from now
on so employed. Every deceased person, when spoken of
by the living, received this predicate; it was always written
after the names of the dead, and finally also after those of
the living in anticipation of their happy destiny. The pre-
vailing notions regarding the future life had not been clari-
fied by the universal sway of Osiris. On the contrary, all
the old beliefs were now intermingled in inextricable con-
fusion, only worse confounded by the effort to accommodate
them to the Osiris faith, with which in the beginning they
had had nothing to do. The favourite idea is still that the
departed sojourn in the field of Yaru, enjoying peace and
plenty, to which they contribute by cultivating the fruitful
plains of the isle, which bring forth grain twelve feet high.
At the same time they may dwell in the tomb or tarry in its
vicinity; they may mount the heavens to be the comrades
of Re; they may descend to the realm of Osiris in the nether
world; or they may consort with the noble dead who once
ruled Egypt at Abydos.
In one important respect the beliefs of the Egyptian
regarding his future state have suffered a striking change.
MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE
175
He is now beset with innumerable dangers in the next world,
against which he must be forewarned and forearmed. Be-
sides the serpents common in the Pyramid Texts, the most
uncanny foes await him. There is the crocodile, who may
rob the deceased of all his potent charms, the foes of the air,
who may withdraw breath from his nostrils; water may
burst into flame as he would drink; he may be deprived of
his mortuary food and drink, and be forced to devour the
refuse of his own body; he may be robbed of his throne and
place; his body may fall into decay; his foes may rob him
of his mouth, his heart, or even of his head; and should they
take his name away, his whole identity would be lost or
annihilated. None of these apprehensions existed in the
Pyramid Texts, which have since fallen into disuse; but, we
repeat, the deceased must now be forewarned and forearmed
against all these dangers, and hence a mass of magical formu-
laries has arisen since the Old Kingdom by the proper utter-
ance of which the dead may overcome all these foes and
live in triumph and security. These charms are accom-
panied by others enabling the dead to assume any form that
he wishes, to go forth from the tomb at will, or to return and
rejoin the body. The judgment also is depicted in detail
with all that the deceased must be prepared to say on that
occasion. All this was written for the use of the deceased
on the inside of his coffin, and although no canonical selec-
tion of these texts yet existed, they formed the nucleus of
what afterward became the Book of the Dead, or, as the
Egyptian later called it, “The Chapters of Going Forth by
Day,” in reference to their great function of enabling the
dead to leave the tomb. It will be seen that in this class
of literature there was offered to an unscrupulous priest-
hood an opportunity for gain, of which in later centuries
they did not fail to take advantage. Already they attempted
what might not inappropriately be termed a “guide-book'
of the hereafter, a geography of the other world, with a
map of the two ways along which the dead might journey.
This “Book of the Two Ways" was probably composed for
176
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
no other purpose than for gain; and the tendency of which
it is an evidence will meet us in future centuries as the most
baleful influence of Egyptian life and religion.
In the material equipment of the dead, the mastaba, while
it has not entirely disappeared, has largely been displaced
by the excavated cliff-tomb, already found so practical and
convenient by the nobles of Upper Egypt in the Old King-
dom. The kings, however, continue to build pyramids as
we shall see. The furniture supposed to accompany the
dead in the tomb is now frequently painted on the inside of
his coffin. Besides this an elaborate equipment (Fig. 81)
was placed beside the coffin, including a model boat with all
its crew, in order that the deceased might have no difficulty
in crossing the waters to the happy isles. By the pyramid
of Sesostris III in the sands of the desert there were even
buried five large Nile boats (Fig. 82), intended to carry the
king and his house across these waters. In addition to the
statue of the noble in his tomb, the king now rewarded
deserving servants of the state by the gift of another por-
trait statue, bearing a dedication in the noble's honour, which
was set up in one of the larger temples, where it shared in
the offerings, which, after they had been presented to the
god, were distributed for other use; and what was even more
desired, it enabled the deceased noble to participate in all
the feasts celebrated in the temple, as he had been wont
to do in life.
CHAPTER X
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY.
We have seen that under the vigourous and skilful leader-
ship of Amenemhet I the rights and privileges attained by
the powerful landed nobles were for the first time properly
adjusted and subjected to the centralized authority of the
kingship, thus enabling the country, after a long interval,
again to enjoy the inestimable advantages accruing from
a uniform control of the nation's affairs. This difficult and
delicate task doubtless consumed a large part of Amenemhet
I's reign, but when it was once thoroughly accomplished,
his house was able to rule the country for over two centuries.
It is probable that at no other time in the history of Egypt
did the land enjoy such widespread and bountiful prosperity
as now ensued. Amenemhet himself says of it:
I was one who cultivated grain and loved the harvest-god;
The Nile greeted me in every valley;
None was hungry in my years, none thirsted then;
Men dwelt in peace, through that which I wrought, conversing
of me.1
In the midst of all this, when Amenemhet fancied that he
had firmly established himself and his line upon the throne
of the land which owed him so much, a foul conspiracy to
assassinate him was conceived among the official members
of his household. It would seem that it even went so far
as the final attack upon the king's person in the night, and
that he only escaped with his life after a combat with his
assailants in his bed-chamber. However this may be, the
palace halls rang with the clash of arms, and the king's life
* I, 483,
12
177
178
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
was in danger. In 1980 B. C., probably no long time after
this incident, and doubtless influenced by it, Amenemhet
appointed his son Sesostris, the first of the name, to share
the throne as coregent with him. The prince brought to his
high office a new fund of energy, and as the internal affairs
of the country were finally made more and more stable, he
was able to devote his attention to the winning of the extreme
South, an enterprise which had been interrupted by the rise
of the feudal barons and the fall of the Sixth Dynasty. In
spite of the achievements of that dynasty in the South, the
country below the first cataract as far north as Edfu was
still reckoned as belonging to Nubia and still bore the name
Tapedet, “Bow-Land,''2 usually applied to Nubia. In the
twenty ninth year of the old king the Egyptian forces pene-
trated Wawat to Korusko, the termination of the desert
route cutting off the great westward bend of the Nile, and
captured prisoners among the Mazoi in the country beyond.3
We can hardly doubt that the young Sesostris was the leader
of this expedition. Work was also resumed in the quarries
of Hammamat, while in the North “the Troglodytes, the
Asiatics and Sand-dwellers" on the east of the Delta were
punished. This eastern frontier was strengthened at the
eastern terminus of the Wadi Tumilat by a fortification,
perhaps that already in existence under the Old Kingdom
Pharaohs; and a garrison, with its sentinels constantly upon
the watch towers, was stationed there. Thus in North and
South alike an aggressive policy was maintained, the fron-
tiers made safe and the foreign connections of the kingdom
carefully regarded.
As the old king felt his end approaching, he delivered to
his son brief instructions' embodying the ripe wisdom which
he had accumulated during his long career. The reader
may clearly discern in these utterances the bitterness with
which the attempt upon his life by his own immediate circle
had imbued the aged Amenemhet. He says to his son:
*I, 479–480.
2 I, 500, 1. 4.
* I, 472-3, 483. • I, 461-8.
I, 469-71; 483, 1. 3. 6 I, 493, II. 17-19.
71, 474-483.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
179
Hearken to that which I say to thee,
That thou mayest be king of the earth,
That thou mayest be ruler of the lands,
That thou mayest increase good.
Harden thyself against all subordinates.
The people give heed to him who terrorizes them;
Approach them not alone.
Fill not thy heart with a brother,
Know not a friend,
Nor make for thyself intimates,
Wherein there is no end.
When thou sleepest, guard for, thyself thine own heart;
For a man has no people,
In the day of evil.
I gave to the beggar,
I nourished the orphan;
I admitted the insignificant,
As well as him who was of great account.
But he who ate my food made insurrection;
He to whom I gave iny hand, aroused fear therein."
The story of ingratitude which was finally capable of a
murderous assault upon him, then follows, in order to en-
force the embittered counsel of the old king. It was probably
not long after this that Sesostris was dispatched at the head
of an army to chastise the Libyans on the western frontier.
During the absence of the prince on this campaign in 1970
B. C., Amenemhet died, after a reign of thirty years. Swift
messengers were dispatched to inform Sesostris of his
father's demise. Without letting the army know what had
happened he quickly left the camp that night and hastened
to the Residence at Ithtowe, where he assumed the throne
before any pretender among the sons of the harem could
forestall him. The whole proceeding is characteristic of
the history of every royal line from the earliest times in the
orient. Similarly, the news of the old king's death, acciden-
tally overheard in the royal tent of Sesostris, threw a certain
Sinube, one of the nobles there, into a state of abject terror,
* I, 478–9.
II, 491,
2
180
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
such that he immediately concealed himself, and watching
his opportunity fled into Asia, where he remained for many
years. Whether he had been guilty of some act which in-
curred the displeasure of the prince coregent, or whether
he had some indirect claim upon the throne which became
valid at Amenemhet's death, is uncertain; but his precipi-
tate flight from Egypt is another striking evidence of the
dangerous forces which were liberated by the death of a
Pharaoh.
The achievements of the house of Amenemhet outside of
the limits of Egypt: in Nubia, Hammamat and Sinai, have
left more adequate records in these regions than their benefi-
cent and prosperous rule in Egypt itself; and the progress
of the dynasty, at least in inscribed records, can be more
clearly traced abroad than at home. It will therefore be
easier to follow the foreign enterprises of the dynasty before
we dwell upon their achievements at home. Profiting by his
ten years' experience as coregent with his father, Sesostris
I was able to maintain with undimmed splendour the pres-
tige of his house. He proved himself quite capable of con-
tinuing the great enterprises which he had inherited. The
conquest of Nubia was pushed as before; the feudatories
were called upon to muster their quotas, and Ameni, later
nomarch of the Oryx-nome, relates in his Benihasan tomb
that his father, who had been appointed nomarch by Ame-
nemhet I, was now too old to undertake such a campaign,
and that he himself, therefore, as his father's representa-
tive placed himself at the head of the troops of the Oryx-
nome, and penetrated Kush under the leadership of his liege,
Sesostris I. The war was thus carried above the second cat-
aract into the great region known as Kush, which now
becomes common in the monumental records, although the
name occurs but once upon the monuments of the Old King-
dom.
We know nothing of the course of the campaign,
but it did not involve serious fighting, for Ameni boasts
that he returned without the loss of a man. The nomarch
41, 486 ff.
I, 361.
31, 519.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
181
of Elephantine, as in the Sixth Dynasty, also played a prom-
inent part in the war and it was perhaps upon this expe-
dition that an elephant was captured, to which he refers
in his tomb at Assuan. The campaign is notable as the first
in a foreign country ever led by the Pharaoh personally, in
so far as we know. The date of the expedition is unknown,
but it was doubtless earlier than that which occurred eight
years after the death of the king's father, for Sesostris I
then no longer regarded it as necessary to lead the conquest
of the South in person. He therefore dispatched Mentu-
hotep, one of his commanders, on a further campaign in
Kush. Mentuhotep left a large stela’ at Wadi Halfa, just
below the second cataract, recording his triumph and giving
us the first list of conquered foreign districts and towns
which we possess.
Unfortunately we know so little of
Nubian geography in this distant age that only one of the
ten districts enumerated can be located. It was called Shet,
and lay above the second cataract some thirty or forty miles
south of Wadi Halfa, near modern Kummeh. It is thus
probable that Mentuhotep's stela was erected close to, if not
in the region which he conquered. To this stela we have
already referred as the one on which Mentuhotep made him-
self so prominent that his figure was erased and that of a
god placed over it. All appearances would indicate that
the successful commander was deposed and disgraced.
The country was now sufficiently subjugated, so that the
chiefs could be forced to work the mines on the east, in the
Wadi Alâki and vicinity, and Ameni of the Oryx-nome was
dispatched to Nubia at the head of four hundred troops of
his nome to bring back the output of gold. The king im-
proved the occasion to send with Ameni the young crown-
prince, who afterward became Amenemhet II, in order that
he might familiarize himself with the region where he should
one day be called upon to continue the process of subjuga-
tion and of incorporation into the Pharaoh's kingdom.'
Similarly the gold country on the east of Coptos was now
11, p. 247, note b.
21, 510-514.
3 I, 520.
182
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
exploited, and the faithful Ameni was entrusted with the
mission of convoying the vizier, who had been sent thither,
to convey the precious metal safely to the Nile valley. This
he successfully accomplished with a force of six hundred
men, mustered from the Oryx-nome. The development of
Egypt's foreign interests was evidently closely watched by
Sesostris I, and it is under him that we first hear of inter-
course with the oases. While the Pharaoh was not yet able
to take possession of them, it is evident that he was in com-
munication with their towns. Ikudidi, a steward of Sesos-
tris I, was dispatched by him to the great oasis of El
Khargeh on the west of Abydos, whence the caravans
started thither. His visit in the city of the holy sepulchre
of Osiris was an opportunity improved by Ikudidi, as by
so many of his colleagues; and he erected a memorial stela
there, praying for the favour of the god. His incidental ref-
erence on this monument to the occasion of his visit at
Abydos is our sole source of information regarding his expe-
dition to the oasis.?
It was doubtless the realization of the evident advantage
which he had enjoyed by the association with his father as
coregent that induced Sesostris I to appoint his own son in
the same way. When he died in 1935 B. C., after a reign
of thirty five years, his son, Amenemhet II had already been
coregent for three years, and assumed the sole authority
without difficulty. This policy was also continued by Ame-
nemhet II and his son Sesostris II had also ruled three
years“ in conjunction with his father before the latter's
death. For fifty years under these two kings in succession
the nation enjoyed unabated prosperity. The mines of
Sinai were reopened, and the traffic with Punt, resumed by
Amenemhet II, was continued under his son. The road
across the desert from Coptos, five days to the Red Sea, had
already been supplied with wells and stations by the Theban
II, 521.
2 I, 524-8.
3 I, 460.
6 I, 602.
61, 604-6, 618.
+ Ibid.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
183
kings of the Eleventh Dynasty. The route was north of
the Hammamat road and terminated in a small harbour at
the mouth of the modern Wadi Gasûs, some miles north of
the later harbour of Kosêr, the Leucos Limên of the Ptole-
mies. Two of the commanders who sailed from this port
(Wadi Gasûs) left inscriptions there to commemorate their
safe return. The distant shores of Punt gradually became
more familiar to Egyptian folk and a popular tale narrates
the marvellous adventures of a shipwrecked seaman in these
waters. The Nubian gold-mines continued to be a source
of wealth to the royal house, and Egyptian interests in
Nubia were protected by fortresses in Wawat, garrisoned
and subject to periodical inspection. With the death of
Sesostris II in 1887 B. C., all was ripe for the complete and
thorough conquest of the two hundred miles of Nile valley
that lie between the first and second cataracts.
Sesostris III was possibly the only one of his house who
had not enjoyed a period of joint power with his father in
preparation for the duties of his high office. Nevertheless
he proved himself worthy of the great line from which he
sprang. Immediately on his accession he took the prelimi-
nary steps toward the completion of the great task in Nubia.
The most important of these measures was the establishment
of unbroken connection by water with the country above
the first cataract. It was over six hundred years since the
excavation of the canal through the cataract by Uni in the
Sixth Dynasty, and meantime it may have been demolished
by the action of the powerful current. In any case, we
hear nothing more of it. At the most difficult .point in the
granite barrier the engineers of Sesostris III cut a channel
through the rock some two hundred and sixty feet long,
nearly thirty four feet wide and nearly twenty six feet deep.
It was named “Beautiful-are-the-Ways-of-Khekure" (the
throne name of Sesostris III), and many a war-galley of
the Pharaoh must have been drawn up through it during
i See above, p. 153. 2 I, 604-6, 617-18. 31, 616. * I, 642-4.
184
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the early campaigns of this king, of which we unfortunately
have no records. In the eighth year it was found to be
choked up and had to be cleared for the expedition then
passing up river.1 The subjugation of the country had
then made such progress that Sesostris III was in that year
able to select a favourable strategic position as his frontier
at modern Kummeh and Semneh, which are opposite each
other on the banks of the river just above the second cat-
aract. This point he formally declared to be the southern
boundary of his kingdom. He erected on each side of the
river a stela marking the boundary-line, and one of these
two important landmarks has survived; it bears the follow-
ing significant inscription: “Southern boundary made in
the year eight, under the majesty of the king of Upper and
Lower Egypt, Sesostris III, who is given life for ever and
ever:-in order to prevent that any negro should cross it
by water or by land, with a ship, or any herds of the
negroes; except a negro who shall cross it to do trading
or with a commission. All kind treatment shall be accorded
them, but without allowing a ship of the negroes to pass
by Heh [Semneh] going down stream, forever."12
of course impossible to maintain the frontier in this way
without a constant display of force. Sesostris III had there-
fore erected a strong fortress on each side of the river at
this point. The stronger and larger of the two, at Semneh,
on the west side, was called “Mighty is Khekure” (Sesos-
tris III), and within its fortified enclosure he built a temple
to Dedwen, a native god of Nubia. These two strongholds
(Fig. 83) still survive, and although in a state of ruin, they
show remarkable skill in the selection of the site and
unexpected knowledge of the art of constructing effective
defenses.
Four years later disturbances among the turbulent Nubian
tribes south of the frontier again called the king into Nubia.
Although Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Kush, the
country above the second cataract, it was nevertheless nec-
'I, 645–7.
²1, 652.
8 I, 752.
It was
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
185
essary for the Pharaoh to protect the trade-routes leading
through it to his new frontier, from the extreme south-routes,
along which the products of the Sudan were now constantly
passing into Egypt. It will be noticed that the declaration
of the boundary permitted the passage of any negro who
came to trade, or bore a matter of business from some
southern chief. From now on it was more often south of
his frontier that the Pharaoh was obliged to appear in force,

FIG. 83.
RESTORATION OF THE FORTRESSES OF SEMNEH AND KUMMEH.
(After Perrot and Chipiez.)
than in the country between the first two cataracts. More-
over, there was rich plunder to be had on these campaigns
over the border, so that the maintenance of the southern
trade routes was not without its compensations. Sesostris
III was able to send his chief treasurer, Ikhernofret, to
restore the cultus image of Osiris at Abydos with gold cap-
tured in Kush ;' it continued to be more plentiful and there-
fore less valuable than silver. The letter written by the
*I, 665.
186
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
king to the treasurer on this occasion we have already read
in the preceding chapter."
The Kushite tribes including the barbarians on the east
of the Nile valley, must have made an unusual raid over
the border just before the sixteenth year, for in that year
Sesostris III undertook an extensive campaign against them,
in which he devastated their country, burnt their harvests
and carried off their cattle. He then renewed his declara-
tion of the southern boundary at Semneh, erecting a stela ?
in the temple there bearing his second proclamation of the
place of the frontier, and exhorting his descendants to main-
tain it where he had established it. He also erected on the
boundary a statue of himself as if to awe the natives of the
region by his very presence. At the same time he strength-
ened the frontier defenses by a fortress at Wadi Halfa, prob-
ably due to him, and another at Matuga, twelve miles further
south, in which his name was found. He erected also
another stronghold on the island of Uronarti, just below
Semneh. Here he placed a duplicate of the second proc-
lamation. He called this new fort “Repulse of the Troglo-
dytes, 135 and an annual feast bearing the same name was
established in the temple of Semneh, where it was main-
tained with a regular calendar of offerings. This feast
was still celebrated and its calendar of offerings renewed
under the Empire. Three years later a campaign, which
may have been only a journey of inspection, was led into
Kush by the king himself, and as far as we know this was
his last expedition thither." He seems to have led all his
wars there in person; his vigourous policy so thoroughly
established the supremacy of the Pharaoh in the newly won
possessions that the Empire regarded him as the real con-
queror of the region, and he was worshipped already in the
Eighteenth Dynasty as the god of the land. Thus the
gradual progress of the Pharaohs southward, which had
begun in prehistoric times at El Kab (Nekhen) and had
* See above, p. 166. 9 I, 653-660.
* I, 660.
* I, 054.
& II, 167 fr.
? I, 602.
SII, 107 ff.
6 Ibid.

FIG. 84.-THE NUBIAN NILE FROM THE RUINED MOSLEM
STRONGHOLD ON THE HEIGHTS OF IBRIM.
(Stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)

Fig. 85.- RUINS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MINING SETTLEMENT AT SARBUT
EL-KHADEM, SINAI.
(Ordnance Survey photograph.)
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
187
absorbed the first cataract by the beginning of the Sixth
Dynasty, had now reached the second cataract, and had
added two hundred miles of the Nile valley to the king-
dom. While this conquest had been already begun in the
Sixth Dynasty, it was the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty who
made it an accomplished fact.
It is under the aggressive Sesostris III also that we hear
of the first invasion of Syria by the Pharaohs. Sebek-khu,
one of his military attendants, at that time commandant of
the residence city, who had also served in Nubia, mentions
on his memorial stone' at Abydos that he accompanied the
king on a campaign into a region called Sekmem in Retenu
(Syria). The Asiatics were defeated in battle, and Sebek-
khu took a prisoner. He narrates with visible pride how
the king rewarded him: “He gave me a staff of electrum
into my hand, a bow, and a dagger wrought with electrum,
together with his [the prisoner's] weapons.” Here is a
trace of the military enthusiasm, which two centuries and a
half later achieved the conquest of the Pharaoh's empire in
the same region. Unfortunately we do not know the loca-
tion of Sekmem in Syria, but it is evident that in some
degree the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom were prepar-
ing the way for the conquest in Asia, as those of the Sixth
Dynasty had done in Nubia. Already in Sesostris I's time
regular messengers? to and from the Pharaonic court were
traversing Syria and Palestine: Egyptians and the Egyp-
tian tongue were not uncommon there, and the dread of the
Pharaoh's name was already felt. At Gezer, between
Jerusalem and the sea, the stela of an Egyptian official of
this age has recently been found® within the precincts of
the “high place” in the “fourth city” from the bottom of
the Gezer “tell.” Khnumhotep of Menet-Khufu depicts in
his well known Benihasan tomb the arrival of thirty seven
Semitic tribesmen, who evidently came to trade with the
nomarch, offering him the fragrant cosmetics so much used
11, 676-687.
I, 496, 1. 94. SPEFQS 1903, 37, 125.
188
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
by the Egyptians. Their leader was a "ruler of the hill-
country, Absha," a name well known in Hebrew as Abshai.?
The unfortunate noble, Sinuhe, who fled to Syria at the
death of Amenemhet I, found not far over the border a
friendly sheik, who had been in Egypt, further north he
found Egyptians abiding. While a fortress existed at the
Delta frontier to keep out the marauding Beduin, there can
be no doubt that it was no more a hindrance to legitimate
trade and intercourse than was the blockade against the
negroes maintained by Sesostris III at the second cataract.
This Suez region and likewise the Gulf of Suez were
already connected with the eastern arm of the Nile by canal,
the earliest known connection between the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. Fragmentary but massive remains of
the temple buildings erected by this dynasty in the cities
of the northeastern Delta, like Tanis and Nebesheli, show
their activity in this region. The needs of the Semitic
tribes of neighbouring Asia were already those of highly
civilized peoples and gave ample occasion for trade. The
tribesmen in the Benihasan tomb wear garments of finely
patterned, woven, woolen stuff and sandals of leather, carry
metal weapons and use a richly wrought lyre. Already the
red pottery produced by the Hittite peoples in Cappadocia,
of Asia Minor, was possibly finding its way to the Semites of
southern Palestine. Doubtless the commerce along this route,
through Palestine, over Carmel and northward to the trade-
routes leading down the Euphrates to Babylon, while not yet
heavy, was already long existent. Commerce with southern
Europe had also begun. The peoples of the Ægean, whose
civilization was now rapidly developing into that of the My-
cenean age, were not unknown in Egypt at this time. They
were called Haunebu, and a treasurer of the Eleventh Dy-
nasty, whose duty was the maintenance of safe frontier
ports, boasts of himself as one "who quells the Haunebu.” ?
This shows that their intercourse with Egypt was not always
1 I, p. 281, note d. 2 II Sam., 10: 10.
31, 403, 1. 20, 494.
* I, 493, 11. 18-19.
. I, 428.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
189
܀
peaceful. A scribe of the time likewise boasts that his
pen
included the Haunebu also in his records. Their pottery has
been found at Kahun in burials of this age, and the Ægean
decorative art of the time, especially in its use of spirals, is
influenced by that of Egypt. Europe thus emerges more
clearly upon the horizon of the Nile people during the Middle
Kingdom.
While Sesostris III's campaign into Syria was evidently
no more than a plundering expedition, as far from achieving
the conquest of the country as were the expeditions of the
Sixth Dynasty into Nubia, nevertheless it must have added
much to the reputation of his house. As the first Pharaoh
who had personally led a campaign in a foreign land, the
Nubian wars of Sesostris I had brought undying prestige
to the name, a prestige which had been greatly increased
by the achievements of Sesostris III. To the name Sesos-
tris, therefore, tradition attached the first foreign conquests
of the Pharaohs. Around this name clustered forever after
the stories of war and conquest related by the people. In
Greek times Sesostris had long since become but a legendary
figure which cannot be identified with any particular king.
That some of the deeds of Rameses II were possibly also
interwoven into the Greek legend of Sesostris is not the
slightest reason for identifying Sesostris with that Nine-
teenth Dynasty king; nor, we repeat, will the preposterous
deeds narrated of the legendary Sesostris permit of his iden-
tification with any particular historical king.
For thirty eight years Sesostris III continued his vig-
ourous rule of a kingdom which now embraced a thousand
miles of Nile valley. He had even succeeded in suppress-
ing the feudal nobles; and their tombs, as at Beni-Hasan
and Bersheh, now disappear. As old age drew on, he
appointed his son as coregent, and an account of the
appointment was recorded on the walls of the temple at
Arsinoe in the Fayum. At Sesostris III's death in 1849
190
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
B. C., this coregent son Amenemhet, the third of the name,
seems to have assumed the throne without difficulty.
A number of peaceful enterprises for the prosperity of
the country and the increase of the royal revenues were suc-
cessfully undertaken by Amenemhet III. While operations
in the mines of Sinai had been resumed as early as the reign
of Sesostris I, the foreign projects of the dynasty had else-
where quite surpassed their achievements here. It remained
for Amenemhet III to develop the equipment of the stations
in the peninsula, so that they might become more permanent
than the mere camp of an expedition while working the
mines for a few months. These expeditions suffered great
hardships and an official of the time describes the difficulties
which beset him when some unlucky chance had decreed that
he should arrive there in summer. He says that “although
it was not the season for going to this Mine-Land," he went
withoạt flinching, and in spite of the fact that “the high-
lands are hot in summer and the mountains brand the skin,
he encouraged his workmen who complained of "this evil
summer season,” and having accomplished the work brought
back more than had been required of him. He left a stela?
there telling of his experience and encouraging those of his
posterity who might find themselves in a similar predica-
ment. Under such conditions permanent wells and cisterns,
barracks for the workmen, houses for the directing officials,
and fortifications against the marauding Beduin were indis-
pensable. While some of these things may have been
already furnished by his predecessors, Amenemhet III made
the station at Sarbut el-Khadem a well equipped colony for
the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the mountains. He
excavated a large cistern in the rocks and opened it with
festival celebrations in his forty fourth year. A temple
for the local Hathor was erected, and we find an official of
the treasury journeying thither with offerings by water, a
fact which shows that the Gulf of Suez was commonly util-
ized to avoid the wearisome desert journey. The mines
II, 733–740. 2 I, 725-727. :1, 717-718; similar offerings I, 738.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
191
were placed each under charge of a foreman, after whom
it was named, and at periodic visits of the treasury officials
a fixed amount of ore was expected from each mine. The
occasional raids of the neighbouring Beduin were doubtless
of little consequence in view of the troops still controlled by
the "treasurer of the god," who could easily disperse the
plundering bands that might venture too close to the colony.
Here Egyptians died and were buried in the burning valley
with all the equipment customary at home, and the ruins still
surviving (Fig. 85) show that what had before been but an
intermittent and occasional effort had now become a perma-
nent and uninterrupted industry, contributing a fixed annual
amount to the royal treasury.
It is doubtless true that the circumstances in which these
kings of the feudal period found themselves forced them to
seek new sources of wealth outside of the country; but at
the same time, as we have before intimated, they raised the
productive capacity of the land to an unprecedented level.
Unfortunately, the annals or records of these achievements
have not survived. It was particularly Amenemhet III of
whom we have evidence of attention to the irrigation system.
His officials in the fortress of Semneh at the second cataract
had instructions to record the height of the Nile on the
rocks there, which thus in a few years became a nilometer,
recording the maximum level of the high water from year
to year. These records, still preserved upon the rocks, are
from twenty five to thirty feet higher than the Nile rises at
the present day. Such observations, communicated without
delay to the officials of lower Egypt in the vizier's office,
enabled them to estimate the crops of the coming season,
and the rate of taxation was fixed accordingly.
In Lower Egypt a plan was also devised for extending
the time during which the waters of the inundation could
be made available by an enormous scheme of irrigation,
which was carried out with brilliant success. A glance at the
II, 731.
: LD II, 139; Lepsius, Sitzungsber. der Berliner Akad. 1844, 374 ff.
192
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
map (No.13) will show the reader an opening in the western
highlands of the Nile valley some sixty five miles above the
southern apex of the Delta. This gap in the western hills
leads into the great depression of the Libyan des known
as the Fayum, a basin which does not differ from those of
the western oases, and is indeed an extensive oasis close to
the Nile valley, with which it is connected by the gap already
ntoui.
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COM
RE
Contout R.L.
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may
.
R
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Dotted time shows
preken Lake Quran
Timite
Biatiny
dan
ya
Olesen
1027
Enclosed
Area
Hawanah
Pyramid
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Canals of Inflow
and Outflow
Share
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Scale 719,866
Dimensions in Metres
Wad
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MAP 3.
THE FAYUM.
(After Maj. R. H. Brown, R.E.)
mentioned. Shaped like a huge maple-leaf, of which the
stem, pointing nearly eastward, represents the connection
with the Nile valley, it is generally speaking about forty
miles across each way. Its lower tracts in the northwest,
occupied to-day by the lake called Birket el-Kurun (Fig.
86), are very much depressed, the surface of the lake at

FIG. 86.-VIEW ACROSS THE BIRKET EL-KURÛN IN THE NORTHWESTERN FAYUM.


FIG. 88.-WOODEN STATUE OF PRINCE
EWIBRE. (Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 87.-OBELISK OF SESOSTRIS I AT
HELIOPOLIS.
(Stereograph copyright by Underwood & Under-
wood, N. Y.)
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
193
present being over one hundred and forty feet below sea-
level. In prehistoric times the high Nile had filled the entire
Fayum basin, producing a considerable lake. The kings of
the Twelfth Dynasty conceived the plan of controlling the
inflow and outflow for the benefit of the irrigation system
then in force. At the same time they undertook vast reten-
tion walls inside the Fayum at the point where the waters
entered, in order to reclaim some of the area of the Fayum
for cultivation. The earlier kings of the Twelfth Dynasty
began this process of reclamation, but it was especially Ame-
nemhet III who so extended this vast wall that it was at last
probably about twenty seven miles long, thus reclaiming
a final total of twenty seven thousand acres. These enor-
mous works at the point where the lake was most commonly
visited gave the impression that the whole body of water
was an artificial product, excavated, as Strabo says, by king
“Lamares," in which we recognize with certainty the throne
name of Amenemhet III. This then was the famous lake
Moeris of the classic geographers and travellers. Strabo,
the most careful ancient observer of the lake, supports the
vaguer description of Herodotus, and states that during the
time of high Nile, the waters replenished the lake through
the canal which still flows through the gap; but that when
the river fell again, they were allowed to escape through
the same canal, and employed in irrigation. Strabo saw the
regulators for controlling the inflow and the outflow as well.
The attention given the Fayum by Amenemhet III would
indicate that this system of control was at least as old as the
works near the entrance of the famous lake which gave him
the reputation of having excavated it. Modern calculations
have shown that enough water could have been accumulated
to double the volume of the river below the Fayum during
the hundred days of low Nile from the first of April on.
The rich and flourishing province recovered from the lake
was doubtless royal domain, and there are evidences that it
Maj. R. H. Brown, R.E. The Fayam and Lake Moeris, London, 1892.
2
1
3 Ibid.
13
194
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
was a favourite place of abode with the kings of the latter part
of the Twelfth Dynasty. A prosperous town, known to the
Greeks as Crocodilopolis, or Arsinoe, with its temple to Sobk,
the crocodile-god, had already arisen in the new province,
and an obelisk of Sesostris I lies at Ebgig far out in the
heart of the reclaimed land. Two colossal statues of Ame-
nemhet III, or at least of the king reputed to be the maker
of the lake in Herodotus's time, stood just outside the great
wall in the midst of the waters. In the gap, on the north
bank of the inflowing canal, was a vast building, some eight
hundred by a thousand feet, which formed a kind of relig-
ious and administrative centre for the whole country. It
contained a set of halls for each nome where its gods were
enshrined and worshipped, and the councils of its govern-
ment gathered from time to time. It would seem from the
remarks of Strabo that each set of halls was thus the office
of the central government pertaining to the administration
of the respective nome, and the whole building was there-
fore the Pharaoh's seat of government for the entire coun-
try. It was still standing in Strabo's time, when it had
already long been known as the Labyrinth, one of the
wonders of Egypt, famous among travellers and historians
of the Græco-Roman world, who compared its intricate com-
plex of halls and passages with the Cretan Labyrinth of
Greek tradition. It is the only building of this remote age,
not exclusively a temple, known to have survived so long;
and Strabo's description of its construction accounts for its
durability, for he says: “It is a marvellous fact that each
of the ceilings of the chambers consists of a single stone, and
also that the passages are covered in the same way with
single slabs of extraordinary size, neither wood nor other
building material having been employed.” The town which
had grown up around this remarkable building was seen
by Strabo; but both have now completely disappeared.
Sesostris II had also founded a town just outside the gap
called Hotep-Sesostris, “Sesostris is Contented,” and he
later built his pyramid beside it. Under these circum-
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
195
stances the Fayum had become the most prominent centre of
the royal and governmental life of this age; and its great
god Sobk was rivalling Amon in the regard of the dynasty,
whose last representative bore the name Sobk-nefru-Re,
which contains that of the god. The name of the god
also appeared in a whole series of Sobk-hoteps of the next
dynasty.
For nearly half a century the beneficent rule of Ame-
nemhet III maintained peace and prosperity throughout
his flourishing kingdom. The people sang of him:
"He makes the Two Lands verdant more than a great Nile.
He hath filled the Two Lands with strength.
He is life, cooling the nostrils;
11
The treasures which he gives are food for those who are in his
following;
He feeds those who tread his path.
The king is food and his mouth is increase."
Business was on a sound basis, values were determined in
terms of weight in copper, and it was customary to append
to the mention of an article the words “of x deben [of
copper],” a deben being 1404 grains. Throughout the land
the evidences of this prosperity under Amenemhet III and
his predecessors still survive in the traces of their extensive
building enterprises, although these have so suffered from
the rebuilding under the Empire that they are but a tithe
of what was once to be seen. Moreover the vandalism of
the Nineteenth Dynasty, especially under Ramses II, oblit-
erated priceless records of the Middle Kingdom by the most
reckless appropriation of its monuments as building mate-
rial. Probably all the more important towns of the country
had received modest temples at the hands of the Old King-
dom Pharaohs, but these have left almost no trace, and we
can gain no comprehensive picture of what the Twelfth
Dynasty may have found throughout the country when they
II, 747.
. 1, 785.
196
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
began their own works. At Thebes, their home, which was
only an obscure village in the Old Kingdom, they found but
a modest chapel, which they replaced with a more preten-
tious temple of Amon, already begun by Amenemhet I. It
was continued or enlarged by Sesostris I, who also built a
dwelling and refectory for the priests of the temple? beside
the sacred lake, a building which was still standing eight
hundred years later. Amenemhet III erected the great
brick wall around the ancient capital of El Kab (Nekheb),
which still stands, as the only city wall of such age now sur-
viving in a condition so nearly intact (Fig. 102). The ancient
temple at Edfu was not forgotten; while at Abydos the wide
popularity and deep veneration of Osiris demanded a new
temple, which was surrounded with an enclosure, within
which for some time the rich and noble were permitted to
erect their tombs. The vicinity of the Fayum, as well as
its own traditional sanctity, secured also for the temple of
Harsaphes at Heracleopolis enlargement and a rich equip-
ment. Of the Fayum itself we have already spoken. Mem-
phis and its ancient god Ptah were doubtless not neglected,
but chance has left little evidence of the activity of the
Middle Kingdom there. The vicinity of Ithtowe and the
other royal residences of the time may have detracted some-
what from its prominence. The supreme god of the state,
the ancestor and at the same time immediate father of the
Pharaohs, was of necessity honoured with rich contributions
from the beginning. Sesostris I held a council at which
he announced to the court his intention of rebuilding the
temple of Re at Heliopolis as soon as the plans could be
prepared. According to immemorial custom, he himself led
the ceremonies when the ground plan was staked out and
the foundations of the building were begun. The dedicatory
inscription, in which he recorded the history of the building,
perished long ago, but a scribe's practice copy of it, as it
stood in the court of the temple some five hundred years
11, 484.
2 IV, 488–9.
4 I, 741–2.
1, 534, note b.
6 I, 674-5.
3 Ibid.


FIG. 89.-HEAD OF AMENEMHET III, FROM A
SPHINX FOUND AT TANIS.
FIG. 90.-BUST OF A STATUE O
AMENEMHET III.
(St. Petersburg Museum.)

Fig. 91.-BRICK PYRAMID OF SESOSTRIS II, AT ILLAHUN.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
197
after its erection, still survives in a leather roll in the Berlin
Museum.' In exaggerated metaphor Sesostris I boasts of
the imperishability of his name, as enshrined in the mas-
sive monument, saying:
"My beauty shall be remembered in his house,
My name is the pyramidion, and my name is the lake."
The splendid temples of Heliopolis and the great city
which surrounded them have all vanished, and with them the
sacred lake to which Sesostris refers, but by a curious chance
the only surviving monument on the ancient site is one of
his obelisks (Fig. 87), still surmounted by the pyramidion,
which, as the king boasted, has indeed perpetuated his name.
The Delta blossomed under these enlightened rulers, re-
freshed as it was by the waters of the Fayum lake which
their foresight stored up for summer use. All the Delta
cities of all ages, as we have so often mentioned, have per-
ished, and but little survives to testify to the activity of
these kings there, but in the eastern part, especially at Tanis
and Bubastis (Fig. 93), massive remains still show the inter-
est which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta
cities. Fragmentary remains of temples built by the mon-
archs of this line have been found at many of the chief towns
from the first cataract to the northwestern Delta. Besides
the great works of the kings, it should not be forgotten that
the wealthier and more powerful of the nomarchs also
erected temples and considerable buildings for purposes
of government. Chapels for their mortuary service were
built in the towns, and had the various structures due to
these great lords survived, there is no doubt that they would
have added materially to our impressions of the solidity and
splendour with which the economic life of the nation was
developing on every hand.
Such impressions are also strengthened by the tombs of
the time, which are indeed the only buildings which have
survived from the feudal age; and even these are in a sad
11, 408-500. PI, 503. • 1, 037, note a. • 1, 637. 6 I, 700.
198
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
state of ruin. We have already referred to the survival of
the mastaba form of tomb, but it was now fast disappearing
and the nobles were hewing out their burial chambers and
the shafts descending to them in the cliffs of the valley.
The chapel-hall connected with such burials, with its scenes
from the life and activity of the departed noble, are our
chief source for the history and life of the feudal age. The
colonnade which sometimes formed the front of such a tomb
was not without architectural merit. The pyramids of the
Twelfth Dynasty kings are eloquent testimony to the fact
that the construction of the royal tomb was no longer the
chief office of the state. More wholesome views of the func-
tion of the kingship have now gained the ascendancy and
the resources of the nation are no longer absorbed in the
pyramid as in the Old Kingdom. In the Eleventh Dynasty
the Theban kings had already returned to the original mate-
rial of the royal tomb and built their unpretentious pyramids
of brick. Amenemhet I followed their example in the erec-
tion of his pyramid at Lisht; the core was of brick masonry
and the monument was then protected by casing masonry
of limestone (Fig. 94). The custom was continued by all
the kings of the dynasty with one exception. Their pyra-
mids are scattered from the mouth of the Fayum northward
to Dashur, just south of Memphis. Sesostris I preferred to
lie at Lisht beside his illustrious father; Amenemhet II was
the first to go northward to Dashur, and his son, Sesostris
II, selected his new town, Hotep-Sesostris, now Illahun, at
the mouth of the Fayum, as the site of his pyramid (Fig.
91). Sesostris III returned to Dashur, where he located his
pyramid on the north of that of Amenemhet II, while Ame-
nemhet III (Fig. 94) lies on the south side of Amenemhet II's
pyramid. The pyramid of Hawara, in the Fayum beside the
Labyrinth, formerly supposed to be that of Amenemhet III,
is not certainly identified, and may possibly belong to Ame-
nemhet IV, the only king of the dynasty whose pyramid is
* Mém. sur les Fouilles de Licht, par J. E. Gautier et G. Jéquier, Cairo
1902.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
199
not located with certainty. All these pyramids show the
most complicated and ingenious arrangements of entrance
and passages in order to baffle the tomb-robbers. That of
Hawara is the most notable in this respect. It was some-
thing over one hundred and ninety feet high and the base
was nearly three hundred and thirty four feet square.
The entrance is in the middle of the western half of
ARTS
-
SANI
BE
M
Rock
W ALL
SUPER-CHAMBER
Masonry filling
TIM
00
1
011
TIITT
Fig. 92. SECTION OF THE BURIAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF HAWABA.
(After Petrie.)
the south side and descending into the rock beneath the
pyramid it turns four times until it approaches the burial
chamber from the north side. Three amazing trapdoor-
blocks of enormous size and weight were intended to with-
stand the attacks of robbers, while numerous cunning and
misleading devices were inserted to puzzle the marauders.
The sepulchre chamber is twenty two feet long, eight feet
wide and six feet high, but is nevertheless cut from a single
block of intensely hard quartzite, weighing 110 tons. It had
no door and the only means of access was through a roofing
200
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
block weighing some forty five tons. Nevertheless it was
entered and robbed in antiquity, doubtless with the conni-
vance of later officials, or even of the later kings themselves.
The corruption of the officials in charge of the erection of
the building is evident in the fact that of the three trapdoor-
blocks they only closed the outer one, knowing full well
that with this one closed no member of the royal family could
possibly discover that the inner ones had been left open.
The failure of these magnificent structures to protect the
bodies of their builders must have had something to do with
the gradual discontinuance of pyramid building which now
ensued. Henceforward, with the exception of a few sinall
pyramids at Thebes, we shall meet no more of these remark-
able tombs, which, stretching in a desultory line along the
margin of the western desert for sixty five miles above the
southern apex of the Delta, are the most impressive surviv-
ing witnesses to the grandeur of the civilization which pre-
ceded the Empire.
Unfortunately the buildings of the Middle Kingdom are
so fragmentary that we can gain little idea of their archi-
tecture. From the tombs, however, it is evident that the
architectural elements employed did not differ materially
from those which we have already found in the Old King-
dom. The Theban Pharaohs of the Eleventh Dynasty in-
troduced a new type in the remarkable terraced temple of
Der el-Bahri, which served as a model to the great architects
of the Empire. The few traces of the Labyrinth which enabled
Petrie to determine the extent of its ground-plan, and the
description furnished by Strabo, are sufficient to establish
little more than the massiveness of its style. The domestic
architecture has also completely perished. From the plan
of the town which Petrie found by the pyramid of Sesostris
II at Illahun (Map 1) we gain only an impression of the con-
tracted quarters in which the workmen of the time were
obliged to live, but of the houses of the rich, in which there
Petrie, Kahun, Gurob and Hawura, pp. 13-17.
1
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
201
was opportunity for architectural effect, we have very little
knowledge.
Art had made a certain kind of progress since the Old
Kingdom. Sculpture had become much more ambitious
and attempted works of the most impressive size. The
statues of Amenemhet III, which overlooked Lake Moeris,
were probably forty or fifty feet high, and we have already
referred to the alabaster colossus of Thuthotep, the nomarch
of the Hare-nome, which was some twenty two feet high.
These colossi, furthermore, were now produced in greater
numbers than ever before. Ten such portraits of Ame-
nemhet I (Fig. 95) were found at his pyramid at Lisht, and
Sihathor, an assistant treasurer of Amenemhet II, records
with great pride how he was entrusted with the oversight
of the work on the sixteen statues of the king for his pyramid
at Dashur. Fragments of such colossi in massive granite
are scattered over the ruins of Tanis (Fig. 93) and Bubastis,
and we recall that Sesostris III erected his statue on the
southern Nubian border.2 Under such circumstances the
royal sculptors could not but betray to some extent the me-
chanical and imitative spirit in which they worked. Their
figures rarely possess the striking vivacity and the strong
individuality which are so characteristic of the Old Kingdom
sculpture. The long dominant canons are also showing
their effect in suppressing the individuality of the sculptor's
work and manner. We find a king searching the ancient
rolls to ascertain the form of a god, that he might “fashion
him as he was formerly, when they made the statues in their
council, in order to establish their monuments upon earth"
from which it is evident that the gods were supposed to have
held a council in the beginning, at which they determined
for all time exactly the form and appearance of each. With
the form of the king and his nobles the same inviolable tradi-
tion ruled, and the art of the Middle Kingdom no longer pos-
sessed the freshness and vigour necessary to accept these con-
ventions and at the same time to triumph completely over
*1, 601.
* I, 660.
SI, 750.
3
;
202
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
them as did the sculptors of the Old Kingdom. Neverthe-
less, there is now and then a portrait of surprising strength
and individuality, like the superb statue of Amenemhet III
(Fig. 90) in St. Petersburg, the head of the same king as a
sphinx at Tanis (Fig. 89), or the colossal head of Sesostris
III recently unearthed at Karnak. Such heads are master-
pieces of Egyptian art, embodying those qualities of super-
human strength and imperturbable calm, of which the Egyp-
tian sculptor was so completely master. The flesh-forms
have been so summarized in the exquisitely hard medium
that something of the eternal immobility of the stone itself
has been wrought into the features of the great king. Such
work contrasts sharply with the soft and effeminate beauty
of the wooden figure of prince Ewibre (Fig. 88). The
chapels in the cliff-tombs of the nomarchs were elaborately
decorated with paintings depicting the life of the deceased
and the industries on his great estates. It cannot be said that
these paintings, excellent as many of them unquestionably
are, show any progress over those of the Old Kingdom, while
as flat relief they are for the most part distinctly inferior to
the earlier work.
The close and familiar oversight of the nomarch lent a
distinct impetus to the arts and crafts,' and the provinces
developed large numbers of skilled craftsmen throughout
the country. Nat:rally the artisans of the court were unsur-
passed. We discern in their work the result of the devel-
opment which had been going on since the days of the
earliest dynasties. The magnificent jewelry (Figs. 97-8)
of the princesses of the royal house displays both technical
skill and refined taste, quite surpassing our anticipations.
Had the tomb robbers of the Dashur necropolis not over-
looked these burials we should never have rated the capaci-
ties of the Middle Kingdom so high. Little ever produced
by the later gold-smiths of Europe can surpass either in
beauty or in workmanship these regal ornaments worn by
II, 638.
1

Fig. 93.-LOOKING DOWN THE AXIS OF THE TEMPLE
AT TANIS. (Petrie, Tanis, I.)
Fig. 94.-CAPSTONE OF THE PYRAMID OF AMENEM-
HET III, AT DASHUR.
FIG. 95.-THREE OF THE TEN LIMESTONE STATUES OF AMENEMHET
I, FOUND AT HIS PYRAMID OF LISHT. (Cairo Museum.)


TILE TWELFTH DYNASTY
203
the daughters of the house of Amenemhet nearly two thou-
sand years before Christ.
Literature also left worthy monuments to witness the rich
and varied life of this great age. We have seen how the
art of writing was fostered by the administrative necessities
of the state. A system of uniform orthography, hitherto
lacking, was now developed and followed by skilled scribes
with consistency. A series of model letters' studied by the
school-boys of the twentieth century B. C. has survived, and
they show with what pains composition was studied. The
language of this age and its literary products were in later
times regarded as classic, and in spite of its excessive arti-
ficialities, the judgment of modern study confirms that of
the Empire. Although it unquestionably existed earlier, it
is in Egypt and in this period that we first find a literature
of entertainment. The unfortunate noble, Sinuhe, who fled
into Syria on the death of Amenemhet I, returned to Egypt
in his old age, and the story of his flight, of his life and
adventures in Asia became a favourite tale, which attained
such popularity that it was even written on sherds and flags
of stone to be placed in the tomb for the entertainment of
the dead in the hereafter. A prototype of Sindebad the
Sailor, who was shipwrecked in southern waters on the
voyage to Punt, returned with a tale of marvellous adven-
tures on the island of the serpent queen where he was res-
cued, and loaded with wealth and favours, was sent safely
back to his native land. The life of the court and the nobles
found reflection among the people in folk-tales, narrating
the great events in the dynastic transitions and a tale of the
rise of the Fifth Dynasty was now in common circulation,
although our surviving copy was written a century or two
after the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty. The most skilled lit-
erati of the time delighted to employ the popular tale as a
* Kahun Papyri, pp. 67–70.
'I, 486-497.
: Unpublished papyrus in St. Petersburg; see Golenischeff, Abh. des
Berliner Orientalistenkongresses.
• Papyrus Westcar, Berlin, P. 3033.
204
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
medium for the exercise of their skill in the artificial style
now regarded as the aim of all composition. A story com-
monly known at the present day as the Tale of the Eloquent
Peasant was composed solely in order to place in the mouth
of a marvellous peasant a series of speeches in which he
pleads his case against an official who had wronged him, with
such eloquence that he is at last brought into the presence
of the Pharaoh himself, that the monarch may enjoy the
beauty of the honeyed rhetoric which flows from his lips.
Unfortunately much of these speeches consists of figures of
speech so far fetched, and poetic verbiage so obscure, that
our modern knowledge of the language has not yet made
them very intelligible. We have already had occasion to
notice the instruction left by the aged Amenemhet I for his
son, which was very popular and has survived in no less than
seven fragmentary copies. The instruction concerning a
wise and wholesome manner of life, which was so prized
by the Egyptians, is represented by a number of composi-
tions of this age, like the advice of the father to his son on
the value of the ability to write;' or the wisdom of the viziers
of the Old Kingdom; although there is no reason why the
Wisdom of Ptahhotep and Kegemne,' preserved in a papyrus
of the Middle Kingdom, should not be authentic composi-
tions of these old wise men. A remarkable philosophizing
treatise represents a man weary of life involved in a long
dialogue with his reluctant soul as he vainly attempts to per-
suade it that they should end life together and hope for
better things beyond this world. A strange and obscure
composition of the time represents a Sibylline prophet
named Ipuwer, standing in the presence of the king and
delivering grim prophecies of coming ruin, in which the
social and political organization shall be overthrown, the
poor shall become rich and the rich shall suffer need, foreign
enemies shall enter and the established order of things shall
be completely overturned. After predicting frightful calam-
i Berlin Papyrus 3023 and 3025.
: 1, 474 ff.
Pap. Sallier II.
• Pap. Prisse. 5 Berlin Papyrus 3024.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
205
ities involving all classes, the prophet announces a saviour
who shall restore the land: “He shall bring cooling to the
flame. Men shall say, 'he is the shepherd of all the people;
there is no evil in his heart. If his flocks go astray he will
spend the day to search them. The thought of men shall
be aflame; would that he might achieve their rescue ...
Verily he shall smite evil when he raises his arm against it.
Where is he this day? Doth he sleep among you?”
In this strange “Messianic" oracle the prophet proclaims
the coming of the good king, who, like the David of the
Hebrew prophets, shall save his people. The motive of the
composition may be a skilful encomium of the reigning
family, by representing the prophet as depicting the anarchy
which had preceded in the dark age before their rise, and
proclaiming their advent to save the people from destruction.
Specimens of this remarkable class of literature, of which this
is the earliest example, may be traced as late as the early
Christian centuries, and we cannot resist the conclusion that
it furnished the Hebrew prophets with the form and to a
surprising extent also with the content of Messianic proph-
ecy. It remained for the Hebrew to give this old form a
higher ethical and religious significance.
So many of the compositions of the Egyptian scribe are
couched in poetic language that it is difficult to distinguish
between poetry and prose. All of the works thus far dis-
cussed are to a large extent poetry; but even among the
common people there were compositions which are distinc-
tively poems: the song of the threshers as they drove their
cattle to and fro upon the threshing-floor, a few simple lines
breathing the simple and wholesome industry of the people;
or the lay of the harper (Fig. 96) as he sings to the ban-
queters in the halls of the rich, -a song burdened with pre-
monitions of the coming darkness and admonishing to un-
bridled enjoyment of the present ere the evil day come:
| Leyden Papyrus I, 344; see Lange, Sitzungsber. der Berliner Akad.,
XXVII, 601-610.
206
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
How happy is this good prince!
This goodly destiny is fulfilled :
The body perishes, passing away,
While others abide, since the time of the ancestors.
The gods who were aforetime rest in their pyramids;
Likewise the noble and the wise, entombed in their pyramids.
As for those who built houses,--their place is no more;
Behold what hath become of them.
I have heard the words of Imhotep and Harzozef,
Whose utterances are of much reputation;
Yet how are the places thereof?
Their walls are in ruin,
Their places are no more,
As if they had never been.
None cometh from thence,
That he might tell us of their state;
That he might restore our hearts,
Until we too depart to the place,
Whither they have gone.
Encourage thy heart to forget it,
And let the heart dwell upon that which is profitable for thee.
Follow thy desire while thou livest,
Lay myrrh upon thy head,
Clothe thee in fine linen,
Imbued with luxurious perfumes,
The genuine things of the gods.
Increase yet more thy delights,
Let not thy heart be weary,
Follow thy desire and thy pleasure,
And mould thine affairs on earth,
After the mandates of thy heart,
Till that day of lamentation cometh to thee,
When the stilled heart hears not their mourning;
For lamentation recalls no man from the tomb.
Celebrate the glad day!
Rest not therein!
- pone taketh his goods with him,
Yea, no man returneth again, that is gone thither.
:
TIIE TWELFTII DYNASTY
207
The earliest known example of poetry exhibiting rigid
strophic structure and all the conscious artificialities of lit-
erary art, is a remarkable hymn to Sesostris III written
during that king's life time. Of the six strophes, the one
following may serve to illustrate its character and structure:
Twice great is the king of his city, above a million arms: as for
other rulers of men, they are but common folk.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a dyke, damming
the stream in its water flood.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a cool lodge,
letting every man repose unto full daylight.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a bulwark, with
walls built of sharp stones of Kesem.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a place of refuge,
excluding the marauder.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were an asylum,
shielding the terrified from his foe.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a shade, the
cool vegetation of the flood in the season of harvest.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a corner warm
and dry in time of winter.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a rock barring
the blast in time of tempest.
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were Sekhmet to foes
who tread upon his boundary.
The dramatic presentation of the life and death of Osiris
at Abydos undoubtedly demanded much dialogue and reci-
tation, which must at least have assumed permanent form
and have been committed to writing. Unfortunately this,
the earliest known drama, has perished. It is characteristic
of this early world that in neither the art or the literature,
of which we have a considerable mass from the Middle King-
dom, can we discern any individuals to whom these great
works should be attributed. Among all the literary produc-
tions which we have enumerated, it is only of the wisdom,
the "instruction,” that we know the authors. Of the litera-
ture of the age we may say that it now displays a wealth of
imagery and a fine mastery of form which five hundred
208
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
years earlier, at the close of the Old Kingdom, was but just
emerging. The content of the surviving works does not dis-
play evidence of constructive ability in the larger sense, in-
volving both form and content; it lacks general coherence.
It is possible, however, that the Osirian drama, which offered
greater constructive opportunity, might have altered this
verdict if it had survived.
It was thus over a nation in the fullness of its powers, rich
and productive in every avenue of life, that Amenemhet III
ruled; and his reign crowned the classic age which had
dawned with the advent of his family. He seems to have
maintained his vigourous grasp of affairs to the end, for he
completed the reservoir at Sarbut el-Khadem in Sinai and
the great wall of El Kab in the forty fourth year of his reign.
But when he passed away in 1801 B. C. the strength of the
line was waning. This was possibly due to the fact that
the prince whom he had selected as his successor and ap-
pointed as coregent did not survive the old king himself. In
any case he seems to have interred in a tomb beside his
pyramid a young and handsome prince who already bore the
royal cartouche, with the throne-name Ewibre (Fig. 88).
But it should be remarked that the form of the name is quite
unlike those of the Twelfth Dynasty, and there is a king
Ewibre of the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Dynasty in the
Turin list. A fourth Amenemhet, after a short coregency
with the old king, succeeded at the death of Amenemhet III,
but his brief reign of a little over nine years has left few
monuments, and the decline of the house, to whom the nation
owed two centuries of imperishable splendour, was evident.
Amenemhet IV left no son, for he was succeeded by the
princess Sebek-nefru-Re, the Skemiophris of Manetho.
After struggling on for nearly four years she too, the last
of her line, disappeared. The family had ruled Egypt two
hundred and thirteen years, one month and some days.


CA
19
Fig. 97.-DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS, FOUND IN
HER TOMB AT DASHUR. (Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 96.- THE HARPER SINGING TO THE BANQUETERS.
See pp. 205-6. (Leyden Museum.)
FIG. 98.-DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS, FOUND IN
HER TOMB AT DASHUR. (Cairo Museum.)

BOOK IV
THE HYKSOS:
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
.
CHAPTER XI
THE FALL OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM.
THE HYKSOS.
one.
The transition of authority to another dynasty (the Thir-
teenth) had seemingly taken place without disturbing the
tranquil prosperity of the land. In any case the new house
immediately gained full control, and the first king, Sekhemre-
Khutowe, ruled from the Deltal to the southern frontier at
the second cataract, where, for the first four years of his
reign, the annual records of the Nile levels regularly ap-
pear. The fortresses there were garrisoned under a com-
mandant as before and the tax and census lists were being
compiled in the North as usual. But the reign was a short
The Pharaohs who followed regarded themselves as
successors of the Twelfth Dynasty and assumed the names
of its greatest rulers; but this brought them none of its
strength and prestige. The succession may have lasted
during four reigns, when it was suddenly interrupted, and
the list of Turin records as fifth king after the Twelfth
Dynasty one Yufni, a name which does not display the royal
form, showing that at this point the usurper, that ceaseless
menace to the throne in the orient, had again triumphed.
Rapid dissolution followed, as the provincial lords rose
against each other and strove for the throne. Pretender
after pretender struggled for supremacy; now and again one
more able than his rivals would gain a brief advantage and
wear his ephemeral honours, only to be quickly supplanted
by another. Private individuals contended with the rest
and occasionally won the coveted goal, only to be overthrown
by a successful rival. Two Sebekemsafs, probably belong-
II, 761.
'I, 752.
Kahun Papyri
, pl. IX, 1. 1; p. 86.
& I, 751-2.
211
212
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ing at about this time, left their modest pyramids at Thebes,
for the pyramid of one of them was examined by the
Ramessid commissioners and found robbed. The bodies
of the king and his queen, Nubkhas, which had laid undis-
turbed for at least five hundred years, were dragged out
of the coffins, and in a remarkable confession the thieves
were forced by the commissioners to tell how they had
despoiled the royal remains of their ornaments and amu-
lets of gold and costly stones. It is thus certain that at
least one group of these obscure kings resided at Thebes
and must have been of Theban origin. At one time a
usurper named Neferhotep succeeded in overthrowing one
of the many Sebekhoteps of the time, and established stable
government. He made no secret of his origin, and on the
monuments added the names of his untitled parents with-
out scruple. On a stela at Abydos he left a remarkable
record of his zeal for the temple of Osiris there and
another determining certain limits of the necropolis. He
reigned eleven years when he was succeeded by his son,
Sihathor, who shortlys gave way to his father's brother,
Neferkhere-Sebekhotep. This Sebekhotep was the greatest
king of this dark age. He did not however advance the
Middle Kingdom frontier southward to the Island of Argo,
above the Third Cataract, as heretofore supposed. His
statue on Argo is but life-size, not a colossus, and was
certainly transported thither by some late Nubian king
from some point in Egypt. It was but a brief restoration,
and the monuments which had survived bear no records to
inform us of its character.
The darkness which followed is only the more obscure by
contrast. Foreign adventurers took advantage of the op-
portunity, and one of the pretenders who achieved a
brief success may have been a Nubian. In any case he
placed the word Nehsi, “Negro,” in his royal cartouche.
Another, whose second royal name was Mermeshu, “Com-
mander of the Army," was evidently a military aspirant to
the throne. The country was broken up into petty king-
*IV, 517.
* IV, 538.
* I, 573.
•I, 753-772.
Turin Pap. Frag. No. 80; Petrie, Scarabs, No. 309.
FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS
213
doins, of which Thebes was evidently the largest in the
South. Nubkheprure-Intef, one of a group of three Intefs
who ruled there, frankly discloses the conditions in a de-
creel deposing an official at Coptos who had proved a traitor.
In this document Intef curses any other king or ruler in
Egypt who may show the culprit mercy, naively declaring
that no such king or ruler shall become Pharaoh of the
whole country. These Intefs were buried at Thebes, where
the pyramids of two of them, still standing toward the close
of the Twentieth Dynasty, were inspected by the Ramessid
commissioners, who found that one of them had been tun-
nelled into by tomb-robbers. But very few of the long list
of kings in the royal list of Turin can be found mentioned
upon contemporary monuments. Here and there a frag-
ment of masonry, a statue, or sometimes only a scarab bear-
ing a royal name, furnishes contemporary testimony of the
reign of this or that one among them. There was neither
power, nor wealth, nor time for the erection of permanent
monuments; king still followed king with unprecedented
rapidity, and for most of them our only source of knowl-
edge is therefore the bare name in the Turin list, the dis-
ordered fragments of which have not even preserved for us
the order of these ephemeral rulers except as we find
groups upon one fragment. The order of the fragments
themselves remains uncertain, so that the succession of
the above most important groups is also questionable.
Where preserved at all the length of the reign is usually
but a year, or occasionally two or three years, while in
two cases we find after a king's name but three days. With-
out any dynastic division which can be discerned, we find
here the remains of at least one hundred and eighteen
names of kings, whose ceaseless struggles to gain or to
hold the throne of the Pharaohs, make up the obscure
history of this dark century and a half since the fall
of the Twelfth Dynasty. Evidently some of these kings
ruled contemporaneously, but even so, such a period of con-
*I, 773-780.
'IV, 514 1.
214
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
stant struggle and usurpation is almost equalled during
the days of the Moslem viceroys of Egypt, when, under the
dynasty of the Abbasids, which lasted one hundred and
eighteen years (750–868 A. D.), seventy seven viceroys held
the throne of Egypt. In European history it is paralleled
by the series of military Emperors after Commodus, when in
about ninety years probably eighty emperors succeed each
other. Manetho, who knew nothing of this confused age,
disposed of its host of kings in two lines, as a Thirteenth
Dynasty in Thebes, and a Fourteenth from Xois, a city of
the Delta.
Economically the condition of the country must have rap-
idly degenerated. The lack of a uniform administration
of the irrigation system, which the nation owed to the king-
ship as an institution, and the generally unstable conditions,
unavoidably checked the agricultural and industrial produc-
tivity of the land; while oppressive taxation and the tyranny
of warring factions in need of funds sapped the energies and
undermined the prosperity which had been so ably con-
served by the house of Amenemhet for two centuries. While
we possess no monuments which tell us of this ruin, their
very absence is evidence of it, and the analogy of similar
periods in Moslem Egypt, particularly under the Mamlukes,
makes certain the unhappy condition of the nation during
this period.
Without centralized resources or organization the hap-
less nation was an easy prey to foreign aggression. About
1675 B. C., before the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, there
poured into the Delta froin Asia a possibly Semitic invasion
such as that, which in prehistoric times, had stamped the
language with its uninistakable form; and again in our own
era, under the influence of Islam, overwhelmed the land.
These invaders, now generally called the Hyksos, after the
designation applied to them by Josephus (quoting Manetho),
themselves left so few monuments in Egypt that even their
nationality is still the subject of much difference of opinion;
Meyer. Aeg. Chron, p. 62.
1
FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: 215
:
TIIE HYKSOS
while the length and character of their supremacy, for the
same reason, are equally obscure matters. The documen-
tary materials bearing on them are so meagre and limited
in extent that the reader may easily survey them and judge
the question for himself, even if this chapter is thereby in
danger of relapsing into a “laboratory note-book.” The
late tradition regarding the Hyksos, recorded by Manetho
and preserved to us in the essay of Josephus against Apion,
is but the substance of a folk-tale like that narrating the fall
of the Fourth Dynasty,' or many other such tales from which
their knowledge of Egypt's past was chiefly drawn by the
Greeks. The more ancient and practically contemporary
evidence should therefore be questioned first. Two genera-
tions after the Hyksos had been expelled from the country
the great queen Hatshepsut thus narrated her restoration
of the damage which they had wrought:
I have restored that which was ruins,
I have raised up that which was unfinished,
Since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland
(Delta),
And the barbarians were in the midst of them (the people of the
Northland),
Overthrowing that which had been made,
While they ruled in ignorance of Re.2
The still earlier evidence of a soldier in the Egyptian army
that expelled the Hyksos shows that a siege of Avaris was
necessary to drive them froin the country ;3 and further that
the pursuit of them was continued into southern Palestine
and ultimately into Phænicia or Cælesyria. Some four
hundred years after their expulsion a folk-tale, narrating
the cause of the final war against them, was circulating
among the people. It gives an interesting account of them:
“Now it came to pass that the land of Egypt was the pos-
session of the polluted, no lord being king at the time when
it happened; but king Sekenenre, he was ruler of the South-
1 Infra, pp. 122-3.
PII, 303.
II, 3-10, 12.
• 11, 13.
SII, 20.
Pap. Sallier 1.
4
216
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ern City [Thebes] ... King Apophis was in Avaris, and
the whole land was tributary to him; the [Southland] bear-
ing their impost, and the Northland likewise bearing every
good thing of the Delta. Now king Apophis made Sutekh
his lord, serving no other god, who was in the whole land,
save Sutekh. He built the temple in beautiful and ever-
lasting work ..."
From these earlier documents it is evident that the Hyksos
were an Asiatic people who ruled Egypt from their strong-
hold of Avaris in the Delta. The later tradition as quoted
from Manetho by Josephus in the main corroborates the
above more trustworthy evidence, and is as follows:2
“There was a king of ours whose name was Timaios, in
whose reign it came to pass, I know not why, that God was
displeased with us, and there came unexpectedly men of
ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, who had boldness
enough to make an expedition into our country, and easily
subdued it by force without a battle. And when they had
got our rulers under their power, they afterward savagely
burnt down our cities and demolished the temples of the
gods, and used all the inhabitants in a most hostile manner,
for they slew some and led the children and wives of others
into slavery. At length they made one of themselves king,
whose name was Salatis, and he lived at Memphis and made
both Upper and Lower Egypt pay tribute, and left garrisons
in places that were most suitable for them. And he made
the eastern part especially strong, as he foresaw that the
Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would covet
their kingdom and invade them. And as he found in the
Saite [read Sethroite) nome a city very fit for his purpose
(which lay east of the arm of the Nile near Bubastis, and
with regard to a certain theological notion was called
Avaris), he rebuilt it and made it very strong by the walls
he built around it and by a numerous garrison of two hun-
dred and forty thousand armed men, whom he put into it to
keep it. There Salatis went every summer, partly to gather
1 Pap. Sallier I, I, II. 1-3.
% Contra Apion 1, 14.

Fig. 99.--EXCAVATION OF STATUE OF NEFERKHERE-SEBEK-
HOTEP, ON ISLAND OF ARKO ABOVE THE THIRD CATA-
RACT, BY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO EXPEDITION IN 1907.
Statue visible at the right.
LE
FIG. 100.--BODY OF ONE OF THE SEKENENRES, SHOWING
WOUND IN SKULL. (Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 101.-FRAGMENT OF A SITTING COLOSSUS OF KHIAN,
IN GRANITE. Found at Bubastis.


FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS
217
in his corn and pay his soldiers their wages, and partly to
train his armed men and so to awe foreigners."
If we eliminate the absurd reference to the Assyrians and
the preposterous number of the garrison at Avaris, the tale
may be credited as in general a probable narrative. The
further account of the Hyksos in the same essay shows
clearly that the late tradition was at a loss to identify the
Hyksos as to nationality and origin. Still quoting from
Manetho, Josephus says:“All this nation was styled Hyksos,
that is, Shepherd Kings; for the first syllable 'hyk’ in the
sacred dialect denotes a king, and ‘sos' signifies a shepherd,
but this is only according to the vulgar tongue; and of these
was compounded the term Hyksos. Some say they were
Arabians.” According to his epitomizers, Manetho also
called them Phænicians. Turning to the designations of
Asiatic rulers as preserved on the Middle Kingdom and
Hyksos monuments, there is no such term to be found as
“ruler of shepherds,” and Manetho wisely adds that the
word “sos" only means shepherd in the late vulgar dialect.
There is no such word known in the older language of the
monuments. “Hyk” (Egyptian Ħk'), however, is a com-
mon word for ruler, as Manetho says, and Khian, one of the
Hyksos kings, often gives himself this title upon his monu-
ments, followed by a word for "countries,” which by slight
and very common phonetic changes might become “sos”;
so that “Hyksos” is a not improbable Greek spelling for the
Egyptian title “Ruler of Countries."
Looking further at the scanty monuments left by the
Hyksos themselves, we discover a few vague but nevertheless
significant hints as to the character of these strange invaders,
whom tradition called Arabians and Phænicians; and con-
temporary monuments designated as “Asiatics," "barbar-
ians," and "rulers of countries.” An Apophis, one of their
kings, fashioned an altar, now at Cairo, and engraved upon
it the dedication: “He [Apophis] made it as his monument
for his father Sutekh, lord of Avaris, when he [Sutekh]
>>
218
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
set all lands under his [the king's] feet." General as is
the statement it would appear that this Apophis ruled over
more than the land of Egypt. More significant are the mon-
uments of Khian, the most remarkable of this line of kings.
They have been found from Gebelen in southern Egypt to
the northern Delta; but they do not stop here. Under a
Mycenæan wall in the palace of Cnossos in Crete an alabas-
ter vase-lid bearing his name was discovered by Mr. Evans;?
while a granite lion with his cartouche upon the breast,
found many years ago at Bagdad, is now in the British
Museum. One of his royal names was “Encompasser [liter-
ally embracer'] of the Lands," and we recall that his con-
stant title upon his scarabs and cylinders is “ruler of coun-
tries.” Scarabs of the Hyksos rulers have been turned up
by the excavations in southern Palestine. Meagre as these
data are, one cannot contemplate them without seeing con-
jured up before him the vision of a vanished empire which
once stretched from the Euphrates to the first cataract of
the Nile, an empire of which all other evidence has perished,
for the reason that Avaris, the capital of its rulers, was in
the Delta, where, like so many other Delta cities, it suffered
a destruction so complete that we cannot even locate the spot
on which it once stood. There was, moreover, every reason
why the victorious Egyptians should annihilate all evidence
of the supremacy of their bated conquerors. In the light
of these developments it becomes evident why the invaders
did not set up their capital in the midst of the conquered
land, but remained in Avaris, on the extreme east of the
Delta, close to the borders of Asia. It was that they might
rule not only Egypt, but also their Asiatic dominions. Ac-
cepting the above probabilities, we can also understand how
the Hyksos could retire to Asia and withstand the Egyptian
onset for six years in southern Palestine, as we know from
contemporary evidence : they did. It then becomes clear
i Mar, Mon. div., 38.
Annual of British School at Athens, VII, 05, Fig. 21.
SII, 13.
FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS
219
also how they could retreat to Syria when beaten in southern
Palestine; these movements were possible because they con-
trolled Palestine and Syria.
If we ask ourselves regarding the nationality, origin and
character of this mysterious Hyksos empire, we can hazard
little in reply. Manetho's tradition that they were Arabians
and Phænicians may well be correct. Such an overflow of
southern Semitic emigration into Syria, as we know has
since then taken place over and over again, may well have
brought together these two elements; and a generation or
two of successful warrior-leaders might weld them together
into a rude state. We have already seen” that the Semitic
tribes trading with Egypt in the Twelfth Dynasty were pos-
sessed of considerably more than the rudiments of civiliza-
tion; while the wars of the Pharaohs in Syria immediately
after the expulsion of the Hyksos show the presence of civi-
lized and highly developed states there. Now, such an em-
pire as we believe the Hyksos ruled could hardly have
existed without leaving its traces among the peoples of
Syria-Palestine for some generations after the beginning of
the succeeding Egyptian supremacy in Asia. It would
therefore be strange if we could not discern in the records
of the subsequent Egyptian wars in Asia some evidence of
the surviving wreck of the once great Hyksos empire which
the Pharaohs demolished.
For two generations after the expulsion of the Hyksos we
can gain little insight into the conditions in Syria. At this
point the ceaseless campaigns of Thutmose III, as recorded
in his Annals, enable us to discern which nation was then
playing the leading role there. The great coalition of the
kings of Palestine and Syria, with which Thutmose III was
called upon to contend at the beginning of his wars, was led
and dominated throughout by the powerful king of Kadesh
on the Orontes. It required ten years of constant campaign-
ing by Thutmose III to achieve the capture of the stubborn
city and the subjugation of the kingdom of which it was
1 But see Meyer, Aeg. Chron., pp. 95 fi.
• Infra, p. 188.
220
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the head; but with power still unbroken it revolted, and
Thutmose III's twenty years of warfare in Syria were only
crowned with victory when he finally succeeded in again
defeating Kadesh, after a dangerous and persistent strug-
gle. The leadership of Kadesh from the beginning to the
end of Thutmose III's campaigns is such as to convey the
impression that many Syrian and Palestinian kinglets were
its vassals. It is in this Syrian domination of the king of
Kadesh that, in the author's opinion, we should recognize
the last nucleus of the Hyksos empire, finally annihilated
by the genius of Thutmose III. Hence it was that Thutmose
III, the final destroyer of the Hyksos empire, became also
the traditional hero who expelled the invaders from Egypt;
and as Misphragmouthosis he thus appears in Manetho's
story as the liberator of his country. That it was a Semitic
empire we cannot doubt, in view of the Manethonian tra-
dition and the subsequent conditions in Syria-Palestine.
Moreover the scarabs of a Pharaoh who evidently belonged
to the Hyksos time, give his name as Jacob-her or possibly
Jacob-El, and it is not impossible that some chief of the
Jacob-tribes of Israel for a time gained the leadership in
this obscure age. Such an incident would account surpris-
ingly well for the entrance of these tribes into Egypt, which
on any hypothesis must have taken place at about this
age;
and in that case the Hebrews in Egypt will have been but a
part of the Beduin allies of the Kadesh or Hyksos empire,
whose presence there brought into the tradition the partially
true belief that the Hyksos were shepherds, and led Manetho
to his untenable etymology of the second part of the word.
Likewise the naive assumption of Josephus, who identifies
the Hyksos with the Hebrews, may thus contain a kernel of
truth, however accidental. But such precarious combina-
tions should not be made without a full realization of their
hazardous character.
Of the reign of these remarkable conquerors in Egypt we
know no more than of their contemporaries, the Egyptian
dynasts of this age already discussed, who continued to rule
FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS
221
in Thebes and probably throughout Upper Egypt. Both
the account in Manetho and the folk-tale above quoted state
that the Hyksos kings laid the whole country under tribute,
and we have already observed that Hyksos monuments have
been found as far south as Gebelen. The beginning of their
rule may have been a gradual immigration without hostili-
ties, as Manetho relates. It is perhaps in this epoch that we
should place one of their kings, a certain Khenzer, who
seems to have left the affairs of the country largely in the
hands of his vizier, Enkhu, so that the latter administered
and restored the temples. As this vizier lived in the period
of Neferhotep and the connected Sebekhoteps, it is possible
that we should place the gradual rise of Hyksos power in
Egypt just after that group of Pharaohs.
From the contemporary monuments we learn the names
of three Apophises and of Khian (Fig. 101), besides possibly
Khenzer and Jacob-her, whom we have already noted.
Among the six names preserved from Manetho by Josephus
we can recognize but two, an Apophis and Iannas, who is
certainly the same as Khian of the contemporary monu-
ments. The only contemporary date is that of the thirty
third year of an Apophis, in the mathematical papyrus of
the British Museum. The Manethonian tradition in which we
find three dynasties of Shepherds or Hyksos (the Fifteenth
to Seventeenth) is totally without support from the contem-
porary monuments in the matter of the duration of the
Hyksos supremacy in Egypt. A hundred years is ample for
the whole period. Even if it was actually much longer, this
fact would not necessarily extend the length of the period
from the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty to the end of the
Hyksos rule; for it is evident that many of the numerous
kings of this period, enumerated in the Turin Papyrus, may
have ruled in the South as vassals of the Hyksos, like the
Sekenenre, whom the folk-tale makes the Theban vassal of
one of the Apophises.
What occasioned the unquestionable barbarities on the
II, 781-787.
222
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
part of the conquerors, it is now impossible to discern; but
it is evident that hostilities must have eventually broken
out, causing the destruction of the temples, later restored
by Hatshepsut. Their patron god Sutekh is of course the
Egyptianized form of some Syrian Baal; Sutekh being an
older form of the well known Egyptian Set. The Hyksos
kings themselves must have been rapidly Egyptianized; they
assumed the complete Pharaonic titulary, and they appro-
priated statues of their predecessors in the Delta cities,
wrought, of course, in the conventional style peculiar to the
Pharaohs (Fig. 101). Civilization did not essentially suffer;
a mathematical treatise dated under one of the Apophises is
preserved in the British Museum. We have already seen one
of the Apophises building a temple in Avaris, and a frag-
ment of a building inscription of an Apophis at Bubastis
says that he made "numerous flag-staves tipped with copper
for this god,” such flag-staves flying a tuft of gaily coloured
pennants being used to adorn a temple front. The influence
upon Egypt of such a foreign dominion, including both
Syria-Palestine and the lower Nile valley, was epoch making,
and had much to do with the fundamental transformation
which began with the expulsion of these aliens. It brought
the horse into the Nile valley and taught the Egyptians war-
fare on a large scale. Whatever they may have suffered,
the Egyptians owed an incalculable debt to their conquerors.
Nav. Bubastis, I, pl. 35c.
>
1
CHAPTER XII
THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS AND THE TRIUMPH
OF THEBES
It must have been about 1600 B. C., nearly two hundred
years after the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty, that the
Sekenenre of the folk-talel was ruling in Thebes under the
suzerainty of a Hyksos Apophis in Avaris. This tale, as
current four hundred years later in Ramessid days, is our
only source for the events that immediately followed. After
its account of the Hyksos, which the reader will recall as
quoted above, there follows the brief description of a sacred
feast, and later a council of Apophis and his wise men; but
what took place at this council is quite uncertain. It con-
cerned a plot or design against king Sekenenre, however,
for the story then proceeds: “Now many days after this,
king Apophis sent to the prince [king Sekenenre) of the
Southern City [Thebes] the report which his scribes and
wise men had communicated to him. Now when the mes-
senger whom king Apophis had sent reached the prince of
the Southern City, he was taken to the prince of the Southern
City. Then said one to the messengers of king Apophis,
'What brings thee to the Southern City, and wherefore hast
thou joined them that journey?' The messenger said to
him, 'It is king Apophis who sends to thee, saying: “One
(that is the messenger) has come to thee) concerning the
pool of the hippopotami, which is in the city [Thebes]. For
they permit me no sleep, day and night the noise of them
is in my ear. Then the prince of the Southern City
lamented a [long] time, and it came to pass that he could
not return (answer) to the messenger of king Apophis."
1 Infra, pp. 215-10.
223
224
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
The surviving fragments at this point would indicate that
Sekenenre now sent gifts to Apophis and promised to do
all that he demanded, after which,“[the messenger of king)
Apophis betook himself away, to proceed to the place where
his lord was. Then the prince of the Southern City caused
to summon his great princes, likewise his officers and leaders
and he recounted to them all the matters concerning
which king Apophis had sent to him. Then they were with
one accord silent for a long time, and could not answer him
either good or bad. Then king Apophis sent to---,
here the tantalizing bit of papyrus is torn off, and we shall
never know the conclusion of the tale. However, what we
have in it is the popular and traditional version of an inci-
dent, doubtless regarded as the occasion of the long war
between the Theban princes and the Hyksos in Avaris. The
preposterous casus belli, the complaint of Apophis in the
Delta that he was disturbed by the noise of the Theban hip-
popotami is folk-history, a wave mark among the people,
left by the tide which the Hyksos war set in motion.
Manetho corroborates the general situation depicted in the
tale; for he says that the kings of the Thebaid and other
parts of Egypt made a great and long war upon the Hyksos
in Avaris. His use of the plural “kings" immediately sug-
gests the numerous local dynasts, whom we have met before,
each contending with his neighbour and effectually prevent-
ing the country from presenting a united front to the north-
ern foe. There were three Sekenenres. The mummy of the
last of the three discovered in the great find at Der el-Bahri,
and now at the Cairo museum, exhibits frightful wounds in
the head (Fig. 100), so that he doubtless fell in battle, not
improbably in the Hyksos war. They were followed by a
king Kemose who probably continued the war. Their small
pyramids of brick at Thebes have long since passed away, but
they were still uninjured when inspected some four hundred
and fifty years later by the Ramessid commissioners, whose
investigation of the necropolis we have referred to before.
1 Pap. Sallier I, II, I. 1-III, I. 3.
991 but
* IV, 518-19.
THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES
225
It is evident that this Theban family were gradually thrust-
ing themselves to the front with more and more successful
aggressiveness, so that these three Sekenenres and Kemose
form the latter part of Manetho's Seventeenth Dynasty.
They were obliged to maintain themselves not merely against
the Hyksos, but also against numerous rival dynasts, espe-
cially in the extreme South above El Kab, where, removed
from the turmoil of northern war, and able to carry on a
flourishing internal commerce, the local princes enjoyed
great prosperity, while those of the North had doubtless in
many instances perished. We shall later find these pros-
perous dynasts of the South holding out against the rising
power of Thebes while the latter was slowly expelling the
Hyksos.
Following Kemose's short reign, Ahmose I, possibly his
son, the first king of Manetho's Eighteenth Dynasty, assumed
the leadership of the Theban house, about 1580 B. C., and
became the deliverer of Egypt from her foreign lords.
Sekenenre III had already won the friendship of the pow-
erful princes of El Kab (Fig. 102), and by rich gifts and
plentiful honours Ahmose I retained the valuable support of
these princes, against both the Hyksos and the obstinate
local dynasts of the upper river, who constantly threatened
his rear.
Ahmose thus made El Kab a buffer, which pro-
tected him from the attacks of his Egyptian rivals south of
that city. No document bearing on the course of the war
with the Hyksos in its earlier stages has survived to us, nor
have any of Ahmose's royal annals been preserved, but one
of his El Kab allies, named Ahmose, son of Ebana (his
mother's name), whose father, Baba, served under Sekenenre
III, has fortunately left an account of his own military
career on the walls of his tomb at El Kab. He thus nar-
rates the story of his service under Ahmose of Thebes: “I
spent my youth in the city of Nekheb [El Kab], my father
being an officer of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Sekenenre, triumphant; Baba, son of Royenet, was his name.
Then I served as an officer in his stead in the ship [called]
16
226
YP
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
'The Offering,' in the time of king Ahmose I, triumphant,
while I was a young man, not having taken a wife
Then after I set up a household I was transferred to the
northern fleet because of my valour.” He was thus taken
from El Kab and given service against the Hyksos in the
north. At first, although a naval officer, he was assigned to
infantry service in attendance upon the king, for his biog-
raphy proceeds: “I followed the king on foot when he rode
abroad in his chariot. One (meaning the king] besieged
the city of Avaris; I showed valor on foot before his majesty;
then I was appointed to the ship (called] 'Shining-in-Mem-
phis.' One fought on the water in the canal Pazedku of
Avaris. Then I fought hand to hand, I brought away a
hand (cut off as a trophy). It was reported to the royal
herald. One gave to me the gold of valor [a decoration).
There was again fighting in this place; I again fought hand
to hand there; I brought away a hand. One gave to me the
gold of valor in the second place." 1 The siege of Avaris
was now interrupted by an uprising of one of the local
dynasts above El Kab, which was regarded as so serious by
the king that he himself went south to quell it, and took
Ahmose, son of Ebana, with him. The latter thus briefly
narrates the incident: “One fought in this Egypt south of
this city [El Kab]; I brought away a living captive, a man,
I descended into the water; behold he was brought as a
seizure upon the road of this city, (although] I crossed with
him over the water. It was announced to the royal herald.
Then one presented me with gold in double measure.
Having sufficiently quelled his southern rivals, Ahmose
resumed the siege of Avaris, for at this point our naval
officer abruptly announces its capture: “One captured
Avaris; I took captive there one man and three women, total
four heads. His majesty gave them to me for slaves."! 8
The city thus fell on the fourth assault after the arrival of
Ahmose, son of Ebana, but it is quite uncertain how many
such assaults had been made before his transference thither,
III, 7-10.
. II, 11.
• II, 12.
2

XED
Fig. 103.-BRONZE WEAPONS OF AHMOSE I.
Fig. 102.-WALLED CITY OF EL KAB, SEEN THROUGH A TOMB
DOOR IN THE EASTERN CLIFFS FLANKING THE TOWN.
They are damascened with designs in gold, and set with costly stones.
Cairo Museum.

THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES
227
for the siege had evidently lasted many years and had been
interrupted by a rebellion in Upper Egypt. Our naval
officer does not tell us who were the defenders of Avaris,
but we do not need to be told in view of what we know from
Manetho and the folk-tale; likewise as we follow his nar-
rative a step farther he fails to inform us who were his foes
in the next encounter; but it is clear that they can be no other
than the Hyksos, fleeing into Asia after being driven from
Avaris, following the fall of which, our biographer says:
"One besieged Sharuhen for three years and his majesty
took it. Then I took captive there two women and one hand.
One gave to me the gold of bravery besides giving me the
captives for slaves." This is the earliest siege of such
length known in history, and it is surprising evidence of the
stubbornness of the Hyksos defense and the tenacity of king
Ahmose in dislodging them from a stronghold in such dan-
gerous proximity to the Egyptian frontier. For Sharuhen
was probably in southern Judah, whence the Hyksos might
again easily invade the Delta. But Ahmose was not content
with driving them out of Sharuhen. We find another mem-
ber of the El Kab family, called Ahmose-Pen-Nekhbet,
fighting under king Ahmose I in Zahi,3 which is Phænicia
and Syria, and it is therefore evident that Ahmose pur-
sued the Hyksos northward from Sharuhen, forcing them
back to at least a safe distance from the Delta frontier. In
the twenty second year of his reign he was still using in
his building operations oxen which he had taken from the
Asiatics, so that this or another campaign of his in Asia
must have continued to within a few years of that time.
Returning to Egypt, now entirely free from all fear of its
former lords, he gave his attention to the recovery of the
Egyptian possessions in Nubia.
During the long period of disorganization following the
Middle Kingdom, the Nubians had naturally taken advan-
tage of their opportunity and fallen away. How far Ahmose
penetrated it is impossible to determine, but he evidently met
III, 13.
* II, 20.
* II, 26-27.
Josh. 19: 6.
228
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
with no serious resistance in the recovery of the old territory
between the first and second cataracts. But his rule was
not yet firmly established in Egypt itself, for he was no
sooner well out of the country on the Nubian campaign than
his inveterate rivals south of El Kab again arose against
him. They were totally defeated in a battle on the Nile,
and our old friend Ahmose, son of Ebana, was rewarded
for his valour in the action with five slaves and five stat
(nearly three and a half acres) of land in El Kab. All the
sailors engaged in the battle were treated with equal gen-
erosity. Even then Ahmose was obliged to quell one more
rebellion before he was left in undisputed possession of the
throne; for in closing the narrative of his service under this
king, Ahmose, son of Ebana, says: “Then came that fallen
one, whose name was Teti-en; he had gathered to himself
rebels. His majesty slew him and his servants, annihilating
them. There were given to me three heads (slaves) and
five stat of land in my city."3 We thus see how king
Ahmose bound his supporters to his cause. He did not stop,
however, with gold, slaves and land, but in some cases even
granted the local princes, the descendants of the great feudal
lords of the Middle Kingdom, high and royal titles like “first
king's son," which, while conveying few or no prerogatives,
satisfied the vanity of old and illustrious families, like that
of El Kab, who deserved well at his hands. Similarly we
find barons who were left in possession of their old titles,
but evidently the estates of such magnates were taken
out of their hands and administered by the central govern-
ment, for they resided at Thebes and were buried there.
Thus we find there the tombs of the lords of Thinis and of
Aphroditopolis; a lord of the former city assisted Queen
Hatshepsut in the transportation of her obelisks."
There were but few of the local nobles who thus supported
Ahmose and gained his favour; the larger number opposed
both him and the Hyksos and perished in the struggle.
Their more fortunate fellows, being now nothing more than
1 II, 14,
2 II, 15.
II, 18.
* II, p. 138, note ..
THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES
229
court and administrative officials, the feudal lords thus prac-
tically disappeared. The lands which formed their heredi-
tary possessions were confiscated and passed to the crown,
where they permanently remained. There was one notable
exception to the general confiscation; the house of El Kab,
to which the Theban dynasty owed so much, was allowed
to retain its lands, and two generations after the expulsion
of the Hyksos, the head of the house appears as lord, not
only of El Kab but also Esneh and all the intervening terri-
tory. Besides this he was given administrative charge,
though not hereditary possession, of the lands of the south
from the vicinity of Thebes (Per-Hathor) to El Kab. Yet
this exception serves but to accentuate more sharply the total
extinction of the landed nobility, who had formed the sub-
stance of the governmental organization under the Middle
Kingdom. All Egypt was now the personal estate of the
Pharaoh, just as it was after the destruction of the Mamlukes
by Mohammed Ali early in the nineteenth century. It is
this state of affairs which in Hebrew tradition was repre-
sented as the direct result of Joseph's sagacity.'
I Gen. 47: 19-20.
BOOK V
THE EMPIRE: FIRST PERIOD
CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
The task of building up a state, which now confronted
Ahmose I, differed materially from the reorganization ac-
complished at the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty by
Amenemhet I. The latter dealt with social and political
factors no longer new in his time, and manipulated to his
own ends the old political units without destroying their iden-
tity, whereas Ahmose had now to begin with the erection of
a fabric of government out of elements so completely di-
vorced from the old forms as to have lost their identity,
being now in a state of total flux. The course of events,
which culminated in the expulsion of the Hyksos, determined
for Ahmose the form which the new state was to assume.
He was now at the head of a strong army, effectively organ-
ized and welded together by long campaigns and sieges pro-
tracted through years, during which he had been both general
in the field and head of the state. The character of the gov-
ernment followed involuntarily out of these conditions.
Egypt became a military state. It was quite natural that
it should remain so, in spite of the usually unwarlike char-
acter of the Egyptian. The long war with the Hyksos had
now educated him as a soldier, the large army of Ahmose
had spent years in Asia and had even been for a longer or
shorter period among the rich cities of Syria. Having
thoroughly learned war and having perceived the enormous
wealth to be gained by it in Asia, the whole land was roused
and stirred with a lust of conquest, which was not quenched
for several centuries. The wealth, the rewards and the pro-
motion open to the professional soldier were a constant in-
centive to a military career, and the middle classes, other-
233
234
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
wise so unwarlike, now entered the ranks with ardour.
Among the survivors of the noble class, chiefly those who
had attached themselves to the Theban house, the profession
of arms became the most attractive of all careers, and in the
biographies’ which they have left in their tombs at Thebes
they narrate with the greatest satisfaction the campaigns
which they went through at the Pharaoh's side, and the
honours which he bestowed upon them. Many a campaign,
all record of which would have been irretrievably lost, has
thus come to our knowledge through one of these military
biographies, like that of Ahmose, son of Ebana, from which
we have quoted. The sons of the Pharaoh, who in the Old
Kingdom held administrative offices, are now generals in the
army. For the next century and a half the story of the
achievements of the army will be the story of Egypt, for
the army is now the dominant force and the chief motive
power in the new state. In organization it quite surpassed
the militia of the old days, if for no other reason than that
it was now a standing army. It was organized into two
grand divisions, one in the Delta and the other in the upper
country. In Syria it had learned tactics and proper strate-
gic disposition of forces, the earliest of which we know any-
thing in history. We shall now find partition of an army
into divisions, we shall hear of wings and centre, we shall
even trace a flank movement and define battle lines. All
this is fundamentally different from the disorganized plun-
dering expeditions naively reported as wars by the monu-
ments of the older periods (Fig. 104). Besides the old bow
and spear, the troops henceforth carry also a war axe. They
have learned archery fire by volleys and the dreaded archers
of Egypt now gained a reputation which followed and made
them feared even in classic times. But more than this, the
Hyksos having brought the horse into Egypt, the Egyptian
armies now for the first time possessed a large proportion
of chariotry. Cavalry in the modern sense of the term was
III, 1-10, 17-25, et passim.
SINI, 350, 302.
* III, 56.
• Ibid.

PVC
a
FIG. 104.-A BODY OF SPEARMEN OF THE EMPIRE.
Part of the military escort of Hatshesput's expedition to Punt. From the reliefs in her temple at Der el-
Bahri, Thebes.

Fig. 105.-A CHARIOT OF THE EMPIRE
It is of full size, made of wood, bronze and leather. Museo Archaeologico, Florence.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 235
not employed. The deft craftsmen of Egypt soon mastered
the art of chariot-making (Fig. 105), while the stables of
the Pharaoh contained thousands of the best horses to be
had in Asia. In accordance with the spirit of the time, the
Pharaoh was accompanied on all public appearances by a
body-guard of élite troops and a group of his favourite mili-
tary officers.
With such force at his back, he ruled in absolute power;
there was none to offer a breath of opposition; there was not
a whisper of that modern monitor of kings, public opinion,
an inconvenience with which rulers in the orient are rarely
obliged to reckon, even at the present day. With a man of
strong powers on the throne, all were at his feet, but let
him betray a single evidence of weakness, and he was quickly
made the puppet of court coteries and the victim of harem
intrigues as of old. At such a time, as has happened so
often since in Egypt, an able minister might overthrow the
dynasty and found one of his own. But the man who ex-
pelled the Hyksos was thoroughly master of the situation.
It is evidently in large measure to him that we owe the recon-
struction of the state which was now emerging from the tur-
inoils of two centuries of internal disorder and foreign
invasion.
This new state is revealed to us more clearly than that of
any other period of Egyptian history under native dynasties,
and while we shall recognize many elements surviving from
earlier times, we shall be able to discern much that is new
in the great structure of government which was now rising
under the hands of Almose I and his successors.
preme position occupied by the Pharaoh meant a very active
participation in the affairs of government. He was accus-
tomed every morning to meet the vizier, still the main spring
of the administration, to consult with him on all the interests
of the country and all the current business which necessarily
came under his eye. Immediately thereafter he held a con-
ference with the chief treasurer.2 These two men headed
I II, 678.
The su-
· Ibid.
236
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the chief departments of government: the treasury and the
judiciary. The Pharaoh's office, in which they made their
daily reports to him, was the central organ of the whole
government where all its lines converged. All other reports
to government were likewise handed in here, and theoretic-
ally they all passed through the Pharaoh's hands. Even
in the limited number of such documents preserved to us,
we discern the vast array of detailed questions in practical
administration which the busy monarch decided. The pun-
ishment of condemned criminals was determined by him,
the documents in the case being sent up to him for a decision
while the victims awaited their fate in the dungeon. Besides
frequent campaigns in Nubia and Asia, he visited’ the quar-
ries and mines in the desert or inspected the desert routes,
seeking suitable locations for wells and stations. Likewise
the internal administration required frequent journeys to
examine new buildings and check all sorts of official abuses.
The official cults in the great temples, too, demanded more
and more of the monarch's time and attention as the rituals
in the vast state temples increased in complexity with the
development of the elaborate state religion. Under these
circumstances the burden inevitably exceeded the powers of
one man, even with the assistance of his vizier. From the
earliest days of the Old Kingdom, as the reader will recall,
there had been but one vizier. Early in the Eighteenth
Dynasty, however, the business of government and the duties
of the Pharaoh had so increased that he appointed two
viziers, one residing at Thebes, for the administration of
the South, from the cataract as far as the nome of Siut;
while the other, who had charge of all the region north of
the latter point, lived at Heliopolis. This innovation prob-
ably took place after the transfer of the southern country
between El Kab and the cataract from the jurisdiction of the
Nubian province to that of the vizier.
For administrative purposes the country was divided into
11V, 541.
2 III, 170.
'IV, 464.
* III, 58.
Inscription of Mes.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
237
irregular districts, some of which consisted of the old and
strong towns of feudal days, each with its surrounding vil-
lages; while others contained no such town centre, and were
evidently arbitrary divisions established solely for govern-
mental reasons. There were at least twenty seven such
administrative districts between Siut and the cataract, and
the country as a whole must have been divided into over
twice that number. The head of government in the old
towns still bore the feudal title "count,” but it now indicated
solely administrative duties and might better be translated
“mayor" or "governor." Each of the smaller towns had
a “town-ruler," but in the other districts there were only
recorders and scribes, with one of their number at their
head. As we shall see, these men were both the adminis-
trators, chiefly in a fiscal capacity, and the judicial officials
within their jurisdictions.
The great object of government was to make the country
economically strong and productive. To secure this end, its
lands, now chiefly owned by the crown, were worked by the
king's serfs, controlled by his officials, or entrusted by him
as permanent and indivisible fiefs to his favourite nobles, his
partisans and relatives. Divisible parcels might also be
held by tenants of the untitled classes. Both classes of hold-
ings might be transferred by will or sale in much the same
way as if the holder actually owned the land.3 Other royal
property, like cattle and asses, was held by the people of
both classes, subject, like the lands, to an annual assessment
for its use. For purposes of taxation all lands and other
property of the crown, except that held by the temples, were
recorded in the tax-registers of the White House, as the
treasury was still called. All “houses” or estates and the
“numbers belonging thereto,"4 were entered in these regis-
ters. On the basis of these, taxes were assessed. They were
still collected in naturalia: cattle, grain, wine, oil, honey, tex-
tiles, and the like. Besides the cattle-yards, the “granary”
1 II, 716-745.
? II, 717.
• Inscription of Mes.
• II, 916, 1. 31.
238
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
was the chief sub-department of the White House, and there
were innumerable other magazines for the storage of its
receipts. All the products which filled these repositories
were termed "labour,” the word employed in ancient Egypt
as we use “taxes.” If we may accept Hebrew tradition as
transmitted in the story of Joseph, such taxes comprised
one fifth of the produce of the land.' It was collected by
the local officials, whom we have already noticed, and its
reception in and payment from the various magazines de-
manded a host of scribes and subordinates, now more numer-
ous than ever before in the history of the country. The chief
treasurer at their head was under the authority of the vizier,
to whom he made a report every morning, after which he
received permission to open the offices and magazines for
the day's business. The collection of a second class of
revenue, that paid by the local officials themselves as a tax
upon their offices, was exclusively in the hands of the viziers.
The southern vizier was responsible for all the officials of
Upper Egypt in his jurisdiction from Elephantine to Siut;
and in view of this fact, the other vizier doubtless bore a
similar responsibility in the North. This tax on the officials
consisted chiefly of gold, silver, grain, cattle and linen; the
mayor of the old city of El Kab, for example, paid some
5,600 grains of gold, 4,200 grains of silver, one ox and one
"two-year old" into the vizier's office every year, while his
subordinate paid 4,200 grains of silver, a bead necklace of
gold, two oxen and two chests of linen. Unfortunately the
list from which these numbers are taken, recorded in the
tomb of the vizier Rekhmire at Thebes, is too mutilated to
permit the calculation of the exact total of this tax on all
the officials under the jurisdiction of the southern vizer; but
they paid him annually at least some 220,000 grains of gold,
nine gold necklaces, over 16,000 grains of silver, some forty
chests and other measures of linen, one hundred and six
cattle of all ages and some grain; and these figures are short
? II, 679.
II, 716-745.
1 Gen. 47: 23-27.
• Ibid.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
239
hy probably at least twenty per cent. of the real total. As
the king presumably received a similar amount from the
northern vizier's collections, this tax on the officials formed
a stately sum in the annual revenues. We can unfortu-
nately form no estimate of the total of all revenues. Of the
royal income from all sources in the Fighteenth Dynasty
the southern vizier had general charge. The amount of all
taxes to be levied and the distribution of the revenue when
collected were determined in his office, where a constant bal-
ance sheet was kept. In order to control both income and
outgo, a monthly fiscal report was made to him by all local
officials, and thus the southern vizier was able to furnish
the king from month to month with a full statement of pros-
pective resources in the royal treasury. The taxes were so
dependent, as they still are, upon the height of the inunda-
tion and the consequent prospects for a plentiful or scanty
harvest, that the level of the rising river was also reported
to him. He held also all the records of the temple estates,
and in the case of Amon, whose chief sanctuary was in the
city of which the vizier was governor, he naturally had
charge of the rich temple fortune, even ranking the High
Priest of Amon in the affairs of the god's estate. As the
income of the crown was, from now on, so largely augmented
by foreign tribute, this was also received by the southern
vizier and by him communicated to the king. The great
vizier, Rekhmire depicts himself in the gorgeous reliefs in
his tomb receiving both the taxes of the officials who ap-
peared before him each year with their dues, and the tribute
of the Asiatic vassal-princes and Nubian chiefs.
In the administration of justice the southern vizier played
even a greater role than in the treasury. Here he was su-
preme. The old magnates of the Southern Tens, once pos-
sessed of important judicial functions, have sunk to a mere
attendant council at the vizier's public audiences, where they
seem to have retained not even advisory functions. They
5
1 II, 708.
* II, 716-745.
2 II, 700.
6 II, 700-761.
II, 746-751.
"JI, 712.
240
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
are never mentioned in the court records of the time, though
they still live in poetry and their old fame survived even
into Greek times. The vizier continues to bear his tradi-
tional title, “chief of the six great houses” or courts of jus-
tice, but these are never referred to in any of the surviving
legal documents and have evidently disappeared save in the
title of the vizier. As always heretofore the officers of ad-
ministration are incidentally the dispensers of justice. They
constantly serve in a judicial capacity. Although there is
no class of judges with exclusively legal duties, every man
of important administrative rank is thoroughly versed in
the law and is ready at any moment to serve as judge. The
vizier is no exception. All petitioners for legal redress
applied first to him in his audience hall; if possible in per-
son, but in any case in writing. For this purpose he held a
daily audience or “sitting” as the Egyptian called it.1
Every morning the people crowded into the “hall of the
vizier,” where the ushers and bailiffs jostled them into line
that they might "be heard,'' in order of arrival, one after
another. In cases concerning land located in Thebes he
was obliged by law to render a decision in three days, but
if the land lay in the "South or North” he required two
months. This was while he was still the only vizier; when
the North received its own vizier such cases there were re-
ferred to him at Heliopolis. All crimes in the capital city
were denounced and tried before him, and he maintained a
criminal docket of prisoners awaiting trial or punishment,
which strikingly suggests modern documents of the same
sort.5 All this, and especially the land cases, demanded
rapid and convenient access to the archives of the land.
They were therefore all filed in his offices. No one might
make a will without filing it in the “vizier's ball." Copies
of all nome archives, boundary records and all contracts were
deposited with him? or with his colleague in the North. Every
III, 675, 714-715.
* Inscription of Mes.
7 II, 703.
& II, 715.
SJI, 083.
s Inscription of Mes.
3 II, 686.
• II, 088.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
241
petitioner to the king was obliged to hand in his petition in
writing at the same office."
Besides the vizier's “hall,” also called the “great coun-
cil,” there were local courts throughout the land, not pri-
marily of a legal character, being, as we have already
explained, merely the body of administrative officials in each
district, who were corporately empowered to try cases with
full competence. They were the "great men of the town,"
or the local "council,” and acted as the local representatives
of the great council." In suits involving real estate
titles, a commissioner of the "great council” was sent out
to execute the decisions of the great council" in coöper-
ation with the nearest local council." Or sometimes a
hearing before the local “council” was necessary before
the “great council” could render a decision.?
The num-
ber of these local courts is entirely uncertain, but the most
important two known were at Thebes and Memphis. At
Thebes its composition varied from day to day; in cases
of a delicate nature, where the members of the royal
house were implicated, it was appointed by the vizier, and
in case of conspiracy against the ruler, the monarch bim-
self commissioned them, though without partiality, and
with instructions merely to determine who were the guilty,
accompanied by power to execute the sentence.4 All courts
were largely made up of priests. It is difficult to discern
the relation of these courts to the "hall of the vizier," but
in at least one case, when satisfaction was not obtained at
the vizier's hall, the petitioner recovered a stolen slave by
suit before one of these courts. They did not, however,
always enjoy the best reputation among the people, who
bewailed the hapless plight of "the one who stands alone
before the court when he is a poor man and his opponent is
rich, while the court oppresses him (saying), 'Silver and
gold for the scribes! Clothing for the servants !'” For
of course the bribe of the rich was often stronger than the
III, 691. Gardiner, Inscription of Mes. SII, 705.
• IV, 423-4. • Spiegelberg, Studien.
• Pap. Anast. II, 8, 6.
!
6
16
242
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
or
justice of the poor man's cause, as it frequently is at the
present day. The law to which the poor appealed was
undoubtedly just. The vizier was obliged to keep it con-
stantly before him, contained in forty rolls which were laid
out before his dais at all his public sessions where they were
doubtless accessible to all. Unfortunately the code which
they contained has perished, but of its justice we can have
no doubt, for the vizier was said to be a judge “judging
justly, not showing partiality, sending two men (opponents]
forth satisfied, judging the weak and the powerful,” 2
again, "not preferring the great above the humble, reward-
ing the oppressed ... , bringing the evil to him who com-
mitted it."'3 Even the king dealt according to law; Amen-
hotep III called himself in his titulary "establisher of law,
and when before one of the courts which we have already
described, the king boasts that “the law stood firm; I did
not reverse judgment, but in view of the facts I was silent
that I might cause jubilation and joy."!! Even conspira-
tors against the king's life were not summarily put to death,
but, as we have seen, were handed over to a legally con-
stituted court to be properly tried, and condemned only when
found guilty. The punishments inflicted by Haremhab
upon his corrupt officials who robbed the poor, were all
according to “law."'5 The great body of this law was un-
doubtedly very old, and some of it, like the old texts of
the Book of the Dead, was ascribed to the gods; but Harem-
hab's new regulations were new law enacted by him.
Diodorus tells of five different kings before Persian times
who enacted new laws, and in the Middle Kingdom even
a nobleman relates having made laws, meaning, of course,
that he had formulated them at the king's request. The
social, agricultural and industrial world of the Nile-dwellers
under the Empire was therefore not at the mercy of arbi-
trary whim on the part of either king or court, but was gov-
erned by a large body of long respected law, embodying the
principles of justice and humanity.
III, 675, 712. II, 713.
• Spiegelberg, Studien.
6 III, 51 ff.
6 See above, pp. 80-82. IIII, 15. 81, 531.
311, 715.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
243
The southern vizier was the motive power behind the
organization and operation of this ancient state. We recall
that he went in every morning and took council with the
Pharaoh on the affairs of the country; and the only other
check upon his untrammelled control of the state was a law
constraining him to report the condition of his office to the
chief treasurer. Every morning as he came forth from his
interview with the king he found the chief treasurer standing
by one of the flag-staves of the palace front, and there they
exchanged reports. The vizier then unsealed the doors of
the court and of the offices of the royal estate so that the
day's business might begin; and during the day all ingress
and egress at these doors was reported to him, whether of
persons or of property of any sort.? His office was the
means of communication with the local authorities, who
reported to himn in writing on the first day of each season,
that is, three times a year. It is in his office that we discern
with unmistakable clearness the complete centralization of
all local government in all its functions. This supervision
of the local administration required frequent journeys and
there was therefore an official barge of the vizier on the
river in which he passed from place to place. It was he
who detailed the king's bodyguard for service as well as
the garrison of the residence city;4 general army orders pro-
ceeded from his office;' the forts of the South were under his
control;" and the officials of the navy all reported to him."
He was thus minister of war for both army and navy, and
in the Eighteenth Dynasty at least, “when the king was
with the army,” he conducted the administration at home.8
He had legal control of the temples throughout the country,
or, as the Egyptian put it, "he established laws in the tem-
ples of the gods of the South and the North,'» so that he
was minister of ecclesiastical affairs. He had economic
oversight of many important resources of the country; no
timber could be cut without his permission, and the adinin-
· II, 678-0.
8 II, 095.
& II, 676, 080.
• II, 702.
3 II, 687, 692, 708, 711.
III, 710. 8 II, 710.
• II, 693-4.
9 II, 757.
244
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
istration of irrigation and water supply was also under his
charge.' In order to establish the calendar for state busi-
ness, the rising of Sirius was reported to him. He exer-
cised advisory functions in all the offices of the state;s so
long as his office was undivided with a vizier of the North
he was grand steward of all Egypt, and there was no prime
function of the state which did not operate immediately or
secondarily through his office, while all others were obliged
to report to it or work more or less closely in connection
with it. He was a veritable Joseph and it must have been
this office which the Hebrew narrator had in mind as that
to which Joseph was appointed. He was regarded by the
people as their great protector and no higher praise could
be proffered to Amon when addressed by a worshipper than
to call him "the poor man's vizier who does not accept the
bribe of the guilty." His appointment was a matter of
such importance that it was conducted by the king himself,
and the instructions given him by the monarch on that occa-
sion were not such as we should expect from the lips of an
oriental conqueror three thousand five hundred years ago.
They display a spirit of kindness and humanity and exhibit
an appreciation of state craft surprising in an age so remote.
The king tells the vizier that he shall conduct himself as
one “not setting his face toward the princes and councillors,
neither one making brethren of all the people”;* again he
says, “It is an abomination of the god to show partiality. This
is the teaching: thou shalt do the like, shalt regard him who
is known to thee like him who is unknown to thee, and him
who is near ... like him who is far. ... Such an official
shall flourish greatly in the place. Be not enraged
toward a man unjustly . . . but show forth the fear of thee;
let one be afraid of thee, for a prince is a prince of whom
one is afraid. Lo, the true dread of a prince is to do jus-
tice. . . . Be not known to the people and they shall not say,
'He is only a man.' 118 Even the vizier's subordinates are
III, 697-8.
* Pap. Anast. II, 6, 5-6.
* II, 709.
6 II, 066.
SII, 696.
II, 008-0.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
245
to be men of justice, for the king admonishes the new vizier,
“Lo, one shall say of the chief scribe of the vizier, ‘A scribe
of justice' shall one say of him." In a land where the
bribery of the court still begins with the lowest subordinates
before access is gained to the magistrates, such "justice
was necessary indeed. The viziers of the Eighteenth Dy-
nasty desired the reputation of hard working, conscientious
officials, who took the greatest pride in the proper adminis-
tration of the office. Several of them have left a record of
their installation, with a long list of the duties of the office,
engraved and painted upon the walls of their Theban tombs,
and it is from these that we have drawn our account of the
vizier. 2
Such was the government of the imperial age in Egypt.
In society the disappearance of the landed nobility, and the
administration of the local districts by a vast army of petty
officials of the crown, opened the way more fully than in
the Middle Kingdom for innumerable careers among the
middle class. These opportunities must have worked a
gradual change in their condition. Thus one official relates
his obscure origin thus: “Ye shall talk of it, one to another,
and the old men shall teach it to the youth. I was one whose
family was poor and whose town was small, but the Lord
of the Two Lands (the king) recognized me; I was accounted
great in his heart, the king in his role as sun-god in the
splendour of his palace saw me. He exalted me more than
the (royal] companions, introducing me among the princes
of the palace. ... He appointed me to conduct works while
I was a youth, he found me, I was made account of in his
heart, I was introduced into the gold-house to fashion the
figures and images of all the gods."93 Here he administered
his office so well in overseeing the production of the costly
images of gold that he was rewarded publicly with decora-
tions of gold by the king and even gained place in the
councils of the treasury. Such possibilities of promotion
III, 670
II, 665-701.
l'npublished stela in Leyden (V, I), by courtesy of the curator.
246
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and royal favour awaited success in local administration;
for in some local office the career of this unknown official in
the small town must have begun. There thus grew up a
new official class, its lower ranks drawn from the old middle
class, while on the other hand in its upper strata were the
relatives and dependents of the old landed nobility, by
whom the higher and more important local offices were
administered. Here the official class gradually merged into
the large circle of royal favourites who filled the great offices
of the central government or commanded the Pharaoh's
forces on his campaigns. As there was no longer a feudal
nobility, the great government officials became the nobles of
the Empire. The old middle class of merchants,' skilled
craftsmen and artists also still survived and continued to
replenish the lower ranks of the official class. Below these
were the masses who worked the fields and estates, the serfs
of the Pharaoh. They formed so large a portion of the
inhabitants that the Hebrew scribe, evidently writing from
the outside, knew only this class of society beside the priests. ?
These lower strata passed away and left little or no trace,
but the official class was now able to erect tombs and inor-
tuary stelæ in such surprising numbers that they furnish
us a vast mass of materials for reconstructing the life and
customs of the time. An official who took a census in the
Eighteenth Dynasty divided the people into “soldiers,
priests, royal serfs and all the craftsmen,'3 and this clas-
sification is corroborated by all that we know of the time;
although we must understand that all callings of the free
middle class are here included among the "soldiers." The
soldier in the standing army has therefore now also become
a social class. The free middle class, liable to military ser-
vice, are called “citizens of the ariny," a term already
known in the Middle Kingdom," but now very common; so
that liability to military service becomes the significant des-
ignation of this class of society. Politically the soldier's
influence grows with every reign and he soon becomes the
illl, 274.
2 Gen. 47: 21.
311, p. 105, note a.
* I, 081.
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
247
involuntary reliance of the Pharaoh in the execution of
numerous civil commissions where formerly the soldier was
never employed. Side by side with him appears another
new and powerful influence, the ancient institution of the
priesthood. As a natural consequence of the great wealth
of the temples under the Empire, the priesthood becomes
a profession, no longer merely an incidental office held by
a layman, as in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. As the
priests increase in numbers they gain more and more polit-
ical power; while the growing wealth of the temples demands
for its proper administration a veritable army of temple
officials of all sorts, who were unknown to the old days of
simplicity. Probably one fourth of all the persons buried
in the great and sacred cemetery of Abydos at this period
were priests. Priestly communities had thus grown up.
Heretofore the priests of the various sanctuaries had never
been united by any official ties, but existed only in individual
and entirely separated communities without interrelation.
All these priestly bodies were now united in a great sacer-
dotal organization embracing the whole land. The head of
the state temple at Thebes, the High Priest of Amon, was
the supreme head of this greater body also and his power
was thereby increased far beyond that of his older rivals
at Heliopolis and Memphis. The members of the sacerdotal
guild thus became a new class, so that priest, soldier and
official now stood together as three great social classes, yet
possessing common interests; their leaders were the Phar-
aoh's nobles, wlio replaced the old aristocracy; but their
lower ranks were not to be distinguished from the free middle
class, the tradesmen and craftsmen ; while at the bottom, as
the chief economic basis of all, were tlie peasant serfs.
The priests whoin we now find so numerous as to have
become a class of society, were the representatives of a richer
and more elaborate state religion than Egypt had ever seen.
The days of the old simplicity were forever past. The wealth
gained by foreign conquest enabled the Pharaohs from now
on to endow the temples with such riches as no sanctuary
248
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of the old days had ever possessed. The temples grew into
vast and gorgeous palaces, each with its community of
priests, and the high priest of such a community in the larger
centres was a veritable sacerdotal prince, ultimately wield-
ing considerable political power. The High Priest's wife at
Thebes was called the chief concubine of the god, and his
real consort was no less a person than the queen herself,
who was therefore known as the “Divine Consort." In the
gorgeous ritual which now prevailed, her part was to lead
the singing of the women who were also still permitted to
participate in the service in large numbers. She possessed
also a fortune, which belonged to the temple endowment,
and for this reason it was desirable that the queen should
hold the office in order to retain this fortune in the royal
house.
The triumph of a Theban family had brought with it the
supremacy of Amon. He had not been the god of the resi-
dence in the Middle Kingdom, and although the rise of a
Theban family had then given him some distinction, it was
not until now that he became the great god of the state. His
essential character and individuality had already been oblit-
erated by the solar theology of the Middle Kingdom, when
he had become Amon-Re, and with some attributes borrowed
from his ithyphallic neighbour, Min of Coptos, he now rose
to a unique and supreme position of unprecedented splen-
dour. He was popular with the people, too, and as a Moslem
says, “Inshallah," "If Allah will," so the Egyptian now
added to all his promises “If Amon spare my life.” They
called him the “vizier of the poor," the people carried to
him their wants and wishes, and their hopes for future pros-
perity were implicitly staked upon his favour. But the
fusion of the old gods had not deprived Amon alone of his
individuality, for in the general flux almost any god might
possess the qualities and functions of the others, although
the dominant position was still occupied by the sun-god.
The mortuary beliefs of the time are the outgrowth of
tendencies already plainly observable in the Middle King-
THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
249
dom. The magical formulæ by which the dead are to
triumph in the hereafter become more and more numerous,
so that it is no longer possible to record them on the inside
of the coffin, but they must be written on papyrus and the roll
placed in the tomb. As the selection of the most important
of these texts came to be more and more uniform, the “Book
of the Dead" began to take form. All was dominated by
magic; by this all-powerful means the dead might effect
all that he desired. The luxurious lords of the Empire no
longer look forward with pleasure to the prospect of plowing,
sowing and reaping in the happy fields of Yaru. They
would escape such peasant labour, and a statuette (Fig.
106) bearing the implements of labour in the field and in-
scribed with a potent charm is placed in the tomb, thereby
ensuring to the deceased immunity from such toil, which
will always be performed by this representative whenever
the call to the fields is heard. Such“Ushebtis," or "respon-
dents, as they were termed, were now placed in the necrop-
olis by scores and hundreds. But this means of obtaining
material good was now unfortunately transferred also to the
ethical world, in order to secure exemption from the conse-
quences of an evil life. A sacred beetle or scarabæus (Fig.
107) is cut from stone and inscribed with a charm, beginning
with the significant words, “O my heart, rise not up against
me as a witness." So powerful is this cunning invention
when laid upon the breast of the mummy under the wrap-
pings that when the guilty soul stands in the judgment-hall
in the awful presence of Osiris, the accusing voice of the
heart is silenced and the great god does not perceive the
evil of which it would testify. Likewise the rolls of the
Book of the Dead containing, besides all the other charms,
also the scene of judgment, and especially the welcome ver-
dict of acquittal, are now sold by the priestly scribes to
anyone with the means to buy; and the fortunate purchaser's
name is then inserted in the blanks left for this purpose
throughout the document; thus securing for himself the cer-
tainty of such a verdict, before it was known whose name
250
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
to grow.
should be so inserted. The invention of these devices by the
priests was undoubtedly as subversive of moral progress and
the elevation of the popular religion as the sale of indul-
gences in Luther's time. The moral aspirations which had
come into the religion of Egypt with the ethical influences
so potent in the Osiris-myth, were now choked and poisoned
by the assurance that, however vicious a man's life, exemp-
tion in the hereafter could be purchased at any time from
the priests. The priestly literature on the hereafter, pro-
duced probably for no other purpose than for gain, continued
We have a "Book of What is in the Nether
World,” describing the twelve caverns, or hours of the
night through which the sun passed beneath the earth; and
a “Book of the Portals,” treating of the gates and strong-
holds between these caverns. Although these edifying com-
positions never gained the wide circulation enjoyed by the
Book of the Dead, the former of the two was engraved in
the tombs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty kings
at Thebes, showing that these grotesque creations of the per-
verted priestly imagination finally gained the credence of
the highest circles.
The tomb of the noble consists as before of chambers
hewn in the face of the cliff, and in accordance with the pre-
vailing tendency it is now filled with imaginary scenes from
the next world, with mortuary and religious texts, many of
them of a magical character. At the same time the tomb
has become more a personal monument to the deceased and
the walls of the chapel bear many scenes from his life, espe-
cially from his official career, particularly as a record of
the honours which he received from the king. Thus the cliffs
opposite Thebes (Figs. 131, 166), honey-combed as they are
with the tombs of the lords of the Empire, contain whole
chapters of the life and history of the period, with which
we shall now deal. In a solitary valley (Fig. 108) behind
these cliffs, as we shall see, the kings now likewise excavate
their tombs in the limestone walls and the pyramid is no
longer employed. Vast galleries (Figs. 109, 110) are pierced

7.32

till
FIG. 106.--"USHEBTI” OR RESPONDENT
STATUETTES.
The substitute of the deceased when called upon for
menial labor in the hereafter. See p. 249. (Art
Institute, Chicago.)
Fig. 107.-HEART SCARAB OF THE “FIRST
OF THE SACRED WOMEN OF AMON,
ISIMKHEB." See p. 249. (Field Museum,
Chicago.)

Fig. 108.-PART OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS' TOMBS, THEBES.
The entrances of two tombs are discernible at the right of the center. See pp. 250-51; 279-80.
TIE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
251
TV
ogo
ITL
طلع
VI
q
1
N
into the mountain, and passing from
hall to hall, they terminate many hun-
dreds of feet from the entrance in a
large chamber, where the body of the
king is laid in a huge stone sarcoph-
agus. It is possible that the whole
excavation is intended to represent the
passages of the nether world along
which the sun passes in his nightly
journey. On the western plain of
Thebes, the plain east of this valley,
as on the east side of the pyramid,
arose the splendid mortuary temples
of the emperors, of which we shall
later have occasion to say more. But
these elaborate mortuary customs are
now no longer confined to the Pharaoh
and his nobles; the necessity for such
equipment in preparation for the here-
after is now felt by all classes. The
manufacture of such materials, result-
ing from the gradual extension of these
customs, has become an industry; the
embalmers, undertakers and manufac-
turers of coffins and tomb furniture
occupy a quarter at Thebes, forming
almost a guild by themselves, as they
did in later Greek times. The middle
class were now frequently able to exca-
vate and decorate a tomb; but when
too poor for this luxury, they rented a
place for their dead in great common
tombs maintained by the priests, and
here the embalmed body was deposited
in a chamber where the mummies were
piled up like cord-wood, but neverthe-
less received the benefit of the ritual
ma
I
FIG. 109. Ground Plan of the
Tomb of Seti I, excavated in the
Valley of the Kings' Tombs at
Thebes. The shaded portions
are descending steps. I-IV and
VII-IX
are galleries, which
descend as they advance. The
otber rooms are pillared halls.
In hall X was the magnificent
alabaster Sarcophagus of the
kiug, now lu Sir Jobu Soave's
Museum in London.
252
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
maintained for all in common. The very poor still buried
in the sand and gravel on the desert margin as of old,
but even they looked with longing upon the luxury enjoyed
in the hereafter by the rich, and at the door of some lux-
urious tomb they buried a rude statuette of their dead,
bearing his name, in the pathetic hope that thus he might
gain a few crumbs from the bounty of the rich man's mor-
tuary table.
Out of the chaos which the rule of foreign lords had pro-
duced, the new state and the new conditions slowly emerged
as Ahmose I gradually gained leisure from his arduous wars.
With the state religion, the foreign dynasty had shown no
sympathy and the temples lay wasted and deserted in many
places. We find Ahmose therefore in his twenty second
year opening new workings in the famous quarries of Ayan
or Troja, opposite Gizeh, from which the blocks for the Gizeh
pyramids were taken, in order to secure stone for the tem-
ples in Memphis, Thebes (Luxor) and probably elsewhere."
For these works he still employed the oxen which he had
taken from the Syrians in his Asiatic wars. None of these
buildings of his, however, has survived. For the ritual of
the state temple at Karnak he furnished the sanctuary with
a magnificent service of rich cultus utensils in precious
metals, and he built a new temple-barge upon the river of
cedar exacted from the Lebanon princes. His greatest work
remains the Eighteenth Dynasty itself, for whose brilliant
career his own achievements had laid so firm a foundation.
Notwithstanding his reign of at least twenty two years,
Ahmose must have died young (1557 B. C.) for his mother
was still living in the tenth year of his son and successor,
Amenhotep 1.3 By him4 he was buried in the old Eleventh
Dynasty cemetery at the north end of the western Theban
plain in a masonry tomb, which has now long perished. The
jewelry of his mother (Fig. 103), stolen from her neigh-
bouring tomb at a remote date, was found by Mariette con-
cealed in the vicinity. The body of Ahmose I, as well as
this jewelry, are now preserved in the Museum at Cairo.
III, 26-28, 33 ff.
2 II, 32.
3 II, 49-51.
* Masp. Mom. roy., 5:34.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM; THE RISE
OF THE EMPIRE
THE time was not yet ripe for the great achievements
which awaited the monarchs of the new dynasty. The old
dominion of the Middle Kingdom, from the second cataract
to the sea, was still far from the consolidation necessary to
retain it in administrative and industrial stability. Nubia
had been long without a strong arm from the north and the
southern rebels in Egypt had prevented Ahmose I from con-
tinuous exertion of force above the cataract. The Troglo-
dytes, who later harassed the Romans on this same frontier,
and who were never thoroughly subdued by them, now pos-
sessed a leader, and Ahmose's campaign against them had
not been lasting in its effects. It was easy for these bar-
barians to retreat into the eastern desert as the Egyptians
approached, and then return after the danger had passed.
Amenhotep I, Ahmose's successor, was therefore obliged to
invade Nubia in force and penetrated to the Middle Kingdom
frontier at the second cataract," where the temple of the
Sesostrises and Amenemhets had long been in the hands
of the barbarians, and was doubtless in ruin. The two
Ahmoses of El Kab were with the king, and Ahmose, son
of Ebana, reports that his majesty captured that Troglodyte
of Nubia in the midst of his soldiers.''2 With the loss of
their leader, there was but one outcome for the action; both
the Ahmoses captured prisoners, displayed great gallantry
and were rewarded by the king.3 Northern Nubia was now
placed under the administration of the mayor or governor
of the old city of Neklen, which now became the northern
III, 38-9.
& II, 39.
SII, 39, 41.
259
254
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
limit of a southern administrative district, including all the
territory on the south of it, controlled by Egypt, at least as
far as northern Nubia, or Wawat. From this time the new
governor was able to go north with the tribute of the country
regularly every year.'
Hardly had Amenhotep I won his victory at the second
cataract, than another danger on the opposite frontier in
the north recalled him thither. Ahmose, son of Ebana,
boasts that he brought the king back to Egypt in his ship,
probably from the second cataract, that is some two hun-
dred miles, in two days. The long period of weakness and
disorganization accompanying the rule of the Hyksos had
given the Libyans the opportunity, which they always im-
proved, of pushing in and occupying the rich lands of the
Delta. Though our only source does not mention any such
invasion, it is evident that Amenhotep I's war with the
Libyans at this particular time can be explained in no other
way. Finding their aggressions too threatening to be longer
ignored, the Pharaoh now drove them back and invaded their
country. We know nothing of the battles that may have
been fought, but Amose-Pen-Nekhbet of El Kab states that
he slew three of the enemy and brought away their severed
hands, for which he was of course rewarded by the king.'
Having relieved his frontiers and secured Nubia, Amen-
hotep was at liberty to turn his arms toward Asia. Unfor-
tunately we have no records of his Syrian war, but he pos-
sibly penetrated far to the north, even to the Euphrates.
In any case he accomplished enough to enable his successor
to boast of ruling as far as the Euphrates,' before the latter
had himself undertaken any Asiatic conquests. Whether
from this war or some other source he gained wealth for
richly wrought buildings at Thebes, including a chapel on
the western plain for his tomb there, and a superb temple-
gate at Karnak, later demolished by Thutmose III.8 The
architect who erected these buildings, all of which have per-
1
* II, 73.
II, 47-48.
2 II, 39, 11. 27-28. SII, 42, 22.
6 IV, 513 and notes. 6 Bull. de l'Inst., 4me ser., No. 3, 104-5.
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
255
ished, narrates the king's death at Thebes, after a reign of
at least ten years.'
Whether Amenhotep left a son entitled to the throne or
not, we do not know. His successor, Thutmose I, was the
son of a woman whose birth and family are of doubtful con-
nection, and she was almost certainly not of royal blood.
Her great son evidently owed his accession to the kingship
to his marriage with a princess of the old line, named
Ahmose, through whom he could assert a valid claim to the
throne. On making good this claim, he lost no time in
issuing a proclamation announcing throughout the kingdom
that he had been crowned. This occurred about January,
1540 or 1535 B. C. The officials in Nubia regarded the proc-
lamation of sufficient importance to engrave it on tablets
which they set up at Wadi Halfa, Kubbân and perhaps else-
where. The official to whom this action was due had reason
to make evident his adherence to the new king, for he had
been appointed to a new and important office immediately
on the king's accession. It was no longer possible for the
mayor of Nekhen to administer Nubia and collect the tribute.
The country demanded the sole attention of a responsible
governor who was practically a viceroy. He was given the
title “Governor of the south countries, king's-son of Kush,"
although he was not necessarily a member of the royal house-
hold or of royal birth. With great ceremony, in the presence
of the Pharaoh, one of the treasury officials was wont to
deliver to the incumbent the seal of his new office, saying:
“This is the seal from the Pharaoh, who assigns to thee the
territory from Nekhen to Napata."'3 The jurisdiction of the
viceroy thus extended to the fourth cataract, and it was the
region between this southern limit and the second cataract
which was known as Kush. There was still no great or domi-
nant kingdom in Kush, nor in lower Nubia, but the country
was under the rule of powerful chiefs, each controlling a
limited territory. It was impossible to suppress these native
rulers at once and nearly two hundred years after this we
III, 45-0.
II, 54-60.
* II, 1020-25.
256
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
still find the chiefs of Kush and a chief of Wawat as far
north as Ibrim. Although possessing only a nominal au-
thority, it was but slowly that they were replaced by Egyp-
tian administrative officers. Moreover, in Thutmose I's
time the southern half of the new province was far from
being sufficiently pacified. The appointment of Thure, the
first viceroy, therefore brought him a serious task. The
turbulent tribes from the hills above the Nile valley were
constantly raiding the towns along the river? and making
stable government and the orderly development of the coun-
try's natural resources impossible. Seeing that Thure was
unable to stop this, the king went south early in his second
year personally to oversee the task of more thorough sub-
jugation. Arriving at the first cataract in February or
March, he found the canal through the rapids obstructed
with stone, just as it had perhaps been since Hyksos days.
Desirous of losing no time, and anxious to take advantage
of the fast falling water, he did not stop to clear it, but
forced the rapids with the aid of the admiral, Ahmose, son
of Ebana, whose exploits we have followed so long. This
officer now again distinguished himself “in the bad water
in the passage of the ship by the bend," presumably in the
cataract, and was again liberally rewarded by the king. By
early April Thutmose had reached Tangur, about seventy
five miles above the second cataract." Ahmose, son of
Ebana, describes the battle, which probably took place some-
here on this advance, between the second and third cat-
aracts. The king engaged in hand to hand combat with
a Nubian chief; “his majesty cast the first lance, which
remained in the body of that fallen one." The enemy were
totally defeated and many prisoners were taken. Of these,
the other hero of El Kab, Ahmose-Pen-Nehkbet, captured no
less than five. The water was now so low that the advance
was necessarily for the most part by land; but the king
pressed on to the third cataract. He was the first Pharaoh
to stand here at the northern gateway of the Dongola Prov-
III, 1037. II, 80. 311, 75. •II, 80.611, p. 28, noteb, II, 80. 11. 8!.
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
257
ince, the great garden of the Upper Nile, through which
there wound before him over two hundred miles of unbroken
river. With the long advance now behind him, he erected
here five triumphant stelæ commemorating the new conquest.
On the Island of Tombos he erected a fortress, of which some
remains still survive, and garrisoned it with troops from the
army of conquest. In August of the same year, five months
after he had passed Tangur on the way up, he erected a
tablet of victorys on Tombos, on which he boasts of ruling
from the frontier at Tombos on the south, to the Euphrates
on the north, a statement to which his own achievements in
Asia did not yet entitle him. Returning slowly northward
with the Nubian chief, whom he had slain, hanging head
downward at the prow of his royal barge, he reached the
first cataract again some seven months after he had erected
the stela on Tombos. We can only explain the slowness
of his return by supposing that he devoted much time to the
reorganization and thorough pacification of the country on
his way. It was now April, and as the low water of that
season was favourable to the enterprise, the king ordered the
canal at the first cataract cleared. The viceroy, Thure, had
charge of the work, and he has left three records of its suc-
cessful accomplishment inscribed on the rocks by the stream,
two on the island of Sehel and one on the neighbouring shore.
The king then sailed through the canal in triumph with the
body of the Nubian chief still hanging head downward at
the bow of his barge, where it remained till he landed at
Thebes.
The subjugation of the Nubian province was now thor-
oughly done, and Thutmose was able to give his attention
to a similar task at the other extremity of his realm, in
Asia. Evidently the conquest of Amenhotep I, which had
enabled Thutmose to claim the Euphrates as his northern
boundary, had not been sufficient to ensure to the Pharaoh's
treasury the regular tribute which he was now enjoying
from Nubia, but the conditions in Syria-Palestine were very
III, p. 28, note &. * II, 72. SII, 67-73. • II, 74-77.
5 Ibid.
17
258
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
favourable for a prolonged lease of power on the Pharaoh's
part.
The geographical conformation of the country along the
eastern end of the Mediterranean, which we may call Syria-
Palestine, is not such as to permit the gradual amalgama-
tion of small and petty states into one great nation, as that
process took place in the valleys of the Nile and the
Euphrates. From north to south, roughly parallel with the
coast, the region is traversed by rugged mountain ranges,
in two main ridges, known as the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon
in the north. In the south, the western ridge, with some
interruptions, drops finally into the bare and forbidding
hills of Judah, which merge then into the desert of Sinai
south of Palestine. South of the plain of Esdraelon, or
Jezreel, it throws off the ridge of Carmel, which drops, like
a Gothic buttress, abruptly to the sea. The eastern ridge
shifts somewhat further eastward in its southern course,
interrupted here and there, and spreading on the east of
the Dead Sea in the mountains of Moab, its southern flanks
are likewise lost in the sandy plateau of northern Arabia.
Between the two Lebanons, that is, in the northern half of
the depression between the eastern and western ridges, is a
fertile valley traversed by the river Orontes. This Orontes
valley is the only extensive region in Syria-Palestine not cut
up by the hills and mountains, where a strong kingdom might
develop. The coast is completely isolated from the interior
by the ridge of Lebanon, on whose western base a people
might rise to wealth and power only by the exploitation of
the resources of the sea; while in the south, Palestine with
its harbourless coast and its large tracts of unproductive
soil, hardly furnished the economic basis for the development
of a strong nation. It is moreover badly cut up by the ridge
of Carmel and the deep clove in which lie the Jordan and
the Dead Sea. Along almost its entire eastern frontier,
Syria-Palestine merges into the northern extension of the
Arabian desert, save in the extreme north, where the valley
of the Orontes and that of the Euphrates almost blend, just as
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
259
they part, the one to seek the Mediterranean, while the other
turns away toward Babylon and the Persian Gulf (Map 7).
The country was settled chiefly by Semites, probably the
descendants of an early overflow of population from the des-
erts of Arabia, such as has occurred in historic times over
and over again. In the north these were subsequently
Aramæans, while in the south they may be designated as
Canaanites. In general these peoples showed little genius
for government, and were totally without any motives for
consolidation. Divided by the physical conformation of the
country, they were organized into numerous city-kingdoms,
that is, petty principalities, consisting of a city, with the sur-
rounding fields and outlying villages, all under the rule of
a local dynast, who lived in the said city. Each city had
not only its own kinglet, but also its own god, a local baſal
(Baal) or “lord,” with whom was often associated a ba‘lat
or “lady," a goddess like her of Byblos. These miniature
kingdoms were embroiled in frequent wars with one another,
each dynast endeavouring to unseat his neighbour and absorb
the latter's territory and revenues. Exceeding all the others
in size was the kingdom of Kadesh, the surviving nucleus
of Hyksos power. It had developed in the only place where
the conditions permitted such an expansion, occupying a
very advantageous position on the Orontes. It thus com-
manded the road northward through inner Syria, the route
of commerce from Egypt and the south, which, following
the Orontes, diverged thence to the Euphrates, to cross to
Assyria or descend the Euphrates to Babylon. Being like-
wise at the northern end of both Lebanons, Kadesh com-
manded also the road from the interior seaward through the
Eleutheros valley. These advantages had enabled it to
subjugate the smaller kingdoms and to organize them into
a loose feudal state, in which we should, in the author's
opinion, recognize the empire of the Hyksos, as already
indicated. We shall now discern it for two generations,
struggling desperately to maintain its independence, and
Scc Map 7 and the author's Battle of Kadesh.
Pp. 219 ff.
260
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
only crushed at last by twenty years of warfare under
Thutmose III.
While, with this exception, these kingdoms of the interior
showed small aptitude for government, some of them never-
theless possessed a high degree of civilization in other direc-
tions. In the art of war especially they had during Hyksos
supremacy taught the Egyptian much. They were masters
of the art of metal-working, they wrought weapons of high
quality, and the manufacture of chariots was a considerable
industry. Metal vessels of varied designs were also produced.
Their more strenuous climate demanded woolen clothing,
so that they had mastered the art of dyeing and weaving
wool, in which they produced textile fabrics of the finest
quality and of rich and sumptuous design. These Semites
were already inveterate traders, and an animated commerce
was passing from town to town, where the market place was
a busy scene of traffic as it is to-day. On the scanty foot-
hold available on the western declivities of the Lebanon some
of these Semites, crossing from the interior, had early gained
a footing on the coast, to become the Phænicians of historic
times. They rapidly subdued the sea, and from being mere
fishermen, they soon developed into hardy mariners. Bear-
ing the products of their industries, their galleys were now
penetrating beyond the harbours of Cyprus, where they ex-
ploited the rich copper mines, and creeping along the coast
of Asia Minor they gained Rhodes and the islands of the
Ægean. In every favourable harbour they established their
colonies, along the southern litoral of Asia Minor, throughout
the Ægean, and here and there on the mainland of Greece.
Their manufactories multiplied in these colonies, and every-
where throughout the regions which they reached, their
wares were prominent in the markets. As their wealth
increased, every harbour along the Phænician coast was the
seat of a rich and flourishing city, among which Tyre, Sidon,
Byblos, Arvad and Simyra were the greatest, each being the
seat of a powerful dynasty. Thus it was that in the Homeric
poems the Phænician merchant and his wares were pro-

FIG. 110.-ENTRANCE GALLERY OF THE TOMB OF RAMSES V,
THEBES. See pp. 250-51; 279-80.
Fig. 111.-SITTING STATUE OF SENMUT, THE FAVOURITE
OF HATSHEPSUT.
He holds the queen's infant daughter, Nefrure, between his knees. See
expungement of his name on right foot (Cf. p. 283). Berlin Museum.

THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
261
verbial, for the commercial and maritime power enjoyed by
the Phænicians at the rise of the Egyptian Empire continued
into Homeric times.
How far west these Phænician mariners penetrated it is
now difficult to determine, but it is not impossible that their
Spanish and Carthaginian colonies already existed. The
civilization which they found in the northern Mediterranean
was that of the Mycenæan age, and these Phænician avenues
of commerce served as a link connecting Egypt and the Myce-
næan civilization of the north. The people who appear with
Mycenæan vessels as gifts and tribute for the Pharaoh in this
age, are termed by the Egyptian monuments Keftyew, and
so regular was the traffic of the Phænician fleets with these
people that the Phænician craft plying on these voyages were
known as “Keftyew ships."1 It is impossible to locate the
Keftyew with certainty, but they seem to have extended from
the southern coast of Asia Minor as far west as Crete. All
this northern region was known to the Egyptians as the
“Isles of the Sea,” for having no acquaintance with the
interior of Asia Minor, they supposed it to be but island
coasts, like those of the Ægean. In northern Syria, on the
upper reaches of the Euphrates, the world, as conceived
by the Egyptian, ended in marshes in which the Euphrates
had its rise, and these again were encircled by the “Great
Circle,''2 the ocean, which was the end of all.
In this Semitic world of Syria-Palestine, now dominated
by Egypt, she was to learn much; nevertheless throughout
this region the influence of Egyptian art and industry was
supreme. Much more highly organized than the neighbour-
ing peoples of Asia, the mighty kingdom on the Nile had
from time immemorial been regarded with awe and respect,
while its more mature civilization, by its very presence on
the threshold of hither Asia, was a powerful influence upon
the politically feeble states there. There was little or no
native art among these peoples of the western Semitic world,
but they were skilful imitators, ready to absorb and adapt
1 II, 402.
9 II, 661.
262
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
to their uses all that might further their industries and
their commerce. The products which their fleets marketed
throughout the eastern Mediterranean were therefore tinc-
tured through and through with Egyptian elements, while
the native Egyptian wares which they carried to Europe and
the Ægean introduced there the unalloyed art of the Nile
valley. In these Phoenician galleys the civilization of the
Orient was being gradually disseminated through southern
Europe and the west. Babylonian influences, while not so
noticeable in the art of Syria-Palestine, were nevertheless
powerfully present there. Since the days of the brief em-
pire of Sargon of Agade, about the middle of the third
thousand years B. C., Babylon had gained in the west a com-
mercial supremacy, which had gradually introduced there
the cuneiform system of writing. It was readily adaptable
to the Semitic dialects prevalent in Syria-Palestine and
gained a footing by a process similar to that which, during
the commercial dominance of Phænicia, brought the Phani-
cian alphabet to Greece. It was even adopted also by the
Hittites, who were not Semites, and likewise by another
non-Semitic nation in this region, the kingdom of Mitanni.
Thus Syria-Palestine became common ground, where the
forces of civilization from the Nile and the Euphrates
mingled at first in peaceful rivaly, but ultimately to meet
upon the battlefield. The historical significance of this
region is found in the inevitable struggle for its possession
between the kingdom of the Nile on the one hand and those
of the Tigro-Euphrates valley and hither Asia on the other.
It was in the midst of this struggle that Hebrew national
history fell, and in its relentless course the Hebrew mon-
archies perished.
Other non-Semitic peoples were also beginning to appear
on Egypt's northern horizon. A group of warriors of
Iran, now appearing for the first time in history, had by
1500 B, C. pushed westward to the upper Euphrates. At
the rise of the Egyptian Empire therefore, these Iranians
were already settled in the country east of the Euphrates,
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
263
within the huge bend where the river turns away from the
Mediterranean, and there established the kingdom of Mi-
tanni. It was the earliest and westernmost outpost of the
Aryan race as yet disclosed to us. The source from which
they had come must have been the original home of that
Aryan race behind the northeastern mountains at the
sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. The influence
and language of Mitanni extended westward to Tunip
in the Orontes valley and eastward to Nineveh. They
formed a powerful and cultivated state, which, planted thus
on the road leading westward from Babylon along the
Euphrates, effectively cut off the latter from her profitable
western trade, and doubtless had much to do with the decline
in which Babylon, under her foreign Kassite dynasty, now
found herself. Assyria was as yet but a new and insig-
nificant city-kingdom, whose coining struggle with Babylon
only rendered the Pharaohs less liable to interference from
the east, in the realization of their plans of conquest in Asia.
Everything thus conspired to favour the permanence of
Egyptian power there.
Under these conditions Thutmose I prepared to quell the
perpetual revolt in Syria and bring it into such complete
subjection as he had achieved in Nubia. None of his records
of the campaign has survived, but the two Ahmoses of EI
Kab were still serving with the army of conquest and in their
biographies they refer briefly to this war also. Kadesh
must have been cowed for the time by Amenhotep I, for,
in so far as we know, Thutinose met with no resistance from
her, which the two Ahmoses considered worthy of mention.
Thus, without serious opposition, the Pharaoh reached
Naharin, or the land of the “rivers," as the name signifies,
which was the designation of the country from the Orontes
to the Euphrates and beyond, merging into Asia Minor. Here
the revolt was naturally the most serious as it was farthest
removed from the Pharaoh's vengeance. The battle resulted
in a great slaughter of the Asiatics, followed by the capture
of large numbers of prisoners. “Meanwhile,” says Ahmose,
264
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
21
son of Ebana, “I was at the head of our troops and his
majesty beheld my bravery. I brought off a chariot, its
horses and him who was upon it as a living prisoner, and I
took them to his majesty. One presented me with gold in
double measure. His namesake of El Kab, who was
younger and more vigourous, was even more successful, for
he captured no less than twenty one hands severed from the
dead, besides a horse and a chariot. These two men are
typical examples of the followers of the Pharaoh at this
time. And it is evident that the king understood how to
make their own prosperity dependent upon the success of
his arms. Unfortunately for our knowledge of Thutmose
I's further campaigns, if there were any, the first of these
biographies and of course also the warlike career which it
narrates, closes with this campaign, though the younger man
campaigned with Thutmose II and lived on in favour and
prosperity till the reign of Thutmose III.
Somewhere along the Euphrates at its nearest approach
to the Mediterranean, Thutmose now erected a stone boun-
dary-tablet, marking the northern and at this point the
eastern limit of his Syrian possessions. He had made good
the boast so proudly recorded, possibly only a year before,
on the tablet marking the other extreme frontier of his
empire at the third cataract of the Nile. Henceforth he was
even less measured in his claims; for he later boasted to the
priests of Abydos, “I made the boundary of Egypt as far
as the circuit of the sun," which, in view of the limited and
vague knowledge of the world possessed by the Egyptians
of that day, was almost true.
Two Pharaohs had now seen the Euphrates, the Syrian
dynasts were fully impressed with the power of Egypt, and
their tribute, together with that of the Beduin and other
inhabitants of Palestine, began to flow regularly into the
Egyptian treasury. Thus Thutmose I was able to begin
the restoration of the temples so neglected since the time of
the Hyksos. The modest old temple of the Middle Kingdom
III, 81.
II, 85.
II, 478,
• II, 08.
6 II, 101.
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
265
monarchs at Thebes was no longer in keeping with the
Pharaoh's increasing wealth and pomp.
His chief archi-
tect, Ineni, was therefore commissioned to erect two massive
pylons, or towered gateways, in front of the old Amon-
temple, and between these a covered hall, with the roof sup-
ported upon large cedar columns, brought of course, like
the splendid silver-gold-tipped flag staves of cedar at the
temple front, from the new possessions in the Lebanon. The
huge door was likewise of Asiatic bronze, with the image of
the god upon it, inlaid with gold. He likewise restored the
revered temple of Osiris at Abydos, equipping it with rich
ceremonial implements and furniture of silver and gold, with
magnificent images of the gods, such as it had doubtless lost
in Hyksos days. Admonished by his advancing years he
also endowed it with an income for the offering of mortuary
oblations to himself, giving the priests instructions regard-
ing the preservation of his name and memory.
III, 103-4.
8 II, 92-96.
* II, 97.
CHAPTER XV
THE FEUD
OF THE THUTMOSIDS AND
AND THE REIGN
OF QUEEN HATSHEPSUT.
As Thutmose I approached the thirtieth anniversary of
his accession to the heirship of the throne, which was also
the thirtieth anniversary of his coronation, he dispatched
his faithful architect, Ineni, to the granite quarries of the
first cataract to procure two obelisks with which to celebrate
the coming Hebsed-festival, or thirty years' jubilee. In a
barge over two hundred feet long and one third as wide
Ineni floated the great shafts down the river to Thebes, and
erected them before the pylons of the Karnak temple, which
he had likewise constructed for the king. He inscribed one
of them, which stands to this day before the temple door,
with the king's names and titles, but before he had begun
the inscription upon the other unexpected changes inter-
fered, so that it never bore the name of Thutmose I. He
was now an old man and the claim to the throne which he
had thus far successfully maintained, was probably weak-
ened by the death of his queen, Ahmose, through whom alone
he had any valid title to the crown. She was the descendant
and representative of the old Theban princes who had fought
and expelled the Hyksos, and there was a strong party who
regarded the blood of this line as alone entitled to royal
honours. She had borne Thutinose I four children, two sons
and two daughters; but both sons and one of the daughters
had died in youth or childhood. The surviving daughter,
Makere-Hatshepsut, was thus the only child of the old line,
and so strong was the party of legitimacy, that they had
forced the king, years before, at about the middle of his
.
III, 105.
211, 86-8.
SII, 64, 1. 11.
•
266
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: IIATSIIEPSUT
267
!
reign, to proclaim her his successor, in spite of the disin-
clination general throughout Egyptian history to submit to
the rule of a queen. Among other children, Thutmose I had
also two sons by other queens: one, who afterward became
Thutmose II, was the son of a princess Mutnofret; while
the other, later Thutmose III, had been born to the king
by an obscure concubine named Isis. The close of Thutmose
I's reign is involved in deep obscurity, and the following
---reconstruction is not without its difficulties. The traces left
by family dissensions on temple walls are not likely to be
sufficiently decisive to enable us to follow the complicated
struggle with certainty three thousand five hundred years
later. In the period of confusion at the close of Thutmose
I's reign probably fall the beginning of Thutmose III's reign
and all of the reign of Thutmose II. When the light finally
breaks Thutmose III is on the throne for a long reign, the
beginning of which had been interrupted for a short time
by the ephemeral rule of Thutmose II. Thus, although
Thutmose III's reign really began before that of Thutmose
II, seven eighths of it falls after Thutmose II's death, and
the numbering of the two kings is most convenient as it is.
Involved in the obscure struggle, with touches of romance
and dramatic incidents interspersed, are the fortunes of the
beautiful and gifted princess of the old line, Hatshepsut.
the daughter of Thutmose I. Possibly after the death of
her brothers she had been married to her half brother, the
concubine's son, whom we must call Thutmose III. As he
was a young prince of no prospects, having, through neither
his father nor his mother, any claim to the succession, he
had been placed in the Karnak temple as a priest with the
rank of prophet. Ere long he had won the priesthood to
his support, for, on the death of the old queen, Ahmose.
Thutmose III had the same right to the throne which his
father had once asserted, that is, by inheritance through his
wife. To this legal right the priesthood of Amon, who sup-
ported him, agreed to add that of divine sanction. Whether
1 II, 307.
811, 128-1:30.
268
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
by previous peaceful understanding with Thutmose I, or as
a hostile revolution totally unexpected on his part, the suc-
cession of Thutmose III was suddenly effected by a highly
dramatic coup d'état in the temple of Amon. On a feast
day, as the image of the god was borne, amid the acclama-
tions of the multitude, from the holy place into the court of
the temple, the priest, Thutmose III, was stationed with his
colleagues in the northern colonnade in Thutmose I's hall of
the temple. The priests bore the god around both sides of
the colonnade, as if he were looking for some one, and he
finally stopped before the young prince, who prostrated him-
self upon the pavement. But the god raised him up, and
as an indication of his will, had him placed immediately
in the “Station of the King," which was the ceremonial spot
where only the king might stand in the celebration of the
temple ritual. Thutmose I, who had but a moment before
been burning incense to the god, and presenting him with a
great oblation, was thus superseded by the will of the same
god, clearly indicated in public. Thutmose III's five-fold
name and titulary were immediately published, and on the
third of May, in the year 1501, B. C., he suddenly stepped
from the duties of an obscure prophet of Amon into the
palace of the Pharaohs. Years afterward, on the occasion
of inaugurating some of his new halls in the Karnak temple
of Amon, he repeated this incident to his assembled court,
and added that instead of going to Heliopolis to receive there
the acknowledgment of the sun-god as king of Egypt, he
was taken up into the heavens where he saw the sun-god in
all his most glorious splendour, and was duly crowned and
given his royal names by the god himself. This account of
unparalleled honour from the gods he then had engraved
upon a wall of the temple, that all might know of it for
all time.
Thutmose I was evidently not regarded as a source of
serious danger, for he was permitted to live on. Thutmose
III early shook off the party of legitimacy. When he had
2
i II, 131-136, 138–148.
% Ibid.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
269
been ruling for thirteen months he restored the ancient brick
temple of his ancestor, Sesostris III, at Semneh, by the
second cataract, putting in its place a temple of fine Nubian
sandstone, in which he carefully reërected the old boundary
stela of the Middle Kingdom and reënacted the decree of
Sesostris endowing the offerings in the temple with a perma-
nent income. Here he makes no reference to any coregency
of Hatshepsut, his queen, in the royal titulary preceding
the dedication. Indeed he allowed her no more honourable
title than “great or chief royal wife." But the party of
legitimacy was not to be so easily put off. The nomination
of Hatshepsut to the succession some fifteen years before,
and, what was still more important, her descent from the
old Theban family of the Sekenenres and the Ahmoses, were
things taken seriously by the nobles of this party. As a
result of their efforts Thutmose III was forced to acknowl-
edge the coregency of his queen and actually to give her a
share in the government. Before long her partisans had
become so strong that the king was seriously hampered,
and eventually even thrust into the background. Hatshepsut
thus became king, an enormity with which the state fiction
of the Pharaoh's origin could not be harmonized. She was
called “the female Horus!” The word "majesty” was put
into a feminine form (as in Egyptian it agrees with the sex
of the ruler) and the conventions of the court were all warped
and distorted to suit the rule of a woman.
Hatshepsut immediately undertook independent works and
royal monuments, especially a magnificent temple for her
own mortuary service, which she erected in a bay of the
cliffs on the west side of the river at Thebes. It is the temple
now known as that of Der el-Bahri; we shall have occasion
to refer to it more fully as we proceed. Whether the priestly
party of Thutmose III and the party of legitimacy so weak-
ened themselves in the struggle with each other as to fall
easy victims of a third party, or whether some other varying
wind of fortune favoured the party of Thutmose II, we can-
1 II, 167-178.
270
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
not now discern. In any case, when Thutmose III and his
aggressive. queen had ruled about five years, Thutmose II,
allying himself with the old dethroned king, Thutmose I,
succeeded in thrusting aside Thutmose III and Hatshepsut
and seizing the crown. Then Thutmose I and II, father and
son, began a bitter persecution of the memory of Hatshepsut,
cutting out her name on the monuments and placing both
their own over it wherever they could find it.
News of the enmities within the royal house had probably
now reached Nubia, and on the very day of Thutmose II's
accession, the report of a serious outbreak there was handed
to him. It was of course impossible to leave the court and
the capital to the intrigues of his enemies at the moment
when he had barely grasped the sceptre. He was therefore
obliged to dispatch an army under the command of a subor-
dinate, who, however, immediately advanced to the third cat-
aract, where the cattle of the Egyptians settled in the country
had been in grave danger. According to instructions the
Egyptian commander not merely defeated the enemy, but
slew all their males whom he could find. They captured a
child of the rebellious Nubian chief and some other natives,
who were carried to Thebes as hostages and paraded in the
presence of the enthroned Pharaoh. After this chasten-
ing Nubia again relapsed into quiet; but in the north the
new Pharaoh was obliged to march against the Asiatic
revolters as far as Niy, on the Euphrates. On the way out,
or possibly on the return, he was obliged to conduct a puni-
tive expedition in southern Palestine against the marauding
Beduin. He was accompanied by Ahinose-Pen-Nekhbet of
El Kab, who captured so many prisoners that he did not
count them. This was the last campaign of the old warrior,
who, like his relative and townsman, Ahinose, son of Ebana,
then retired to an honoured old age at El Kab. The imposing
temple of Hatshepsut, now standing gaunt and unfinished,
abandoned by the workmen, was used by Thutmose II on
his return from the north for recording a memorial of his
III, 119-122.
& II, 125,
II, 123-4.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: IIATSIIEPSUT
271
Asiatic campaign. On one of the vacant walls he depicted
his reception of tribute from the vanquished, the words
“horses" and "elephants" being still legible in the accom-
panying inscription. At this juncture it is probable that
the death of the aged Thutmose I so weakened the position
of the feeble and diseased? Thutmose II that he made com-
mon cause with Thutmose III, then apparently living in
retirement, but of course secretly seeking to reënstate him-
self. In any case we find them together for a brief core-
gency,' which was terminated by the death of Thutmose II,
after a reign of not more than three years at most.
Thutmose III thus held the throne again, but he was not
able to maintain himself alone against the partisans of
Hatshepsut, and was forced to a compromise, by which the
queen was recognized as coregent. Matters did not stop
here; her party was so powerful, that, although they were
unable to dispose of Thutmose III entirely, he was again
relegated to the background, while the queen played the
leading rôle in the state. Both she and Thutmose III num-
bered the years of their joint reign from the first accession
of Thutmose III, as if it had never been interrupted by the
short reign of Thutmose II. The queen now entered upon
an aggressive career as the first great woman in history of
whom we are informed. Her father's architect, Ineni, thus
defines the position of the two: after a brief reference to
Thutmose III as “the ruler upon the throne of him who
begat him," he says: “His sister, the Divine Consort,
Hatshepsut, adjusted the affairs of the Two Lands by reason
of her designs; Egypt was made to labour with bowed head
for her, the excellent seed of the god, who came forth from
him. The bow-cable of the South, the mooring-stake of the
southerners, the excellent stern-cable of the Northland is
she; the mistress of command, whose plans are excellent,
who satisfies the Two Regions when she speaks.” Thus, in
perhaps the first occurrence of the ship of state, Ineni likens
III, 125.
& Masr. Nom. roy., 547.
SII, 593-5.
272
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
4
her, in vivid oriental imagery, to the mooring cables of a
Nile boat.
This characterization is confirmed by the deeds of the
queen. Her partisans had now installed themselves in
the most powerful offices. Closest to the queen's person
stood one Senmut (Fig. 111), who deeply ingratiated him-
self in her favour. He had been the tutor of Thutmose III
as a child, and he was now entrusted with the education of
the queen's little daughter Nefrure (Fig. 111), who had
passed her infancy in charge of the ancient Ahinose-Pen-
Nekhbet of El Kab, now no longer capable of any more
serious commission.3 Senmut was then placed in control
of the young girl's fortune as her steward. He had a
brother named Senmen,• who likewise supported Hatshep-
sut's cause. The most powerful of her coterie was Hapu-
seneb, who was both vizier and High Priest of Amon. He
was also head of the newly organized priesthood of the whole
land;' he thus united in his person all the power of the
administrative government with that of the strong priestly
party, which was now enlisted in Hatshepsut's favour.
With such new forces Hatshepsut's party was now oper-
ating. The aged Ineni was succeeded as “overseer of the
• gold and silver treasury' by a noble named Thutiy,8 while
one Nehsi' was chief treasurer and colleague of Hapuseneb.
The whole machinery of the state was thus in the hands of
these partisans of the queen. It is needless to say that the
fortunes, and probably the lives of these men were identified
with the success and the dominance of Hatshepsut; they
therefore took good care that her position should be main-
tained. In every way they were at great pains to show that
the queen had been destined for the throne by the gods from
the beginning. In her temple at Der el-Bahri, where work
was now actively resumed, they had sculptured on the walls
a long series of reliefs 10 showing the birth of the queen.
Here all the details of the old state fiction that the sovereign
1 II, 341. 2 Karnak statue. s II, 344. 4 II, 363 fr. SII, 348.
• II, 388 ff. II, 388.
8 II, 369 fr. SII, 200. 10 II, 187 .
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
273
should be the bodily son of the sun-god were elaborately de-
picted. Thutmose I's queen, Ahmose, is shown in converse
with Amon (the successor of the sun god Re in Theban the-
ology), who tells her as he leaves, “Hatshepsut shall be the
name of this my daughter [to be born]. ... She shall exer-
cise the excellent kingship in this whole land." The reliefs
thus show how she was designed by the divine will from the
first to rule Egypt, and hence they proceed to picture her
birth, accompanied by all the prodigies, which both the con-
ventions of the court and the credulity of the folk associated
with the advent of the sun-god's heir. The artist who did
the work followed the current tradition so closely that the
new-born child appears as a boy, showing how the intro-
duction of a woman into the situation was wrenching the
inherited forms. To such scenes they added others, show-
ing her coronation by the gods, and then the acknowledg-
ment of her as queen by Thutmose I before the assembled
court on New Year's day. The accompanying narrative
of these events they copied from the old Twelfth Dynasty
records of Amenemhet III's similar appointment by his
father, Sesostris III. As a discreet reminder to any who
might be inclined to oppose the queen's rule, these inscrip-
tions were so framed by the queen's party that they rep-
resent Thutmose I as saying to the court, “Ye shall pro-
claim her word, ye shall be united at her command. He
who shall do her homage shall live, he who shall speak evil
in blasphemy of her majesty shall die." On the pylon,
which Thutmose I built as a southern approach to the
Karnak temple, he was even depicted before the Theban gods
praying for a prosperous reign for his daughter. With
such devices as these it was sought to overcome the prejudice
against a queen upon the throne of the Pharaohs.
Hatshepsut's first enterprise was, as we have intimated,
to continue the building of her magnificent temple against
the western cliffs at Thebes where her father and brother
had inserted their names over hers. The building was in
* II, 187 .
* II, 215.
* II, 237, 11. 15-16.
5 II, 243 ir.
III, 198.
18
274
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
design quite unlike the great temples of the age. It was
modelled after the little terraced temple of Mentuhotep II
in a neighbouring bay of the cliffs. In a series of three
terraces it rose from the plain to the level of an elevated
court, flanked by the massive yellow cliffs, into which the
holy of holies was cut. In front of the terraces were ranged
fine colonnades, which, when seen from a distance, to this
day exhibit such an exquisite sense of proportion and of
proper grouping, as to quite disprove the common assertion
that the Greeks were the first to understand the art of adjust-
ing external colonnades, and that the Egyptian understood
only the employment of the column in interiors (Fig. 113).
The architect of the temple was Senmut, the queen's favour-
ite, while Ineni's successor, Thutiy,' wrought the bronze
doors, chased with figures in electrum, and other metal work.
The queen found especial pleasure in the design of the
temple. She saw in it a paradise of Amon and conceived
its terraces as the “myrrh-terraces” of Punt, the original
home of the gods. She refers in one of her inscriptions to
the fact that Amon had desired her "to establish for him
a Punt in his house." To carry out the design fully it was
further necessary to plant the terraces with the myrrh trees
from Punt. Her ancestors had often sent expeditions
thither, but none of these parties had ever been equipped
to bring back the trees; and indeed for a long time, as far
back as any one could remember, even the myrrh necessary
for the incense in the temple service had been passed from
hand to hand by overland traffic until it reached Egypt.*
Foreign traffic had suffered severely during the long reign
of the Hyksos. But one day as the queen stood before the
shrine of the god, “a command was heard from the great
throne, an oracle of the god himself, that the ways to Punt
should be searched out, that the highways to the myrrh-ter-
races should be penetrated For, so says the god, “It is
a glorious region of God's-Land, it is indeed my place of
delight; I have made it for myself in order to divert my
I II, 351, 11. 6-7.
! II, 375.
III, 295.
• II, 287.
6 II, 285, 1. 5.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
275


Les
NAAF
Alles
NA
GATE
ܘܒܛܐ
ALOE
مسرح
2.
TANAANE
was
FIG. 112, SCENES FROM THE GREAT SERIES OF PUNT RELIEFS IN THE DER EL-BAHRI TEMPLE AT THEBES.
Here Queen Hatshepsut depicts her Expedition to the Land of Punt (pp. 276 ff.). The Upper Row shows the Departure of
the Fleet; in the Lower Row the Vessels are being loaded and the Myrrh-trees carried on board.
276
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
2
heart.". The queen adds, “it was done according to all that
the majesty of this god commanded.
The organization and dispatch of the expedition were nat-
urally entrusted by the queen to the chief treasurer, Nehsi,
in whose coffers the wealth brought back by the expedition
were to be stored. With propitiatory offerings to the divin-
ities of the air to ensure a fair wind, the five vessels of the
fleet set sail early in the ninth year of the queen's reign.*
The route was down the Nile and through a canal leading
from the eastern Delta through the Wadi Tumilat, and con-
necting the Nile with the Red Sea. This canal, as the
reader will recall (see p. 188), was already in regular use
in the Middle Kingdom. Besides plentiful merchandise for
barter, the fleet bore a great stone statue of the queen, to
be erected in Punt. If still surviving there, it is the most
remote statue ever erected by an Egyptian ruler. They ar-
rived in Punt in safety; the Egyptian commander pitched
his tent on the shore, where he was received with friendliness
by Perehu, the chief of Punt, followed by his absurdly corpu-
lent wife and three children. It was so long since any Egyp-
tians had been seen in Punt that the Egyptians represented
the Puntites as crying out, “Why have ye come hither unto
this land, which the people [of Egypt] know not? Did ye
descend upon the roads of heaven, or did ye sail upon the
waters, upon the sea of God's-Land ?"6 The Puntite chief
having been won with gifts, a stirring traffic is soon in prog-
ress," the ships are drawn up to the beach, the gang-planks
run out, and the loading goes rapidly forward, until the ves-
sels are laden "very heavily with marvels of the country of
Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God's-Land, heaps of
myrrh-resin, of fresh myrrh-trees, with ebony and pure
ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon-wood, with
incense, eye-cosmetic, with baboons, monkeys, dogs, with
skins of the southern panther, with natives and their chil-
dren. Never was the like of this brought for any king who
* II, 252-3. 292
1 II, 288.
SII, 254.
. II, 285, l. 6.
* II, 257.
3 II, 290.
7 II, 259.
FEUD OF THE TIIUTMOSIDS: HIATSHEPSUT
277
has been since the beginning." After a fair voyage, with-
out mishap, and with no transfer of cargo as far as our
sources inform us, the fleet finally moored again at the docks
of Thebes. Probably the Thebans had never before been
diverted by such a sight as now greeted them, when the
motley array of Puntites and the strange products of their
far-off country passed through the streets to the queen's
palace, where the Egyptian commander presented them to
her majesty. After inspecting the results of her great expe-
dition, the queen immediately presented a portion of them
to Amon, together with the impost of Nubia, with which
Punt was always classed. She offered to the god thirty one
living myrrh-trees, electrum, eye-cosmetic, throw-sticks of
the Puntites, ebony, ivory shells, a live southern panther,
which had been especially caught for her majesty, many pan-
ther skins and 3,300 small cattle. Huge piles of myrrh of
twice a man's stature were now measured in grain-measures
under the oversight of the queen's favourite, Thutiy, and
large rings of commercial gold were weighed in tall balances
ten feet high. Then, after formally announcing to Amon
the success of the expedition which his oracle had called
forth,' Hatshepsut summoned the court, giving to her favour-
ites, Senmut, and the chief treasurer, Nehsi, who had dis-
patched the expedition, places of honour at her feet, while
she told the nobles the result of her great venture. She
reminded them of Amon's oracle commanding her “to estab-
lish for him Punt in his house, to plant the trees of God's-
Land beside his temple in his garden, according as he com-
manded.” She proudly continues, “It was done. . . . I
have made for him a Punt in his garden, just as he com-
manded me. . . . It is large enough for him to walk abroad
in it."'? Thus the splendid temple was made a terraced
myrrb-garden for the god, though the energetic queen was
obliged to send to the end of the known world to do it for
him. She had all the incidents of the remarkable expedition
III, 205.
SII, 283-8.
JI, 266.
• II, 289-295.
SII, 270-272.
III, 295.
• II, 273-282.
278
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
3
{
recorded in reliefon the wall once appropriated by Thut-
mose II for the record of his Asiatic campaign,' where they
still form one of the great beauties of her temple. All her
chief favourites found place among the scenes.
Senmut was
even allowed to depict himself on one of the walls praying to
Hathor for the queen, an unparalleled honour.
This unique temple was in its function the culmination of
a new development in the arrangement and architecture of
the royal tomb and its chapel or temple. Perhaps because
they had other uses for their resources, perhaps because they
recognized the futility of so vast a tomb, which yet failed
to preserve from violation the body of the builder, the
Pharaoh, as we have seen, had gradually abandoned the con-
struction of a pyramid. With its mortuary chapel on the
east front, it had survived probably into the reign of Almose
I, but it had been gradually declining in size and importance,
while the shaft and chambers under it and the chapel before
it remained relatively large. Amenhotep I was the last to
follow the old traditions; he pierced a passage two hundred
feet long into the western cliffs of Thebes, terminating in a
mortuary chamber for the reception of the royal. body.
Before the cliff, at the entrance to the passage, he built a
modest mortuary chapel, surmounted by a pyramidal roof, to
which we have already adverted. Probably for purposes
of safety Thutmose I then took the radical step of separating
the tomb from the mortuary chapel before it. The latter
was still left upon the plain at the foot of the cliffs, but the
sepulchre chamber, with the passage leading to it (Figs.
109-10) was hewn into the rocky wall of a wild and desolate
valley (Fig. 108), lying behind the western cliffs, some two
miles in a direct line from the river, and accessible only by
a long detour northward, involving nearly twice that dis-
tance. It is evident that the exact spot where the king's
body was entombed was intended to be kept secret, that all
possibility of robbing the royal burial might be precluded.
3 II, 345.
See p. 275; II, 246–295.
IV, 513 and notes.
+ Infra, pp. 270-71.
P. 254.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
279
Thutmose I's architect, Ineni, says that he superintended
“the excavation of the cliff-tomb of his majesty alone, no
one seeing and no one hearing.”l The new arrangement
was such that the sepulchre was still behind the chapel or
temple, which thus continued to be on the east of the tomb
as before, although the two were now separated by the inter-
vening cliffs. The valley, now known as the "Valley of the
Kings' Tombs” rapidly filled with the vast excavations of
Thutmose I's successors. It continued to be the cemetery.
of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, and
over forty tombs of the Theban kings were excavated there.
Forty one now accessible form one of the wonders which
attract the modern Nile-tourists to Thebes, and Strabo
speaks of forty which were worthy to be visited in his time.
Hatshepsut's terraced sanctuary was therefore her mortuary
temple, dedicated also to her father. As the tombs multi-
plied in the valley behind, there rose upon the plain before
it temple after temple endowed for the mortuary service of
the departed gods, the emperors who had once ruled Egypt.
They were besides also sacred to Amon as the state god;
but they bore euphemistic names significant of their mor-
tuary function. Thus, for example, the temple of Thutmose
III was called “Gift of Life."12 Hatshepsut's architect,
Hapuseneb, who was also her vizier, likewise excavated her
tombs in the desolate valley. In its eastern wall, imme-
diately behind the terraced temple, the passage descended
at a sharp decline for many hundred feet, and terminated
in several chambers, one of which contained a sarcophagus
both for herself and her father, Thutmose I. But the family
feud was probably responsible for his construction of his
own tomb, on a modest scale, as we have seen, and he doubt-
less never used the sarcophagus made for him by his
daughter. Both sarcophagi, however had been robbed in
antiquity and contained no remains when recently discovered.
The aggressive queen's attention to the arts of peace, her
active devotion to the development of the resources of her
III, 100.
2 II, 552.
SII, 389.
280
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
my fame is
empire, soon began to bring in returns. Besides the vast
income of the crown from internal sources, Hatshepsut was
also receiving tribute from her wide empire, extending from
the third cataract of the Nile to the Euphrates. As she herself
claimed, “My southern boundary is as far as Punt ...;
my eastern boundary is as far as the marshes of Asia, and
the Asiatics are in my grasp; my western boundary is as
far as the mountain of Manu (the sun-set]
among the Sand-dwellers [Beduin) altogether. The myrrh
of Punt has been brought to me ...,
all the luxurious mar-
vels of this country were brought to my palace in one col-
lection. ... They have brought to me the choicest products
... of cedar, of juniper and of meru-wood; all the
goodly sweet woods of God's-Land. I brought the tribute
of Tehenu [Libya], consisting of ivory and seven hundred
tusks which were there, numerous panther skins of five
cubits along the back and four cubits wide."! Evidently
no serious trouble in Asia had as yet resulted from the fact
that there was no longer a warrior upon the throne of the
Pharaohs. This energetic woman therefore began to employ
her new wealth in the restoration of the old temples, which,
although two generations had elapsed, had not even yet
recovered from the neglect which they had suffered under
the Hyksos. She recorded her good work upon a rock
temple of Pakht at Beni Hasan, saying, “I have restored
that which was ruins, I have raised up that which was unfin-
ished since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the
Northland, and the barbarians in the midst of them, over-
throwing that which had been made while they ruled in
ignorance of Re."
It was now seven or eight years since she and Thutmose
III had regained the throne and fifteen years since they had
first seized it. Thutmose III had never been appointed heir
to the succession, but his queen had enjoyed that honour, and
it was now nearing the thirtieth anniversary of her appoint-
ment, when she might celebrate her jubilee. She must there-
1 II, 321.
II, 206 fr.
II, 303.

FIG. 113.-NORTHERN COLONNADES ON THE MIDDLE TERRACE OF HAT-
SHEPSUT'S TERRACED TEMPLE OF DER EL-BAHRI, THEBES.

Fig. 114.-OBELISKS OF HATSHEPSUT AT KARNAK.
The standing shaft is ninety-seven and one-half feet high.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
281
fore make preparation for the erection of the obelisks, which
were the customary memorial of such jubilees. Of this, the
queen herself tells us: “I sat in the palace, I remembered
him who fashioned me, my heart led me to make for him two
obelisks of electrum, whose points mingled with heaven."'1
Her inevitable favourite, Senmut, was therefore called in
and instructed to proceeed to the granite quarries at the first
cataract to secure the two gigantic shafts for the obelisks.
He levied the necessary forced labour and began work early
in February of the queen's fifteenth year. By early August,
exactly seven months later, he had freed the huge blocks
from the quarry, was able to employ the high water then
rapidly approaching to float them, and towed them to Thebes
before the inundation had again fallen. The queen then
chose an extraordinary location for her obelisks, namely, the
very colonnaded hall of the Karnak temple erected by her
father, where her husband Thutmose III had been named
king by oracle of Amon; although this necessitated the
removal of all her father's cedar columns in the south half
of the hall and four of those in the north half, besides, of
course, unroofing the hall, and demolishing the south wall,
where the obelisks were introduced. They were richly over-
laid with electrum, the work on which was done for the queen
by Thutiy. She avers that she measured out the precious
metal by the peck, like sacks of grain,4 and she is supported
in this extraordinary statement by Thutiy, who states that
by royal command he piled up in the festival hall of th
palace no less than nearly twelve bushels of electrum.5 The
queen boasts of their beauty, "their summits being of elec-
trum of the best of every country, which are seen on both
sides of the river. Their rays flood the Two Lands when the
sun rises between them as he dawns in the horizon of
heaven." They towered so high (Fig. 114) above the dis-
mantled hall of Thutmose I that the queen recorded a long
1 I, 317, II. 6-7.
• II, 319, I. 3.
: II, 318.
SII, 377, 1, 36–38.
* II, 376, 1. 28.
• II, 315.
282
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
oath, swearing by all the gods that they were each of one
block. They were indeed the tallest shafts ever erected
in Egypt up to that time, being ninety seven and a half feet
high and weighing nearly three hundred and fifty tons each.
One of them still stands, an object of constant admiration to
the modern visitor at Thebes (Fig. 114). Hatshepsut at the
same time erected two more large obelisks at Karnak, though
they have now perished. It is possible that she also set up
two more, at her terraced temple, making six in all; for she
has recorded there the transportation of two great shafts on
the river, depicting the achievement in a relief,' which shows
the obelisks end to end on a huge barge, towed by thirty
galleys, with a total of some nine hundred and sixty oarsmen.
But this scene may refer to the first two obelisks as they were
brought down the river by Senmut.
Besides her obelisks, erected in her sixteenth year, we
learn of another enterprise of Hatshepsut in the same year
from a relief in the Wadi Maghara* in Sinai, whither the tire-
less queen had sent a mining expedition, resuming the work
there which had been interrupted by the Hyksos invasion.
This work in Sinai continued in her name until the twentieth
year of her reign. Some time between this date and
the close of the year twenty one, when we find Thutmose
III ruling alone, the great queen must have died. If we
have spent some space on her buildings and expeditions, it
has been because she was a woman, in an age when warfare
was impossible for her sex, and great achievements could
only be hers in the arts and enterprises of peace. Great
though she was, her rule was a distinct misfortune, falling,
as it did, at a time when Egypt's power in Asia had not yet
been seriously tested, and Syria was only too ready to revolt.
Thutmose III was not chivalrous in his treatment of her
when she was gone. He had suffered too much. Burning
to lead his forces into Asia, he had been assigned to such
puerile functions as offering incense to Amon on the return
III, 318.
% II, 304-330.
* JI, 322 ff.
* II, 337.
6 Petrie, Cat. of Egyptian Antiquities found in the Peninsula of Sinai, etc.,
P. 19.
FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS: HATSHEPSUT
283
of the queen's expedition to Punt; or his restless energies
had been allowed to expend themselves on building his mor-
tuary temple of the western plain of Thebes. Considering
the age in which he lived, we must not too much blame him
for his treatment of the departed queen. Around her obe-
lisks in her father's hall at Karnak he now had a masonry
sheathing built, covering her name and the record of her
erection of them on the base. Everywhere he had her name
erased and in the terraced temple on all the walls both her
figure and her name have been hacked out. Her partisans
doubtless all fled. If not they must have met short shrift.
In the relief-scenes in the same temple, where Senmut and
Nehsi and Thutiy had been so proud to appear, their names
and their figures were ruthlessly chiselled away. The queen
had given Senmut three statues in the Theban temples and
on all these his name was erased; in his tomb and on his mor-
tuary stela his name vanished. A statue of the vizier Hapu-
seneb was treated in the same way. Thutiy's tomb was
likewise visited and his name obliterated, the tomb of
Senmen, Senmut's brother, did not escape, and the name of a
colleague of theirs who was buried in the next tomb was so
effectually erased that we do not know who he was. Even
distant Silsileh was visited at the king's orders that the
tomb of the queen's “chief steward" might be dealt with
in the same way. And these mutilated monuments stand to
this day, grim witnesses of the great king's vengeance. But
in Hatshepsut's splendid temple her fame still lives, and the
masonry around her Karnak obelisk has fallen down, expos-
ing the gigantic shaft to proclaim to the modern world the
greatness of Hatshepsut.
I II, p. 160, note f.
* II, 348.
CHAPTER XVI
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE EMPIRE: THUTMOSE III
1
In the year fifteen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III still con-
trolled their Asiatic dependencies as far north as the Leb-
anon. From that time until we find him marching into
Asia, late in the year twenty two, we are not informed of
what took place there; but the conditions which then con-
fronted him and the course of his subsequent campaigns,
make it evident how matters had gone with Egyptian su-
premacy during the interim. Not having seen an Egyptian
army for many years, the Syrian dynasts grew continually
more restless, and finding that their boldness called forth no
response from the Pharaoh, the king of Kadesh, once prob-
ably the suzerain of all Syria-Palestine, had stirred all the
city-kings of northern Palestine and Syria to accept his
leadership in a great coalition, in which they at last felt them-
selves strong enough to begin open revolt. Kadesh thus
assumed its head with a power in which we should evidently
recognize the surviving prestige of her old time more ex-
tended and unchallenged suzerainty. “Behold from Yeraza
[in northern Judea] to the marshes of the earth (upper
Euphrates), they had begun to revolt against his majesty."' 2
But southern Palestine was loth to take up arms against the
Pharaoh. Sharuhen, which had suffered a six years' siege at
the hands of Ahmose in Hyksos days, was too well aware of
what to expect thoughtlessly to assume the offensive against
Egypt. Hence the whole region of southern Palestine, which
had witnessed that siege, was not differently minded, but a
small minority probably desired to join the revolt. Hence
civil war arose in Sharuhen, as well as in the south generally,
1 II, 137, 162.
2 II, 416.
284
THUTMOSE III
285
as the allies sought to compel the southern dynasts to join the
uprising and send a quota to the army which they were rais-
ing. Not only were “all the allied countries of Zahi,''2 or
western Syria, in open rebellion against the Pharaoh, but it
is also evident that the great kingdom of Mitanni, on the east
of the Euphrates, had done all in her power to encourage the
rebellion and to support it when once in progress; for Thut-
mose III was ultimately obliged to invade Mitanni and
punish its king before he could maintain Egyptian suprem-
acy in Naharin. It was natural that Mitanni, an aggressive
and active power, competing with the infant Assyria on
more than equal terms, should view with distrust the pres-
ence of a new and great empire on its western borders. The
Mitannian king had finally learned what to expect from
Egypt and he would naturally exert himself to the utmost
to rehabilitate the once great kingdom of Kadesh, as a buffer
between himself and Egypt. Against such formidable re-
sources as these, then, Thutmose III was summoned to con-
tend, and no Pharaoh before his time had ever undertaken so
great a task
In what condition the long unused Egyptian army may
have been, or how long it took Thutmose to reorganize and pre-
pare it for service, we have no means of knowing. The armies
of the early orient, at least those of Egypt, were not large,
and it is not probable that any Pharaoh ever invaded Asia
with more than twenty five or thirty thousand men, while less
than twenty thousand is probably nearer the usual figure.
Late in his twenty second year we find Thutmose with his
army ready to take the field. He marched from Tharu, the
last Egyptian city on the northeastern frontier, about the 19th
of April, 1479 B. C.* Nine days later, that is, on April 28th,
he reached Gaza, one hundred and sixty miles from Tharu.
In the Egyptian calendar the day was the fourth of Pakhons,
his coronation day, just twenty two years since the oracle of
Amon had proclaimed him king in his father's colonnaded
3
1 II, 416. : II, 610.
* II, 409, 415.
. See the author's Battle of Kadesh, pp. 8-11,
6 II, 409, 417.
286
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
temple hall at Karnak. It had been long indeed, but the
opportunity for which he had ceaselessly plotted and planned
and striven was at last his. He was not the man to waste
the day in a futile celebration, but having arrived in the
PLAIN
Kina
ROAD
Brook
Kishon
R ſ D G E
OF
Megiddo
ZEFTI
ESORIA ELON
SEA
Megiddo
Taanacho
River
of
Arung
Pass
d
A R ME
MEGIDOO
Al
ROAD
N
ROAD
DAMASCUS
Egyptiano
w Aslatics
isiin
MILES
1
9
6
7
MAP 4. THE CARMEL RIDGE.
Showing Megiddo, Taanach, the Roads leading across the Ridge to Megiddo,
and Positions of the Two Armies at the Beginning of the Battle.
evening of the coronation anniversary, he was away for the
north again the very next morning. Marching along the
Shephelah and through the sea-plain, he crossed the plain of
Sharon, turning inland as he did so, and camped on the
evening of May 10th at Yehem, a town of uncertain location,
some eighty or ninety miles from Gaza, on the southern slopes
III, 418.
THUTMOSE III
287
of the Carmel range.' Meantime the army of the Asiatic
allies under the command of the king of Kadesh, had pushed
southward as far as the territory of their adherents extended,
and had occupied the strong fortress of Megiddo, in the plain
of Jezreel, on the north slope of the Carmel ridge. This
place, which here appears in history for the first time, was
not only a powerful stronghold, but occupied an important
strategic position, commanding the road from Egypt between
the two Lebanons to the Euphrates, hence its prominent rôle
in oriental history from this time on. Thutmose, of course,
regarded all this country as his own, and hence afterward
says: "The lands of the Fenkhu [Asiatics] .
had begun
to invade my boundary."'2
Thus far he had been advancing through friendly towns,
or at least through regions where no open disaffection pre-
vailed; but as he neared Carmel it was necessary to move
with caution. At Yehem he learned of the enemy's occupa-
tion of Megiddo, and he called a council of his officers to
ascertain the most favourable route for crossing the ridge
and reaching the plain of Esdraelon. There were three
roads practicable for an army leading from Yehem over the
mountain; one which made a direct line by way of Aruna
for the gates of Megiddo; and two involving a detour to
either side, the first leading around southward by way of
Taanach, about five miles southeast of Megiddo; and the
other northward through Zefti, emerging on the northwest
of Megiddo.* Thutmose characteristically favoured the direct
route, but his officers urged that the other roads were more
open, while the middle one was a narrow pass. “Will not
horse come behind horse," they asked, "and man behind man
likewise? Shall our advance-guard be fighting while our
rear-guard is yet standing in Aruna?" These objections
showed a good military understanding of the dangers of the
pass; but Thutmose swore a round oath that he would move
against his enemies by the most direct route, and they might
follow or not as they pleased. Accordingly, making his
III, 419.
:II, 439.
* II, 420.
• II, 421. See Map 4.
• II, 422.
B Ibid.
288
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
>> 2
preparations very deliberately, he moved to Aruna on the
thirteenth of May. To prevent surprise and also to work
upon the courage of his army, he personally took the head of
the column, vowing that none should precede him, but that
he would go "forth at the head of his army himself, showing
the way by his own footsteps." Aruna lay well up in the
mountain ridge, accessible only by a stretch of narrow road;
but he reached it in safety, and passed the night of the thir-
teenth there. At this point his army must have been dis-
tributed for a long distance along the road from Aruna back
to Yehem; but on the morning of the fourteenth he pushed
quickly forward again. He had not been long on the march
when he came in touch with the enemy. Had they been in
force he must have suffered, in view of his long and strag-
gling line of march, extended along the narrow mountain
road. Fortunately the pass now widened and he was able
to expand his advance in a spreading valley. Here, on the
urgent advice of his officers, he held the enemy in check until
his rear, which was still in Aruna, came up. The enemy
had not been in sufficient force to take advantage of his pre-
carious position, and he now pushed on his advance again.
It was just past midday when his forward column emerged
from the pass upon the plain of Esdraelon, and by one
o'clock Thutmose halted without opposition on the south of
Megiddo, "on the bank of the brook Kina."96 The Asiatics
had thus lost an inestimable opportunity to destroy him in
detail. They seem to have been too far toward the south-
east to draw in quickly and concentrate against his thin line
of march as it defiled from the mountains. It is impossible
to determine their exact position, but when the skirmishing
in the mountains took place their southern wing was at
Taanach,' doubtless in the expectation that Thutmose would
cross the mountain by the Taanach road. From Taanach
their line could not have extended as far north as Megiddo,
otherwise it would have been impossible for the Egyptians
peacefully to emerge from the defile and debouch upon the
1 II, 424-5. 2 Ibid. II, 425. II, 426. II, 427. 8 II, 428. II, 426.
THUTMOSE III
289
slope south of Megiddo. Thutmose went into camp on the
plain by Megiddo, sending out orders to the entire army to
make ready for the battle on the morrow. Preparations for
the conflict then went quietly on, and the best of order and
spirit prevailed in the camp. Late in the afternoon of the
same day (the fourteenth), or during the ensuing night,
Thutmose took advantage of the enemy's position on the east
and southeast of his own force to draw his line around the
west side of Megiddo and boldly threw out his left wing on
the northwest of the city. He thus secured, in case of neces-
sity, a safe and easy line of retreat westward along the Zefti
road, while at the same time his extreme left might cut off
the enemy from flight northward.
Early the next morning, the fifteenth of May, Thutmose
gave orders to form and move out in order of battle. In a
glittering chariot of electrum he took up his position with
the centre; his right or southern wing rested on a hill south
of the brook of Kina; while, as we have seen, his left was
northwest of Megiddo.3 To protect their stronghold the
Asiatics now drew in between Thutmose's line and the city,
from which, of course, supplementary forces emerged. He
immediately attacked them, leading the onset himself “at
the head of his army."4 “The king himself, he led the way
of his army, mighty at its head like a flame of fire, the king
who wrought with his sword. He went forth, none like him,
slaying the barbarians, smiting Retenu, bringing their
princes as living captives, their chariots wrought with gold,
bound to their horses."'5
The enemy gave way at the first
charge, “they fled headlong to Megiddo in fear, abandoning
their horses and their chariots of gold and silver, and the
people hauled them up, pulling them by their clothing into
this city; the people of this city having closed it against
them and lowered clothing to pull them up into this city.
Now if only the army of his majesty had not given their
heart to plundering the things of the enemy they would have
III, 429.
3 II, 430, 1. 3.
• Proved by his position the next day.
• Ibid., 1. 4.
6 II, 413.
19
290
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
captured Megiddo at this moment, when the wretched van-
quished king of Kadesh and the wretched vanquished king
of this city [Megiddo] were hauled up in haste to bring
them into this city."1 But the discipline of an oriental
army cannot to this day withstand a rich display of plunder;
much less could the host of Egypt in the fifteenth century
B. C. resist the spoil of the combined armies of Syria.
“Then were captured their horses, their chariots of gold and
silver were made spoil. . . . Their champions lay stretched
out like fishes on the ground. The victorious army of his
majesty went round counting the spoils, their portions. Be-
hold there was captured the tent of that wretched vanquished
foe [the king of Kadesh] in which was his son. ... The
whole army made jubilee, giving praise to Amon for the
victory which he had granted to his son. ... They brought
in the booty which they had taken, consisting of hands (sev-
ered from the slain), living prisoners, of horses, chariots,
gold and silver.” It is evident that in the disorganized
rout the camp of the king of Kadesh fell into the hands of
the Egyptians and they brought its rich and luxurious furni-
ture to the Pharaoh.
But the stern Thutmose was not to be placated by these
tokens of victory; he saw only what had been lost. “Had ye
afterwards captured this city," said he to the troops, “behold
I would have given [a rich offering to] Re this day; because
every chief of every country that has revolted is within it;
and because it is the capture of a thousand cities, this capture
of Megiddo." 3
Hereupon he gave orders for the instant
investment of the city; "they measured this city, surround-
ing it with an enclosure, walled about with green timber of
all their pleasant trees. His majesty himself was upon the
fortification east of the city, inspecting what was done." *
Thutmose boasts after his return to Egypt, saying, “Amon
gave to me all the allied countries of Zahi shut up in one
city. .. I snared them in one city, I built around them with
a rampart of thick wall.?? They called this wall of invest-
1 II, 430, 1. 5.
& II, 431.
* II, 432.
* II, 433.
SII, 616, 440.
THUTMOSE III
291
ment: “Thutmose is the Surrounder of the Asiatics,'
according to the custoin under the Empire of naming every
royal building after the king. The closest vigilance was
enjoined upon the troops that none might escape, and no one
from within the city was allowed to approach the siege-lines
unless with the purpose of surrendering. But, as we shall
sce, before Thutmose had succeeded in closely investing the
place, the king of Kadesh had escaped northward, which was
exactly what Thutmose had desired to prevent in swinging
his left wing around the northwest angle of the city on the
night before the battle. As the siege went on, the dynasts
who were fortunate enough not to be shut up in the city
hastened to make their peace with the incensed Pharaoh ;
“the Asiatics of all countries came with bowed head, doing
obeisance to the fame of his majesty.
Of the course of
the siege meanwhile and of the assaults of the Egyptians,
we are not informed. The priestly scribe of our only source
remarks, "Now all that his majesty did to this city, to that
wretched foe and his wretched army was recorded on each
day by its [the day's] name . recorded upon a roll of
leather in the temple of Amon to this day."13
But this pre-
cious roll, like the book of chronicles of the kings of Judah,'
has perished, and our narrative suffers much from its loss.
The season was far enough advanced so that the Egyptians
foraged on the grain-fields of the plain of Esdraelon, while
its herds furnished them the fat of the land. They were the
first host, of whom we have knowledge, to ravage this fair
plain, destined to be the battle ground of the east and west
from Thutmose III to Napoleon. But within the walls all
was different; proper provision for a siege had not been
made, and famine finally wrought its customary havoc in
the beleaguered town, which, after sustaining the siege for
some weeks, at length surrendered. But the king of Kadesh
was not among the prisoners. “These Asiatics who were
in the wretched Megiddo came forth to the fame of
Thutmose III, who is given life, saying, "Give us a chance,
III, 433.
· II, 440.
9 II, 433.
• I Kings 15: 23.
.
292
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
2
that we may present to thy majesty our impost.'» Then
they came, bringing that which belonged to them, to do
obeisance to the fame of his majesty, to crave the breath of
their nostrils, because of the greatness of his power.
“Then,” says Thutmose, “my majesty commanded to give
to them the breath of life,''3 and it is evident that he treated
them with the greatest leniency. The frightful destruction
of whole cities, of which the Assyrian kings boasted when
recounting their treatment of rebels, is nowhere found among
the records of the Pharaohs. To compensate for the failure
to capture the dangerous king of Kadesh himself, they
secured his family as hostages; for Thutmose says, “Lo, my
majesty carried off the wives of that vanquished one, together
with his children, and the wives of the chiefs who were there,
together with their children.
Rich as had been the spoil on the battle-field, it was not to
be compared with the wealth which awaited the Pharaoh in
the captured city. Nine hundred and twenty four chariots,
including those of the kings of Kadesh and Megiddo, two
thousand two hundred and thirty eight horses, two hundred
suits of armour, again including those of the same two kings,
the gorgeous tent of the king of Kadesh, some two thousand
large cattle and twenty two thousand five hundred small
cattle, the magnificent household furniture of the king of
Kadesh, and among it his royal sceptre, a silver statue, per-
haps of his god, and an ebony statue of himself, wrought with
gold and lapis-lazuli.” Immense quantities of gold and
silver were also taken from the city, but they are combined
with the spoil of other cities in Thutmose's account of the
plunder, and we cannot determine how much came out of
Megiddo alone. The cattle, of course, came from the country
round about; otherwise the city would not have suffered from
famine. Before they left, the army also harvested the fields
of the plain of Esdraelon around Megiddo, and gathered
over one hundred and thirteen thousand bushels, after the
army had foraged on the fields during the siege.
III, 441. ? II, 434. * II, 442. * II, 596. . II, 435. • II, 437.
THUTMOSE III
293
Thutmose lost no time in marching as far northward as
the hostile strongholds and the lateness of the season would
permit. He reached the southern slopes of Lebanon, where
the three cities of Yenoam, Nuges and Herenkeru formed a
kind of Tripolis under the government of “that foe,” who
was possibly the king of Kadesh. They quickly succumbed,
if their king had not already been among those to send in
their submission, while Thutmose was still besieging Me-
giddo. In order to prevent another southward advance of
the still unconquered king of Kadesh and to hold command
of the important road northward between the Lebanons,
Thutmose now built a fortress at this point, which he called
“Thutmose-is-the-Binder-of-the-Barbarians,'' using the
same rare word for “barbarian" which Hatshepsut applies
to the Hyksos. He now began the reorganization of the con-
quered territory, supplanting the old revolting dynasts, of
course, with others who might be expected to show loyalty
to Egypt. These new rulers were allowed to govern much
as they pleased, if only they regularly and promptly sent in
the yearly tribute to Egypt. In order to hold them to their
obligations Thutmose carried off with him to Egypt their
eldest sons, whom he placed in a special quarter or building
called “Castle in Thebes." Here they were educated and
so treated as to engender feelings of friendliness toward
Egypt; and whenever a king of one of the Syrian cities died
“his majesty would cause his son to stand in his place." 4
Thutmose now controlled all Palestine as far north as the
southern end of Lebanon, and further inland also Damascus.
In so far as they had rebelled, he stripped all the towns of
their wealth, and returned to Egypt with some four hundred
and twenty six pounds of gold and silver in commercial
rings or wrought into magnificent vessels and other objects
of art, besides untold quantities of less valuable property
and the spoil of Megiddo already mentioned.
Early in October Thutmose bad reached Thebes, and we
can be certain that it was such a return to the capital as no
6
1!I, 548.
i II, 434.
3 II, 402.
• II, 407.
SII, 402.
. II, 436.
294
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Pharaoh before him had ever enjoyed. In less than six
months, that is, within the limits of the dry season in Pales-
tine, he had marched from Tharu, gained a sweeping victory
at Megiddo, captured the city after a long and arduous
investment, marched to the Lebanon and taken three cities
there, built and garrisoned a permanent fort near them,
begun reorganizing the government in northern Palestine,
and completed the return journey to Thebes. With what
difficulties such an achievement was beset we may learn by
a perusal of Napoleon's campaign from Egypt through the
same country against Akko, which is almost exactly as far
from Egypt as Megiddo. We may then understand why it
was that Thutmose immediately celebrated three “Feasts
of Victory” in his capital. They were each five days long
and coincided with the first, second and fifth calendar feasts
of Amon. The last was held in Thutmose's mortuary temple
on the western plain of Thebes, which was now completed,
and this may have been the first celebration held in it.
These feasts were made permanent, endowed with an annual
income of plentiful offerings. At the feast of Opet, which
was Amon's greatest annual feast and lasted eleven days,
he presented to the god the three towns which he had cap-
tured in southern Lebanon, besides a rich array of magnifi-
cent vessels of gold, silver and costly stones from the prodig-
ious spoil of Retenu. In order to furnish income to main-
tain the temple on the sumptuous plan thus projected, he
gave Amon not only the said three towns, but also extensive
lands in Upper and Lower Egypt, supplied them with plen-
tiful herds and with hosts of peasant serfs taken from
among his Asiatic prisoners. Thus was established the
foundation of that vast fortune of Amon, which now began
to grow out of all proportion to the increased wealth of other
temples. Hence the state-temple, the old sanctuary of his
father at Karnak, was no longer adequate for the rich and
elaborate state-cult; for even his father's great hall had been
dismantled by Hatshepsut in order to insert her obelisks.
: JI, 550-53. 311, 557. * II, 358, 543–47. II, 557, 598.
1Jl. -109, 549.

FIG. 115.-VIEW ACROSS THE AMON-OASIS, OR SIWA.
(From a photograph by Steindorff.)


FIG. 116.-OBELISK OF THUTMOSE III.
As it stood in Alexandria, before its removal to New York,
FIG. 117.-LISTS OF TOWNS IN ASIA
TAKEN BY THUTMOSE III.
On the walls of the Karnak temple (p. 306).
THUTMOSE III
295
There it stood, with the obelisks preventing the replacement
of over a third of the roof, the south half without roof or
columns, and four cedar columns of Thutmose I, with two
of sandstone which he had himself inserted, occupying the
north half.' It was further disfigured by the masonry which
Thutmose III had built around Hatshepsut's obelisks. But
it was the hall where he had been called to be king of Egypt
by the oracle of Amon himself. Hatshepsut's partisan,
Thutiy, had now been supplanted by another architect and
chief of craftsmen named Menkheperre-seneb, whose very
name, “Thutmose III is Healthy," was indicative of his
loyalty. He was called in and an attempt was made to
restore the north half of the old hall, replacing the cedar
columns by shafts of sandstone. But the southern half was
left untouched. In this make-shift hall the great feasts cele-
brating his victorious return from the first campaign were
some of them held, but for others he naturally resorted to his
mortuary temple of Amon, which, as we have seen, was now
complete on the western plain. Judging from the small
temple of Ptah by the great Karnak temple which Thutmose
also rebuilt at his return from this campaign," he probably
showed like generosity to the two ancient sanctuaries at
Heliopolis and Memphis, of which the former was still in a
traditional sense the temple of the state god, for Re was now
identified with Amon.
The great task of properly consolidating the empire was
now fairly begun; but Egyptian power in Asia during the
long military inactivity of Hatshepsut's reign had been so
thoroughly shaken that Thutmose III was far from ready,
as a result of the first campaign, to march immediately upon
Kadesh, his most dangerous enemy. Moreover, he desired
properly to organize and render perfectly secure the states
already under the power of Egypt. In the year twenty four
therefore he marched in a wide curve through the conquered
territory of northern Palestine and southern Syria, while
the dynasts came to pay their tribute and do him homage in
9
· II, 100.
II, 306.
SII, 772.
+ 11, 600-602.
6 1, 609 f.
296
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
"every place of his majesty's circuit where the tent was
pitched." The news of his great victory of the year before
had by this time reached Assyria, now just rising on the
eastern horizon, with her career as yet all before her. Her
king naturally desired to be on good terms with the great
empire of the west, and the gifts of costly stone, chiefly lapis-
lazuli from Babylon, and the horses which he sent to Thut-
mose, so that they reached him while on this campaign,
were, of course, interpreted by the Egyptians as tribute.”
In all probability no battles were fought on this expedition.
Returning to Thebes as before, in October, the king imme-
diately planned for the enlargement of the Karnak temple,
to suit the needs of the empire of which he dreamed.
Moreover the slowly rising bed of the river had now
raised the waters of the inundation until they invaded the
temple area, and it had become necessary to elevate the
temple pavement. The splendid gate of Amenhotep I was
sacrificed to this necessity. By the latter part of February,
at the feast of the new moon, which happened by a lucky
chance to fall upon the day of the tenth feast of Amon, he
was able personally to celebrate the foundation-ceremonies
with the greatest splendour.3 To render the act especially
auspicious the god appeared and even himself participated
in the stretching of the measuring cord as the foundation-
plan was laid out. As the west end, the real front of the
temple, was marred by Hatshepsut's obelisks, rising from
his father's dismantled hall, and he was unable or unwilling
to build around his father's obelisks, which stood before the
western entrance of the temple, Thutmose III laid out his
imposing colonnaded halls at the other, or east end, of the
temple, where they to-day form one of the great architectural
beauties of Thebes. The greatest hall is nearly one hundred
and forty feet long, and lies transversely across the axis of
the temple. This hall was called "Menkheperre [Thutmose
III) is Glorious in Monuments," a name which it still bore
six hundred and fifty years later. Behind it is the ganc-
1 II, 447, 1. 25.
9 II, 446.
; II, 008.
• Ibid.
6 II, p. 237, note f.
THUTMOSE III
297
tuary or holy of holies, while grouped about it are some half
a hundred halls and chambers. Among these, on the south
side, was a hall for the mortuary service of his ancestors. In
the chamber to which this hall led he "commanded to record
the names of his fathers, to increase their offerings and to
fashion statues of all these their bodies."'1 These names
formed a great list on the walls, which still exists in the Bib-
liothèque Nationale at Paris. The statues of his fathers,
while many have perished, have recently been discovered in
a court south of the temple, where they had been concealed
for safety in time of war.
The third campaign, of the next year (twenty five) was
evidently spent like the first, in organizing the southern half
of the future Asiatic empire, the northern half being still
unsubdued. When he returned, his building at Karnak was
sufficiently far advanced to record upon the walls of one of
the chambers the plants and animals of Asia which he had
found on his march and brought home with him to beautify
the garden of the temple of Amon,' the sacred lake of which
he supplied with a masonry coping.
No records of the fourth campaign have survived, but the
course of his subsequent operations was such that it must
have been confined like the others to the territory already
regained. It had now become evident to Thutmose that he
could not march northward between the Lebanons and oper-
ate against Kadesh, while leaving his flank exposed to the
unsubdued Phænician cities of the coast. It was likewise
impossible to strike Naharin and Mitanni without first de-
stroying Kadesh, which dominated the Orontes valley. He
therefore planned a series of campaigns, directed first against
the northern coast, which he might then use as a base of oper-
ations against Kadesh; and this being once disposed of, he
could again push in from the coast against Mitanni and the
whole Naharin region. No modern strategist could have con-
ceived a series of operations better suited to the conditions,
nor have gone about putting them into execution with more
1 II, 604-5.
2 II, 450-52.
298
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
indomitable energy than Thutmose now displayed. He
therefore organized a fleet and placed in command of it a
trusty officer named Nibamon, who had served with his
father. In the year twenty nine, on his fifth campaign, he
moved for the first time against the northern coast cities, the
wealthy commercial kingdoms of Phænicia. He must have
employed the new fleet and transported liis army by sea, for
he began operations in northern Phænicia, which, with all
southern Phænicia and Kadesh still unconquered, he could
not have reached by land. It is possible that he gained his
first foothold by offering to Tyre special inducements to
submit, for it is evident that some Pharaoh granted this city
exceptional privileges, making it practically a free city. It
is easily conceivable that the rich harbour-town would readily
embrace the opportunity to save lier commerce from destruc-
tion and escape tribute, or at least a portion of the usual
obligation in the future. The name of the first city which
Thutmose took is unfortunately lost, but it was on the coast
opposite Tunip, and must have been a place of considerable
importance, for it brought him rich spoils; and there was in
the town a temple of Amon, erected by one of Thutmose
III's predecessors (either Thutmose I or possibly Amenhotep
I). The cities of the interior, seeing that this attack from
the coast must be fatal to them if successful, had sent troops
to assist in its defense. Thus Tunip4 sent forces to
strengthen the garrison of this unknown city, the fall of
which would involve the ultimate capture of Tunip also.
Thutmose now seized the fleet of the city," and was able rap-
idly to move his army southward against the powerful city
of Arvad. A short siege, compelling Thutmose to cut down
the groves about the town, as at Megiddo, sufficed to bring
the place to terms, and with its surrender a vast quantity
of the wealth of Phænicia fell into the hands of the Egyp-
tians. Besides this, it being now autumn, the gardens and
groves “were filled with their fruit, their wines were found
1 II, 779. ? Amarna Letters, ed. Winckler, p. XXXIII; n. 2; 70 rev. 12 ff.
II, 457-9.
* II, 459.
5 II, 400.
• II, 401.
THUTMOSE III
299
tions."
2
left in their presses as water flows, their grain on the [hill-
side) terraces ...; it was more plentiful than the sand of
the shore. The army were overwhelmed with their por-
Under these circumstances it was useless for Thut-
mose to attempt to maintain discipline, and during the first
days following the surrender, “behold the army of his
majesty was drunk and anointed with oil every day as at
a feast in Egypt. The dynasts along the coast now came
in with their tribute and offered submission.3 Thutmose had
thus gained a secure footing on the northern coast, easily
accessible by water from Egypt, and forming an admirable
base for operations inland as he had foreseen. He then re-
turned to Egypt, possibly not for the first time, by water. *
All was now in readiness for the long planned advance
upon Kadesh. It had taken five campaigns to gain the south
and the coast; the sixth was at last directed against his long
invulnerable enemy. In the year thirty the close of the
spring rains found Thutmose disembarking his army from
the fleet at Simyra, by the mouth of the Eleutheros, up the
valley of which he immediately marched upon Kadesh. It
was a convenient and easy road, and the shortest route from
the sea to Kadesh to be found anywhere along the coast;
indeed it was then, as it is now, the only practicable highway
for a military advance inland across the mountains toward the
region of Kadesh. The city lay on the west side of the Orontes
river at the north end of the high valley between the two Leb-
anons, the ridge of Anti-Lebanon dropping to the plain just
south and east of the town (Maps 5, 7). A small tributary
of the Orontes from the west joined the larger stream just
below the city, so that it lay on a point of land between the
two. A canal, still traceable and doubtless in existence in
Thutmose's day, was cut across the tongue of land above the
town, thus connecting the two streams and entirely sur-
rounding the place by water. An inner moat encircling the
high curtain-walls within the banks of the rivers reënforced
the natural water-defences, so that, in spite of its location in
1 Ibid.
III, 462
3 Ibid.
• II, 460.
6 II, 463.
• II, 484.
300
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
a perfectly level plain, it was a place of great strength, and
probably the most formidable fortress in Syria. In its rela-
tion to the surrounding country also the place was skilfully
chosen as one of great strategic importance; for, as the
reader recalls, it commanded the Orontes valley, and, as

4EVE
၁၀
AVON
swingers
Nahr el Ahsi
Plas
Tell
Nebi-Mind
MAP 5. THE MODERN TELL-NEBI-MINDOH, ANCIENT KADESH.
Showing the Mound of Ruins between the Orontes on the right and its
Tributary on the left (after Koldewey).
Thutmose had found, it was impossible to advance northward
without reckoning with it. It will be remembered, further-
more, that it also dominated the only road inland from the
coast for a long distance both north and south. This was
the road up the Eleutheros valley, along which we have fol-
lowed Thutmose. The capture of such a place by siege was
1 See the author's Battle of Kadesh, pp. 13-21, 49, and infra, pp. 258-59.

VALINNANAM
AVALAVALUAN ALASA
SEINAK
GUME WCHINH
RAH 物​化学
​441 HEFORSI
um
SLOUCLA CLOUDS
Fig. 118.-A PHARAOH OF THE EMPIRE RECEIVING ASIATIC ENVOYS BEARING TRIBUTE.
They are introduced by white-robed Egyptian officials. The Asiatics are distinguished by their gay robes and beards. See pp. 307-08.
THUTMOSE III
301
اور
an achievement of no slight difficulty, and it is with peculiar
regret that one reads in the narrative of the priestly scribe
who excerpted Thutmose's annals, merely these words re-
garding it:“His majesty arrived at the city of Kadesh, over-
threw it, cut down its groves, harvested its grain. We
can only discern from these laconic words that as at Megiddo
Thutmose was obliged to fell the groves to build his siege-
walls, and that the army lived on the forage from the sur-
rounding grain fields during the investment, which must
therefore have continued from early spring into harvest
time. At least one assault was made, in which Amenembab,
one of Thutmose's commanders, whom we shall meet in later
campaigns also, captured two of the patricians of the city.
He was rewarded in the presence of the army with two orders
or decorations for distinguished service:"a lion of the finest
gold” and “two flies,” besides rich ornaments. The siege
had now continued long enough to encourage the coast cities
in the hope that Thutmose had suffered a reverse.
In spite
of the chastisement inflicted upon Arvad the year before,
the opulent harbour town could not resist an attempt to rid
itself of the annual obligation to Thutmose, which cost it so
large a portion of its yearly gains. As soon as Kadesh fell
and Thutmose was able to leave it, he quickly returned to
Simyra, embarked his army on his waiting fleet and sailed
to Arvad to inflict swift retribution. Sailing for Egypt as
the rainy season drew on, he took with him the sons of the
north Syrian kings and dynasts, to be educated at Thebes,
as he had already done with the young princes of the south
in former years.
The revolt of Arvad, while Thutmose was still besieging
Kadesh, showed him that he must devote another campaign
to the thorough subjugation of the coast before he could
safely push inland beyond the valley of the Orontes on the
long planned advance into Naharin. He therefore spent the
summer of the year thirty one, the seventh campaign, in
completely quenching any slumbering embers of revolt in
* II, 405.
! II, 585.
* II, 465.
• II, 407.
302
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the coast cities. In spite of his display of force at Simyra,
Ullaza, a harbour-town near Simyra, had showed serious dis-
affection, owing to encouragement from the king of Tunip,
who sent his two sons to conduct the revolt. On the 27th
of April, Thutmose appeared in the harbour of the recreant
city;1 he made short work of the place and captured the
king of Tunip's son. The local dynasts came in as usual
with their submission and Thutmose collected about one
hundred and eighty five pounds of silver from them and the
captured city, besides great quantities of natural produce.3
He then sailed from harbour to harbour along the coast, dis-
playing his force and thoroughly organizing the administra-
tion of the cities. In particular he saw to it that every
harbour-town should be liberally supplied with provisions for
his coming campaign in Naharin. On his return to Egypt
he found envoys from the extreme south, probably eastern
Nubia, bringing to the Pharaoh their tribute, showing that
he was maintaining an aggressive policy in the far south
while at the same time so active in the north.
The organization and the collection of resources necessary
for the great campaign now before him evidently occupied
Thutmose all the year following his return from this expe-
dition; for it was not until the spring of the year thirty three
that he landed his forces in the harbour of Simyra, on his
eighth campaign, and marched inland for the second time
along the Kadesh road. He turned northward and captured
the town of Ketne. Continuing the march down the
Orontes, he fought a battle at the city of Senzar, which he
also took. In this action his general, Amenemhab, again
won distinction. Thutmose probably crossed and forsook
the Orontes at this point; in any case, he now entered
Naharin and marched rapidly on. He soon met resistance
and fought a slight action in which Amenemhab captured
three prisoners. But no serious force confronted him until
he had arrived at "The Height of Wan, on the west of
6 II, 474-3.
1 II, 470.
6 II, 478.
2 Ibid.
7 II, 598.
3 II, 471.
8 II, 584.
4 II, 472.
9 II, 581.
THUTMOSE III
303
Aleppo," where a considerable battle was fought, in the
course of which Amenemhab took thirteen prisoners, each
bearing a bronze spear inlaid with gold. This doubtless
shows that the royal troops of the king of Aleppo were en-
gaged. Aleppo itself must have fallen, for the Pharaoh
could otherwise hardly have pushed on without delay, as he
evidently did. “Behold his majesty went north, capturing
the towns and laying waste the settlements of that foe of
wretched Naharin," who was, of course, the king of Mitanni.
Egyptian troops were again plundering the Euphrates val-
ley, a license which they had not enjoyed since the days of
their fathers under Thutmose I, some fifty years before.
As he advanced northward, Thutmose now turned slightly
toward the Euphrates, in order to reach Carchemish. In the
battle fought at that city it must have been his long unscathed
foe, the king of Mitanni, whose army Thutmose scattered far
and wide, “not one looked behind him, but they fled forsooth
like a herd of mountain goats." Amenemhab seems to have
pushed the pursuit across the Euphrates to the east side, as
he was obliged to cross it in bringing back to the king the
prisoners whom he had taken. This battle at last enabled
Thutmose to do what he had been fighting ten years to attain,
for he himself now crossed the Euphrates into Mitanni and
set up his boundary tablet on the east side, an achievement
of which none of his fathers could boast. But without win-
tering in Naharin, it was impossible for Thutmose to advance
further, and he was too wise a soldier to risk exposing to the
inclement northern winter the seasoned veterans of so many
campaigns, whom it would have taken him years to replace.
He therefore returned unmolested to the west shore, where
he found the tablet of his father, Thutmose I, and with the
greatest satisfaction he set up another of his own alongside
it. It was now late in the season, his troops had already
harvested the fields of the Euphrates valley, and he was
obliged to begin the return march. But one serious enter-
II. 583.
1 II, 682.
BII, 478, 481; 650, II. 7-8.
III, 479.
6 II, 478.
3 Ibid.
* II, 480.
304
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
prise still awaited him before he could return to the coast.
The city of Niy, further down the Euphrates, was still uncon-
quered and all his work in Naharin might be undone were
this place left unscathed. Having set up his boundary tab-
lets, therefore, he marched down the river and took Niy
without trouble so far as we know.' The object of the cam-
paign having been accomplished and its arduous duties past,
Thutmose organized a great elephant hunt in the region of
Niy, where these animals have now been extinct for ages.
He and his party attacked the North Syrian herd of one
hundred and twenty animals. In the course of the hunt the
king came to close quarters with one great beast and was in
some danger when his general, Amenemhab rushed between
and cut off the animal's trunk; whereupon the infuriated
beast charged upon his hardy assailant, who escaped between
two rocks overhanging a neighbouring pool. For thus divert-
ing the animal at the critical moment the faithful Amenei-
hab was of course liberally rewarded by the king.?
Meantime all the local princes and dynasts of Nabarin
appeared at his camp and brought in their tribute as a token
of their submission. Even far off Babylon was now anxious
to secure the goodwill of the Pharaoh, and its king sent him
gifts wrought of lapis-lazuli.But what was still more impor-
tant, the mighty people of the Kheta, whose domain stretched
far away into the unknown regions of Asia Minor, sent him
a rich gift. As he was on the march from Naharin to reach
the coast again their envoys met him, with eight massive com-
mercial rings of silver, weighing nearly ninety eight pounds,
beside some unknown precious stone and costly wood. Thus
the Kheta, probably the Biblical Hittites, enter for the first
time, as far as we know, into relations with the Egyptian Pha-
raohs. On Thutmose's arrival at the coast, he laid upon the
chiefs of the Lebanon the yearly obligation to keep the Phæ-
nician harbours supplied with the necessary provision for his
campaigns. From any point in this line of harbours, which
he could reach from Egypt by ship in a few days, he was
III, 481.
2 II, 588.
III, 482.
* II, 484.
SII, 485.
6 II, 483.
THUIMOSE III
305
then able to strike inland without delay and bring delin-
quents to an immediate accounting. His sea power was such
that the king of Cyprus became practically a vassal of
Egypt, as later in Saitic times. Moreover, his fleet made
him so feared in the islands of the north that he was able to
exert a loose control over the eastern Mediterranean, west-
ward an indefinite distance to the Ægean. Thus his gen-
eral, Thutiy, includes the isles in the midst of the sea” as
within his jurisdiction as governor of the north countries;
although his control will doubtless have consisted in little
more than the reception of the annual gifts which the island
dynasts thought it wise to send him.
His arrival at Thebes in October found awaiting him a
newly returned expedition which in the midst of his respon-
sibilities in Asia he had found time to dispatch to Punt. His
emissaries brought back the usual rich and varied cargo of
ivory, ebony, panther-skins, gold and over two hundred and
twenty three bushels of myrrh, besides male and female
slaves and many cattle. At some time during these wars
Thutmose is also found in possession of the entire oasis-
region on the west of Egypt (Fig. 115). The oases thus
became Pharaonic territory and were placed under the gov-
ernment of Intef, Thutmose III's herald, who was a descend-
ant of the old line of lords of Thinis-Abydos, whence the
Great Oasis was most easily reached (Map 13). The oasis
region remained an appanage of the lords of Thinis and
became famous for its fine wines.
The great object for which Thutmose had so long striven
was now achieved; he had followed his fathers to the Eu-
phrates. The kings whom they had been able to defeat
singly and in succession, he had been obliged to meet united,
and against the combined military resources of Syria and
northern Palestine under their old time Hyksos suzerain of
Kadesh, he had forced his way through to the north. In
ten long years of scattered and often guerilla warfare he
had crushed thern with blow on blow, until he had at last
SIT, 763.
III, 480.
20
306
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
planted his boundary stone beside that of his father ou
the frontier, won two generations before. He had even
surpassed his father and crossed the Euphrates, an unpre-
cedented feat in the annals of Egyptian conquest. He might
pardonably permit himself some satisfaction in the contem-
plation of what he had accomplished. Nearly thirty three
years had elapsed since the day when Amon called him to
the throne. Already on his thirtieth anniversary his archi-
tect, Puemre, had erected the jubilee obelisks at Thebes;
but on his return from the great campaign the date for the
customary second jubilee-celebration was approaching. A
pair of enormous obelisks, which had been in preparation
for the event, were erected at the Karnak temple and one of
them bore the proud words, “Thutmose, who crossed the
great ‘Bend of Naharin' [the Euphrates] with might and
with victory at the head of his army." The other obelisk
of this pair has perished, but this one now stands in Con-
stantinople. Indeed all of the great king's obelisks in
Egypt have either perished or been removed, so that not a
single obelisk of his still stands in the land he ruled so
mightily, while the modern world possesses a line of them
reaching from Constantinople, through Rome and London to
New York (Fig. 116). The last two, which commemorate
his fourth jubilee-celebration now rise on opposite shores of
the Atlantic, as they once stood on either side of the approach
to the sun-temple at Heliopolis.)
With such monuments as these before them the people of
Thebes soon forgot that he who erected them was once a
humble priest in the very temple where his giant obelisks
On its walls, moreover, they saw long annals of
his victories in Asia, endless records of the plunder he had
taken, with splendid reliefs picturing the rich portion which
fell to Amon. A list (Fig. 117) of one hundred and nineteen
towns which he captured on his first campaigns was three
times displayed upon the pylons, while from his recent suc-
cesses in the north the same walls bore a record of no less
now rose.
III, 382-4.
2 II, 629–31.
SII, 632-0.
THUTMOSE III
រ
307
than two hundred and forty eight towns which had submitted
to him.' However much they may have impressed the Theb-
ans, these records are for us of priceless value. Unfortu-
nately they are but excerpts from the state records, made
by priests who wished to explain the source of the gifts
received by the temple, and to show how Thutmose was
repaying his debt to Amon for the many victories which the
favouring god had vouchsafed hiin. Hence they are but
meagre sources from which to reconstruct the campaigns of
the first great strategist of whom we know anything in his-
tory. But the Thebans were not obliged to study the monu-
ments of Karnak for witness to the greatness of their king.
In the garden of Amon's temple, as we have seen, grew the
strange plants of Syria-Palestine, while animals unknown to
the hunter of the Nile valley wandered among trees equally
unfamiliar. Envoys from the north and south were con-
stantly appearing at the court. Phænician galleys, such as
the upper Nile had never seen before delighted the eyes of
the curious crowd at the docks of Thebes; and from these
landed whole cargoes of the finest stuffs of Phænicia, gold
and silver vessels of magnificent workmanship, from the
cunning hand of the Tyrian artificer or the workshops of
distant Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete and the Ægean islands;
exquisite furniture of carved ivory, delicately wrought
ebony, chariots mounted with gold and electrum, and bronze
implements of war; besides these, fine horses for the Phar-
aoh's stables and untold quantities of the best that the fields,
gardens, vineyards, orchards and pastures of Asia produced.
Under heavy guard emerged from these ships, too, the annual
tribute of gold and silver in large commercial rings, some
of which weighed as much as twelve pounds each, while others
for purposes of daily trade were of but a few grains weight.
Winding through the streets, crowded with the wondering
Theban multitude, the strange tongued Asiatics in long pro-
cession bore their tribute to the Pharaoh's treasury. They
were received by the vizier, Rekhmire, and when unusually
INT, 402-3.
308
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
rich tribute was presented, he conducted them into the
Pharaoh's presence, who, enthroned in splendour, reviewed
them and praised the vizier and his officials for their zeal
in his behalf. The Asiatics then delivered tlieir tribute at
the office of the vizier, where all was duly entered on his
books, even to the last measure of grain. It was such scenes
as this that the vizier and treasury officials loved to perpetu-
ate in gorgeous paintings on the walls of their tombs, where
they are still preserved at Thebes (Fig. 118). The amount
of wealth which thus came into Egypt must have been enor-
mous for those times, and on one occasion the treasury was
able to weigh out some eight thousand nine hundred and
forty three pounds of gold-silver alloy.2 Nubia also, under
the Egyptian viceroy, was rendering with great regularity
her annual impost of gold, negro slaves, cattle, ebony, ivory
and grain; much of the gold in the above hoard must have
come from the Nubian mines. It was a great day, too, for
the Theban crowds when the Nubian barges landed their
motley cargo. Similar sights diverted the multitudes of the
once provincial Thebes when every year, toward the close
of September or the opening days of October, Thutmose's
war-galleys moored in the harbour of the town; but at this
time not merely the wealth of Asia was unloaded from the
ships; the Asiatics themselves, bound one to another in long
lines, were led down the gang planks to begin a life of slave-
labour for the Pharaoh (Fig. 119). They wore long matted
beards, an abomination to the Egyptians; their hair hung in
heavy black masses upon their shoulders, and they were
clad in gaily coloured woolen stuffs, such as the Egyptian,
spotless in his white linen robe, would never put on his body.
Their arms were pinioned behind them at the elbows or
crossed over their heads and lashed together; or, again, their
hands were thrust through odd pointed ovals of wood, which
served as hand-cuffs. The women carried their children
slung in a fold of the mantle over their shoulders. With
their strange speech and uncouth postures the poor wretches
III, 760-1, 773.
2 II, 761.

LILLY
Fig. 119.- ASIATIC PRISONERS IN EGYPT UNDER THE EMPIRE.
Recognizable by their long beards and heavy robes, they march in pairs, their hands in long, oval wooden manacles; between the pairs of prisoners are Egyptian guards also
in pairs; at the rear a woman carrying her children. Continued at the right in Fig. 148. (Leyden Museum.)
THUTMOSE III
309
were the subject of jibe and merriment on the part of the
multitude; while the artists of the time could never forbear
caricaturing them. Many of them found their way into the
houses of the Pharaoh's favourites, and his generals were
liberally rewarded with gifts of such slaves; but the larger
number were immediately employed on the temple estates,
the Pharaoh's domains, or in the construction of his great
monuments and buildings, especially the last, a custom
which continued until Saladin built the citadel at Cairo
with the labour of the knights whom he captured from the
ranks of the crusaders. We shall later see how this captive
labour transformed Thebes.
The return of the king every autumn, under such circum-
stances, with the next campaign but six months distant,
began for him a winter, if not so arduous, at least as busily
occupied as the campaigning season in Asia. At the time
of the feast of Opet, that is in October, shortly after his
return, Thutmose made a tour of inspection throughout
Egypt, closely questioning the local authorities wherever he
landed, for the purpose of suppressing corruption in the
local administration by preventing all collusion between
them and the officers of the central government in extor-
tionate oppression of the people while collecting taxes.?
On these journeys, too, he had opportunity of observing the
progress on the noble temples which he was either erecting,
restoring or adorning at over thirty different places of which
we know, and many more which have perished. He revived
the long neglected Delta and from there to the third cataract
his buildings were rising, strung like gems, along the river.
He built a new town with its temple at the mouth of the
Fayum; while at Dendereh, Coptos, El Kab, Edfu, Kom
Ombo, Elephantine and many other places his captives of
war and his imperial revenues were producing the magnifi-
cent works which he and his architects planned. Returning
to Thebes his interests were wide and his power was felt in
every avenue of administration. Besides the attention con-
ITI, 750-9.
8 III, 58.
310
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
tinually demanded by Nubian affairs, of which we shall
speak more fully later, he organized the other gold-country,
that on the Coptos road, placing it under a “governor of the
gold-country of Coptos.” 1 It is evident that every resource
of his empire was being thus exploited. The increasing
wealth of the Amon temple demanded reorganization of its
management. This the king personally accomplished, giving
the priests full instructions and careful regulations for the
conduct of the state temple and its growing fortune.? As
the fruit of a moment's respite from the cares of state, he
even handed to his chief of artificers in the state and temple
workshops designs sketched by his own royal hand for ves-
sels which he desired for the temple service. Thutmose
himself thought sufficiently well of this accomplishment to
have it noted over a relief depicting these vessels on the
temple walls at Karnak, after they had been presented to
the god; while in the opinion of the official who received the
commission it was a fact so remarkable that he had the
execution of these vessels by his artificers shown in the
paintings on the walls of his tomb chapel. Both these evi-
dences of Thutmose's restless versatility still survive at
Thebes.3 The great state temple received another pylon on
the south and the whole mass of buildings, with the adjoining
grove and garden, was given unity by an enclosure wall, with
which Thutmose surrounded them.
His campaigning was now as thoroughly organized as the
administration at Thebes. As soon as the spring rains in
Syria and Palestine had (eased, le regularly disembarked
his troops in some Phænician or worth Syrian harbour. Here
his permanent officials had effected the collection of the ner-
essary stores froin the neighbouring dynasts, who were obli-
gated to furnish them. His palace-herald, or marshal, Intef,
who was of the old princely line of Thinis, and still held his
title as "count of Thinis and lord of the entire oasis-
region,” accompanied him on all his marches, and as Thut-
mose advanced inland Intef preceded him until the proximity
III, 774.
2 II, 571.
311, 545, 775.
* II, 703.
THUTMOSE III
311
6
of the enemy prevented. Whenever he reached a town in
which the king was expected to spend the night, he sought
out the palace of the local dynast and prepared it for Thut-
mose's reception, “When my lord arrived in safety where
I was, I had prepared it, I had equipped it with everything
that is desired in a foreign country, made better than the
palaces of Egypt, purified, cleansed, set apart, their man-
sions adorned, each chamber for its proper purpose.
I
made the king satisfied with that which I did.” 1 One is
reminded of the regular and detailed preparation of Napo-
leon's tent, which he always found awaiting him after his
day's march, as he rode into the quarters each night. All
the king's intercourse with the outside world, and the regu-
lation of the simple court state maintained on the campaigns,
was in Intef's hands. When the Syrian princes came in
to offer their allegiance and pay their tribute, it was Intef
also who had charge of the interview; he informed the vas-
sals what they were expected to contribute and he counted
the gold, silver and naturalia when they were paid in at the
camp. When any of the Pharaoh's captains distinguished
himself upon the battlefield, it was again Intef who reported
it to the king, that the proper reward might be rendered to
the fortunate hero.2
Had it been preserved, the life of these warriors of Thut-
mose would form a stirring chapter in the history of the
early east. The career of his general, Amenemhab, who cut
off the elephant's trunk and rescued the king, is but a hint of
the life of the Pharaoli's followers in bivouac and on bat-
tlefield, crowded to the full with perilous adventure and hard-
won distinction. We shall meet one more exploit of this
same Amenemhab, but his is the only such career which has
survived in authentic narrative. The fame of these tried
veterans of Thutmose, of course, found its way among the
common people and doubtless many a stirring adventure
from the Syrian campaigns took form in folk-tales, told
with eager interest in the market-places and the streets of
III, 771.
III, 763-71.
312
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Thutiy.”2
Thebes. A lucky chance has rescued one of these tales writ-
ten by some scribe on a page or two of papyrus. It concerns
one Thutiy, a great general of Thutinose, and his clever cap-
ture of the city of Joppa by introducing his picked soldiers
into the town, concealed in panniers, borne by a train of
donkeys. The tale is probably the prototype of “Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves." But Thutiy was not a creation of
fancy; his tomb, though now unknown, must exist some-
where in Thebes, for it was plundered many years ago by
the natives, who took from it some of the rich gifts which
Thutmose gave him as a reward for his valour. A splendid
golden dish, which found its way into the Louvre, bears the
words: “Given as a distinction from king Thutmose III to
the prince and priest who satisfies the king in every country,
and the isles in the midst of the sea, filling the treasury with
lapis-lazuli, silver and gold, the governor of countries, com-
mander of the army, favourite of the king, the king's scribe,
A jewel of his in the Leyden museum calls him
"governor of the north countries,”3 so that he must have
administered Thutmose's northern vassal-kingdoms.*
Had chance so decreed we might have known not only the
whole romance of Thutmose's personal adventures on the
field and those of his commanders, but also the entire course
of his campaigns, which we could have followed step by step;
for a record of every day's happenings throughout each
campaign was carefully kept by one Thaneni, a scribe
appointed for the purpose by Thutmose. Thaneni tells us
of his duties with great pride, saying: “I followed king
Thutmose III; I beheld the victories of the king which he
won in every country. He brought the chiefs of Zahi (Syria]
as living prisoners to Egypt; he captured all their cities, he
cut down their groves. . .
I recorded the victories which
he won in every land, putting them into writing according
1 II, 577.
? From my own copy of the original; see Birch, Mém. sur une patère Egypt-
ienne du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1858; and Pierret, Salle hist. de la Gal.
Égypt., Paris, 1889, No. 358, p. 87.
3 My own copy.
• See p. 322.
1
THUTMOSE III
313
to the facts.''1 It is these records of Thaneni upon rolls
of leather which are referred to in the account? of the first
campaign during the siege of Megiddo. But the priceless
rolls have perished and we have upon the wall at Karnak
only the capricious extracts of a temple scribe, more anxious
to set forth the spoil and Amon's share therein than to per-
petuate the story of his king's great deeds. How much he
has passed over, the biography of Amenemhab shows only
too well; and thus all that we have of the wars of Egypt's
greatest commander has filtered through the shrivelled soul
of an ancient bureaucrat, who little dreamed how hungrily
future ages would ponder his meagre excerpts.
The advancement of Egypt's Asiatic frontier to the
Euphrates again was, in the light of past experience, not
an achievement from which he might expect lasting results;
nor was Thutmose III the man to drop the work he had
begun as if it were complete with the campaign of the year
thirty three. The spring of the thirty fourth year therefore
found him again in Zahi on his ninth campaign. Some dis-
affection, probably in the Lebanon region, obliged him to
take three towns, one of which at least was in the district of
Nuges, where he had erected a fortress at the close of the
first campaign. Considerable spoil was captured and the
Syrian dynasts as usual hastened to pay their tribute and
express their loyalty. Meanwhile the magazines of the
harbour-towns were replenished as formerly, but especially
with ships for the fleet, and with masts and spars for naval
repairs. The tribute of the year was rendered notable by
a present of one hundred and eight blocks of copper, weigh-
ing nearly four pounds apiece, beside some lead and costly
stones from the king of Cyprus, who had not heretofore rec-
ognized the might of Thutmose in this manner.
This year evidently saw the extension of his power in the
south also; for he secured the son of the chief of Irem, the
7
* II, 490.
III, 392.
SII, 491.
* See above, p. 291.
& II, 492.
* II, 489.
7 II, 493.
314
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
neighbour of Punt as a hostage;' and the combined tribute
of Nubia amounted to over one hundred and thirty four
pounds of gold alone, besides the usual ebony, ivory, grain,
cattle and slaves.2 The sway of Thutmose was absolute
from above the third cataract to the Euphrates and his power
was at its zenith when he learned of a general revolt in
Naharin. It was now nearly two years since he had seen
that region and in so short a time its princes had ceased to
fear his power. They formed a coalition, with some prince
at its head, possibly the king of Aleppo, whom Thutmose's
Annals call “that wretched foe of Naharin." The alliance
was strong in numbers, for it included the far north, or "the
ends of the earth,” 4 as the Egyptians called the distant
regions of Asia where their knowledge of the country ceased.
Thutmose's continual state of preparation enabled him to
appear promptly on the plains of Naharin in the spring of
the year thirty five. He engaged the allies in battle at a
place called Araina," which we are unable to locate with cer-
tainty, but it was probably somewhere in the lower Orontes
valley. “Then his majesty prevailed against these bar-
barians. . They fled headlong, falling one over another
before his majesty." It is perhaps this battle which
Amenemhab mentions as occurring in the land of Tikhsi.?
If so, he fought before Thutmose, as the latter advanced
against the enemy and both took booty from the field: the
king several pieces of armour, and his general three pris-
oners, for which act he was again decorated by Thutmose.
The troops, of course, found rich plunder on the field : horses,
bronze armour and weapons, besides chariots richly wrought
with gold and silver. The alliance of the Naharin dynasts
was completely shattered and its resources for future resist-
ance destroyed or carried off by the victorious Egyptians.
Far as were these Syrian princes from Egypt, they had
learned the length and the might of the Pharaoh's arm, and
it was seven years before they again revolted.
1 II, 494.
$ Ibid.
2 II, 494-5.
• II, 499.
3 II, 498.
:11, 587.
4 Ibid.
& II, 500-501.
THUTMOSE III
315
Thutmose's annals for the next two years are lost, and we
know nothing of the objective of his eleventh and twelfth
campaigns; but the year thirty eight found him in the
southern Lebanon region on his thirteenth campaign, again
chastising the region of Nuges," which had felt his power for
the first time fifteen years before on the first campaign. On
this expedition he received not only another gift from the
king of Cyprus, but also one from far off Arrapakhitis, later
a province of Assyria. The turbulent Beduin of southern
Palestine forced him to march through their country the next
year, and the inevitable Amenemhab captured three pris-
oners in an action in the Negeb. He then spent the rest
of this fourteenth campaign in Syria, where it became
merely a tour of inspection; but in both years he kept the
harbours supplied as before, ready for every emergency. The
tribute seems to have come in regularly for the next two
years (forty and forty one),4 and again the king of “Kheta
the great” sent gifts, which Thutmose as before records
among the "tribute."96
The princes of Syria, sorely chastised as they had been, were
nevertheless unwilling to relinquish finally their independ-
ence, and regard the suzerainty of Egypt as an inevitable and
permanent condition of their rule. Incited by Kadesh, Thut-
mose's inveterate enemy, they again rose in a final united
effort to shake off the Pharaoh's strong hand. All Naharin,
especially the king of Tunip, and also some of the northern
coast cities, had been induced to join the alliance. The great
king was now an old man, probably over seventy years of
age, but with his accustomed promptitude he appeared with
his fleet off the north coast of Syria in the spring of the year
forty two. It was his seventeenth and last campaign. Like
his first, it was directed against his arch enemy, Kadesh.
Instead of approaching the place from the south, as before,
Thutmose determined to isolate her from her northern sup-
port and to capture Tunip first. He therefore landed at
some point between the mouth of the Orontes and the Nahr
ill, 507.
& II, 511-12.
• II, 517, 580.
* II, 520-527.
5 II, 525.
316
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
el-Kebîr and captured the coast city of Erkatu," the exact
location of which is not certain; but it must have been nearly
opposite Tunip, against which he then marched. He was
detained at Tunip until the harvest season, but he captured
the place after a short resistance. He then accomplished
the march up the Orontes to Kadesh without mishap and
wasted the towns of the region. The king of Kadesh, know-
ing that his all was lost unless he could defeat Thutmose's
army, made a desperate resistance. He engaged the Egyp-
tians in battle before the city, and in the effort to make head
against Thutmose's seasoned troops the Syrian king resorted
to a stratagem. He sent forth a mare against the Egyptian
chariotry, hoping thus to excite the stallions and produce
confusion, or even a break in the Egyptian battle line, of
which he might take advantage. But Amenemhab leaped
from his chariot, sword in hand, pursued the mare on foot,
ripped her up and cut off her tail, which he carried in
triumph to the king.* Thutmose's siege-lines now closed in
on the doomed city, and the first assault was ordered. For
this purpose he selected all the élite of his army, in order to
breach the walls. Amenemhab was placed in command.
The dangerous feat was successfully accomplished, the flower
of Thutmose's tried veterans poured in through the breach,
Amenemhab at their head, and the strongest city of Syria
was again at the Pharaoh's mercy.' The Naharin auxiliaries
in the city fell into Thutmose's hands, and it was not even
necessary for him to march into the north. In any case, at
his advanced age he might have been pardoned for avoiding
so arduous an expedition after a long campaign. It is also
probable that the season was too far advanced for him to
undertake so long a march before the cold of winter should
set in. However, as the event proved, no further display of
force in the north was necessary.
Never again as long as the old king lived did the Asiatic
princes make any attempt to shake off his yoke. In seven-
teen campaigns, during a period of nineteen years, he had
III, 529.
· II, 530.
3 II, 531.
* II, 589.
6 II, 500.
THUTMOSE III
317
mand
4
beaten them into submission, until there was no spirit for
resistance left among them. With the fall of Kadesh disap-
peared the last vestige of that Hyksos power which had once
subdued Egypt. Thutmose's name became a proverb in their
midst, and when, four generations later, his successors failed
to shield their faithful vassals in Naharin from the aggression
of the Kheta, the forsaken unfortunates remembered Thut-
mose's great name, and wrote pathetically to Egypt: “Who
formerly could have plundered Tunip without being plun-
dered by Manakhbiria (Thutmose III)?” But even now,
at three score and ten or more, the indomitable old warrior
had the harbours equipped with the necessary supplies,” and
there is little doubt that if it had been necessary he would
have led his army into Syria again. For the last time in
Asia he received the envoys of the tribute-paying princes
in his tent, and then returned to Egypt. There the Nubian
envoys brought him over five hundred and seventy eight
pounds of gold from Wawat alone.
One would have thought that the old king might now enjoy
a well-earned repose for the few years that remained to him;
but having at last established the sovereignty of Egypt in
Asia on a permanent basis, he turned his attention to Nubia.
It is evident that Menkheperreseneb, the head of his gold and
silver treasury," was now receiving thence six to eight hun-
dred pounds of gold every year, for, as we now see, even
the incomplete data at our command show in his forty first
year nearly eight hundred pounds. His viceroy, Nehi, had
now been administering Kush for twenty years and had
placed the productivity of the country on a high plane; but
it was the desire of the great king to extend still further his
dominions in the south. In his last years his buildings show
that he was extremely active throughout the province; as
far as the third cataract we trace his temples at Kalabsheh,
Amâda, Wadi Halfa, Kummeh and Semneh, where he re-
stored the temple of his great ancestor Sesostris III, and at
1 Amarna Letters, ed. Winckler, 41, 6-8. 1 II, 535.
• II, 539.
SII, 772 fr.
. II, 526-27.
3 II, 533-4, 536–7.
II, 651-2.
318
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Soleb. We learn through the clearance of the canal at the
first cataract, which he was obliged to effect in the fiftieth
year,' that an expedition of his was then returning from a
campaign against the Nubians. It is impossible to suppose
that the aged Thutmose accompanied it. There must have
been earlier expeditions also in the same region, for Thut-
mose was able to record in duplicate upon the pylons of his
Karnak temple a list of one hundred and fifteen places which
he conquered in Nubia and another containing some four
hundred such names. The geography of Nubia is too little
known to enable us to locate the territory represented, and it
is uncertain exactly how far up the Nile his new frontier
may have been, but it was doubtless well up toward the
fourth cataract, where we find it under his son.
Twelve years more were vouchsafed the great king after
he had returned from his last campaign in Asia. As he felt
his strength failing he made coregent his son, Amenhotep II,2
born to him by Hatshepsut-Meretre, a queen of whose origin
we know nothing. About a year later, on the 17th of March,
in the year 1447 B. C., when he was within five weeks of
the end of his fifty fourth year upon the throne, he closed
his eyes upon the scenes among which he had played so great
a part." He was buried in his tomb in the Valley of the
Kings by his son, and his body still survives (Fig. 120).
Before his death the priests of Amon had put into the mouth
of their god a hymn of praise* to him, which, although a
highly artificial composition, is not without effectiveness as
literature; and shows at the same time not only how universal
was his sway as the priests saw it, but also how deeply he had
wrought upon the imagination of his contemporaries. After
a long introduction in praise of Thutmose, Amon, his god,
says to him:
I have come, giving thee to smite the princes of Zahi,
I have hurled them beneath thy feet among their highlands;
I have made them see thy majesty as lord of radiance,
So that thou hast shone in their faces like my image.
1 II, 649-650.
II, 184.
3 II, 592.
• II, 655 8.
THUTMOSE III
319
I have come, giving thee to smite the Asiatics,
Thou hast made captive the heads of the Asiatics of Retenu;
I have made them see thy majesty equipped with thy adornment,
When thou hast taken the weapons of war in the chariot.
I have come, giving thee to smite the eastern land,
Thou hast trampled those who are in the districts of God's-Land;
I have made them see thy majesty as a circling star,
When it scatters its flame in fire and gives forth its dew.
I have come, giving thee to smite the western land,
Keftyew and Cyprus are in terror;
I have made them see thy majesty as a young bull,
Firm of heart, ready-horned and irresistible.
I have come, giving thee to smite those who are in their marshes,
The lands of Mitanni tremble under fear of thee;
I have made them see thy majesty as a crocodile,
Lord of fear in the water, inapproachable.
I have come, giving thee to smite those who are in their isles,
Those who are in the midst of the great sea hear thy roarings;
I have made them see thy majesty as an avenger,
Rising upon the back of his slain victim.
I have come, giving thee to smite the Libyans,
The isles of the Utentyew belong to the might of thy prowess ;
I have made them see thy majesty as a fierce-eyed lion,
While thou makest them corpses in their valleys.
I have come, giving thee to smite the uttermost ends of the
lands;
The circuit of the Great Curve (Okeanos) is enclosed in thy grasp;
I have made them see thy majesty as a soaring hawk,
Seizing that which he seeth, as much as he desires.
I have come, giving thee to smite those who are nigh thy border,
Thou hast smitten the Sand-Dwellers as living captives;
I have made them see thy majesty as a southern jackal,
Swift-footed, stealthy-going, who roves the Two Lands.
We have seen enough of Thutmose to know that this was
not all poetry, the adulation of a fawning priesthood. His
character stands forth with more of colour and individuality
than that of any king of early Egypt, except Ikhnaton. We
see the man of a tireless energy unknown in any Pharaoh
before or since; the man of versatility, designing exquisite
320
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
vases in a moment of leisure; the lynx-eyed administrator,
who launched his armies upon Asia with one hand and with
the other crushed the extortionate tax-gatherer. His vizier,
Rekhmire, who stood closest to his person, says of him:'Lo,
his majesty was one who knew what happened; there was
nothing of which he was ignorant; he was Thoth (the god
of knowledge] in everything; there was no matter which he
did not carry out."1 While he was proud to leave a record
of his unparalleled achievements, Thutmose protests more
than once his deep respect for the truth in so doing. “I
have not uttered exaggeration," says he, "in order to boast
of that which I did, saying, 'I have done something,' although
my majesty had not done it. I have not done anything .
against which contradiction might be uttered. I have done
this for my father, Amon ..; because he knoweth heaven
and he knoweth earth, he seeth the whole earth hourly."2
Such protestations, mingled with reverence for his god as
demanding the truth, are not infrequently on his lips. His
reign marks an epoch not only in Egypt but in the whole east
as we know it in his age. Never before in history had a
single brain wielded the resources of so great a nation and
wrought them into such centralized, permanent and at the
same time mobile efficiency, that for years they could be
brought to bear with incessant impact upon another conti-
nent as a skilled artisan manipulates a hundred-ton forge
hammer; although the figure is inadequate unless we remem-
ber that Thutmose forged his own hammer. The genius
which rose from an obscure priestly office to accomplish this
for the first time in history reminds us of an Alexander or
a Napoleon. He built the first real empire, and is thus the
first character possessed of universal aspects, the first world-
hero. From the fastnesses of Asia Minor, the marshes of
the upper Euphrates, the islands of the sea, the swamps of
Babylonia, the distant shores of Libya, the cases of the
Sahara, the terraces of the Somali coast and the upper cat-
aracts of the Nile the princes of his time rendered their
III, 664.
2 II, 570.
3 II, 452.
THUTMOSE III
321
tribute to his greatness. He thus made not only a world-
wide impression upon his age, but an impression of a new
order. His commanding figure, towering like an embodi-
ment of righteous penalty among the trivial plots and treach-
erous schemes of the petty Syrian dynasts, must have clar-
ified the atmosphere of oriental politics as a strong wind
drives away miasmic vapours. The inevitable chastisement
of his strong arm was held in awed remembrance by the
men of Naharin for three generations. His name was one
to conjure with, and centuries after his empire had crumbled
to pieces it was placed on amulets as a word of power. It
should be a matter of gratification to us of the western world
that one of this king's greatest monuments, his Heliopolitan
obelisks,' now rises on our own shores as a memorial of the
world's first empire-builder.
1 Of this pair one is on the Thames embankment in London, and the other
in Central Park, New York City. See p. 306.
21
CHAPTER XVII
THE EMPIRE
The imperial age was now at its full noontide in the Nile
valley. The old seclusiveness had totally disappeared, the
wall of partition between Asia and Africa, already shaken
by the Hyksos, was now broken down completely by the wars
of Thutmose III. Traditional limits disappeared, the cur-
rents of life eddied no longer within the landmarks of tiny
kingdoms, but pulsed from end to end of a great empire,
embracing many kingdoms and tongues, from the upper Nile
to the upper Euphrates. The wealth of Asiatic trade, cir-
culating through the eastern end of the Mediterranean, which
once flowed down the Euphrates to Babylon, was thus di-
verted to the Nile Delta, centuries earlier united by canal
with the Red Sea. All the world traded in the Delta mar-
kets. Assyria was still in her infancy and Babylonia no
longer possessed any political influence in the west. The
Pharaoh looked forward to an indefinite lease of power
throughout the vast empire which he had conquered.
Of his administration in Asia we know very little. The
whole region was under the general control of a “governor
of the north countries”; Thutmose III's general, Thutiy,
being the first to hold that office. To bridle the turbulent
Asiatic dynasts it was necessary permanently to station
troops throughout Syria-Palestine. Strongholds named after
the Pharaoh were established and the troops placed in them
as garrisons under deputies with power to act as the Phar-
aoh's representatives.2 Thutmose III erected one such at
the south end of Lebanon ;3 he resuscitated another founded
by his predecessors at some city on the Phænician coast,
See p. 312.
& Amarna Letters.
III, 548.
322
THE EMPIRE
323
where we find a sanctuary of Amon, the state god of Egypt,
and there was probably such a temple in each of the gar-
rison towns. Yet another stronghold at Ikathi,? in furthest
Naharin, was doubtless his foundation. Remains of an
Egyptian temple found by Renan at Byblos,3 doubtless
belong to this period. As we have seen, the city-kings were
allowed to rule their little states with great freedom, as long
as they paid the annual tribute with promptness and regu-
larity. When such a ruler died his son, who had been edu-
cated at Thebes, was installed in the father's place. The
Asiatic conquests were therefore rather a series of tributary
kingdoms than provinces, which indeed represent a system
of foreign government as yet in its infancy, or only roughly
foreshadowed in the rule of the viceroy of Kush. How the
local government of the city-kings was related to the admin-
istration of the governor of the north countries" is entirely
uncertain. His office was apparently largely a fiscal one,
for Thutiy, Thutmose III's governor, adds to his name the
phrase "filling the treasury with lapis-lazuli, silver and
But it is evident that the dynasts collected their
own taxes and rendered a part to the Pharaoh. We are
unable to determine what portion of his income the Asiatic
vassal was thus obliged to contribute; nor have we the
slightest idea how large was the Pharaoh's total revenue
from Asia.
As so often in similar empires of later age, when the great
king died the tributary princes revolted. Thus when the
news of Thutmose III's death reached Asia the opportunity
was improved and the dynasts made every preparation to
throw off the irksome obligation of the annual tribute.
Amenhotep II had reigned as coregent but a year when his
father died and the storm broke. All Naharin, including
the Mitanni princes, and probably also the northern coast
cities, were combined or at least simultaneous in the uprising.
With all his father's energy the young king prepared for the
gold.”4
III, 457-8. & II, 787.
* See above, p. 312.
Rougé, Revue arch. n. s. VII, 1863, pp. 194 ff.
BII, 184.
324
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
crisis and marched into Asia against the allies, who had col-
lected a large army. The south had evidently not ventured
to rebel, but from northern Palestine on, the revolt was gen-
eral. Leaving Egypt with his forces in April of his second
year (1447 B. C.), Amenhotep was in touch with the enemy
in northern Palestine early in May and immediately fought
an action at Shemesh-Edom’against the princes of Lebanon.
In this encounter he led his forces in person, as his father
before him had so often done, and mingled freely in the
hand-to-hand fray. With his own hand he took eighteen
prisoners and sixteen horses. The enemy was routed. By
the twelfth of May he had crossed the Orontes for the last
time in his northward advance, probably at Senzar and
turned northeastward for the Euphrates." He fought a
skirmish with the Naharin advance just after crossing the
river, but pushed rapidly on and captured seven of the
rebellious dynasts in the land of Tikhsi. On the 26th of
May, fourteen days after leaving the Orontes, he arrived at
Viy, which opened its gates to him; and with the men and
women of the town acclaiming him from the walls he entered
the place in triumph.? Ten days later, on the fifth of June,
he had rescued a garrison of his troops from the treachery
of the revolting town of Ikathi® and punished its inhabitants.
Whether the march to this town carried him northward from
Niy, up the Euphrates or across it and into Mitanni, is uncer-
tain; but the latter is the more probable, for his records say
of him, “The chiefs of Mitanni come to him, their tribute
upon their backs, to beseech his majesty that there may be
given to them his sweet breath of life; a mighty occurrence,
it has never been heard since the time of the gods. This
country, which knew not Egypt, beseeches the Good God [the
Pharaoh].”
As he reached his extreme advance, which
thus probably surpassed his father's, he set up a boundary
tablet, as his father and grandfather had done. His return
was a triumphal procession as he approached Memphis.
9
1
8 Ibid.
II, 792, I. 4.
• II, 797.
II, 783.
1 II, 786.
3 Ibid.
8 II, 787.
II, 784.
9 II, 804.
10 II, 800, II. 4-5.
THE EMPIRE
325
The populace assembled in admiring crowds while his lines
passed, driving with them over five hundred of the north
Syrian lords, two hundred and forty of their women, two
hundred and ten horses and three hundred chariots. His
.
herald had in charge for the chief treasurer nearly sixteen
hundred and sixty pounds of gold in the form of vases
and vessels, besides nearly one hundred thousand pounds
of copper. Proceeding to Thebes, he took with him the
seven kings of Tikhsi, who were hung head downward on
the prow of his royal barge as he approached the city. He
personally sacrificed them in the presence of Amon and
hanged their bodies on the walls of Thebes, reserving one for
a lesson to the Nubians as we shall see. His unexpected
energy had evidently crushed the revolt before it had been
able to muster all its forces, and in so far as we know, the
lesson was so effective that no further attempt was made
against his suzerainty in Asia.
The young Pharaoh now directed his energies toward
ensuring the security of the other extremity of his empire
and establishing his southern frontier. On his arrival at
Thebes he dispatched an expedition into Nubia, bearing the
body of the seventh king of the land of Tikhsi, which was
hung up on the wall of Napata, as a hint of what the Nubians
might expect should they attempt revolt against their new
sovereign. The operations of Thutmose III in upper Nubia
now made it possible for Amenhotep to establish his frontier
at the fourth cataract; it was guarded by Napata, just below
the cataract, and the region of Karoy, in which the town lay,
was from this time on known as the southern limit of Egyp-
tian administration. To this point extended the jurisdic-
tion of the "viceroy of Kush and governor of the south coun-
This carried the territory of Egypt around the
great bend in the river to the region where the stream often
flows southward. Here Amenhotep set up tablets marking
his southern frontier,' and beyond these there was no more
control of the rude Nubian tribes than was necessary to keep
tries."93
il], 700.
* Il, 707.
SII, 1025.
• II, 800.
326
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
open the trade-routes from the south and prevent the bar-
barians from becoming so bold as to invade the province in
plundering expeditions. About nine months after his return
from the Asiatic campaign, the Nubian expedition erected
two stelas, one at Amâda and the other at Elephantine,
recording his completion of the temples begun by his father
at these places. He there tells us of the fate of the Tiklisi
kings, and although the second campaign had not yet taken
place, he refers to his Naharin war as his “first campaign,'
a significant prophecy of the life of conquest which he ex-
pected to lead. It was now regarded as a matter of course
that Amon had pressed into the eager hand of every Pharaoh
sceptre and sword alike. The work of Amenhotep's great
father was so thoroughly done, however, that, as far as we
know, he was not obliged to invade either Asia or Nubia
again.
In Thebes he built bis now vanished mortuary temple on
the west side of the river, by that of his father, while in the
Karnak temple he restored the long dismantled hall of
Hatshepsut's obelisks, setting up again the columns which
she had removed and richly adorning them with precious
metal. He recorded the restoration on the wall which his
father had built around the obelisks of Hatshepsut to hide
their inscriptions forever from view. Besides a small col-
onnaded structure at Karnak, he also built at Memphis and
Heliopolis, restoring the neighbouring quarries of Troja;
but all his works there have perished. We are able to discern
little of him personally, but he seems to have been a worthy
son of the great king. Physically he was a very powerful
man and claims in his inscriptions that no man could draw
his bow. The weapon was found in his tomb and bears the
words after his name: “Smiter of the Troglodytes, over-
thrower of Kush, hacking up their cities ... the great Wall
of Egypt, protector of his soldiers."!3 It is this story which
furnished Herodotus with the legend that Cambyses was
unable to draw the bow of the king of Ethiopia. He cele-
III, 791-8.
9 II, 803-6.
sII, p. 310, note d.


FIG. 120.-HEAD OF THUTMOSE III.
(From his mummy. Cairo Museum.)
FIG. 121.-HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, SON OF
THUTMOSE III.
(From his mummy still in his tomb at Thebes.)


Fig. 122.-HEAD OF THUTMOSE IV, SON OF
AMENHOTEP II.
(From his mummy. Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 123.-AMARNA LETTER, NO. 296.
Containing list of the dowry of the Mitannian
King Dushratta's daughter, Tadukhipa.
(Berlin Museum.)
THE EMPIRE
327
brated his jubilee on the thirtieth anniversary of his appoint-
ment as crown prince and erected an obelisk in Elephantine
in commemoration of the event. Dying about 1420 B.C., after
a reign of some twenty six years, he was interred like his an-
cestors in the valley of the kings' tombs, where his body rests
to this day (Fig. 121), though even now a prey to the clever
tomb-robbers of modern Thebes, who in November, 1901,
forced the tomb and cut through the wrappings of the
muminy in their search for royal treasure on the body of their
ancient ruler. Their Theban ancestors in the same craft,
however, had three thousand years ago taken good care that
nothing should be left for their descendants.2
Amenhotep II was followed by his son, Thutmose IV. It
is possible that this prince was not at first designed to be
his father's successor, if we may believe a folk-tale which
was in circulation some centuries later. The story recounted
how, long before his father's death, a hunting expedition
once carried him to the desert near the pyramids of Gizeh,
where the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty had already slept
over thirteen hundred years. He rested in the shadow of
the great Sphinx at noon time, and falling asleep, the sun-
god, with whom the Sphinx in his time was identified, ap-
peared to him in a dream, beseeching him to clear his image
from the sand which already at that early day encumbered
it, and at the same time promising him the kingdom. The
prince made a vow to do as the great god desired. The god's
promise was fulfilled and the young king immediately upon
his accession hastened to redeem his vow. He cleared the
gigantic figure of the Sphinx and recorded the whole inci-
dent on a stela in the vicinity. A later version, made by the
priests of the palace, was engraved on a huge granite archi-
trave taken from the neighbouring Osiris-temple and erected
against the breast of the Sphinx between the forelegs, where
it still stands.
He was early called upon to maintain the empire in Asia.
We are, however, entirely ignorant of the course of his cam-
3
TIV, 507-8.
Infra, pp. 510-11.
* II, 810-815.
328
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
paign there, which, like his father, he called his "first cam-
paign."1 It is evident, however, that he was obliged to
advance into the far north, eventually invading Naharin, so
that he was afterward able to record in the state temple at
Thebes the spoil, “which his majesty captured in Naharin
the wretched, on his first victorious campaign."2 The imme-
diate result of his appearance in Naharin was completely
to quiet all disaffection there as far as the vassal-princes
were concerned. He returned by way of Lebanon where he
forced the chiefs to furnish him with a cargo of cedar for
the sacred barge of Amon at Thebes. Arriving at Thebes,
he settled a colony of the prisoners, possibly from the city
of Gezer in Palestine,4 in the enclosure of his mortuary
temple, which he had erected by those of his ancestors on
the plain at Thebes. Perhaps the recognition of a common
enemy in the Kheta now produced a rapprochement between
the Pharaoh and Mitanni, for the latter was soon to suffer
from the aggressions of the king of Kheta. Thutmose evi-
dently desired a friend in the north, for he sent to Artatama,
the Mitannian king, and desired his daughter in marriage."
After some proper display of reluctance, Artatama consented,
and the Mitannian princess was sent to Egypt, where she
probably received an Egyptian name, Mutemuya, and became
the mother of the next king of Egypt, Amenhotep III. A
firm alliance with Mitanni was thus formed, which forbade
all thought of future conquest by the Pharaoh east of the
Euphrates. A friendly alliance was also cemented with
Babylonia. Although it is probable that Thutmose found
it unnecessary to invade Asia again, he was called the “con-
queror of Syria” by his nobles, and the tribute of the Syrian
princes regularly appeared at the office of the vizier or the
treasurer. In the spring of the year eight news of a serious
revolt in Nubia reached him." After a triumphant voyage
up the river, having stopped to greet the gods in all the
larger temples, he passed the first cataract, and advancing
' II, 817.
III, 822, 838.
* II, 821. Amarna Letters, 21, 16-18. 6 Amarna Letters, 1, 1. 03.
TII, 822. . II, 819-820.
'II, 826.
2 Ibid.
THE EMPIRE
329
2
into Wawat, he seems to have found the enemy surprisingly
near the northern boundary of Nubia. There was of course
but one possible issue for the battle which followed, and
great quantities of spoil fell into Thutmose's hands.1 Again
he settled the prisoners which he took as serfs of his mor-
tuary temple.
It is probable that Thutmose did not long survive the war
in Nubia. He was therefore unable to beautify Thebes and
adorn the state temple as his fathers had done. But the
respect in which he held his grandfather, Thutmose III, led
him to the completion of a notable work of the latter. For
thirty five years the last obelisk planned by Thutmose III
had been lying unfinished at the southern portal of the
Karnak temple enclosure or temenos. His grandson now had
it engraved in the old conqueror's name, recorded also upon
it his own pious deed in continuing the work, and erected the
colossal shaft, one hundred and five and a half feet high,
the largest surviving obelisk, at the southern portal of the
enclosure, where he had found it lying. It now stands before
the Lateran in Rome. Not long after this gracious act,
which may possibly have been in celebration of his own jubi-
lee, Thutmose was gathered to his fathers (about 1411 B. C.)
and was buried in the valley where they slept (Fig. 122).
The son who succeeded him was the third of the Amen-
hoteps and the last of the great emperors. He was but the
great grandson of Thutmose III, but with him the high tide
of Egyptian power was already slowly on the ebb, and he
was not the man to stem the tide. An early evidence of the
effeminate character, which he afterward showed, is notice-
able in his relation with his queen. Already as crown prince, ,
or at least early in his reign he married a remarkable
woman, of uncertain origin, named Tiy. There is not a par-
ticle of evidence to prove her of foreign birth, as is so often
claimed. In celebration of the marriage, Amenhotep issued
a large number of scarabs, or sacred beetles, carved in stone
and engraved with a records of the event, in which the unti-
1 II, 829.
& II, 824.
* II, 861-2.
330
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
tled parentage of his queen frankly follows her name in the
very royal titulary itself, which declares her to be the queen-
consort. But the record closes with the words: “She is the
wife of a mighty king whose southern boundary is as far as
Karoy and northern as far as Naharin";' as if to remind
any who might reflect upon the humble origin of the queen
of the exalted station which she now occupied. From the
beginning the new queen exerted a powerful influence over
Amenhotep, and he immediately inserted her name in the
official caption placed at the head of royal docuinents. Her
power continued throughout his reign and was the beginning
of a remarkable era characterized by the prominence of the
queens in state affairs and on public occasions, a peculiarity
which we find only under Amenhotep III and his iinmediate
successors. The significance of these events we shall later
dwell upon.
In the administration of lis great empire Amenhotep III
began well. The Asiatics gave him no trouble at his acces-
sion, and he ruled in security and unparalleled splendour.
Toward the close of his fourth year, however, trouble in
Nubia called him south. Early in October he had improved
the high water to pass the cataract with his fleet. His vice-
roy of Nubia, Mermose, had levied an army of Nubians in
the region from the vicinity of Kubbân for seventy five miles
up to Ibrim. These, with the Pharaoh's Egyptians, were
to be employed against the Nubians of the upper country, a
striking evidence of the very Egyptianized character of lower
Nubia. When they had reached Ibhet, which is at least
above the second cataract, they found the enemy and engaged
them in battle, probably on the anniversary of the king's
coronation, the first day of his fifth year. They took seven
hundred and forty prisoners and slew three hundred and
twelve, as recorded on a tablet of victory which they set up
at the second cataract.' The outlying villages and wells
were visited by small parties and the inhabitants punished
to prevent further recurrences of insubordination;" where-
III, 862.
II, 852.
3 II, 353-4.
II, 850.
THE EMPIRE
331
upon Amenhotep marched southward for a month, taking
captives and spoil as he went." Arriving finally at the
“height of Hua,'' a place of uncertain location, which, how-
ever, occurs in the lists, together with Punt, and must have
been a long distance south, perhaps above the cataracts, he
camped in the land of Uneshek on the south of Hua. This
marked his extreme southern advance.? In the land of
Karoy, with which the reader is now acquainted as the region
about Napata, he collected great quantities of gold for his
Theban buildings, and at Kebehu-Hor, or “the Pool of
Horus," he erected his tablet of victory, but we are unable
to locate the place with certainty. It was certainly not
essentially in advance of the frontier of his father. This was
the last great invasion of Nubia by the Pharaohs. It was
constantly necessary to punish the outlying tribes for their
incessant predatory incursions into the Nile valley; but the
valley itself, as far as the fourth cataract, was completely
subjugated, and as far as the second cataract largely Egyp-
tianized, a process which now went steadily forward until
the country up to the fourth cataract was effectually en-
grafted with Egyptian civilization. Egyptian temples had
now sprung up at every larger town, and the Egyptian gods
were worshipped therein; the Egyptian arts were learned
by the Nubian craftsmen, and everywhere the rude barbarism
of the upper Nile was receiving the stamp of Egyptian cul-
ture. Nevertheless the native chieftains, under the surveil-
lance of the viceroy, were still permitted to retain their titles
and honours, and doubtless continued to enjoy at least a
nominal share in the government. We find them as far
north as Ibrim, which had marked the southern limit of
Amenhotep III's levy of negro auxiliaries, and was therefore
probably the extreme point to which local administration
solely by Egyptian officials extended southward. The annual
landing of the viceroy at Thebes, bringing the yearly tribute
of all the Nubian lands, was now a long established custom.
1 II, 850, 11. 11
• II, 845.
III, 847-8.
BII, 1037.
$ II, 889.
o II, 1035–41.
332
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
In Asia Amenhotep enjoyed unchallenged supremacy; at
the court of Babylon even, his suzerainty in Canaan, as they
called Syria-Palestine, was acknowledged; and when the
dynasts attempted to involve Kurigalzu, king of Babylon,
in an alliance with them against the Pharaoh, he wrote them
an unqualified refusal, stating that he was in alliance with
the Pharaoh, and even threatened them with hostilities if
they formed a hostile alliance against Egypt. At least this
is the Babylonian version of the affair and whether true
or not, it shows Babylon's earnest desire to stand well with
the Pharaoh. All the powers: Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni
and Alasa-Cyprus, were exerting every effort to gain the
friendship of Egypt. A scene of world politics, such as is
unknown before in history, now unfolds before us. From
the Pharaoh's court as the centre radiate a host of lines of
communication with all the great peoples of the age. The
Tell el-Amarna letters (Fig. 123), perhaps the most interest-
ing mass of documents surviving from the early east, have
preserved to us this glimpse across the kingdoms of hither
Asia as one might see them on a stage, each king playing his
part before the great throne of the Pharaoh. The letters,
some three hundred in number, are written on clay tablets
in the Babylonian cuneiform, and were discovered in 1888
at the capital city of Amenhotep III's son, Ikhnaton, the
place known in modern times as Tell el-Amarna, from which
the correspondence takes its name. They date from the
reign of Amenhotep III and that of his son and successor,
Amenhotep IV, or Ikhnaton, being correspondence of a
strictly official character between these Pharaohs on the one
hand, and on the other the kings of Babylonia, Nineveh,
Mitanni, Alasa (Cyprus) and the Pharaoh's vassal kings
of Syria-Palestine. Five letters’ survive from the corre-
spondence of Amenhotep III with Kallimma-Sin (Kadash-
man-Bel), king of Babylonia, one from the Pharaoh and the
others from Kallimma-Sin. The Babylonian king is con-
stantly in need of gold and insistently importunates his
1 Amarna Letters, 7.
: Amarna Letters, 1-5.
THE EMPIRE
333
brother of Egypt to send him large quantities of the precious
metal, which he says is as plentiful as dust in Egypt accord-
ing to the reports of the Babylonian messengers. Consid-
erable friction results from the dissatisfaction of Kallimma-
Sin at the amounts with which Amenhotep favours him. He
refers to the fact that Amenhotep had received from his
father a daughter in marriage, and makes this relationship
a reason for further gifts of gold. As the correspondence
goes on another marriage is negotiated between a daughter
of Amenhotep and Kallimma-Sin or his son. Similarly
Amenhotep enjoys the most intimate connection with Shut-
tarna, the king of Mitanni, the son of Artatama, with whom
his father, Thutmose IV, had enjoyed the most cordial rela-
tions. Indeed Amenhotep was perhaps the nephew of Shut-
tarna, from whom he now received a daughter, named
Gilukhipa, in marriage. In celebration of this union Amen-
hotep issued a series of scarab-beetles of stone bearing an
inscription commemorating the event, and stating that the
princess brought with her a train of three hundred and
seventeen ladies and attendants.' This occurred in Amen-
hotep's tenth year. On the death of Shuttarna the alliance
was continued under his son, Dushratta, from whom Amen-
hotep later received, as a wife for his son and successor, a
second Mitannian princess, Tadukhipa, the daughter of
Dushratta. The correspondence between the two kings is
very illuminating and may serve as an example of such com-
munications. The following is a letter” of Dushratta to his
Egyptian ally:
“To Nimmuria, the great king, the king of Egypt, my
brother, my son-in-law, who loves me, and whom I love:-
Dushratta, the great king, thy father-in-law, who loves thee,
the king of Mitanni, thy brother. It is well with me. With
thee may it be well, with thy house, my sister and thy other
wives, thy sons, thy chariots, thy horses, thy chief men,
thy land, and all thy possessions, may it be very well
indeed. In the time of thy fathers, they were on very
IIT, 860-7.
& Amarna Letters, 17.
334
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
friendly terms with my fathers, but thou hast increased
[this friendship] still more and with my father thou hast
been on very friendly terms indeed. Now, therefore, since
thou and I are on mutually friendly terms, thou hast made
it ten times closer than with my father. May the gods cause
this friendship of ours to prosper. May Tishub [the god
of Mitanni], the lord, and Amon eternally ordain it as it
is now.'
“Inasmuch as my brother sent his messenger, Mani, ,
saying: 'My brother, send me thy daughter for my wife, to
be queen of Egypt,' I did not grieve the heart of my brother,
and I continually ordered what was friendly. And as my
brother wished, I presented her to Mani. And he beheld her
and when he saw her, he rejoiced greatly; and when he
brings her safely to my brother's land, then may Ishtar and
Amon make her correspond to my brother's wish."
'Gilia, my messenger, has brought to me my brother's
message; when I heard it, it seeemed to me very good, and
I was very glad indeed and said: 'So far as I am concerned,
even if all the friendly relation which we have had with one
another had ceased, nevertheless, on account of this message,
we would forever continue friendly. Now when I wrote
my brother I said: “So far as I am concerned, we will be very
friendly indeed, and mutually well disposed'; and I said to
my brother: 'Let my brother make [our friendship) ten times
greater than with my father,' and I asked of my brother a
great deal of gold, saying: 'More than to my father let my
brother give me and send me. Thou sentest my father a
great deal of gold: a namkhar of pure (?) gold, and a kiru
of pure (?) gold, thou sentest him; but thou sentest me
[only] a tablet of gold that is as if it were alloyed with
copper.
So let my brother send gold in very great quan-
tity, without measure, and let him send more gold to me than
to my father. For in my brother's land gold is as common
as dust
In tñis rein the men who were now shaping the destinies
of all hither Asia wrote to one another. In response to sim-
THE EMPIRE
335
ilar entreaties, Amenhotep sent a gift of twenty talents of
gold to the king of Assyria,' and gained his friendship also.
The vassalship of the king of Alasa-Cyprus continued, and
he regularly sent the Pharaoh large quantities of copper,
save when on one occasion he excuses himself because his
country had been visited by a pestilence. So complete was
the understanding between Egypt and Cyprus that even the
extradition of the property of a citizen of Cyprus who had
died in Egypt was regarded by the two kings as a matter of
course, and a messenger was sent to Egypt to receive the
property and bring it back to Cyprus for delivery to the wife
and son of the deceased.2 Desirous of holding the first
place with Egypt, the island king even ventures to advise the
Pharaoh against any alliance with Kheta or Babylonia, a
policy which we shall later find practiced by Babylonia
herself.
Thus courted and flattered, the object of diplomatic atten-
tion from all the great powers, Amenhotep found little occa-
sion for anxiety regarding his Asiatic empire. The Syrian
vassals were now the grandsons of the men whom Thutmose
III had conquered; they had grown thoroughly habituated
to the Egyptian allegiance. The time was so far past when
they had enjoyed independence that they knew no other con-
dition than that of vassals of Egypt. In an age of turbu-
lence and aggression, where might was the only appeal, it
finally seemed to them the natural condition of things and it
was not without its advantages in rendering them free from
all apprehension of attack from without. An Egyptian edu-
cation at the Pharaoh's capital had, moreover, made him
many a loyal servant among the children of the dynasts,
who had succeeded disloyal or lukewarm fathers in Syria.
They protest their fidelity to the Pharaoh on all occasions.
Thus the prince Akizzi of Katna writes to Amenhotep:“My
lord, here in this place I am thy servant. I am pursuing the
way of my lord, and from my lord I do not depart. Since
my fathers became thy servants this land has been thy land,
1 Amarna Letters, 23, 30 ff.
Amarna Letters, 25, 30 ff.
336
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the city of Katna thy city, and I am my lord's. My lord,
if the troops and chariots of my lord came, food, drink, cattle,
sheep, honey and oil were brought for the king's troops and
chariots."1
Such letters were introduced by the most abject
and self-abasing adulation; the writer says: "To my lord,
the king, my gods, my sun: Abimilki, thy servant. Seven and
seven times at the feet of my lord I fall. I am the dust under
the sandals of my lord, the king. My lord is the sun which
rises over the lands every day, etc.”;the vassals fall down
before the Pharaoh not only seven times but also “on breast
and back” (see Fig. 147). They are “the ground upon
which thou treadest, the throne upon which thou sittest, the
foot-stool of thy feet"; even “thy dog”; and one is pleased
to call himself the groom of the Pharaoh's horse. They
have all been installed by the Pharaoh's grace, and he sends
oil to anoint them at accession to office. They inform the
court at the first sign of disloyalty among their fellows and
are even commissioned to proceed against rebellious princes.
Throughout the land in the larger cities are garrisons of
Egyptian troops, consisting of infantry and chariotry. But
they are no longer solely native Egyptians, but to a large
extent Nubians and Sherden, roving, predatory bands of
sea-robbers, perhaps the ancestors of the historical Sardin-
ians. From now on they took service in the Egyptian army
in ever larger and larger numbers. These forces of the
Pharaoh were maintained by the dynasts and one of their
self-applied tests of loyalty in writing to the Pharaoh was,
as we have seen above, their readiness and faithfulness in
furnishing supplies. Syria thus enjoyed a stability of gov-
ernment which had never before been hers. The roads were
safe from robbers, caravans were convoyed from vassal to
vassal, and a word from the Pharaoh was sufficient to bring
any of his subject-princes to his knees. The payment of
tribute was as regular as the collection of taxes in Egypt
itself. But in case of any delay a represensative of the
Pharaoh, who was stationed in the various larger towns,
1 Ibid., 138, 4-13.
9 Ibid., 149, 1-7.
THE EMPIRE
337
needed but to appear in the delinquent's vicinity to recall
the unfulfilled obligation. Amenhotep himself was never
obliged to carry on a war in Asia. On one occasion he ap-
peared at Sidon, and one of his officials mentions prisoners
taken by his majesty on the battlefield, but this may refer
to the Nubian campaign. It was deemed sufficient, as we
shall later see, to send troops under the command of an
efficient officer, who found no difficulty in coping with the
situation for a generation after Amenhotep's accession.
Thus one of the vassal princes later wrote to Amenhotep's
son:“Verily, thy father did not march forth, nor inspect the
lands of his vassal princes.''2
Under such circumstances Amenhotep was at leisure to
devote himself to those enterprises of peace which have occu-
pied all emperors under similar conditions.
Trade now
developed as never before. The Nile, from the Delta to the
cataracts, was alive with the freight of all the world, which
flowed into it from the Red Sea fleets and from long caravans
passing back and forth through the Isthmus of Suez, bearing
the rich stuffs of Syria, the spices and aromatic woods of
the East, the weapons and chased vessels of the Phænicians,
and a myriad of other things, which brought their Semitic
names into the hieroglyphic and their use into the life of the
Nile-dwellers. Parallel with the land traffic through the
isthmus were the routes of commerce on the Mediterranean,
thickly dotted with the richly laden galleys of Phænicia, con-
verging upon the Delta from all quarters and bringing to the
markets of the Nile the decorated vessels or damascened
bronzes from the Mycenæan industrial settlements of the
Ægean. The products of Egyptian industry were likewise in
use in the palace of the sea-kings of Cnossos, in Rhodes, and
in Cyprus, where a number of Egyptian monuments of this
age have been found. Scarabs and bits of glazed ware with
the name of Amenhotep III or queen Tiy have also been dis-
covered on the mainland of Greece at Mycenæ. The northern
Mediterranean peoples were feeling the impact of Egyptian
II, 916, 918.
& Amarna Letters, 87, 62-64.
22
338
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
civilization now appearing in the north with more insistent
force than ever before. In Crete Egyptian religious forms
had been introduced, in one case under the personal leader-
ship of an Egyptian priest (Fig. 127). Mycenæan artists
were powerfully influenced by the incoming products of
Egypt. Egyptian landscapes appear in their metal work, and
the lithe animal forms in instantaneous postures which were
caught by the pencil of the Theban artists were now cominon
in Mycenæ. The superb decorated ceilings of Thebes like-
wise appear in the tombs of Mycenæ and Orchomenos. Even
the pre-Greek writing of Crete shows traces of the influence
of the hieroglyphics of the Nile. The men of the Mycenaan
world, the Keftyew, who brought these things to their coun-
trymen, were now a familiar sight upon the streets of Thebes,
where the wares which they offered were also modifying the
art of Egypt. The plentiful silver of the north now came
in with the northern strangers in great quantities, and,
although under the Hyksos the baser metal had been worth
twice as much as gold, the latter now and permanently
became the more valuable medium. The ratio was now
about one and two thirds to one, and the value of silver
steadily fell until Ptolemaic times (third century B. C. on),
when the ratio was twelve to one.
Such trade required protection and regulation. Roving
bands of Lycian pirates infested the coasts of the eastern
Mediterranean; they boldly entered the harbours of Cyprus
and plundered the towns, and even landed on the coast of
the Delta. Amenhotep was therefore obliged to develop a
marine police which patroled the coast of the Delta and con-
stantly held the mouths of the river closed against all but
lawful comers. Custom houses were also maintained by
these police officials at the same places, and all merchandise
not consigned to the king was dutiable. The income from
this source must have been very large, but we have no means
of estimating it. All the land-routes leading into the country
were similarly policed, and foreigners who could not satis-
1 Amarna Letters, 28. 11, 916, ll. 33-4. Amarna letters, 20; 32; 33.
THE EMPIRE
339.
factorily explain their business were turned back, while
legitimate trade was encouraged, protected and properly
taxed.
The influx of slaves, chiefly of Semitic race, which had
begun under Thutmose III, still continued, and the king's
chief scribe distributed them throughout the land and en-
rolled them among the tax-paying serfs. As this host of
foreigners intermarried with the natives, the large infusion
of strange blood began to make itself felt in a new and com-
posite type of face, if we may trust the artists of the day.
The incalculable wealth which had now been converging
upon the coffers of the Pharaoh for over a century also began
to exert a profound influence, which, as under like conditions,
in later history, was far from wholesome. On New Year's
Day the king presented his nobles with a profusion of costly
gifts which would have amazed the Pharaohs of the pyra-
mid-age. On one such occasion the chief treasurer carried
in before the monarch “chariots of silver and gold, statues
of ivory and ebony, necklaces of every costly stone, weapons
of warfare, and work of all craftsmen.” They included
thirteen statues of the king, seven sphinx portraits of the
monarch, eight superb necklaces, six hundred and eighty
richly wrought shields and two hundred and thirty quivers
of the same workmanship, three hundred and sixty bronze
swords and one hundred and forty bronze daggers, both
damascened with precious metal, thirty ebony staves tipped
with silver and gold, two hundred and twenty ivory and
ebony whips, seven elaborately wrought chests, many sun-
shades, chairs, vases and innumerable small objects. In
the old days the monarch rewarded a faithful noble with
land, which, in order to pay a return, must be properly cul-
tivated and administered, thus fostering simplicity and
wholesome country virtues on a large domain; but the
favourite now received convertible wealth, which required
no administration to be utilized. The luxury and display of
the metropolis supplanted the old rustic simplicity and
III, 010, 11. 32-3.
3
• II, 801 f.
e Ibid., II. 31, 30.
340
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
sturdy elemental virtues. From the Pharaoh down to the
humblest scribe this change was evident, if in nothing else
than the externals of costume; for the simple linen kilt from
the hips to the knees, which once satisfied all, not excluding
the king, has now given way to an elaborate costume, with
long plaited skirt, a rich tunic with full flowing sleeves; the
unpretentious head-dress of the old time has been replaced
by an elaborately curled wig hanging down upon the shoul-
ders; while the once bare feet are shod in elegant sandals,
with tapering toes curled up at the tips. A noble of the
landed class from the
court of the Amenem-
hets or the Sesostrises,
could he have walked
the streets of Thebes in
Amenhotep III's day,
would almost have been
at a loss to know in
what country he had
suddenly found himself;
while his own antiqua-
Fig. 124. COSTUMES OF TIIE EMPIRE.
ted costume, which had
survived only among the priests, would have awakened equal
astonishment among the fashionable Thebans of the day. He
would not have felt less strange than a noble of Elizabeth's
reign upon the streets of modern London. All about him he
would have found elegant chateaus and luxurious villas, with
charming gardens and summer-houses grouped about vast
temples, such as the Nile-dweller had never seen before.
The wealth and the captive labour of Asia and Nubia were
being rapidly transmuted into noble architecture, and at
Thebes a new and fundamental chapter in the history of
the world's architecture was being daily written. Amen-
hotep gave himself with appreciation and enthusiasm to such
works, and placed at the disposal of his architects all the
resources which they needed for an ampler practice of their
落
​THE EMPIRE
341
art than had ever before been possible. There were among
them men of the highest gifts, and one of them, who bore the
same name as the king, gained such a wide reputation for
his wisdom that his sayings circulated in Greek some twelve
hundred years later among the “Proverbs of the Seven Wise
Men”; and in Ptolemaic times he was finally worshipped as
a god, and took his place among the innumerable deities of
Egypt as “ Amenhotep, son of Hapu.”1
Under the fingers of such men as these the old and tradi-
tional elements of Egyptian building were imbued with new
life and combined into new forms in which they took on a
wondrous beauty unknown before. Besides this, the unpre-
cedented resources of wealth and labour at the command of

ןווו
ME
by kávAxel Film
INFO
Fig. 125.
THE PERIPTERAL CELLA-TEMPLE.
Built by Amenhotep III on the Island of Elephantine. It was destroyed
for building material by the Turkish governor of Assuan in 1822. (After the
"Description" by Napoleon's Expedition.)
such an architect enabled him to deal with such vast dimen-
sions that the element of size alone must have rendered his
buildings in the highest degree impressive. But of the two
forms of temple which now developed, the smaller is not less
1 II, 911.

342
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
effective than the larger. It was a simple rectangular cella
or holy of holies, thirty or forty feet long and fourteen feet
high, with a door at each end, surrounded by a portico, the
whole being raised upon a base of about half the height of
the temple walls. With the door looking out between two
graceful columns, and the façade happily set in the retreat-
ing vistas of the side colonnades, the whole is so exquisitely
proportioned that the trained eye immediately recognizes the
hand of a master who appreciated the full value of simple
fundamental lines. Little wonder that the architects of
Napoleon's expedition who brought it to the notice of the
modern world were charmed with it, and thought that they
had discovered in it the origin of the Greek peripteral tem-
ple; nor can there indeed be any doubt that the architecture
of Greece was influenced by this form. The other and larger

***
CA
FIG. 126.
PERSPECTIVE AND SECTION OF A TYPICAL PYLON TEMPLE OF THE
EMPIRE.
The nearer half, with its Pylon-Tower, has been cut away to expose the
arrangement of the interior.
Compare with description on p. 343. (After
Perrot-Chipiez.)
type of temple, which now found its highest development,
differs strikingly from the one just discussed; and perhaps
most fundamentally in the fact that its colonnades are all
within and not visible from the outside. The holy of holies, ,
as of old, is surrounded by a series of chambers, now larger

Fig. 127.-FRAGMENT OF CARVED STONE VASE FOUND IN
CRETE
In the middle of a festal procession an Egyptian priest, with upraised sistrum,
leads singing Cretan youths. Eighteenth Century B.C.

Fig. 128.-AMENHOTEP III'S COURT OF CLUSTERED PAPYRUS BUD COLUMNS
Luxor Temple
THE EMPIRE
343
than before, as rendered necessary by the rich and elaborate
ritual which had arisen. Before it is a large colonnaded hall,
often called the hypostyle, while in front of this hall lies an
extensive forecourt surrounded by a columned portico. In
front of this court rise two towers (together called a
"pylon”), which form the facade of the temple. Their
walls incline inward, they are crowned by a hollow cornice
and the great door of the temple opens between them. While
the masonry, which is of sandstone or limestone, does not
usually contain large blocks, huge architraves, thirty or forty
feet long and weighing one or two hundred tons, are not
unknown. Nearly all the surfaces except those on the col-
umns are carved with reliefs, the outside showing the king
: in battle, while on the inside he appears in the worship of
the gods, and all surfaces with slight exception were highly
coloured. Before the vast double doors of cedar of Lebanon
mounted in bronze, rose, one on either side, a pair of obelisks,
towering high above the pylon-towers, while colossal statues
of the king, each hewn from a single block, were placed with
backs to the pylon, on either side of the door. In the use
of these elements and this general arrangement of the parts,
already common before Amenhotep's reign, his architects
created a radically new type, destined to survive in frequent
use to this day as one of the noblest forms of architecture.
At Luxor, the old southern suburb of Thebes, which had
now grown into the city, there was a small temple to Amon,
built by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty. Amenhotep had,
probably early in his reign, pulled it down and built a new
sanctuary with surrounding chambers and a hall before it,
like that of Thutmose I at Karnak. To this his architects
had laid out in front a superb forecourt (Fig. 128), with the
finest colonnades now surviving in Egypt. Gaining confi-
dence, they determined to erect in front of all this a new
and more ambitious hall than had ever been attempted before,
to be preceded in all probability by a still larger court. The
great hall was laid out with a row of gigantic columns on
either side the central axis, quite surpassing in height any
344
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
pier ever before employed by the Egyptian (Fig. 130). Nor
were they less beautiful for their great size, being in every
respect masterpieces of exquisite proportion, with capitals
of the graceful, spreading papyrus-flower type (Fig. 130).
These columns were higher than those ranged on both sides
of the middle, thus producing a higher roof over a central
aisle or nave and a lower roof over the side aisles, the differ-
ence in level being filled with grated stone windows in a
clear-story. Thus were produced the fundamental elements
in basilica and cathedral architecture, which we owe to the
Theban architects of Amenhotep III. Unfortunately the
vast hall was unfinished at the death of the king, and his
son was too ardent an enemy of Amon to carry out the
work of his father. His later successors walled up the mag-
nificent nave with drums from the columns of the side aisles
which were never set up, and the whole stands to-day a
mournful wreck of an unfinished work of art, the first
example of a type for which the world cannot be too grateful.
Amenhotep now proceeded to give the great buildings of
the city a unity which they had not before possessed. He
raised a massive pylon before the temple of Karnak, adorned
with unsurpassed richness; stelas of lapis-lazuli were set up
on either side and besides great quantities of gold and silver,
nearly twelve hundred pounds of malachite were employed
in the inlay work. From the river an avenue led up to it
between two tall obelisks, and before it his architect, Amen-
hotep, set up for him his portrait colossus, the largest thus
far erected, having been hewn from a single block of tough
gritstone sixty seven feet long, brought up the river from the
quarry near modern Cairo by an army of men. The king
also built a temple to Mut, the goddess of Thebes, where his
ancestors had begun it, on the south of Karnak, and exca-
vated a lake beside it. He then laid out a beautiful garden
in the interval of over a mile and a half, which separates
the Karnak from the Luxor temple and connected the great
temples by avenues of rams (Figs. 4; 129) carved in stone,
1 II, 003.
II, 903, 1. 57.
* II, 917.
THE EMPIRE
345
each bearing a statue of the Pharaoh between the forepaws.
The general effect must have been imposing in the extreme;
the brilliant hues of the polychrome architecture, with col-
umns and gates overwrought in gold and floors overlaid with
silver, the whole dominated by towering obelisks clothed in
glittering metal, rising high above the rich green of the
nodding palms and tropical foliage which framed the mass,
all this must have produced an impression both of gorgeous
detail and overwhelming grandeur, of which the sombre
ruins of the same buildings, impressive as they are, offer
little hint at the present day. As at Athens in the days of
her glory, the state was fortunate in the possession of men
of sensitive and creative mind, upon whose quick imagina-
tion her greatness had profoundly wrought, until they were
able to embody her external manifestations in forms of
beauty, dignity and splendour. Thebes was now rapidly
becoming a worthy seat of empire, the first monumental city
of antiquity. Nor did the western plain on the other side
of the river, behind wbich the conquerors slept, suffer by
comparison with the new glories of Karnak and Luxor.
Along the foot of the rugged cliffs, from the modest chapel
of Amenhotep I on the north, there stretched southward in
an imposing line the mortuary temples of the emperors. At
the south end of this line, but a little nearer the river, Amen-
hotep III now erected his own mortuary sanctuary, the
largest temple of his reign. Two gigantic colossi of the
king, nearly seventy feet high, each cut from one block and
weighing over seven hundred tons, besides a pair of obelisks,
stood before the pylon, which was approached from the river
by an avenue of jackals sculptured in stone. Numerous
other great statues of the Pharaoh were ranged about the
colonnades of the court. A huge stela' of sandstone thirty
feet high, inwrought with gold and encrusted with costly
stones marked the ceremonial “Station of the King," where
Amenhotep stood in performing the official duties of the
ritual; another over ten feet high bore a record of all his
I II, 004 ff.
+II, 878 f.
346
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
works for Amon, while the walls and floors of the temple,
overlaid with gold and silver, displayed the most prodigal
magnificence. The fine taste and the technical skill required
for such supplementary works of the craftsman were now
developed to a point of classical excellence, beyond which
Egyptian art never passed. In mere mass alone some of
these works of industrial art were surprising, for the bronze
hinges and other mountings of the vast cedar pylon-doors
weighed together some tons, and required castings of unprec-
edented size; while the overlaying of such doors with sheets
of bronze exquisitely damascened in precious metal with the
figure of the god demanded a combination of aesthetic capac-
ity with mastery of ponderous mechanics, which is not too
common even at the present day.
Sculpture also flourished under such circumstances as
never before. While there now developed an attention to
details which required infinite patience and nicety, such
arduous application did not hamper the fine feeling of which
these Eighteenth Dynasty sculptors were capable; nor was
the old method of a summary rendering of main lines for-
saken. There appear in the works of this age (Figs. 136-7,
151) a refinement, a delicacy and a flexibility which were
heretofore lacking, even in the best works, though perhaps the
striking individuality of the Old Kingdom portraits was not
so noticeable. These qualities were carried into work of
such ample proportions that the sculptor's command of them
under such circumstances is surprising, although not all of
the colossal portrait statues are successful in these particu-
lars. Especially in relief were the artists of this age mas-
ters. In the accompanying relief (Fig. 132), now in the
Berlin Museum, study the abandoned grief of the two sons
of the High Priest of Memphis as they follow their father's
body to the tomb, and note how effectively the artist has con-
trasted with them the severe gravity and conventional
decorum of the great ministers of state behind them, who
themselves are again in striking contrast with a Beau Brum-
mel of that day, who is affectatiously arranging the per-

Fig. 129.-AVENUE OF RAM-SPHINXES BEFORE THE GREAT KARNAK TEMPLE.
Leading from the temple entrance (behind the observer) to the Nile (further end). Photograph loaned by Mr. John Ward.
THE EMPIRE
347
fumed curls of hiş elaborate wig. The man of whose work we
have here a mere fragment was a master of ripe and matured
culture, an observer of life, whose work exhibits alike the
pathos and the wistful questioning of human sorrow, recog-
nizing both the necessity and the cruel indifference of official
conventionality, and seeing amid all the play of the vain
and ostentatious fashions of the hour. Here across thirty five
centuries there speaks to us a maturity in the contemplation
of life which finds a sympathetic response in every cultivated
observer. This fragmentary sketch not merely surpasses
anything to be found among any other early oriental people,
but belongs to a class of work totally lacking elsewhere in
this age. It is one of the earliest examples of sculpture
exhibiting that interpretation of life and appreciation of
individual traits (often supposed to have arisen first among
the sculptors of Greece), in which art finds its highest
expression.
Now, too, the Pharaoh's deeds of prowess inspired the
sculptors of the time to more elaborate compositions than
had ever before been approached. The battle scenes on the
noble chariot of Thutmose IV (Fig. 135) exhibit a complexity
in drawing unprecedented, and this tendency continues in
the Nineteenth Dynasty. While brute life does not afford
opportunity for such work as that just discussed, the per-
fection attained in the sculpture of animal forms by the
artists of this time marks again the highest level of achieve-
ment attained by Egyptian art, and Ruskin has even insisted
with his customary conviction that the two lions (Fig. 133)
of Amenhotep's reign, now in the British Museum, are the
finest embodiment of animal majesty which has survived to
us from any ancient people. While this may be an over
enthusiastic estimate of their value, it must not be forgotten
that these noble works were designed as the adornment of a
distant provincial sanctuary at Soleb in upper Nubia. If
such work as this beautified the courts of a remote Nubian
temple, what may we not imagine were the sculptures in the
III, 803, 896–7.
348
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
mortuary temple of the Pharaoh himself at Thebes ? But
this sumptuous building, probably the greatest work of art
ever wrought in Egypt, has vanished utterly. Only the two
weather-beaten colossi which guarded the entrance still look
out across the plain (Fig. 131), one of them still bearin
the scribblings in Greek of curious tourists in the times of th::
Roman Empire who came to hear the marvellous voice whic!:
issued from it every morning. A hundred paces behind lies
prostrate and shattered in two the vast stela, once encrusted
with gold and costly stones, marking the “Station of the
King," and upon it one may still read the words of Amen-
hotep regarding the temple: “My majesty has done these
things for millions of years, and I know that they will abide
in the earth." We shall later have occasion to observe
how this regal temple fell a prey to the impiety of Amen-
hotep's degenerate descendants within two hundred years
of his death. Of the painting of the time, the best examples
were in the palaces, and these being of wood and sun-dried
brick, have perished, but a fine perception, which enabled
the artist in his representation of animals and birds to depict
instantaneous postures is already observable, reaching its
highest expression in the next reign. More elaborate draw-
ings than any known in earlier times were, as we have seen,
demanded by the Pharaoh in the representation of his battles,
and the artist's powers of composition were taxed to the
utmost. The battle scenes on the temples of this period have
perished, but that they existed is certain, in view of such a
composition as that on the chariot of Thutmose IV.
Adorned with such works as these, the western plain of
Thebes was a majestic prospect as the observer advanced
from the river, ascending Amenhotep's avenue of sculptured
jackals. On the left, behind the temple and nearer the cliffs,
appeared a palace of the king of woodern architecture in
bright colours; very light and airy, the facade adorned with
flagstaves bearing tufts of parti-coloured pennants, and
having over the front entrance a gorgeous cushioned balcony
III, 907.
THE EMPIRE
351
hunting he distributed to the nobles of the court a similar
memorial of his prowess, which, after the usual royal titulary
of himself and his queen, bore the words: “Statement of
lions which his majesty brought down with his own arrows
from the year one to the year ten: fierce lions, 102.” Some
thirty or forty of these scarabs of the lion-hunt still survive.
It will be seen that in these things a new and modern ten-
dency was coming to its own. The divine Pharaoh is con-
stantly being exhibited in human relations, the affairs of
the royal house are made public property, the name of the
queen, not even a woman of royal birth, is constantly appear-
ing at the head of official documents side by side with that
of the Pharaoh. In constant intercourse with the nations
of Asia he is gradually forced from his old superhuman
state, suited only to the Nile, into less provincial and more
modern relations with his neighbours of Babylon and Mi-
tanni, who in their letters call him “brother." This lion-
hunting, bull-baiting Pharaoh is far indeed from the godlike
and unapproachable immobility of his divine ancestors. It
was as if the emperor of China or the Dalailama of Thibet
were all at once to make his personal doings known on a series
of medals! To be sure, Amenhotep compromised with the
traditions; he built a temple in Memphis, where he was wor-
shipped and enlarged the Nubian temple at Soleb also for his
own worships in conjunction with that of Amon. His queen
likewise was goddess of the Nubian temple of Sedeinga.
Amenhotep was thus still a god in Nubia, but in fact he had
long since broken with this court and priestly fiction. Whether
consciously or not he had assumed a modern standpoint,
which must inevitably lead to sharp conflict with the almost
irresistible inertia of tradition in an oriental country.
Meantime all went well; the lines of the coming internal
struggle were not yet clearly drawn, and of the first signs
of trouble from without he was unconscious. A veritable
“Cæsar divus" he presided over the magnificence of Thebes.
In the thirtieth year of his reign he celebrated the jubilee
III, 885.
: II, p. 354, note a.
SII, 893 ff.
352
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of his appointment as crown prince, which had coincided
with his accession. It was on this occasion probably that the
obelisks before the king's mortuary temple were erected.
To render the feast still more auspicious the chief treasurer,
in presenting to the king the enormous harvest returns from
Nubia to Naharin, was able to report a large increase, which
so pleased the king that the local officials of the treasury were
all received in audience and presented with rich rewards."
The second jubilee, probably of the year thirty four, passed
without incident so far as we know; and in the year thirty
six, when the third jubilee was celebrated, the old monarch
was still able to grant the court an audience and receive
their congratulations.”
But ominous signs of trouble had meanwhile appeared on
the northern horizon. Mitanni had been invaded by the
Hittites (Kheta), but Dushratta, the Mitannian king, had
been able to repel them and sent to Amenhotep a chariot and
pair, besides two slaves, as a present from the booty which
the Hittites had left in his hands.' But the provinces of
Egypt had not been spared. Akizzi, the Pharaoh's vassal
king of Katna, wrote him that the Hittites had invaded his
territory in the Orontes valley, bad carried off the image of
Amon-Re, bearing the name of Amenhotep, and had burned
the city as they went." Nukhashshi, which lay still further
north, suffered a similar invasion, and its king, Hadadnirari,
wrote a despairing letter to Amenhotep with assurances of
loyalty and an appeal for support against the invaders. All
this had not been done without the connivance of treacherous
vassals of the Pharaoh, who were themselves attempting the
conquest of territory on their own account. The afterward
notorious Aziru and his father, Abdashirta, were leaders in
the movement, entering Katna and Nukhashshi from the
south and plundering as they went. Others who had made
common cause with them threatened Ubi, the region of
Damascus. Akizzi of Katna and Rib-Addi of Byblos quickly
1 II, 870-872.
2 II, 873.
* Ibid., 138, Reverse, 11. 5, 18-31.
3 Amarna Letters, 16, 30-37.
6 Ibid., 37.
THE EMPIRE
353
reported the defection of the Pharaoh's vassals; Akizzi wrote
appealing for speedy aid: “O my lord, just as Damascus,
in the land of Ubi, stretches out her hand to thy feet, so also
Katna stretches out her hand to thy feet.” The situation
was far more critical than it appeared to the Pharaoh, for
he had no means of recognizing the seriousness of the Hittite
advance, and Akizzi assured him that the kings of Naharin
were loyal, saying: “O my lord, even as I love my lord the
king, so also do the king of Nukhashshi, the king of Niy, the
king of Senzar and the king of Kinanat. For these kings
are all servants of my lord the king." Amenhotep, there-
fore, instead of marching with his entire army immediately
into north Syria, as Thutmose III would have done, sent
troops only. These of course had no trouble in momentarily
quelling the turbulent dynasts and putting a brief stop to
their aggressions against the loyal vassals;' but they were
quite unable to cope with the southern advance of the Hit-
tites, who secured a footing in northern Naharin of the great-
est value in their further plans for the conquest of Syria.
Furthermore the king's long absence from Syria was telling
upon Egyptian prestige there, and another threatening dan-
ger to his Asiatic possessions is stated to have begun from
the day when the king had last left Sidon. An invasion of
the Khabiri, desert Semites, such as had periodically inun-
dated Syria and Palestine from time immemorial, was now
taking place. It was of such proportions that it may fairly
be called an immigration. Before Amenhotep III's death
it had become threatening, and thus Ribaddi of Byblos later
wrote to Amenhotep III's son: “Since thy father returned
from Sidon, since that time the lands have fallen into the
hands of the Khabiri."'2
Under such ominous conditions as these the old Pharaoh,
whom we may well call “ Amenhotep the Magnificent," drew
near his end. His brother of Mitanni, with whom he was
still on terms of intimacy, probably knowing of his age and
weakness, sent the image of Ishtar of Nineveh for the second
1 Ibid., 83, 28-33, 94, 13-18.
• Ibid., 00, 71-73.
中
​28
354
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
time to Egypt, doubtless in the hope that the far-famed god-
dess might be able to exorcise the evil spirits which were
causing Amenhotep's infirmity and restore the old king to
health.” But all such means were of no avail, and about
1375 B. C., after nearly thirty six years upon the throne,
“Amenhotep the Magnificent” passed away and was buried
with the other emperors, his fathers, in the Valley of the
Kings' Tombs.
1 Ibid., 20.
1

Fig. 131.-COLOSSAL GRITSTONE STATUES OF AMENHOTEP III (MEMNON COLOSSI).
They stand on the western plain of Thebes and were once flanked by the great mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, which was destroyed by
Merneptah. Behind them rise the western cliffs honey-combed with tombs.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
No nation ever stood in direr need of a strong and prac-
tical ruler than did Egypt at the death of Amenhotep III.
Yet she chanced to be ruled at this fatal crisis by a young
dreamer, who, in spite of unprecedented greatness in the
world of ideas, was not fitted to cope with a situation demand-
ing an aggressive man of affairs and a skilled military
leader, --in fine such a man as Thutmose III. Amenhotep
IV, the young and inexperienced son of Amenhotep III and
the queen Tiy, was indeed strong and fearless in certain
directions, but he failed utterly to understand the practical
needs of his empire. He had inherited a difficult situation.
The conflict of new forces with tradition, was, as we have
seen, already felt by his father. The task before him was
such manipulation of these conflicting forces as might even-
tually give reasonable play to the new and modern tendency,
but at the same time to conserve enough of the old to pre-
vent a catastrophe. It was a problem of practical states-
manship, but Amenhotep IV saw it chiefly in its ideal aspects.
His mother, Tiy, and his queen, Nofretete, perhaps a woman
of Asiatic birth, and a favourite priest, Eye, the husband
of his childhood nurse, formed his immediate circle. The
first two probably exercised a powerful influence over him,
and were given a prominent share in the government, at least
as far as its public manifestations were concerned, for in a
manner quite surpassing his father's similar tendency, he
constantly appeared in public with both his mother and his
wife. The lofty and impractical aims which he had in view
must have found a ready response in these his two most
influential counsellors. Thus, while Egypt was in sore need
i
355
356
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of a vigourous and skilled administrator, the young king was
in close counsel with a priest and two perhaps gifted women,
who, however able, were not of the fibre to show the new
Pharaoh what the empire really demanded. Instead of gath-
ering the army so sadly needed in Naharin, Amenhotep IV
immersed himself heart and soul in the thought of the time,
and the philosophizing theology of the priests was of more
importance to him than all the provinces of Asia. In such
contemplations he gradually developed ideals and purposes
which make him the most remarkable of all the Pharaohs,
and the first individual in human history.
The profound influence of Egypt's imperial position had
not been limited to the externals of life, to the manners and
customs of the people, to the rich and prolific art, pregnant
with new possibilities of beauty, but had extended likewise
to the thought of the age. Such thought was chiefly theo-
logical and we must divest it of all the ideas which are con-
noted by the modern term "the thought of the age.' Even
before the conquests in Asia the priests had made great
progress in the interpretation of the gods, and they had now
reached a stage in which, like the later Greeks, they were
importing semi-philosophical significance into the myths,
such as these had of course not originally possessed. The
interpretation of a god was naturally suggested by his place
or function in the myth. Thus Ptah, the artificer-god of
Memphis, furnished the priesthood there with a fruitful line
of thought, moving in concrete channels, and thus guiding
the thinker, in an age of intellectual beginnings, thinking in
a language without terminology for such processes, even
when they had once been followed out. Ptah had been from
the remotest ages the god of the architect and craftsman, to
whom he communicated plans and designs for architectural
works and the products of the industrial arts. Contemplat-
ing this god, the Memphite priest, little used as his mind was
to abstractions, found a tangible channel, moving along
which he gradually gained a rational and with certain limi-
tations a philosophical conception of the world. The work-
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
357
shop of the Memphite temple, where, under Ptah's guidance,
were wrought the splendid statues, utensils and offerings for
the temple, expands into a world, and Ptah, its lord, grows
into the master-workman of the universal workshop. As he
furnishes all designs to the architect and craftsman, so now
he does the same for all men in all that they do, he becomes
the supreme mind; he is mind and all things proceed from
him. The world and all that is in it existed as thought in
his mind; and his thoughts, like his plans for buildings and
works of art, needed but to be expressed in spoken words to
take concrete form as material realities. Gods and men alike
proceeded from mind, and all that they do is but the mind of
the god working in them. A priest of Ptah has expressed
this in a short poem, a part of which vaguely and indefinitely
shows how the minds of the time were explaining the world:
i
Ptah, the great, is the mind and tongue of the gods.
Ptah, from whom proceeded the power
Of the mind,
And of the tongue.
That which comes forth from every mind,
And from every mouth:
Of all gods, of all people, of all cattle, of all reptiles,
That live, thinking and commanding
Everything that he (Ptah) wills.
It (the mind) is the one that bringeth forth every successful issue.
It is the tongue which repeats the thought of the mind :
It (the mind) was the fashioner of all gods.
At a time when every divine word
Came into existence by the thought of the mind,
And the command of the tongue.
1
Wherever we have used the word “mind" in this passage
the Egyptian has “heart,” which word served him for
“mind" in exactly the same way as the Hebrews and many
other peoples frequently employ it; much in the same man-
1 See the author's account of this remarkable document, Zeitschrift fiir
Aegyptische Sprache, XXXIX, 39 ff.
358
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ner indeed as we ourselves often use it, with the difference
that the Egyptian believed the heart and the bowels actually
to be the seat of mind. Although such notions could have
been entertained by very limited circles, they were not con-
fined to the priests alone. Intef, the court herald of Thut-
mose III, states on his tombstone that he owed his success to
the guidance of his “heart,” to which he listened implicitly;
and he adds that the people said: “Lo, it is an oracle of the
god, which is in every body."'i “Body” is here, as com-
monly, the word for abdomen or bowels, the seat of mind.
The Egyptian had thus gained the idea of a single controlling
intelligence, behind and above all sentient beings, including
the gods. The efficient force by which this intelligence put
his designs into execution was his spoken word,” and this
primitive “logos” is undoubtedly the incipient germ of the
later logos-doctrine which found its origin in Egypt. Early
Greek philosophy may also have drawn upon it.
Similar ideas were now being propagated regarding all
the greater gods of Egypt, but as long as the kingdom was
confined to the Nile valley the activity of such a god was
limited, in their thinking, to the confines of the Pharaoh's
domain, and the world of which they thought meant no more.
From of old the Pharaoh was the heir of the gods and ruled
the two kingdoms of the upper and lower river which they
had once ruled. Thus they had not in the inyths extended
their dominion beyond the river valley, and that valley origi-
nally extended only from the sea to the first cataract. But
under the Empire all this is changed, the god goes where the
Pharaoh's sword carries him; the advance of the Pharaoh's
boundary-tablets in Nubia and Syria is the extension of the
god's domain. The king is now called “The one who brings
the world to him [the god], who placed him [the Pharaoh]
on his throne."'2
For king and priest alike the world is only
a great domain of the god. All the Pharaoh's wars are
recorded upon the temple walls, and even in their mechanical
arrangement his wars converge upon the temple door.' The
ill, 770.
III, 9:39, 1. 3; 1000.
SIII, 80.

7
TOFFF
FA
ta
Fig. 132.-PART OF A FUNERAL PROCESSION OF A HIGH PRIEST OF MEMPHIS.
Eighteenth dynasty reliefs from his Memphite tomb. Below is a fragment of the group immediately behind the coffin (extreme right); above, the servants build funeral
booths. See pp. 346-47. (Berlin Museum.)
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
353
theological theory of the state is simply that the king receives
the world that he may deliver it to the god, and he prays for
extended conquests that the dominion of the god may be
correspondingly extended. Thus theological thinking is
brought into close and sensitive relationship with political
conditions; and theological theory must inevitably extend
the active government of the god to the limits of the domain
whence the king receives tribute. It can be no accident that
the notion of a practically universal god arose in Egypt at the
moment when he was receiving universal tribute from the
world of that day. Again the analogy of the Pharaoh's
power unquestionably operated powerfully with the Egyp-
tian theologian at this time; for in the myth-making days the
gods were conceived as Pharaohs ruling the Nile valley,
because the myth-makers lived under Pharaohs who so ruled.
Living now under Pharaohs who ruled a world-empire, the
priest of the imperial age had before him in tangible form
a world-dominion and a world-concept, the prerequisite of
the notion of the world-god. Conquered and organized and
governed, it has now been before him for two hundred years,
and out of the Pharaoh-ruled world he gradually began to
see the world-god.
We have thus far given this god no name. Had you asked
the Memphite priests they would have said his name was
Ptah, the old god of Memphis; the priests of Amon at Thebes
would have claimed the honour for Amon, the state god, as
a matter of course, while the High Priest of Re at Heliopolis
would have pointed out the fact that the Pharaoh was the
son of Re and the heir to his kingdom, and hence Re must
be the supreme god of all the empire. Obscure gods in the
local sanctuaries would have found similar champions in
their priesthoods because they were now identified with Re
and claimed his prerogatives. But historically Re's claim
was undoubtedly the best. Amon had never succeeded in
displacing him. The introduction of official letters still, as
of old, commends the addressé to the favour of Re-Harakhte.
while in the popular tales of the time it is Re-Harakhte who
360
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
rules the world. But none of the old divinities of Egypt
had been proclaimed the god of the empire, although in fact
the priesthood of Heliopolis had gained the coveted honour
for their revered sun-god, Re. Already under Amenhotep
III an old name for the material sun, “Aton," had come into
prominent use, where the name of the sun-god miglit have
been expected. Thus he called the royal barge on which
he sailed with Tiy on her beautiful lake, “Aton Gleams."
A company of his body-guard bore the new god's name, and
there was probably a chapel dedicated to him at Heliopolis.
The sun-god, too, was now and again designated as “the sole
god” by Amenhotep III's contemporaries.
The already existent conflict with traditional tendencies
into which the Pharaoh had been forced, contained in itself
difficulties enough to tax the resources of any statesman
without the introduction of a departure involving the most
dangerous conflicts with the powerful priesthoods and touch-
ing religious tradition, the strongest conservative force of the
time. It was just this rash step which the young king now
had no hesitation in taking. Under the name of Aton, then,
Amenhotep IV introduced the worship of the supreme god,
but he made no attempt to conceal the identity of his new
deity with the old sun-god, Re. Instructing his vizier in
the new faith, he said to him, “The words of Re are before
thee . . . my august father who taught me their essence.
It was known in my heart, revealed to my face, I under-
stood ... "92. He thus attributes the new faith to Re as
its source, and claims to have been himself the channel of its
revelation. He immediately assumed the office of High Priest
of his new god with the same title, “Great Seer," as that of
the High Priest of Re at Heliopolis. But, however evident
the Heliopolitan origin of the new state religion might be,
it was not merely sun-worship; the word Aton was employed
in place of the old word for "god" (nuter),* and the god is
clearly distinguished from the material sun. To the old sun-
god's name is appended the explanatory phrase "under his
1 II, 869. ? II, 945. :ll, 934, I. 2. * II, p. 407, note e.
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
361
name: 'Heat which is in the Sun [Aton],'” and he is like-
wise called “lord of the sun [Aton]." The king, therefore,
was deifying the vital heat which he found accompanying all
life. It plays in the new faith a similar important part,
which we find it assuming in the early cosmogonic philoso-
phies of the Greeks. Thence, as we might expect, the god
is stated to be everywhere active by means of his “rays,'
and his symbol is a disk in the heavens, darting earthward
numerous diverging rays which terminate in hands, each
grasping the symbol of life. In his age of the world it is
perfectly certain that the king could not have had the vaguest
notion of the physico-chemical aspects of his assumption
any more than had the early Greeks in dealing with a similar
thought; yet the fundamental idea is surprisingly true, and,
as we shall see, marvellously fruitful. The outward symbol
of his god thus broke sharply with tradition, but it was
capable of practical introduction in the many different
nations making up the empire and could be understood at a
glance by any intelligent foreigner, which was far from
the case with any of the traditional symbols of Egyptian
religion (Figs. 139–40).
The new god could not dispense with a temple like those
of the older deities whom he was ultimately to supersede.
Early in his reign Amenhotep IV sent an expedition to the
sandstone quarries of Silsileh to secure the necessary stone
and the chief nobles of his court were in charge of the works
at the quarry. In the garden of Amon, which his father
had laid out between the temples of Karnak and Luxor,
Amenhotep located his new temple, which was a large and
stately building, adorned with polychrome reliefs. Thebes
was now called “City of the Brightness of Aton," and the
temple-quarter “Brightness of Aton the Great”; while the
sanctuary itself bore the name “Gem-Aton,” a term of uncer-
tain meaning. Although the other gods were still tolerated
as of old,' it was nevertheless inevitable that the priesthood
of Amon should view with growing jealousy the brilliant rise
III, 936.
. II, p. 388, note b.
3 II, 937.
362
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of a strange god in their midst, an artificial creation of
which they knew nothing, save that much of the wealth
formerly employed in the enrichment of Amon's sanctuary
was now lavished on the intruder. One of Amenhotep III's
High Priests of Amon had also been chief treasurer of the
kingdom, and another, Ptahmose, was the grand vizier of
the realm; while the same thing had occurred in the reign
of Hatshepsut, when Hapuseneb had been both vizier and
High Priest of Amon. Besides these powers, the High
Priest of Amon was also the supreme head of the organiza-
tion including all the priests of the nation. Indeed, the fact
that such extensive political power was now wielded by the
High Priests of Amon must have intensified the young king's
desire to be freed from the sacerdotal thrall which he had
inherited. His father had evidently made some attempt to
shake off the priestly hand that lay so heavily on the sceptre,
for he had succeeded Ptahinose by a vizier who was not High
Priest of Amon. This new vizier, Ramose, was won by the
young king's gifts, and a servile court followed him, even
superintending the quarry work for the new temple, as we
have seen. The priesthood of Amon, however, was now al
rich and powerful body. They had installed Thutmose III
as king, and could they have supplanted with one of their
own tools the young dreamer who now held the throne they
would of course have done so at the first opportunity. But
Amenhotep IV was the son of a line of rulers too strong and
too illustrious to be thus set aside even by the most powerful
priesthood in the land; moreover, he possessed unlimited
personal force of character, and he was of course supported
in his opposition of Amon by the older priesthoods of the
north at Memphis and Heliopolis, long jealous of this inter-
loper, the obscure Theban god, who had never been heard
of in the north before the rise of the Middle Kingdom. A
conflict to the bitter end, with the most disastrous results
to the Amonite priesthood ensued. It rendered Thebes
intolerable to the young king, and soon after he had finished
1 II, 944-947.

FIG. 133.-LION FROM AMENHOTEP III'S TEMPLE AT
SOLEB.
Later removed by the Nubians to Napata. (British Museum.)
FIG. 134.-A STOOL OF THE EMPIRE.
Ebony inlaid with ivory. (British Museum.)
Fig. 135.-FRONT OF THE STATE CHARIOT OF THUTMOSE IV.
Stucco surface carved with battle scenes in relief. From Mr. Theo. M. Davis's excavations at Thebes. (Cairc
Museum)


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
363
his new temple he resolved upon radical measures. He would
break with the priesthoods and make Aton the sole god, not
merely in his own thought, but in very fact; and Amon
should fare no better than the rest of the time-honoured gods
of his fathers. It was no “Götterdämmerung" which the
king contemplated, but an immediate annihilation of the
gods. As far as their external and material manifestations
and equipment were concerned, this could be and was accom-
plished without delay. The priesthoods, including that of
Amon, were dispossessed, the official temple-worship of the
various gods throughout the land ceased, and their names
were erased wherever they could be found upon the monu-
ments. The persecution of Amon was especially severe.
The cemetery of Thebes was visited and in the tombs of
the ancestors the hated name of Amon was hammered out
wherever it appeared upon the stone. The rows on rows
of statues of the great nobles of the old and glorious days
of the Empire, ranged along the walls of the Karnak temple,
were not spared, but the god's name was invariably erased.
Even the royal statues of his ancestors, including the king's
father, were not respected; and, what was worse, as the name
of that father, Amenhotep, contained the name of Amon, the
young king was placed in the unpleasant predicament of
being obliged to cut out his own father's name in order to
prevent the name of Amon from appearing “writ large" on
all the temples of Thebes. The splendid stela erected by
his father in his mortuary temple, recording all his great
buildings for Amon, was mercilessly hacked and rendered
illegible. Even the word “gods' was not permitted to
appear on any of the old monuments and the walls of the
temples at Thebes were painfully searched that wherever
the compromising word appeared it might be blotted out.2
And then there was the embarrassment of the king's own
name, likewise Amenhotep, “Amon rests,” which could not
be spoken or placed on a monument. It was of necessity
III, 878 ff.
. See Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 40, 109-110 and II, p. 386, note b.
364
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
also banished and the king assumed in its place the name
Ikhnaton," which means “Spirit of Aton."
Thebes was now compromised by too many old associa-
tions to be a congenial place of residence for so radical a
revolutionist. As he looked across the city he saw stretching
along the western plain that imposing line of mortuary
temples of his fathers which he had violated. They now
stood silent and empty. The towering pylons and obelisks
of Karnak and Luxor were not a welcome reminder of
all that his fathers had contributed to the glory of Amon,
and the unfinished hall of his father at Luxor, with the
superb columns of the nave, still waiting for the roof, could
hardly lave stirred pleasant memories in the heart of the
young reformer. A doubtless long contemplated plan was
therefore undertaken. Aton, the god of the empire, should
possess his own city in each of the three great divisions of
the empire: Egypt, Asia and Nubia, and the god's Egyptian
city should be made the royal residence. It must have been
an enterprise requiring some time, but the three cities were
duly founded. The Aton-city of Nubia was situated oppo-
site modern Dulgo, at the foot of the Third Cataract, and
was thus in the heart of the Egyptian province.' It
was named “Gem-Aton” after the Aton-temple in Thebes.
In Syria the Aton-city is unknown, but Ikhnaton will not.
have done less for Aton there than his fathers had done for
Amon. In the sixth year, shortly after he had changed his
name, the king was living in his own Aton-city in Egypt.
He chose as its site a fine bay in the cliffs about one hundred
and sixty miles above the Delta and nearly three hundred
miles below Thebes. The cliffs, leaving the river in a semi-
circle, retreat at this point some three miles from the stream
and return to it again about five miles lower down. In the
wide plain thus bounded on three sides by the cliffs and on
the west by the river Ikhnaton founded his new residence
and the holy city of Aton. He called it Akhetaton, “Hori-
· II, p. 388, note b; see also my “ Monuments of Sudanese Nubia," Chicago,
1908, pp. 51-82.
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
365
zon of Aton," and it is known in modern times as Tell
el-Amarna. In addition to the town, the territory around
it was demarked as a domain belonging to the god, and
included the plain on both sides of the river. In the cliffs
on either side, fourteen large stelas (Fig. 140), one of them
no less than twenty six feet in height, were cut into the rock,
bearing inscriptions determining the limits of the entire
sacred district around the city. As thus laid out the dis-
trict was about eight miles wide from north to south, and
from twelve to over seventeen miles long from cliff to cliff.
The king's oath regarding it is recorded on the extreme
northern and southern stelas thus: "His majesty raised his
hand to heaven, to him who made him, even to Aton, saying,
*This is my testimony forever, and this is my witness for-
ever, this landmark (stela). ... I have made Akhetaton for
my father as a dwelling. I have demarked Akhetaton on
its south, on its north, on its west, on its east. I shall not pass
beyond the southern landmark of Akhetaton toward the south,
nor shall I pass beyond the northern landmark of Akhetaton
toward the north. ... He has made his circuit for his own,
he has made his altar in its midst, whereon I make offering to
him.' 192
Whether this statement that he would never pass
beyond the boundary of the district, a vow which is found
referring to all four cardinal points, is merely a legal phrase
by which a property owner recognized that he had no rights
beyond his just limit, the boundary of his property; or
whether the king actually carried out this vow literally and
remained the rest of his life in Akhetaton we cannot say.
But the phrase is not found in any other boundary land-
marks known to us. The region thus demarked was then
legally conveyed to Aton by the king's own decree, saying:
“Now as for the area within the landmarks from the
eastern mountain [cliffs] to the western mountain of Akhe-
taton opposite, it belongs to my father, Aton, who is given
life forever and ever: whether mountains or cliffs, or swamps
or uplands, or fields, or waters, or towns, or shores, or
1 II, 949-972.
* II, 954.
366
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
people, or cattle, or trees, or anything which Aton, my
father has made. I have made it for Aton, my father,
forever and ever."1 And on another stela he says that they
are to belong to the temple of Aton in Akhetaton forever
and ever as offerings.2 Besides this sacred domain the god
was endowed with revenues from other lands in Egypt and
Nubia, and probably also in Syria. The city thus estab-
lished was to be the real capital of the empire, for the king
himself said: “The whole land shall come hither, for the
beautiful seat of Akhetaton shall be another seat [capital],
and I will give them audience whether they be north or south
or west or east."'4 The royal architect, Bek, was sent to
the first cataract to procure stone for the new temple, or
we should rather say temples, for no less than three were
now built in the new city,“ one for the queen another, Tiy,
and another for the princess Beketaton (“Maid-servant of
Aton''), beside the state temple of the king himself. "
Around the temples rose the palace of the king and the
chateaus of his nobles, one of whom describes the city thus:
“Akhetaton, great in loveliness, mistress of pleasant cere-
monies, rich in possessions, the offerings of Re in her midst.
At the sight of her beauty there is rejoicing. She is lovely
and beautiful; when one sees her it is like a glimpse of
heaven. Her number cannot be calculated. When the Aton
rises in her he fills her with his rays and he embraces (with
his rays] his beloved son, son of eternity, who came forth
from Aton and offers the earth to him who placed him on his
throne, causing the earth to belong to him who made him.”8
On the day when the temple was ready to receive the first
dues from its revenues the king proceeded thither in his
chariot accompanied by his four daughters and a gorgeous
retinue. They were received at the temple with shouts of
“Welcome”; a rich oblation filled the high altar in the
temple court, while the store-chambers around it were groan-
ing with the wealth of the newly paid revenues.' The king
1 II, 968.
III, 972.
SII, 957,
* II, 955.
5 II, 973 ff.
. II, 1010-18.
8 II, 1000.
9 II, 982.
✓ Ibid.


Fig. 136.-ROYAL PORTRAIT
OF THE EMPIRE. (Cairo
Museum.)
Fig. 137.-PORTRAIT OF AMENHOTEP, SON
OF HAPI. See p. 341. (Cairo Museum.)

O
Fig. 138.-DUCKS SWIMMING AMONG LOTUS FLOWERS.
Fragment of painting from the floor of Amenhotep III's palace in western Thebes. See pp. 348-49. (From
Tytus, Preliminary Report.)
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKIINATON
367
himself participated in such ceremonies,' while the queen
"sends the Aton to rest with a sweet voice, her two beau-
tiful hands bearing the two sistrums."2 But Ikhnaton no
longer attempted to act as High Priest himself; one of his
favourites, Merire (“Beloved of Re''), was appointed by
him to the office, coming one day for this purpose with his
friends to the balcony of the palace, in which the king and
queen appeared in state. The king then formally promoted
Merire to the exalted office, saying: “Behold, I am appoint-
ing thee for myself to be “Great Seer' [High Priest] of the
Aton in the temple of Aton in Akhetaton. ... I give to thee
the office saying, “Thou shalt eat the food of Pharaoh, thy
lord, in the house of Aton.' 113 Merire was so faithful in the
administration of the temple that the king publicly rewarded
him with "the gold," the customary distinction granted to
zealous servitors of the Pharaoh. At the door of one of the
temple buildings the king, queen and two daughters extend
to the fortunate Merire the rewards of fidelity, and the king
says to the attendants: “Hang gold at his neck before and
behind, and gold on his legs; because of his hearing the
teaching of Pharaoh concerning every saying in these beau-
tiful seats which Pharaoh has made in the sanctuary in the
Aton-temple in Akhetaton.” It thus appears that Merire
had given heed to the king's teachings regarding the ritual
of the temple, or, as he says, "every saying in these beautiful
seats.”
It becomes more and more evident that all that was devised
and done in the new city and in the propagation of the Aton
faith is directly due to the king and bears the stamp of his
individuality. A king who did not hesitate to erase his
own father's name on the monuments in order to annihilate
Amon, the great foe of his revolutionary movement, was not
one to stop half way, and the men about him must have been
involuntarily carried on at his imperious will. But Ikhna-
ton understood enough of the old policy of the Pharaohs to
know that he must hold his party by practical rowards, and
084, ll. 17-18. 8 II, 995, II. 21 f. SII, 985. • II, 987.
(((
22
NN
2
868
FIG. 139. IKINATON AND HI8 QUEEN DECORATE THIE PRIEST EYE AND His WIFE.
See p. 369, note l.
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
369
the leading partisans of his movement like Merire enjoyed
liberal bounty at his hands (Fig. 139). Thus one of his
priests of Aton, and at the same time his master of the royal
horse, named Eye, who had by good fortune happened to
marry the nurse of the king, renders this very evident in
such statements as the following: “He doubles to me my
favours in silver and gold,” or again, addressing the king,
“How prosperous is he who hears thy teaching of life! He
is satisfied with seeing thee without ceasing."'2 The general
of the army, Mai, enjoyed similar bounty, boasting of it in
the same way: “He hath doubled to me my favours like
the numbers of the sand. I am the head of the officials, at
the head of the people; my lord has advanced me because
I have carried out his teaching, and I hear his word without
ceasing. My eyes behold thy beauty every day, O my lord,
wise like Aton, satisfied with truth. How prosperous is he
who hears thy teaching of life!"3 Although there must have
been a nucleus of men who really appreciated the ideal
aspects of the king's teaching, it is thus evident that many
were chiefly influenced by “the loaves and the fishes."
Indeed there was one royal favour which must have been
welcome to them all without exception. This was the beau-
tiful cliff-tomb which the king commanded his craftsmen to
hew out of the eastern cliffs for each one of his favourites.
For the old mortuary practices were not all suppressed by
Ikhnaton, and it was still necessary for a man to be buried
in the "eternal house," with its endowment for the sup-
port of the deceased in the hereafter." But that eternal
house was no longer disfigured with hideous demons and
grotesque monsters which should confront the dead in the
future life; and the magic paraphernalia necessary to meet
1 Description of Fig. 139: Leaning upon the cushioned balustrade of the
palace balcony with his queen and his infant daughters by his side, the king
throws down golden collars, vessels, rings and ornaments to his favourites.
The queen likewise throws two collars. The servants and suite of Eye dance
with joy or bow ceremoniously. Above (that is behind) are the waiting
chariots of Eye and his wife, while next to (below) these his scribes make
record of the event, carefully listing all the gifts.
& II, 994, ll. 16-17.
$ II, 1002-3.
• II, 996.
4
24
370
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and vanquish the dark powers of the nether world, which
filled the tombs of the old order at Thebes, were completely
banished. In thus suppressing these base and repulsive
devices, which the perverted imagination of a stupid priest-
hood had imposed upon an implicit people, the king's reform
was most salutary. The tomb now became a monument to
the deceased; the walls of its chapel bore fresh and natural
pictures from the life of the people in Akhetaton, particu-
larly the incidents in the official career of the dead man, and
preferably his intercourse with the king. Thus the city of
Akhetaton is now better known to us from its cennetery than
from its ruins. Throughout these tombs the nobles take
delight in reiterating, both in relief and inscription, the inti-
mate relation between Aton and the king. Over and over
again they show the king and the queen together standing
under the disk of Aton, whose rays, terminating in hands,
descend and embrace the king.' The vulture-goddess, Mut,
who, since the hoary age of the Thinites had appeared on
all the monuments extending her protecting wings over the
Pharaoh's head, had long since been banished. The nobles
constantly pray to the god for the king, saying that he
“came forth from thy rays,'or “thou hast formed him
out of thine own rays”?;; and interspersed through their
prayers are numerous current phrases of the Aton faith,
which have now become conventional, replacing those of the
old orthodox religion, which it must have been very awkward
for them to cease using. Thus they demonstrated how
zealous they had been in accepting and appropriating the
king's new teaching. On state occasions, instead of the old
stock phrases, with innumerable references to the traditional
gods, every noble who would enjoy the king's favour was
evidently obliged to show his familiarity with the Aton faith
and the king's position in it by a liberal use of these allu-
sions. Even the Syrian vassals were wise enough to make
their dispatches pleasant reading by glossing them with
appropriate recognition of the supremacy of the sun-god.“
I II, 1012 and infra, Fig. 139, p. 368. 2 II, 1000, 1. 5; 091, 1. 3.
II, 1010, 1. 3.
* Amarna Letters, 149,6 ff., and often.

12
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2011
Solo
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SE360
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Fig. 140.-GREAT BOUNDARY STELA OF AMARNA.
The relief above shows Ikhnaton on each side, accompanied by his queen
and daughters, worshiping the sun-disk, whose rays, terminating in hands,
embrace them, and offer them the symbol of life.
Fig. 141.-IKHNATON RECEIVING FLOWERS FROM HIS QUEEN.
Brightly-colored relief in limestone. The conventional postures are abandoned, and
the king leans lazily on his staff. (Berlin Museum.)

THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
371
The source of such phrases was really the king himself, as
we have before intimated, and something of the “teaching"
whence they were taken, so often attributed to him, is pre-
served in the tombs 1 to which we have referred.
Either for the temple service or for personal devotions
the king composed two hymns to Aton, both of which the
nobles had engraved on the walls of their tomb chapels. Of
all the monuments left by this unparalleled revolution, these
hymns are by far the most remarkable; and from them we
may gather an intimation of the doctrines which the specu-
lative young Pharaoh had sacrificed so much to disseminate.
They are regularly entitled : “Praise of Aton by king Ikhna-
ton and queen Nefernefruaton''; and the longer and finer
of the two is worthy of being known in modern literature.
The titles of the separate strophes are the addition of the
present author, and in the translation no attempt has been
inade to do more than to furnish an accurate rendering. The
one hundred and fourth Psalm of the Hebrews shows a
notable similarity to our hymn both in the thought and the
sequence, so that it seemed desirable to place the most notice-
ably parallel passages side by side.
THE SPLENDOUR OF ATON.
Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,
O living Aton, Beginning of life!
When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven,
Thou fillest every land with thy beauty;
For thou are beautiful, great, glittering, high over the earth;
Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all thou hast made.
Thou art Re, and thou hast carried them all away captive;
Thou bindest them by thy love.
Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth;
Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.
NIGHT.
When thou settest in the western Thou makest darkness and it is
horizon of heaven,
night,
The world is in darkness like the Wherein all the beasts of the
dead.
forest do creep forth.
III, 977–1018.
372
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
They sleep in their chambers, The young lions roar after their
Their heads are wrapt up,
prey ;
Their nostrils stopped, and none They seek their meat from God.
seeth the other.
(Psalm 104, 20-21.)
Stolen are all their things, that
are under their heads,
While they know it not.
Every lion cometh forth from his
den,
All serpents, they sting.
Darkness reigns (?),
The world is in silence,
He that made them has gone to
rest in his horizon.
DAY AND MAN.
Bright is the earth,
The sun ariseth, they get them
When thou risest in the horizon, away,
When thou shinest as Aton by And lay them down in their
day.
dens.
The darkness is banished, Man goeth forth unto his work,
When thou sendest forth thy And to his labour until the even-
ing
The Two Lands (Egypt) are in
(Psalm 104, 22-23.)
daily festivity,
Awake and standing upon their
feet,
For thou hast raised them up.
Their limbs bathed, they take
their clothing;
Their arms uplifted in adoration
to thy dawning.
Then in all the world, they do
their work.
rays,
DAY AND THE ANIMALS AND PLANTS.
All cattle rest upon their herbage,
All trees and plants flourish,
The birds flutter in their marshes,
Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All the sheep dance upon their feet,
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
373
All winged things fly,
They live when thou hast shone upon them.
DAY AND THE WATERS.
The barques sail up-stream and Yonder is the sea, great and
down-stream alike.
wide,
Every highway is open because Wherein are things creeping in-
thou hast dawned.
numerable
The fish in the river leap up be- Both small and great beasts.
fore thee,
There go the ships;
And thy rays are in the midst There is leviathan, whom thou
of the great sea.
hast formed to sport with him.
(Psalm 104, 25–26.)
CREATION OF MAN.
Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman,
Who makest seed in man,
Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother,
Who soothest him that he may not weep,
A nurse (even) in the womb.
Who giveth breath to animate every one that he maketh.
When he cometh forth from the body,
on the day of his birth,
Thou openest his mouth in speech,
Thou suppliest his necessities.
CREATION OF ANIMALS.
When the chicklet crieth in the egg-shell,
Thou givest him breath therein, to preserve him alive.
When thou hast perfected him
That he may pierce the egg,
lle cometh forth from the egg,
To chirp with all his inight;
He runneth about upon his two feet,
When he hath come forth therefrom.
THE WHOLE CREATION.
O lord, how manifold are thy
How manifold are all thy works !
They are hidden from before us,
works!
374
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
O thou sole god, whose powers no In wisdom hast thou made them
other possesseth."
all;
Thou didst create the earth ac- The earth is full of thy crea-
cording to thy desire.
tures.
While thou wast alone:
(Psalm 104, 24.)
Men, all cattle large and small,
All that are upon the earth,
That go about upon their feet;
All that are on high,
That fly with their wings.
The countries of Syria and
Nubia,
The land of Egypt;
Thou settest every man in his
place,
Thou suppliest their necessities.
Every one has his possessions,
And his days are reckoned.
Their tongues are divers in
speech,
Their forms likewise and their
skins,
For thou divider, hast divided
the peoples.
WATERING THE EARTH.
Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World,
Thou bringest it at thy desire, to preserve the people alive.
O lord of them all, when feebleness is in theni,
O lord of every house, who risist for them,
O sun of day, the fear of every distant land,
Thou makest (alsol their life.
Thou hast set a Nile in heaven,
That it may fall for them,
Making floods upon the mountains, like the great sea;
And watering their fields ainong their towns.
How excellent are thy designs, O lord of eternity!
The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,
I The other hymns frequently say, “O thou sole god, beside whom there is
no other."
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON
375
And for the cattle of every land, that go upon their feet;
But the Nile, it cometh from the nether world for Egypt.
Thus thy rays nourish every garden,
When thou risest they live, and grow by thee.
THE SEASONS.
Thou makest the seasons, in order to create all thy works:
Winter bringing them coolness,
And the heat [of summer likewise).
Thou hast made the distant heaven to rise therein,
In order to behold all that thou didst make,
While thou wast alone,
Rising in thy form as living Aton,
Dawning, shining afar off and returning.
BEAUTY DUE TO LIGHT.
Thou makest the beauty of form, through thyself alone.
Cities, towns and settlements,
On highway or on river,
All eyes see thee before them,
For thou art Aton of the day over the earth.
REVELATION TO THE KING.
Thou art in my heart,
There is no other that knoweth thee,
Save thy son Ikhnaton.
hou hast made him wise in thy designs
And in thy might.
The world is in thy hand,
Even as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen, they live;
When thou settest, they die.
For thou art duration, beyond thy mere limbs,
By thee man liveth,
And their eyes look upon thy beauty,
Until thou settest.
All labour is laid aside,
When thou settest in the west;
376
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
When thou risest, they are made to grow
for the king.
Since thou didst establish the earth,
Thou hast raised them up for thy son,
Who came forth from thy limbs,
The king, living in truth,
The lord of the Two Lands Nefer-khepru-Re, Wan-Re,
The son of Re, living in truth, lord of diadems,
Ikhnaton, whose life is long;
[And for the great royal wife, his beloved,
Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefer nefru aton, Nofretete,
Living and flourishing for ever and ever.
In this hymn the universalism of the empire finds full
expression and the royal singer sweeps his eye from the far-
off cataracts of the Nubian Nile to the remotest lands of
Syria. These are not thoughts which we have been accus-
tomed to attribute to the men of some fourteen hundred
years before Christ. A new spirit has breathed upon the
dry bones of traditionalism in Egypt, and he who reads
these lines for the first time must be moved with involuntary
admiration for the young king who in such an age found
such thoughts in his heart. He grasped the idea of a world-
dominator, as the creator of nature, in which the king saw
revealed the creator's beneficent purpose for all his creat-
ures, even the meanest; for the birds fluttering about in the
lily-grown Nile-marshes to him seemed to be uplifting their
wings in adoration of their creator; and even the fish in the
stream leaped up in praise to God. It is his voice that
summons the blossoms and nourishes the chicklet or com-
mands the mighty deluge of the Nile. He called Aton, “the
father and the mother of all that he had made," and he
saw in some degree the goodness of that All-Father as did
he who bade us consider the lilies. He based the universal
sway of God upon his fatherly care of all men alike, irre-
spective of race or nationality, and to the proud and exclu-
sive Egyptian he pointed to the all-embracing bounty of the
common father of humanity, even placing Syria and Nubia
V


Fig. 142.--LIMESTONE TORSO OF IKH
NATON'S DAUGHTER.
See p. 378.
Fig. 143.-HEAD OF IKHNATON.
Remarkable Limestone Bust recently acquired
by the Louvre.

Fig. 144.-MARSH LIFE.
Fragment of painted pavement from the palace of Ikhnaton at Amarna.
See p. 378. (From Petrie, Amarna.)
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKIINATON
377
before Egypt in his enumeration. It is this aspect of
Ikhnaton's mind which is especially remarkable; he is the
first prophet of history. While to the traditional Pharaoh
the state god was only the triumphant conqueror, who
crushed all peoples and drove them tribute-laden before
the Pharaoh's chariot, Ikhnaton saw in him the beneficent
father of all men. It is the first time in history that a dis-
cerning eye has caught this great universal truth. Again
his whole movement was but a return to nature, resulting
from a spontaneous recognition of the goodness and the
beauty evident in it, mingled also with a consciousness of
the mystery in it all, which adds just the fitting element of
mysticism in such a faith.
How manifold are all thy works!
They are hidden from before us,
O thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth,
While Ikhnaton thus recognized clearly the power, and to
a surprising extent, the beneficence of God, there is not here
a very spiritual conception of the deity nor any attribution
to him of ethical qualities beyond those which Amon had
long been supposed to possess. The king has not percep-
tibly risen from the beneficence to the righteousness in the
character of God, nor to his demand for this in the charac-
ter of men. Nevertheless, there is in his “teaching," as it
is fragmentarily preserved in the hymns and tomb-inscrip-
tions of his nobles, a constant emphasis upon “truth” such
as is not found before nor since. The king always attaches
to his name the phrase “living in truth," and that this
phrase was not meaningless is evident in his daily life. To
him it meant an acceptance of the daily facts of living in
a simple and unconventional manner. For him what was
was right and its propriety was evident by its very exist-
ence. Thus his family life was open and unconcealed be-
fore the people. He took the greatest delight in his children
and appeared with them and the queen, their mother, on
all possible occasions, as if he had been but the humblest
scribe in the Aton-temple. He had himself depicted on the
monuments while enjoying the most familiar and unaffected
4
378
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
intercourse with his family, and whenever he appeared in
the temple to offer sacrifice the queen and the daughters
she had borne him participated in the service. All that was
natural was to him true, and he never failed practically to
exemplify this belief, however radically he was obliged to
disregard tradition.
Such a principle unavoidably affected the art of the time
in which the king took great interest. Bek, his chief sculp-
tor, appended to his title the words, "whom his majesty
himself taught."i Thus the artists of his court were taught
to make the chisel and the brush tell the story of what they
actually saw. The result was a simple and beautiful real-
ism that saw more clearly than ever any art had seen before
(Figs. 119, 147-8). They caught the instantaneous postures
of animal life; the coursing hound, the fleeing game, the
wild bull leaping in the swamp (Fig. 144); for all these
belonged to the “truth,' in which Ikhnaton lived. The
king's person was no exception to the law of the new art.
The monuments of Egypt bore what they had never borne
before, a Pharaoh not frozen in the conventional posture
demanded by the traditions of court propriety (Figs. 141,
143). The modelling of the human figure at this time was
so plastic that at the first glance one is sometimes in doubt
whether he has before him a product of the Greek age (Fig.
142). Even complex compositions of grouped figures in
the round were now first conceived. Fragments recently
discovered show that in the palace court at Akhetaton, a
group in stone depicted the king speeding his chariot at
the heels of the wounded lion. This was indeed a new
chapter in the history of art, even though now lost. It was
in some things an obscure chapter; for the strange treat-
ment of the lower limbs by Ikhnaton's artists is a problem
which still remains unsolved and cannot be wholly ac-
counted for by supposing a mal-formation of the king's
own limbs. It is one of those unhealthy symptoms which
are visible too in the body politic, and to these last we
must now turn if we would learn how fatal to the material
interests of the state this violent break with tradition
has been.
1 II, 975.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FALL OF IKHNATON, AND THE DISSOLUTION
OF THE EMPIRE
WHOLLY absorbed in the exalted religion to which he had
given his life, stemming the tide of tradition that was daily
as strong against him as at first, Ikhnaton was beset with
too many enterprises and responsibilities of a totally differ-
ent nature, to give much attention to the affairs of the
empire abroad. Indeed, as we shall see, he probably did
not realize the necessity of doing so until it was far too
late. On his accession his sovereignty in Asia had immedi-
ately been recognized by the Hittites and the powers of the
Euphrates valley. Dushratta of Mitanni wrote to the queen-
mother, Tiy, requesting her influence with the new king
for a continuance of the old friendship which he had en-
joyed with Ikhnaton's father, and to the young king he
wrote a letter of condolence on his father, Amenhotep III's
death, not forgetting to add the usual requests for plentiful
gold. Burraburyash of Babylon sent similar assurances
of sympathy, but only the pass-port of his messenger, call-
ing on the kings of Canaan to grant him speedy passage, has
survived. A son of Burraburyash later sojourned at
Ikhnaton's court and married a daughter of the latter, 4 and
her Babylonian father-in-law sent her a noble necklace of
over a thousand gems. But such intercourse did not last
long, as we shall see.
Meantime the power of the Hittites in northern Syria
was constantly on the increase, as they were reinforced by
the southern movement of their countrymen behind them.
This remarkable race, who still form one of the greatest
problems in the study of the early orient, were now emerging
1 Amarna Letters, 22. : Ibid., 21. Ibid., 14. • Ibid., 8, 41.
3
379
380
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
from the obscurity which had hitherto enveloped them.
Their remains have been found from the western coast of
Asia Minor eastward to the plains of Syria and the Euphra-
tes, and southward as far as Hamath. They were a non-
Semitic people, or rather peoples, of uncertain racial affini-
ties, but evidently distinct from, and preceding, the Indo-
Germanic influx after 1200 B. C. which brought in the Phryg-
ians (see p. 478). As shown on the Egyptian monuments,
they are beardless, with long hair hanging in two prominent
locks before their ears and dropping to the shoulders; but
their own native monuments often give them a heavy beard
(Fig. 146). On the head they most often wore tall pointed
caps like a sugar-loaf hat, but with little brim. As their cli-
mate demands, they wear heavy woollen clothing, usually in
a long, close-fitting garment, depending from the shoulders
and reaching to the knees or sometimes the ankles; while
the feet are shod in high boots turned up at the toes. They
possessed a crude, but by no means primitive, art which
produced very creditable monuments in stone (Figs. 145–6)
still scattered over the hills of Asia Minor. Their skill in
the practical arts was considerable, and they produced a
red figured pottery above mentioned which was disseminated
in trade from the centre of its manufacture in Cappadocia
to the Ægean on the west, and eastward through Syria and
Palestine to Lachish and Gezer on the south. Already by
2000 B. C. we remember it had perhaps reached the latter
place. They were masters of the art of writing, and the king
had his personal scribe ever with him. Their pictographic
records are still in course of decipherment, and enough
progress has not yet been made to enable the scholar to do
more than recognize a word here and there. For corre-
spondence they employed the Babylonian cuneiform and
must therefore have maintained scribes and interpreters
who were masters of Babylonian speech and writing.
Large quantities of cuneiform tablets in the Hittite tongue
have been found at Boghaz-köi (see below). In war they
1 III, 337.
THE DISSOLUTION OF TIIE EMPIRE
381
1
were formidable opponents. The infantry, among which
foreign mercenaries were plentiful, bore bow and arrows,
sword and spear and often an axe. They fought in close
phalanx formation, very effective at close quarters; but
their chief power consisted of chariotry. The chariot itself
was more heavily built than in Egypt, as it bore three men,
driver, bowman and shield-bearer, while the Egyptian dis-
dispensed with the third man. One of the Hittite dynasts
had consolidated a kingdom beyond the Amanus, which
Thutmose III regularly called “Great Kheta," as prob-
ably distinguished from the less important independent
Hittite princes. His capital was a great fortified city
called “Khatti” (identified in 1907), situated at modern
Boghaz-köi, east of Angora and the Halys (Kisil-irmak)
river in eastern Asia Minor. Active trade and inter-
course between this kingdom and Egypt had been car-
ried on from that time or began not long after.
This
reached such proportions that the king of Cyprus was
apprehensive lest too close relations between Egypt and the
Hittite kingdom (“Great Kheta”) might endanger his own
position. When Ikhnaton ascended the throne Seplel, the
king of the Hittites, wrote him a letter of congratulation,
and to all appearances had only the friendliest intentions
toward Egypt.3 For the first invasions of the most advanced
Hittites, like that which Dushratta of Mitanni repulsed, he
may indeed not have been responsible. Even after
Ikhnaton's removal to Akhetaton, his new capital, a Hittite
embassy appeared there with gifts and greetings. But
Ikhnaton must have regarded the old relations as no longer
desirable, for the Hittite king asks him why he has ceased
the correspondence which his father had maintained. If
he realized the situation, Ikhnaton had good reason indeed
for abandoning the connection; for the Hittite empire now
stood on the northern threshold of Syria, the most for-
midable enemy which had ever confronted Egypt, and the
greatest power in Asia. It is doubtful whether Ikhnaton
4
1 Aniarna Letters, 35.
3 Ibid., 35.
& Ibid., 25, 49 f.
6 Amarna Letters, 35, 14 f.
* II, 981.
382
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
could have withstood the masses of Asia Minor which were
now shifting southward into Syria even if he had made a
serious effort to do so; but no such effort was made. Im-
mediately on his accession the disaffected dynasts who had
been temporarily suppressed by his father resumed their
operations against the faithful vassals of Egypt. One of
the latter, in a later letter to Ikhnaton, exactly depicts the
situation, saying: “Verily, thy father did not march forth,
nor inspect the lands of the vassal-princes. . . . And when
thou ascendedst the throne of thy father's house, Abd-
ashirta's sons took the king's land for themselves. Creat-
ures of the king of Mitanni are they, and of the king of
Babylon, and of the king of the Hittites.” 1 With the
coöperation of the unfaithful Egyptian vassals Abd-ashirta
and his son Aziru, who were at the head of an Amorite
kingdom on the upper Orontes; together with Itakama, a
Syrian prince, who had seized Kadesh as his kingdom, the
Hittites took possession of Amki, the plain on the north
side of the lower Orontes, between Antioch and the Amanus.2
Three faithful vassal-kings of the vicinity marched to re-
cover the Pharaoh's lost territory for him, but were met by
Itakama at the head of Hittite troops and driven back. All
three wrote immediately to the Pharaoh of the trouble and
complained of Itakama.3 Aziru of Amor had meantime
advanced upon the Phænician and north Syrian coast cities,
which he captured as far as Ugarit at the mouth of the
Orontes,* slaying their kings and appropriating their
wealth. Simyra and Byblos held out, however, and as the
Hittites advanced into Nukhashshi, on the lower Orontes,
Aziru coöperated with them and captured Niy, whose king
he slew.6 Tunip was now in such grave danger that her
elders wrote the Pharaoh a pathetic letter beseeching his
protection. “To the king of Egypt, my lord :— The inhabi-
tants of Tunip thy servant. May it be well with thee, and
at the feet of our lord we fall. My lord, Tunip, thy servant
1 Ibid., 88.
* Ibid., 123.
2 Ibid., 119, 125.
6 Ibid, 86; 119.
3 Ibid., 131-133.
• Ibid., 120.


be
FIG. 146.-HITTITE KING BEARING SPEAR AND
SCEPTER
FIG. 145. - HITTITE SOLDIER
ARMED WITH AN AXE.
Relief from Senjirli, North Syria.
(Berlin Museum.)
Relief from Senjirli, North Syria. (Berlin Museum.)

Fig. 147.-EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL RECEIVING SEMITIC IMMIGRANTS.
See p. 388. Relief from the tomb of Harmhab, p. 408. (Leyden Museum.)
THE DISSOLUTION OF TIIE EMPIRE
383
speaks, saying: 'Who formerly could have plundered Tunip
without being plundered by Manakhbiria [Thutmose III]?
The gods . . of the king of Egypt, my lord, dwell in
Tunip. May our lord ask his old men [if it be not
so]. Now, however, we belong no more to our lord, the
king of Egypt. . . . If his soldiers and chariots come too
late, Aziru will make us like the city of Niy. If, however,
we have to mourn, the king of Egypt will mourn over those
things which Aziru has done, for he will turn his hand against
our lord. And when Aziru enters Simyra, Aziru will do
to us as he pleases, in the territory of our lord, the king, and
on account of these things our lord will have to lament. And
now, Tunip, thy city weeps, and her tears are flowing, and
there is no help for us. For twenty years we have been
sending to our lord, the king, the king of Egypt, but there
has not come to us a word, no not one. The fears of
Tunip were soon realized, for Aziru now concentrated upon
Simyra and quickly brought it to a state of extremity.
During all this, Rib-Addi, a faithful vassal of Byblos,
where there was an Egyptian temple, writes to the Pharoah
in the most urgent appeals, stating what is going on, and
asking for help to drive away Aziru's people from Simyra,
knowing full well that if it falls his own city of Byblos is
likewise doomed. But no help comes and the Syrian dynasts
grow bolder. Zimrida of Sidon falls away and makes terms
with Aziru,and, desiring a share of the spoils for himself,
moves against Tyre, whose king, Abi-milki, immediately
writes to Egypt for aid.' The number of troops asked for
by these vassals is absurdly small, and had it not been for
the Hittite host, which was pressing south behind them, their
operations might have caused Egypt very little anxiety.
Aziru now captured the outer defences of Simyra and Rib-
Addi continued to plead for assistance for his sister-city,
adding that he himself had suffered from the hostility of
Amor for five years, beginning, as we have seen, under Amen-
hotep III. Several Egyptian deputies had been charged
' Ibid., 41. & See above, p. 323. 3 Ibid., 150. • Ibid., 151. 6 Ibid., 85.

34°
Longitude
35°
East
36°
Troni
37°
Greenwich
SIA
MINOR
TTI
TE S
88
of HI T
E
Gyeria
MOUNTAINE
LIMI
Scitirliy
Carthemish
(I
N
MITANNI
H
Loorita
or kereth
kie
"Height
of Wau"
Aleppo
36
NiyEmpirates
H н
XAralpa
* Tunis)
Qarqar
SE A
Senzar
35
Hamath
A LA SA OR
CYPRUS
Arvad
E
Singma
Kai OSB
Ribick
ez Kata
CH
BIR
Berat
Isidor
aus Damascus
Yenoam
kecukeru
ro
Kadesh
Κ Η Α
TRIBES)
Othu
An
or
Μ Ε Ρ Ι Τ Ε R R Α Ν Ε Α Ν
AKko
R
Demet
DorN
Slunem
Thanach
Aruua
"Yehem
[Bull-shean
Hlapharalm
Megiddy
HAVRAN
(BEDUIN
si
Beth Aaron
Gezer Ajalou,
Yeraz
Ashdod
Jerusalem
Altaku
Askalon
Sortal
Lachishu Bethanol
Sharuhenk
EDOM
8 H A
мо А в
Tharu
EIR
S H A
(BEDUIN TRIBES
100
Scalo of Miles
50
يع
All places marked with
* are of uncertain locatlou aud
are only located approximately.
38
RED SEA
PENINSULA
OF
SINAI
THE MATTHEW NORTHAUP WORKS, BURTALO
37"
MAP No. 7. THE ASIATIC EMPIRE OF EGYPT.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
385
with the investigation of affairs at Simyra, but they did not
succeed in doing anything, and the city finally fell. Aziru
had no hesitation in slaying the Egyptian deputy resident
in the place,' and having destroyed it, was now free to
move against Byblos. Rib-Addi wrote in horror of these
facts to the Pharaoh, stating that the Egyptian deputy, resi-
dent in Kumidi in northern Palestine, was now in danger.?
But the wily Aziru so uses his friends at court that he
escapes. He wrote to Tutu, one of Ikhnaton's court officials,
who interceded for him, and he speciously excuses himself
to Khai, the Egyptian deputy in his vicinity.* With Machia-
vellian skill and cynicism he explains in letters to the
Pharaoh that he is unable to come and give an account of
himself at the Egyptian court, as he had been commanded
to do, because the Hittites are in Nukbashishi, and he fears
that Tunip will not be strong enough to resist them !5 What
Tunip herself thought about his presence in Nukhashshi we
have already seen. To the Pharaoh's demand that he imme-
diately rebuild Simyra, which he had destroyed (as he
claimed, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the
Hittites), he replies that he is too hard pressed in defending
the king's cities in Nukhashshi against the Hittites; but that
he will do so within a year. Ikhnaton is reassured by
Aziru's promises to pay the same tribute as the cities which
he has taken formerly paid." Such acknowledgment of
Egyptian suzerainty by the turbulent dynasts everywhere
must have left in the Pharaoh a feeling of security which the
situation by no means really justified. He therefore wrote
Aziru granting him the year which he had asked for before
he appeared at court, but Aziru contrived to evade Khani,
the Egyptian bearer of the king's letter, which was thus
brought back to Egypt without being delivered. It shows
the astonishing leniency of Ikhnaton in a manner which
would indicate that he was opposed to measures of force,
such as his fathers had employed. Aziru immediately wrote
i Ibid., 110; 120. Ibid., 94.
• Ibid., 44-5.
• Ibid., 46.
6 Ibid., 45; 47. 6 Ibid., 46, 26–34. * Ibid, 49, 36-40. & Ibid., 50.
6
25
386
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
3
to the king expressing his regret that an expedition against
the Hittites in the north had deprived him of the pleasure
of meeting the Pharaoh's envoy, in spite of the fact that he
had made all haste homeward as soon as he had heard of
his coming! The usual excuse for not rebuilding Simyra is
offered.
During all this time Rib-Addi is in sore straits in Byblos,
and sends dispatch after dispatch to the Egyptian court,
appealing for aid against Aziru. The claims of the hos-
tile dynasts, however, are so skilfully made that the resi-
dent Egyptian deputies actually do not seem to know who
are the faithful vassals and who the secretly rebellious.
Thus Bikhuru, the Egyptian deputy in Galilee, not under-
standing the situation in Byblos, sent his Beduin merce-
naries thither, where they slew all of Rib-Addi's Sherden
garrison. The unhappy Rib-Addi was now at the mercy of
his foes and he sent off two dispatches beseeching the
Pharaoh to take notice of his pitiful plight;' while, to make
matters worse, the city raised an insurrection against him
because of the wanton act of the Egyptian resident. He has
now sustained the siege for three years, he is old and bur-
dened with disease; * fleeing to Berût to secure help from the
Egyptian deputy there, he returns to Byblos to find the city
closed against him, his brother having seized the government
in his absence and delivered his children to Aziru. As
Berût itself is soon attacked and falls, he forsakes it, again
returns to Byblos and in some way regains control and holds
the place for a while longer. Although Aziru, his enemy,
was obliged to appear at court and finally did so, no relief
came for the despairing Rib-Addi. All the cities of the coast
were held by his enemies and their ships commanded the sea,
so that provisions and reinforcements could not reach him."
His wife and family urge him to abandon Egypt and join
Aziru's party, but still he is faithful to the Pharaoh and asks
for three hundred men to undertake the recovery of Berût,
and thus gain a little room. The Hittites are plundering
1 Ibid., 51. 9 Ibid., 77; 100. s Ibid., 100. • Ibid., 71, 23.
5 Ibid., 96. • Ibid., 65; 67.
7 Ibid., 104. • Ibid., 88.

2010
Fig. 148.-HARMHAB AS AN OFFICIAL REWARDED WITH GOLD BY THE KING.
Relief from his tomb. The king is out of range on the right. Harmhab's servants hang golden collars about his neck, brought out by other menials on his left. From the
left, led by Egyptian guards, approach Asiatic prisoners, whose presentation to the king by Harmhab is evidently the occasion of the honors he is receiving. See p. 399.
Continued at the left in Fig. 119. (Leyden Museum.)
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
387
his territory and the Khabiri, or Beduin mercenaries of his
enemy Aziru, swarm under his walls;' his dispatches to the
court soon cease, his city of course fell, he was probably
slain like the kings of the other coast cities, and in him the
last vassal of Egypt in the north had perished.
Similar conditions prevailed in the south, where the
advance of the Khabiri, the Aramæan Semites, may be com-
pared with that of the Hittites in the north. Knots of their
warriors are now appearing everywhere and taking service
as mercenary troops under the dynasts. As we have seen,
Aziru employed them against Rib-Addi at Byblos, but the
other side, that is, the faithful vassals, engaged them also,
so that the traitor, Itakama, wrote to the Pharaoh and
accused his vassals of giving over the territory of Kadesh
and Damascus to the Khabiri.2 Under various adventurers
the Khabiri are frequently the real masters, and Palestinian
cities like Megiddo, Askalon and Gezer write to the Pharaoh
for succour against them. The last named city, together with
Askalon and Lachish, united against Abdkhiba, the Egyp-
tian deputy in Jerusalem, already at this time an important
stronghold of southern Palestine, and the faithful officer
sends urgent dispatches to Ikhnaton explaining the danger
and appealing for aid against the Khabiri and their leaders.
Under his very gates, at Ajalon, the caravans of the king
were plundered. “The king's whole land," wrote he,
"which has begun hostilities with me, will be lost. Behold
the territory of Shiri [Seir) as far as Ginti-Kirmil (Car-
mel],-its princes are wholly lost, and hostility prevails
against me. As long as ships were upon the sea, the
strong arm of the king occupied Naharin and Kash, but now
the Khabiri are occupying the king's cities. There remains
not one prince to my lord, the king, every one is ruined. .
Let the king take care of his land and ... let him send
troops. . . . For if no troops come in this year, the whole
territory of my lord the king will perish. . . . If there are
no troops in this year, let the king send his officer to fetch
1 Ibid., 102; 104. { lbid., 146. lbid., 179-185. Ibid., 180, 55 f.
3
388
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
king."1
me and my brothers, that we may die with our lord, the
Abdkhiba was well acquainted with Ikhnaton's
cuneiform scribe, and he adds to several of his dispatches a
postscript addressed to his friend in which the urgent sin-
cerity of the man is evident: “To the scribe of my lord, the
king, Abdkhiba thy servant. Bring these words plainly
before my lord the king: The whole land of my lord,
the king, is going to ruin.' ”2 Fleeing in terror before
the Khabiri, who burned the towns and laid waste the fields,
many of the Palestinians forsook their towns and took
to the hills, or sought refuge in Egypt, where the Egyptian
officer in charge of some of them said of them: “They
have been destroyed and their town laid waste, and fire
has been thrown [into their grain?).
Their coun-
tries are starving, they live like goats of the mountain.
A few of the Asiatics, who knew not how they should
live, have come [begging a liome in the domain?] of
Pharaoh, after the manner of your father's fathers since
the beginning ... Now the Pharaoh gives them into your
hand to protect their borders",3 (Fig. 147). The task of
those to whom the last words are addressed was hopeless
indeed, for the general, Bikhuru, whom Ikhnaton sent to
restore order and suppress the Khabiri was entirely unable
to accomplish anything. As we have seen, he misunderstood
the situation totally in Rib-Addi's case, and dispatched his
Beduin auxiliaries against him. He advanced as far north
as Kumidi, north of Galilee, but retreated as Rib-Addi had
foreseen he would;t he was for a time in Jerusalem, but fell
back to Gaza;5 and in all probability was finally slain.”
Both in Syria and Palestine the provinces of the Pharaoh
had gradually passed entirely out of Egyptian control, and
in the south a state of complete anarchy had resulted, in
which the hopeless Egyptian party at last gave up any
attempt to maintain the authority of the Pharaoh, and those
who had not perished joined the enemy. The caravans of
1 Amarna Letters, 181.
* Amarna Letters, 94.
2 Ibid., 179.
5 Ibid., 182.
III, 11.
Ibid., 07.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
389
Burraburyash of Babylonia were plundered by the king of
Akko and a neighbouring confederate, and Burraburyash
wrote peremptorily demanding that the loss be made good
and the guilty punished, lest his trade with Egypt become a
constant prey of such marauding dynasts.' But what he
feared had come to pass, and the Egyptian Empire in Asia
was for the time at an end.
Ikhnaton's faithful vassals had showered dispatches upon
him, had sent special ambassadors, sons and brothers to rep-
resent to him the seriousness of the situation; but they had
either received no replies at all, or an Egyptian commander
with an entirely inadequate force was dispatched to make
futile and desultory attempts to deal with a situation which
demanded the Pharaoh himself and the whole available
army
of Egypt. At Akhetaton, the new and beautiful capital, the
splendid temple of Aton resounded with hymns to the new
god of the Empire, while the Empire itself was no more.
The tribute of Ikhnaton's twelfth year was received at Akhe-
taton as usual, and the king, borne in his sedan-chair on the
shoulders of eighteen soldiers, went forth to receive it in
gorgeous state. The habit of generations and a fast van-
ishing apprehension lest the Pharaoh might appear in Syria
with his army, still prompted a few sporadic letters from the
dynasts, assuring him of their loyalty, which perhaps con-
tinued in the mind of Ikhnaton the illusion that he was still
lord of Asia.
The storm which had broken over his Asiatic empire was
not more disastrous than that which threatened the fortunes
of his house in Egypt. But he was as steadfast as before
in the propagation of his new faith. At his command tem-
ples of Aton had now arisen all over the land. Besides the
Aton-sanctuary which he had at first built at Thebes, three
at least in Akhetaton and Gem-Aton in Nubia, he built others
at Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis, Hermonthis and in the
Fayum. He devoted himself to the elaboration of the
I Amarna Letters, 11,
* II, 1014-15.
3 II, 1017-18; see my remarks Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 40, 110
3
113.
390
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
temple ritual and the tendency to theologize somewhat
dimmed the earlier freshness of the hymns to the god. His
name was now changed and the qualifying phrase at the
end of it was altered from “Heat which is in Aton” to “Fire
which comes from Aton." Meantime the national convul-
sion which his revolution had precipitated was producing
the most disastrous consequences throughout the land. The
Aton-faith disregarded some of the most cherished beliefs
of the people, especially those regarding the hereafter.
Osiris, their old time protector and friend in the world of
darkness, was taken from them and the magical parapher-
L nalia which were to protect them from a thousand foes were
gone. Some of them tried to put Aton into their old usages,
but he was not a folk-god, who lived out in yonder tree or
spring, and he was too far from their homely round of daily
needs to touch their lives. The people could understand
nothing of the refinements involved in the new faith. They
only knew that the worship of the old gods had been inter-
dicted and a strange deity of whom they had no knowledge
and could gain none was forced upon them. Such a decree
of the state could have had no more effect upon their prac-
tical worship in the end than did that of Theodosius when
he banished the old gods of Egypt in favour of Christianity
eighteen hundred years after Ikhnaton's revolution. For
centuries after the death of Theodosius the old so-called
pagan gods continued to be worshipped by the people in
Upper Egypt; for in the course of such attempted changes
in the customs and traditional faith of a whole people, the
span of one man's life is insignificant indeed. The Aton-
faith remained but the cherished theory of the idealist,
Ikhnaton, and a little circle which forined his court; it never
really became the religion of the people.
Added to the secret resentment and opposition of the peo-
ple, we must consider also a far more dangerous force, the
hatred of the old priesthoods, particularly that of Amon.
At Thebes there were eight great temples of this god stand-
ing idle and forsaken; his vast fortune, embracing towns in

Fig. 149.-SOUTHERN PYLONS OF HARMHAB AT KARNAK.
Looking southwestward across the temple lake.


FIG. 150.--HARMHAB AS A PEASANT
IN THE HEREAFTER.
Relief from his tomb, showing later insertion
of the royal serpent on his forehead.
(Bologna Museum.)
FIG. 151.-BUST OF KHONSU.
End of the Eighteenth or early in the Nineteenth
Dynasty. (Cairo Museum.)
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
391
Syria and extensive lands in Egypt, had evidently been con-
fiscated and probably diverted to Aton. There could not
but be, and, as the result shows, there was, during all of
Ikhnaton's reign a powerful priestly party which openly
or secretly did all in its power to undermine him. The
neglect and loss of the Asiatic empire must have turned
against the king many a strong man, and aroused indigna-
tion among those whose grandfathers had served under
Thutmose III. The memory of what had been done in those
glorious days must have been sufficiently strong to fire the
hearts of the military class and set them looking for a leader
who would recover what had been lost. Ikhnaton might
appoint one of his favourites to the command of the army,
as we have seen he did, but his ideal aims and his high
motives for peace would be as unpopular as they were unin-
telligible to his commanders. One such man, an officer
named Hammhab, was now in the service of Ikhnaton and
enjoying the royal favour; he contrived not only to win the
support of the military class, but, as we shall later see,
he also gained the favour of the priests of Amon, who werel
of course looking for some one who could bring them the
opportunity they coveted. At every point Ikhnaton had
offended against the cherished traditions of a whole people.
Thus both the people and the priestly and military classes
alike were fomenting plans to overthrow the hated dreamer
in the palace of the Pharaohs, of whose thoughts they under-
stood so little. To increase his danger, fortune had decreed
him no son, and he was obliged to depend for support as
the years passed upon his son-in-law, a noble named Sakere,
who had married his eldest daughter, Meritaton, “Beloved
of Aton.'' Ikhnaton had probably never been physically
strong; his spare face, with the lines of an ascetic, shows
increasing traces of the cares which weighed so heavily upon
him. He finally nominated Sakere as his successor and
appointed him at the same time coregent. He survived but
a short time after this, and about 1358 B. C., having reigned
1 III, 22 ff.
392
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
some seventeen years, he succumbed to the overwhelming
forces that were against him. In a lonely valley some miles
to the east of his city he was buried in a tomb which he had
excavated in the rock for himself and family, and where his
second daughter, Meketaton, already rested.
Thus disappeared the most remarkable figure in earlier
Løriental history. To his own nation he was afterward known
as “the criminal of Akhetaton”;1 but for us, however much
we may censure him for the loss of the empire, which he
allowed to slip from his fingers; however much we may con-
demn the fanaticism with which he pursued his aim, even to
the violation of his own father's name and monuments; there
died with him such a spirit as the world had never seen
before,--a brave soul, undauntedly facing the momentum
of immemorial tradition, and thereby stepping out from the
L
long line of conventional and colourless Pharaohs, that he
might disseminate ideas far beyond and above the capacity
of his age to understand. Among the Hebrews, seven or
eight hundred years later, we look for such men; but the
modern world has yet adequately to value or even acquaint
itself with this man, who in an age so remote and under con-
ditions so adverse, became the world's first idealist and the
world's first individual.
Sakere was quite unequal to the task before him, and after
an obscure and ephemeral reign at Akhetaton he disap-
peared, to be followed by Tutenkhaton (“Living image of
Aton”), another son-in-law of Ikhnaton, who had married
he king's third daughter, Enkhosnepaaton (“She lives by
the Aton"). The priestly party of Amon was now con-
stantly growing, and although Tutenkhaton still continued
to reside at Akhetaton, it was not long before he was forced
to a compromise in order to maintain himself. He forsook
his father-in-law's city and transferred the court to Thebes,
which had not seen a Pharaoh for twenty years. Akhetaton
maintained a precarious existence for a time, supported by
the manufactories of coloured glass and fayence, which had
Inscription of Mes.
1
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
393
flourished there during the reign of Ikhnaton. These indus-
tries soon languished, the place was gradually forsaken,
until not a soul was left in its solitary streets. The roofs
of the houses fell in, the walls tottered and collapsed, the
temples fell a prey to the vengeance of the Theban party,
as we shall see, and the once beautiful city of Aton was
gradually transformed into a desolate ruin. To-day it is
known as Tell el-Amarna, and it still stands as its enemies,
time and the priests of Amon, left it. One may walk its
ancient streets, where the walls of the houses are still sev-
eral feet high, and strive to recall to its forsaken dwellings
the life of the Aton-worshippers who once inhabited them.
Here in a low brick room, which had served as an archive-
chamber for Ikhnaton's foreign office, were found in 1885
some three hundred letters and dispatches in which we have
traced his intercourse and dealings with the kings and rulers
of Asia and the gradual disintegration of his empire there.
Here were the more than sixty dispatches of the unfortunate
Rib-Addi of Byblos. After the modern name of the place,
the whole correspondence is generally called the Tell
el-Amarna letters. All the other Aton-cities likewise per-
ished utterly; but Gem-Aton in distant Nubia escaped.
Long afterward its Aton temple became a temple of “Amon,
Lord of Gem-Aton," and thus in far-off Nubia the ruins
of the earliest temple of monotheism still stand.
On reaching Thebes, Tutenkhaton continued the worship
of Aton and made some enlargement or at least repairs of.
the Aton-temple there; but he was obliged by the priests
of Amon to permit the resumption of Amon-worship. In-
deed he was constrained to restore the old festal calendar
of Karnak and Luxor; he himself conducted the first “feast
of Opet," the greatest of all the festivals of Amon, and
restored the temples there. Expediency also obliged him
to begin restoring the disfigured name of Amon, expunged
from the monuments by Ikhnaton, and his restorations are
found as far south as Soleb in Nubia. He was then forced
* See reference, p. 364, note 1.
Luxor reliefs, ibid., 34, 135.
II, 896.
1
S
394
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
to another serious concession to the priests of Amon; he
changed his name to Tutenkhamon. “Living image of
Amon,” showing that he was now completely in the hands
of the priestly party.'
The empire which he ruled was still no mean one, ex-
tending as it did from the Delta of the Nile to the fourth
cataract. The Nubian province under the viceroy was now
thoroughly Egyptianized, and the native chiefs wore Egyp-
tian clothing, assumed since Thutmose III's time.” The
revolution in Egypt had not affected Nubia seriously, and
it continued to pay its annual dues into the Pharaoh's treas-
ury. He also received tribute from the north which, as
his viceroy of Kush, Huy claimed,` came from Syria. Al-
though this is probably in some degree an exaggeration in
view of our information from the Amarna letters; yet one
of Ikhnaton's successors fought a battle in Asia, and this
can hardly have been any other than Tutenkhaton. He
may thus have recovered sufficient power in Palestine to
collect some tribute or at least some spoil, which fact may
then have been interpreted to include Syria also. Tuten-
khaton soon disappeared and was succeeded by another of
the worthies of the Akhetaton court, Eve, who had married
Ikhnaton's nurse, Tiy, and had excavated for himself a
tomb at Akhetaton, from which came the great Aton-lıymn
which we have already read. He was sufficiently imbued
with Ikhnaton's ideas to hold his own for a short time
against the priests of Amon; and he built to some extent
on the Aton-temple at Thebes. He abandoned his tomb at
Akhetaton and excavated another in the Valley of the Kings'
Tombs at Thebes. He soon had need of it, for ere long he
too passed away and it would appear that one or two other
ephemeral pretenders gained the ascendancy either now or
before his accession. Anarchy ensued. Thebes was a prey
of plundering bands, who forced their way into the royal
tombs and as we now know robbed the tomb of Thutmose
IV. The prestige of the old Theban family which had heen
IJI, 1019.
SI1, 1034 IT.
+ II, 1027 f.
6 III, 32 A fT.
2 II, 1035.
6 III, 20. 11. 2, 5 and 8.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE
395
dominant for two hundred and fifty years; the family which
two hundred and thirty years before had cast out the
Hyksos and built the greatest empire the east had ever
seen, was now totally eclipsed. The illustrious name which
it had won was no longer a sufficient influence to enable its
decadent descendants to hold the throne, and the Eighteenth
Dynasty had thus slowly declined to its end about 1350 B. C.
Manetho places Harmhab, the restorer, who now gained the
throne, at the close of the Eighteenth Dynasty; but in so
far as we know he was not of royal blood nor any kin of
the now fallen house. He marks the restoration of Amon,
the resumption of the old order and the beginning of a
new epoch.

poje
Fig. 152.-BATTLE RELIEFS OF SETI I AT KARNAK.
Below, on the left, Seti slays a Libyan chief; on the right, a battle with the Libyans. Above, the storming of Kadesh in Galilee (see p. 412). Behind the chariot, below,
is a later insertion of the crown prince's figure, like that depicted in Fig. 157, p. 419.
BOOK VI
THE EMPIRE: SECOND PERIOD
CHAPTER XX
THE TRIUMPH OF AMON AND THE REORGANIZATION
OF THE EMPIRE
We have already noticed that in the service of Ikhnaton
there had been an able organizer and skilful man of affairs
quite after the manner of Thutmose III. Harmhab, as he
was called, belonged to an old family once nomarchs of
Alabastronpolis;' he had been entrusted with important
missions and rewarded with the gold of distinguished ser-
vice 2 (Fig. 148). He had in charge the fugitive Asiatics
who fled from Palestine into Egypt before the Khabiri,; and
he dispatched some of the officials who went out at that time
to restore order there. Under Ikhnaton or his successors
he had been sent on a commission to the south in connection
with the tribute,4 and in this as in all his other duties he
showed himself a man of resourcefulness and ability. He
had served with distinction on a campaign with one of
Ikhnaton's successors in Asia, probably Tutenkhaton ;5 and
during the precarious times incident to the rapid succession
of weak kings following Ikhnaton's death he had skilfully
maintained himself and gradually gained a position of power
and influence. Finally becoming commander-in-chief of the
army and chief councillor in the palace, he called himself
“greatest of the great, mightiest of the mighty, great lord
of the people, king's-messenger at the head of his army to
the South and the North; chosen of the king, presider over
the Two Lands, in order to carry on the administration of
the Two Lands; general of generals of the Lord of the Two
Lands."8
Such titles no officer under the king had ever
borne. Under what ruler he thus served is not certain,
I III, 27.
& III, 5-9.
3 III, 10–12.
* III, 13.
6 III, 20.
. Ibid.
399
400
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
but whoever he was such power in the hands of a subject
must necessarily have endangered his throne. Harmhab
was now the real power of the throne; for the king “ap-
pointed him to be chief of the land, to administer the laws
of the Two Lands as hereditary prince of all this land. He
was alone without a rival. ... The council bowed down
to him in obeisance at the front of the palace, the chiefs of
the Nine Bows [foreign peoples] came to him, South as
well as North; their hands were spread out in his presence,
they offered praise to him as to a god. All that was done was
done under his command. ... When he came the fear of
him was great in the sight of the people; 'prosperity and
health' [the royal greeting] were craved for him; he was
greeted as 'Father of the Two Lands.'» 1 This continued
for some years, until 1350 B. C., when he was in effect king,
and the next step was but to receive the titles and insignia
of royalty. He had the army behind him and he had won
the support of the priesthood of Amon at Thebes; it was
only necessary to proceed thither to be recognized as the
ruling Pharaoh; or as the piously veiled language of his
own record states it: “Now when many days had passed
by, while the eldest son of Horus [Harmhab] was chief
and hereditary prince in this whole land, behold the heart of
this august god, Horus, lord of Alabastronpolis, desired to
establish his son upon his eternal throne. .
ceeded with rejoicing to Thebes ... and with his son in
his embrace, to Karnak, to introduce him before Amon, to
assign to him his office of king." 3 He arrived just as the
Theban priests were celebrating the great feast of Opet, at
which the image of Amon at Karnak was carried to Luxor;4
and here Harmhab now appeared. As the priests of Amon
had once recognized Thutmose III as king, so now the
oracle of the god was not wanting in confirming their
choice. But the new Pharaoh must possess some legal
claim to the crown and this too was forthcoming; for after
the oracle of Amon had declared him the son of Re and
Horus pro-
* III, 25-26.
2 III, 26, 1. 9.
III, 27.
• Ibid.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
401
1
heir to the kingdom, Harmhab proceeded to the palace and
was joined in marriage to the princess Mutnezmet, the sister
of Ikhnaton's queen, Nefer nefru aton. Although she was
advanced in years, she was “Divine Consort,” or high
priestess of Amon and a princess of the royal line, and that
was sufficient to make Harmhab's accession quite legal.
The palace where this ceremony took place was in Luxor,
and as the image of Amon was carried back to Karnak the
priests bore it to the palace where Harmhab's accession
was again recognized by the god. His royal titulary was
now published and the new reign began.
The energy which had brought Harmhab his exalted office
was immediately evident in his administration of it. He was
untiring in restoring to the land the orderly organization
which it had once enjoyed. After remaining at least two
months at Thebes adjusting his affairs there and further
conciliating the priestly party by his attendance at the re-
ligious feasts, 4 he sailed for the north to continue this work.
“His majesty sailed down stream. .. He organized this
land, he adjusted it according to the time of Re' [as when
the sun-god was Pharaoh]. At the same time he did not
forget the temples, which had been closed so long under the
Aton regime. “He restored the temples from the pools of
the Delta marshes to Nubia. He shaped all their images in
number more than before, increasing the beauty in that
which he made. . . . He raised up their temples; he fash-
ioned a hundred images with all their bodies correct and
with all splendid costly stones. He sought the precincts of
the gods which were in the districts in this land; he fur-
nished them as they had been since the time of the first
beginning. He established for them daily offerings every
day. All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver
and gold. He equipped them with priests and with ritual
priests and with the choicest of the army. He transferred
to them lands and cattle, supplied with all equipment.” 6
Among other works of this kind he set up a statue of him-
I III, 28. III, 30. SIII, 29. • III, 23. III, 31.
• Ibid.
26
402
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
self and his queen in the temple of Horus of Alabastron-
polis on which he frankly recorded the manner in which
he had gradually risen from the rank of a simple official
of the king to the throne of the Pharaohs. Thus Amon
received again his old endowments and the incomes of all
the disinherited temples were restored. The people resumed
in public the worship of the innumerable gods which they
had practised in secret durine
sculptors of the king were sent throughout the land con-
tinuing the restoration begun by Tutenkhamon, reinserting
on the monuments defaced by Ikhnaton, the names of the
gods whom he had dishonoured and erased. Over and over
again appear in the temple of Amon at Karnak the records
of such restoration by command of Harmhab. All tliis
must have ensured to him the united support of the priestly
party throughout the land. At the same time, the worship
of Aton, while not forbidden, was in many places suppressed
by the destruction of his sanctuaries. At Thebes Harmhab
razed to the ground the temple of Aton and used the ma-
terials for building two pylons (Fig. 149), extending the
temple of Amon on the south; and the materials which he
left unused were employed in similar works by his succes-
sors. In the ruined pylons of Amon at Karnak to-day one
may pick out the blocks which formed the sanctuary of
Aton, still bearing the royal names of the despised Aton-
worshippers. Harmhab also sent to Akhetaton and carried
away the materials of the Aton temple there which were
available for his buildings. Everywhere the name of the
hated Ikhnaton was treated as he had those of the gods.
At Akhetaton his tomb was wrecked and its reliefs chiselled
out; while the tombs of his nobles there were violated in the
same way. Every effort was made to annihilate all trace of
the reign of such a man; and when in legal procedure it was
necessary to cite documents or enactments from his reign he
was designated as "that criminal of Akhetaton. "3
While thus uncompromising in his hostility to the
1 III, 22-32.
II, p. 383, notes a, Inscription of Mes.
b.

D
Fig. 153.-SETI I OFFERING AN IMAGE OF TRUTH TO OSIRIS.
Relief from his temple at Abydos. See p. 417.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
403
name and the movement of Ikhnaton, and while so deter-
mined in his restoration of the old order, Harmhab did not
fail to conciliate wherever possible. It is probable that one
of Ikhnaton's old favourites at Akhetaton, named Paton-
emhab, was appointed as High Priest of Heliopolis, over
whose influential priesthood, as the original source of the
Aton movement, it was necessary to place one of his parti-
sans who would second the king in the destruction of
Ikhnaton's monuments there and the complete suppression
of his influence. The triumph of Amon was complete; as
the royal favourites of Ikhnaton had once sung the good
fortune of the disciples of Aton, so now Harmhab's
courtiers recognized clearly the change in the wind of
fortune, and they sang:“How bountiful are the possessions
of him who knows the gifts of that god (Amon), the king
of gods. Wise is he who knows him, favoured is he who
serves him, there is protection for him who follows him." 2
The priest of Amon, Neferhotep, who uttered these words,
was at the moment receiving the richest tokens of the king's
favour.3 Such men exulted in the overthrow of Amon's
enemies: “Woe to him who assails thee! Thy city endures
but he who assails thee is overthrown. Fie upon him who
sins against thee in any land. ... The sun of him who
knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee shines. The
sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in dark-
ness, but the whole earth is in light.
While the process of reorganizing the priesthoods was
but yielding to the revulsion which had followed Ikhnaton's
revolution, there were other directions in which the restora-
tion of what Harmhab regarded as normal conditions was not
so easy. Gross laxity in the oversight of the local administra-
tion had characterized the reign of Ikhnaton and his succes-
sors; and those abuses which always arise under such condi-
tions in the orient had grown to excess. Everywhere the
local officials, long secure from close inspection on the part of
1 III, 22.
: III, 72.
3 III, 71.
• Birch, Inscr. in the Hier., XXVI, sce Erman, Handbuch.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
405
would overlook the extortions which they had been sent on
journeys of inspection to discover and prevent. This evil
had been rooted out in the days of the aggressive Thutmose
III, but it was now rampant again, and Harmhab apparently
revived the methods of Thutmose III for controlling it."
For the collection of all the various produce of the land by
the different departments of the treasury, laws were framed
to prevent robbery and extortion on the part of the officials.
In the introduction and application of the new laws Harm-
hab went personally from end to end of the kingdom. At
the same time he improved the opportunity to look for fit-
ting men with whom he could lodge the responsibility for a
proper administration of justice, in which direction there
had also been great abuse since the Aton revolution. He
gave special attention to the character of the two viziers
whom he placed at the head of this judicial administration,
the one in Thebes and the other in Heliopolis or Memphis.
He calls them “perfect in speech, excellent in good qualities,
knowing how to judge the heart, hearing the words of the
palace, the laws of the judgment-hall. I have appointed
them to judge the Two Lands. ... I have set them in the
two great cities of the South and North."93 He warned
them against the acceptance of a bribe: “Receive not the
reward of another. ... How shall those like you judge
others while there is one among you committing a crime
against justice ??? In order to discourage bribery among
the local judges he took an unprecedented step. He remitted
the tax of gold and silver levied upon all local officials for
judicial duties, permitting them to retain the entire income
of their offices, in order that they might have no excuse
for illegally enriching themselves. But he went still fur-
ther; while organizing the local courts throughout the land
he passed a most stringent law against the acceptance of
any bribe by a member of a local court or "council”:
“Now as for any official or any priest concerning whom
it shall be heard, saying: 'He sits to execute judgment
6
• III, 58.
8 III, 63.
3 III, 63.
Ibid.
5 Ibid.
* III, 65.
404
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the central government, had revelled in extortions, practised
upon the long suffering masses until the fiscal and adminis-
trative system was honey-combed with bribery and corruption
of all sorts. To ameliorate these conditions Harmhab first
informed himself thoroughly as to the extent and character
of the evils, and then in his private chamber he dictated to
his personal scribe a remarkable series of special and highly
particularized laws to suit every case of which he had
learned.' These laws were comprised in at least nine para-
graphs, and they were all directed against the practice of
extortion upon the poor by fiscal and administrative officials.
The penalties were severe. A tax-collector found guilty
of thus practising upon the poor man was sentenced to
have his nose cut off, followed by banishment to Tharu, the
desolate frontier city far out in the sands of the Arabian
desert toward Asia. The military age and the military
empire suffered from the same abuses at the hands of
irresponsible soldiery, which in the orient have always ac-
companied it, the common people and the poor being the
greatest sufferers. The troops used in administration and
stationed in the north and south were accustomed to steal
the hides of the Pharaoh's loan-herds from the peasants
responsible for them. “They went out from house to house
beating and plundering without leaving a hide." In every
such demonstrable case the new law enacted that the peasant
should not be held responsible for the hides by the Pharaoh's
overseer of cattle. The guilty soldier was severely dealt
with: “As for any citizen of the army concerning whom
one shall hear, saying: 'He goeth about stealing hides”;
beginning with this day the law shall be executed against
him by beating him with a hundred blows, opening five
wounds and taking away the hides which he took."6 One
of the greatest difficulties connected with the discovery of
such local misgovernment was collusion with the local
officials by inspecting officers sent out by the central gov-
ernment. The corrupt superiors, for a share in the plunder,
1 III, 50.
III, 45-47.
III, 54.
• III, 50.
6 Ibid.
406
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
9,2
among the council appointed for judgment and he commits
a crime against justice therein'; it shall be counted against
him as a capital crime. Behold my majesty has done this
to improve the laws of Egypt. In order to keep his
executive officials in close touch with himself, as well as to
lift them above all necessity of accepting any income from
a corrupt source, Harmhab had them provided for with
great liberality. They went out on inspection several times
a month, and on these occasions either just before their
departure or immediately after their return the king gave
them a sumptuous feast in the palace court, appearing him-
self upon the balcony, addressing each man by name and
throwing down gifts among them. They were also given
substantial portions of barley and spelt on these occasions,
and "there was not found one who had nothing."
All these enactments were recorded by Harmhab on a
huge stelaº some sixteen feet high and nearly ten feet wide,
which he set up before one of his Karnak pylons for which
he had taken materials from the Aton temple at Karnak,
as we have already mentioned. He added the remark:
“My majesty is legislating for Egypt to prosper the life of
her inhabitants,"4 and he closed with the admonition,
"Hear ye these commands, which my majesty has made for
the first time, governing the whole land, when my majesty
remembered these cases of oppression which occur in the
presence of this land.”'6 These sane and philanthropic re-
forms give Harmhab a high place in the history of humane
government; especially when we remember that even since
the occupation of the country by the English, within the
memory of almost every reader, the evils at which he struck
have been found exceedingly persistent and difficult to
root out.
With such serious tasks as these occupying him at home
and an inheritance of disorganization and anarchy abroad,
we shall not expect that Harmhab could have accomplished
much in foreign wars. He had had experience in Asia, and
IIII, 64. * III, 66. SIIT, 45 ff.
* III, 05.
6 III, 07.

2
2
FIG. 154.-SETI I AS A YOUTH OFFERING THE IMAGE OF TRUTH.
Relief in his tomb at Thebes. See plan, p. 251.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
407
he knew what to expect there. Apparently he regarded the
foreign situation as hopeless, in view of all that was engag-
ing his full time and attention at home. A list of names
of foreign countries on the wall near his great code of laws
contains the conventional enumeration of conquests abroad,
which are probably not to be taken very seriously;t the name
of the Hittites appears among them, but later conditions show
that he could have accomplished no effective retrenchment
of their power in Syria. On the contrary, we should pos-
sibly place in his reign the treaty of alliance and friendship,
referred to by Ramses II some fifty years later, as having
existed before.2 In the south there was no serious need of
aggressive action, although a revolt of the usual character
finally forced him to appear in Nubia and punish the tribes
there. He was able also to send an expedition to Punt,
which returned with the now familiar wealth of that coun-
try. If Harmhab had any ambition to leave a reputation
as a conqueror the times were against him. His accession
fell at a time when all his powers and all his great ability
were necessarily employed exclusively in reorganizing the
kingdom after the long period of unparalleled laxity which
preceded him. He performed his task with a strength and
skill not less than were required for great conquest abroad;
while at the same time he showed a spirit of humane solici-
tude for the amelioration of the conditions among the masses,
which has never been surpassed in Egypt, from his time until
the present day. Although a soldier, with all the qualities
which that calling implies in the early east, yet when he
became king he could truly say: “Behold, his majesty spent
the whole time seeking the welfare of Egypt."5
How long he reigned is uncertain, but in Ramses II's day
the reigns of Ikhnaton and the other Aton worshippers had
apparently been added to his reign, increasing it by twenty
five years or more, so that a lawsuit of Ramses II's time
refers to events of the fifty ninth year of Harmhab. He
1 III, 34.
TII, 37 fr.
* III, 377.
SIII, 50.
$11), 40 ff.
6 Inscription of Mes.
408
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
therefore probably reigned some thirty five years. While
he was still serving the Pharaoh, in the days of his official
career, he had built a tomb of the most superb and artistic
workmanship at Memphis (Figs. 119, 147–8, 150). It was a
characteristic of the man that he did not abandon this Mem-
phite tomb and order one more splendid at Thebes in the
Valley of the Kings' Tombs. He left untouched upon its
walls all his old official titles as general, etc., which we have
already quoted, merely placing alongside them his royal
names and the Pharaonic titulary. Wherever his figure
appeared among the reliefs in the tomb chapel, he caused
the royal uræus serpent to be inserted on the forehead (Fig.
150), thus clearly distinguishing the figure as that of a
king. These insertions may still be traced at the present
day.
The fruits of Harmhab's reorganization were destined to
be enjoyed by his successors. Whether or not he succeeded
in founding a dynasty we do not know. It is impossible to
discover any certain connection between him and Ramses I,
who now (1315 B. C.) succeeded him, but as Ramses I was
already of advanced age on his accession, he must have had
some legal title to the throne. Otherwise at such an age
he would hardly have been able to make good his claims.
He was too old to accomplish anything or to utilize the
resources of the new nation which Harmhab had built up.
He planned and began the vast colonnaded hall, the famous
hypostyle of Karnak, afterward continued and completed
by his successors. In his second year he found the new
responsibility beyond his strength and he associated as co-
regent with himself his son, Seti 1,² then probably about
thirty years old. Together with his son he may have organ-
ized a campaign in Nubia, for in any case in the same year
he was able to add “slaves of the captivity of his majesty'
to the endowment of the Nubian temple at Wadi Halfa.
The inscription recording this and other gifts to the said
temple is the only dated monument of Ramses I's reign,
5
1 III, 1-21.
2 III, 157.
* III, 78.
• III, 74 ff.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
409
and as Seti's name is appended to it at the bottom, it is not
impossible that the young coregent prince had carried on
the campaign in Nubia himself and erected the tablet before
he left. Six months after the dating of this tablet the old
king was already dead (1313 B. C.), and Seti, as sole king
of Egypt, succeeded him."
During his short coregency of not more than a year, Seti
I must have already laid all his plans and organized his
army in readiness for an attempt to recover the lost empire
in Asia. The desert road leading to Palestine from Tharu,
the frontier fort of Egypt, whither Harmhab's noseless
exiles were banished, was again put in condition. The for-
tified stations which protected the wells and cisterns dis-
tributed along it were rebuilt and repaired. It was a march
of ten days from Tharu through the desert to Gaza in
southern Palestine,' and a plentiful supply of water was
therefore absolutely essential throughout the march. It is
probable that Egypt was still maintaining some degree of
control in Palestine, but the conditions which we saw devel-
oping there during the reign of Ikhnaton had received no
serious attention since then, with the possible exception of
an ineffective campaign by one of Ikhnaton's successors.
The information which Seti I now received as to the state of
the country betrays a condition of affairs quite such as we
should expect would have resulted from the tendency evi-
dent in the letters of Abdkhiba of Jerusalem to Ikhnaton.
They showed us the Beduin of the neighbouring desert press-
ing into Palestine and taking possession of the towns,
whether in the service of the turbulent dynasts or on their
own responsibility. We saw these letters corroborated by
Egyptian monuments, portraying the panic-stricken Pales-
tinians fleeing into Egypt before these foes. Seti I's mes-
sengers now bring him information of the very same char-
acter regarding the Beduin. They report: “Their tribal
chiefs are in coalition and they are gaining a foothold in
Palestine; they have taken to cursing and quarrelling, each
+
1 III, 157.
* III, 84; 86.
SII, 409.
• See above, pp. 387-8.
410
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of them slaying his neighbour, and they disregard the laws
of the palace."1 It was among these desert invaders of
Palestine that the movement of the Hebrews resulting in
their settlement there took place. It was of little moment
to the Pharaoh which particular tribe of Semites possessed
the different regions of Palestine, if only they regularly
paid their tribute to Egypt; but this was now no longer
the case.
In his first year Seti was able to march out from Tharu
and lead his expedition along the desert road, past the sta-
tions which he had restored. In the Negeb, or southern
Palestinian country, he was met by the “Shasu” or “Shos,'
as the Egyptians called the Beduin of that region, and he
scattered them far and wide. As he reached the frontier
of Canaan, which was the name applied by the Egyptians
to all western Palestine and Syria, he captured a walled
town, which marked the northern limit of the struggle with
the Beduin. Thence he pushed rapidly northward, cap.
turing the towns of the plain of Megiddo (Jezreel), pushing
eastward across the valley of the Jordan and erecting his
tablet of victory in the Hauran," and westward to the south-
ern slopes of Lebanon, where he took the forest-girt city of
Yenoam, once the property of the temple of Amon, after
its capture by Thutmose III, nearly one hundred and fifty
years before.
The neighbouring dynasts of the Lebanon
immediately came to him and offered their allegiance. They
had not seen a Pharaoh at the head of his army in Asia for
over fifty years, --not since Amenhotep III had left Sidon;?
and Seti immediately put them to the test by requiring a
liberal contribution of cedar logs for the sacred barge of
Amon which he was building at Thebes, as well as for the
tall flag-staves which surmounted the temple pylons. These
the subjects of the Lebanon felled in his presence, and Seti
was able to send them to Egypt by water from the harbours
which, like his great predecessor, Thutmose III, he was now
I III, 101, ll. 3-9.
6 III, 81.
: III, 83 f.
• III, 89-90.
3 III, 85 f.
• III, 87-8.
7 See above, p. 353. &III, 01-94.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
411
subduing. It is remotely possible that he advanced as far
north as Simyra and Ullaza,' and that the prince of Cyprus
sent in his gifts as of old. However that may be, Tyre and
Othu? submitted in any case and having thus secured the
coast and restored the water route between Syria and Egypt
for future operations, Seti returned to Egypt. The return
of a victorious Pharaoh from conquest in Asia, so common
in the days of the great conquerors, was now a spectacle
which the grandees of the realm had not witnessed for two
generations. The news of Seti's successes had preceded
him, and the nobles of the administrative government has-
tened to the frontier to receive him. At Tharu, outside the
gate of the frontier fortress beside the bridge over the fresh
water canal, which, as the reader will recall (see p. 188),
already connected the Nile with the bitter lakes of the Isth-
mus of Suez, they gathered in a rejoicing group, and as
Seti's weary lines toiled up in the dust of the long desert
march, with the Pharaoh at their head, driving before his
chariot-horses the captive dynasts of Palestine and Syria,
the nobles broke out in acclamation.3 At Thebes there was
another festive presentation of prisoners and spoil before
Amon, such as had been common enough in the days of the
empire, but which the Thebans had not witnessed for fifty
years or more;' and in the course of the celebration the
king sacrificed in the presence of the gods some of the
prisoners whom he had taken.
This campaign was quite sufficient to restore southern Pal-
estine to the kingdom of the Pharaoh, and probably also most
of northern Palestine. Before Seti could continue his opera-
tions in Asia, however, he was obliged to direct his forces
against a threatening danger, which likewise at the begin-
ning of the Eighteenth Dynasty had demanded the Pharaoh's
attention and cost him a war. The Libyans west of the
Nile mouths never failed to improve the opportunity of lax
government in Egypt to push into the Delta and take pos-
session of all the territory they could hold, and the exact
illi, 81; 92.
*TII, 89.
SIII, 98-103.
• III, 104-112.
S III, 113.
412
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
western border of the Delta was always more or less uncer-
tain on their frontier. Seti spent his entire next year, the
second of his reign, in the Delta, as a series of court bills
for his table supplies shows;' and it is thus very probable
that he carried on his operations against the Libyans in that
year. He met them in battle at some unknown point in
the western Delta, and according to the meagre accounts
which he has left us, was able to return in triumph to Thebes
with the usual prisoners and spoil to be presented in the
temple of Amon. It is possible that this return to Thebes
did not take place immediately, but that he proceeded to
Asia after the overthrow of the Libyans, to continue the
restoration of Egyptian power in Syria which he had begun
so auspiciously the season before. In any case, we next find
him in Galilee, storming the walled city of Kadesh, which
must not be confused with Kadesh on the Orontes. Here
the Amorite kingdom, founded by Abdashirta and Aziru,
as we were able to follow it in the letters of Rib-Addi,
formed a kind of buffer state, to which the Galilean Kadesh
belonged, lying between Palestine on the south and the
southern Hittite frontier in the Orontes valley on the north.
It was necessary for Seti to subdue this intermediate king-
dom before he could come to blows with the Hittites lying
behind it. After harrying its territory and probably taking
Kadesh,' Seti pushed northward against the Hittites. Their
king, Seplel, who had entered into treaty relations with
Egypt toward the close of the Eighteenth Dynasty, was
now long dead; his son, Merasar, was ruling in his stead.
Somewhere in the Orontes valley Seti came into contact
with them and the first battle between the Hittites and a
Pharaoh occurred. Of the character and magnitude of the
action we know nothing; we have only a battle relief showing
Seti in full career charging the enemy in his chariot. It
is, however, not probable that he met the main army of the
Hittites; certain it is that he did not shake their power in
I III, 82, 2.
: III, 120-132. III, 133-9. * See above, pp. 383-7.
6 III, 140-141. III, 375.
III, 142–144.
6
.

Fig. 155.-CATTLE INSPECTION.
Painting from a Theban tomb of the Empire. See p. 417.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
413
Syria; Kadesh on the Orontes remained in their hands,
and at most, Seti could not have accomplished more than
to have driven back their extreme advance, thus preventing
them from absorbing any more territory on the south or
pushing southward into Palestine. He returned to Thebes
for another triumph, driving his Hittite prisoners before
him, and presenting them, with the spoil, to the god of
the Empire, Amon of Karnak. The boundary which he had
established in Asia roughly coincided inland with the north-
ern limits of Palestine, and must have included also Tyre
and the Phænician coast south of the mouth of the Litâny.
Though much increasing the territory of Egypt in Asia, it
represented but a small third of what she had once con-
quered there. Under these circumstances, it would have
been quite natural for Seti to continue the war in Syria.
For some reason, however, he did not, in so far as we know,
ever appear with his forces in Asia again. He possibly
recognized the hopelessness of a struggle against the Hit-
tites, who were now so firmly entrenched in Syria. The
position of Egypt in Syria was indeed totally different from
that of the Hittites, who were actually occupying the coun-
try, the warrior class at least residing there; whereas the
Pharaohs had never attempted to colonize the country, but
merely to hold it in vassalage, subject to the payment of
yearly tribute. Such a method of holding distant conquests
was not likely to succeed at the threshold of the powerful
Hittite kingdom, a nation unable to resist its own expansive
force and overflowing constantly into Syria. Had the Phar-
aoh succeeded in evicting them it would have required inces-
sant war in northern Syria to have kept them within their
old limits. Seti may have perceived the changed conditions
and understood that the methods which had built up the
empire of Thutmose III could no longer apply with a power
of the first rank already occupying Syria. He therefore,
either at this time or later, negotiated a treaty of peace
with the Hittite king, Metella, who had succeeded his father,
Merasar.2
1 III, 145–152.
3 III, 377.
414
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
Returning to Egypt, he devoted himself to the interests
of peace, especially to the temples of the gods. The deface-
ment of the monuments during the Aton revolution had
been but partially repaired by Harmhab; Seti's father had
reigned too briefly to accomplish anything in this direction,
so that Seti himself found much to do in merely restoring
the disfigured monuments of his ancestors, which he did with
admirable piety. All the larger monuments of the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty from the Nubian temple of Amâda on the
south to Bubastis on the north, bear records of his restora-
tion, with the words appended : “Restoration of the monu-
ment, which Seti I made."1 Throughout the great quarries
of Egypt, Assuan, Silsileh, Gebelen, his workmen were dis-
patched.? Captives of war were employed as of old, but
where he utilized the labour of native Egyptians, Seti
records with great pride the humane treatment and the gen-
erous supplies accorded them. At Silsileh, whence the sand-
stone was procured, every one of the thousand workmen
employed there received daily nearly four pounds of bread,
two bundles of vegetables and a roast of meat; while twice
a month each man was given a clean linen garinent. At
all the great sanctuaries of the old gods his buildings were
now rising on a scale unprecedented in the palmiest days
of the Empire,-a fact which shows that the income, even
of the reduced empire of Seti I, reaching from the fourth
cataract of the Nile to the sources of the Jordan, was still
sufficient to support enterprises of imperial scope. In front
of the pylon of Amenhotep III, forming the façade of the
state temple at Karnak, Seti continued the vast colonnaded
hall planned and begun by his father, and which surpassed
in size even the enormous unfinished hypostyle of Amenhotep
III at Luxor. The battle reliefs on the front of Amenhotep
III's pylon were covered by Seti’s masonry. He completed
some of the columns of the northern aisles as well as the
north wall, on the outside of which his sculptors engraved
a colossal series of reliefs (Fig. 152) portraying his cam-
IIII, 200.
SIII, 201-210.
• III, 207.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
415
paigns. Mounting from the base to the coping they cover
the entire wall (over two hundred feet long), converging
from each end upon a door in the middle, toward which
the king is shown returning to Egypt, then presenting offer-
ings, spoil and captives to Amon; and at last sacrificing
the prisoners before the god, at the very door itself, as if
the king were entering to perform the ceremony. Similar
works existed in the Eighteenth Dynasty temples, but they
have all perished save the remnants of Amenhotep III's
reliefs just referred to, and Seti's battle-reliefs therefore
form the most imposing work of the kind now surviving
in Egypt. The great hall which it was to adorn was never
finished by him, and it was left to his successors to complete
it. Like his fathers of the Eighteenth Dynasty, he erected
a great mortuary temple on the western plain of Thebes. It
was located at the northern end of the line of similar sanc-
tuaries left by the earlier kings, and as Seti's father had
died too soon to construct any such temple, it was also dedi-
cated to him. This temple, now known as that of Kurna,
was likewise left incomplete by Seti.? At Abydos he built
a magnificent sanctuary dedicated to the great gods of the
empire, the Osirian triad and himself, with a side chapel
for the services of the old kings, especially of the First and
Second Dynasties, whose tombs still lie in the desert behind
the temple.' The list of their names which he engraved
upon the walls still forms one of the most important sources
for our chronological arrangement and assignment of the
Pharaohs. Although this temple has lost the first and
second pylons, it still remains perhaps the noblest monument
of Egyptian art still surviving in the land. To its artistic
value we shall revert again. A temple at Memphis, prob-
ably another at Heliopolis, with doubtless others in the
Delta of which we know nothing; and in Nubia an enormous
cliff-temple at Abu Simbel, left incomplete and afterward
finished by his son, Ramses II, completed the series of Seti's
greater buildings.
I III, 80-150. · III, 211-221. SIII, 225-243. • III, 495.
416
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
These works drew heavily upon his treasury, and when
he reached the point of permanently endowing the mor-
tuary service of the Abydos temple, he found it necessary
to seek additional sources of income. He therefore turned
his attention to the possible resources and found that the
supply of gold from the mountains of the Red Sea region
in the district of Gebel Zebâra was seriously restricted by
the difficulties which beset the route, especially in the matter
of water. The road from the Nile valley thither left the
river at a point a few miles above Edfu, and Seti visited
the place himself to discover what might be done to remedy
the difficulty. He found it necessary to go out into the
desert some two days journey to a point about thirty seven
miles from the river, where there was an old and probably
disused station known to the caravans of the Eighteenth
Dynasty.' Here, under his own superintendence, a well was
dug, yielding a plentiful supply of water. Thereupon Seti
erected a small temple by the well and established a settle-
ment at the place. In all probability other stations further
out on the same route were erected. The thirsty caravaneers
sang his praise: “Ye gods dwelling in the well give ye to
him your duration; for he hath opened for us the way to
march in, when it was closed up before us. We proceed and
are saved; we arrive and are preserved alive. The difficult
way which is in our memories has become a good way.
Then Seti established the income from the mines thus reached
as à permanent endowment for his temple at Abydos, and
called down terrifying curses on any posterity who should
violate his enactments. Yet within a year after his death
they had ceased to be effective and had to be renewed by
his son. In a similar effort to replenish his treasury from
gold mines further south in the Wadi Alâki, Seti dug a well
two hundred feet deep on the road leading southeast from
Kubbân in Nubia, but he failed to reach water, and the
attempt to increase the gold-supply from this region was
evidently unsuccessful."
1 III, 170.
III, 171.
* III, 172-4.
• III, 195.
6 III, 175–194. 6 III, 263.
" III, 289.
14
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE.
417
The art developed in connection with Seti's buildings
was hardly less strong, virile and beautiful than that pre-
vailing during the Eighteenth Dynasty. The impulses which
had come with Egypt's imperial position, while not as strong
as under the great emperors, were nevertheless not entirely
quenched. The conception of the great hall at Karnak,
although not carried out with the refinement which we found
in the Eighteenth Dynasty, as we shall see later on, was yet
one of the noblest fruits of Egypt's power and wealth, and
remains to-day, in spite of glaring faults, one of the most
impressive surviving monuments of Egyptian architectural
genius. In sculpture, Seti's battle-reliefs are the most ambi-
tious attempt at elaborate composition left by the surviving
school of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which they represent;
while very effective as compositions, they are however de-
fective in drawing. Nevertheless the figure of Seti with
upraised spear, dispatching the Libyan chief, on this north
wall at Karnak (Fig. 152), is one of the strongest and
most vigourous examples of drawing to be found among the
works of Egyptian artists; while as a composition it is
almost equally good. The finest reliefs of the time, how-
ever, are to be found in Seti's temple at Abydos (Fig. 153),
in which there is a rare combination of softness and refine-
ment, with bold and sinuous lines and exquisite modelling.
Hardly inferior to these are the reliefs in Seti's magnificent
tomb (Fig. 154) at Thebes. The painting of the time also
continues to show much of the power of the Amarna school
of art. The Theban tombs have preserved exquisite examples
like the inspection of the herds (Fig. 155) or the hunt in
the marshes, the latter exhibiting a fine touch of animal
savagery in the fierce abandon of a lithe cat as she tramples
two wild birds beneath her feet and sinks her teeth at the
same moment into a third victim (Fig. 156).
Beyond Seti's ninth year we know practically nothing of
his reign. He seems to have spent his energies upon his
extensive buildings, and among these he did not forget
the excavation of the largest tomb yet made in the valley of
27
418
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the kings at Thebes. It is of complicated construction and
descends into the mountain through a series of galleries and
extensive halls no less than four hundred and seventy feet in
oblique depth (Fig. 109). As the thirtieth anniversary of
his nomination as crown prince approached Seti began the
preparation of the necessary obelisks; and about the same
time his eldest son, whose name is unknown to us, was
appointed to the succession as crown prince. Desirous of
appearing to have shared in the achievements of his father,
this prince had his figure inserted in the scene on the north
wall of his father's Karnak hall, showing him in battle with
the Libyans. As his figure is not original here, there was
not room for it and part of an inscription had to be chiselled
out in order to create the necessary space.
The fraud is
visible to this day, the colour by which it was once disguised
having now vanished. Ramses, another son of Seti, born
to him by one of his queens named Tuya, was, however, plot-
ting to supplant his eldest brother, and during their father's
last days Ramses laid his plans so effectively that he was
ready for a successful coup at the old king's death. Some
time before the approaching jubilee, while the obelisks for
it were still unfinished, Seti died (about 1292 B. C.), having
reigned over twenty years since his own father's death.
He was laid to rest in a sumptuous sarcophagus of alabaster
in the splendid tomb which he had excavated in the western
valley. The body then deposited in the tomb, and preserved
by happy accident, like many others of the Pharaohs whom
we have seen, shows him to have been one of the stateliest
figures that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt, in so far as
we can judge at this time from the remains preserved to
us (Fig. 158).
The plans of the young Ramses were immediately carried
out. Whether his elder brother gained the throne long
enough to have his figure inserted in his father's reliefs or
whether his influence as crown prince had accomplished this,
we cannot tell. In any case Ramses brushed him aside
without a moment's hesitation and seized the throne. The

Fig. 156.-SWAMP HUNTING IN A REED BOAT.
Painting from a Theban tomb of the Empire. Before the hunter is the cat described on p. 417.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE.
419
only public evidence of his brother's claims, his figure in-
serted by that of Seti in the battle with the Libyans (Fig.
152) was immediately erased with the inscriptions which
stated his name and titles; while in their stead the artists
of Ramses inserted the figure of their new lord, with the
title “crown prince,” which he had never borne (Fig. 157).
BOVITE
2012
UTY
yu
العا با
Fig. 157. SECTION OF ONE OF SETI I's RELIEFS AT KARNAK.
The broken lines are the figure of Seti's first born son, who had himself
inserted here long after the completion of the reliefs, so that a column of the
original inscription now continues down into the figure. The dotted lines
show the form of Ramses II, inserted by him over that of his elder brother
whom he displaced and supplanted.
The colour which once carefully veiled all traces of these
alterations has now long since disappeared, and the evi-
dence of the bitter conflict of the two princes involving of
course the harem and the officials of the court and a whole
lost romance of court intrigue may still be traced by the
trained eye on the north wall of the Karnak hypostyle.
Such was the accession of the famous Pharaoh, Ramses II.
But the usual court devices were immediately resorted to,
420
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
that the manner of the Pharaoh's actual conquest of the
throne might be forgotten. When Ramses addressed the
court he alluded specifically to the day when his father had
set him as a child before the nobles and published him as
the heir to the kingdom. The grandees knew too well the
road to favour not to respond in fulsome eulogies expanding
on the wonderful powers of the king in his childhood and
narrating how he had even commanded the army at ten
years of age. The young monarch showed great vigour and
high abilities, and if his unfortunate rival left a party to
dispute his claims, no trace of their opposition is now
discoverable.
Ramses lost no time however in making himself strong
at Thebes, the seat of power. Thither he immediately
hastened, probably from the Delta, and celebrated in the
state temple the great annual Feast of Opet.3 Having
gained the priests of Amon he devoted himself with great
zeal to pious works in memory of his father. For this
purpose he sailed down the river from Thebes to Abydos,
which he had probably touched on his way up to Thebes.
At Abydos he found has father's magnificent mortuary
temple in a sad state; it was without roof, the drums of
the columns and the blocks for the half raised walls lay scat-
tered in the mire, and the whole monument, left thus unfin-
ished by Seti, was fast going to destruction. Worse than
this, the endowments which Seti had left for its support had
been neglected, violated and misappropriated by the people
left in charge of them,' in total disregard of the solemn adju-
rations and frightful curses recorded by their royal master,
then less than a year dead. The tombs of the hoary kings
of the First Dynasty, who had ruled over two thousand years
before, were also found to be in need of attention. Ramses
summoned his court and announced to them his intention
of completing and putting in repair all these works, but
particularly the temple of his father.? He carried out his
4
* III, 281.
1 III, 267-8.
III, 263.
2 III, 288, l. 17.
III, 262.
SIII, 255-6, 200.
1 III, 284-5.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE.
421
father's plans and completed the temple, at the same time
renewing the landed endowments and reorganizing the ad-
ministration of its property to which Ramses now added
herds, the tribute of fowlers and fishermen, a trading ship
on the Red Sea, a fleet of barges on the river, slaves and
serfs, with priests and officials for the management of the
temple-estate. All this, although recognized by the court
as due to the most pious motives, was not wholly without
advantage to the giver; for the conclusion of the enormous
inscriptionleft by Ramses to record his good deeds in his
father's temple, represents Ramses as thus securing the
favour of his father, who, as the companion of the gods,
intercedes with them in his son's behalf and thus ensures
to Ramses the favour of the divine powers who grant him a
long and powerful reign. This notion of the intercession
of the dead with the gods on behalf of the living is found
in one inscription as old as the Old Kingdom, occurs also
in the Middle Kingdom and again, enunciated by Ramses in
the mortuary temple of his father at Thebes which he like-
wise completed on finding it left unfinished by Seti.“
Perhaps the heavy draughts upon his treasury entailed by
the mortuary endowments of his father now moved Ramses
to look for new sources of income. However this may be,
we find him at Memphis in his third year consulting with
his officials regarding the possibility of opening up the Wadi
Alâki country in Nubia and developing there the mines
which Seti I had unsuccessfully attempted to exploit. The
viceroy of Kush, who was present, explained the difficulty
to the king and related the fruitless attempt of his father
to supply the route with water. It was now so bad that
when the caravaneers attempted the desert journey thither
"it was only half of them that arrived there; for they died
of thirst on the road, together with the asses which they
drove before them.” They were obliged to take enough
water for the round trip, as they could obtain none at the
mines. “Hence no gold was brought from this country for
I III, 274-7.
& III, 251-281.
SIII, 279-281.
* III, 281, 1. 103, note.
SIII, 282–293.
422
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
lack of water." With subtle flattery the viceroy and court
advised another attempt to supply the route with water,
and the result of the ensuing royal command to undertake
it was a letter from the viceroy of Kush announcing the
complete success of the enterprise and the discovery of a
copious spring of water at a depth of only twenty feet.'
At Kubbân, where the road leading to the mines left the
Nile-valley, Ramses had the viceroy erect a stela commem-
orating the achievement and bearing a record of the events
which we have sketched. Such enterprises of internal ex-
ploitation were but preparatory in the plans of Ramses.
His ambition held him to greater purposes; and he contem-
plated nothing less than the recovery of the great Asiatic
empire, conquered by his predecessors of the Eighteenth
Dynasty.
1 III, 286.
* III, 288-9,
* III, 292.
• III, 282-295.
CHAPTER XXI
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
We have seen that the Nineteenth Dynasty had inherited
a very dangerous situation in Syria. Ramses I had been
too old and had reigned too briefly to accomplish anything
there; Seti I, his son, had not been able to penetrate into the
territory held by the Hittites, much less to sweep them back
into Asia Minor and reclaim the old conquests of the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty. When Ramses II ascended the throne the
Hittites had remained in undisputed possession of these con-
quests for probably more than twenty years since the only
attempt by Seti I to dislodge them. The long peace prob-
ably concluded with Seti gave their king, Metella, an oppor-
tunity, of which he made good use, to render their position
in Syria impregnable. Advancing southward, up the valley
of the Orontes, he had seized Kadesh, the centre of the
Syrian power in the days of Thutmose III, which, we remem-
ber, had given him more trouble and held out with more
tenacious resistance than any other kingdom in Syria. We
have already seen the strategic importance of the location,
an importance which was quickly grasped by the Hittite
king, who made the place the bulwark of his southern
frontier.
Ramses's plan for the war was like that of his great ances-
tor, Thutinose III: le purposed first to gain the coast, that
he might use one of its harbours as a base, enjoying quick
and easy communication with Egypt by water. Our sources
tell us nothing of his operations on the first campaign, when
this purpose was accomplished. We have only the mute
evidence of a limestone stela (Fig. 159) cut into the face of
the rocks overlooking the Dog River near Berût; it is so
weathered that only the name of Ramses II and the date in
423
424
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
3
the "year four" can be read. It was in that year, therefore,
that Ramses pushed northward along the coast of Phænicia
to this point. Unfortunately for Ramses, this preparatory
campaign, however necessary, gave the Hittite king, Metella,
an opportunity to collect all his resources and to muster all
available forces from every possible source. All the vassal
kings of his great empire were compelled to contribute their
levies to his army. We find among them the old enemies
of Egypt in Syria: the kings of Naharin, Arvad, Carchemish,
Kode, Kadesh, Nuges, Ekereth (Ugarit) and Aleppo. Besides
these, Metella's subject kingdoms in Asia Minor, like Kez-
weden and Pedes, were drawn upon;2 and not content with
the army thus collected, he emptied his treasury to tempt the
mercenaries of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands.
Roving bands of Lycian sailors, such as had plundered the
coasts of the Delta and of Cyprus in the Eighteenth Dynasty,
besides Mysians, Cilicians, Dardanians, and levies of the
unidentified Erwenet, took service in the Hittite ranks. In
this manner Metella collected an army more formidable than
any which Egypt had ever hitherto been called upon to meet.
In numbers it was large for those times, containing probably
not less than twenty thousand men.
Ramses on his part had not been less active in securing
mercenary support. From the remote days of the Old King-
dom Nubian levies had been plentifully sprinkled through
the Egyptian armies; one of their tribes, the Mazoi, fur-
nished gensdarmes-police for Ikhnaton's capital, and they
were commonly found in similar service elsewhere in the
Pharaoh's realm. Among the troops used to garrison Syria
in the days of the Amarna letters sixty years before we find
the “Sherden," or Sardinians, who there appear for the
first time in history. These men were now taken into
Ramses' army in considerable numbers, so that they con-
stituted a recognized element in it, and the king levied "his
infantry, his chariotry and the Sherden."4 Ramses claims
to have taken them as prisoners in one of his victories,' and
1 III, 297.
III, 306.
• III, 307.
* Ibid.
• Ibid.
Fig. 158.-HEAD OF SETI I.
::
Fig. 159.-STELÆ OF RAMSES II (RIGHT) AND ESARHADDON
(LEFT) IN PHENICIA.
Hewn in the limestone cliffs at the mouth of the Nah rel-Kelb (Dog River) near
Berút. See pp. 423 and 556.


From his mummy, Cairo Museum.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
425
2
doubtless some of them were therefore the remnants of
marauding bands, captured as they sailed in plundering
expeditions along the coasts of the western Delta.' He must
have commanded an army of not less than twenty thousand
men all told, although the proportion of mercenaries is un-
known to us; nor is it known what proportion of his force
was chariotry, as compared with the infantry. He divided
these troops into four divisions, each named after one of
the great gods: Amon, Re, Ptah and Sutekh; and himself
took personal command of the division of Amon.
About the end of April of his fifth year (1288 B. C.), when
the rains of Syria had ceased, Ramses marched out of Tharu,
on his northeastern frontier, at the head of these troops.
The division of Amon, with whom the Pharaoh was, formed
the advance, and the other divisions, Re, Ptah and Sutekh,
followed in the order mentioned. What route Ramses took
across Palestine it is now impossible to determine; but when
they reached the region of Lebanon they were on the sea-
road, along the coast of Phænicia, which, as we have seen,
had been secured in the campaign of the year before. Here
Ramses had, at that time or before, founded a city, which
bore his name, and was evidently intended to serve as his
base for the campaign. Its location is uncertain, but it
may have been at or near the mouth of the Dog River, where
his stela of the previous year is located. Here he formed
the van of picked men and leaders of his force and turned
inland, perhaps up the valley of the Dog River, although
a much less precipitous road left the sea further south and
would have carried him up the Litâny. He then struck
into the valley of the Orontes, and marching down that river
northward during the last days of May, he camped on the
night of the twenty ninth day out from Tharu, on the last
and northernmost height of the elevated valley between the
northern ends of the two Lebanons, overlooking the vast
plain in which lay Kadesh, only a day's march distant, with
I III, 491.
. For the following account of the battle of Kadesh see the documents, III,
298-348; and my Battle of Kadesh, University of Chicago Press, 1904.
426
A HISTORY OF EGYPT

309
Lake of Homs
will
Kadesh
OR ON TJES
Brook El-Mukadiyeh
30
30
Ford
Shabtuna
[Ribleh)
/Amon
OAranami
/Re
/Ptah
Sutekh
Height South
of Kadesh
wAsiatics
Egyptians
20 *Ramses
201
30
임
​5
10Km.
O
5
10M
MAP 8. THE VICINITY OF KADESH.
Showing the “ Height south of Kadesh,” where Ramses camped the night
before the battle, and his position early on the day of the battle.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
427
its battlements probably visible on the northern horizon,
toward which the Orontes wound its way across the plain.
The next morning Ramses broke camp early, and putting
himself at the head of the division of Amon, he left the
other divisions to follow after, while he set out down the
last slope of the high valley to the ford of the Orontes at
Shabtuna, later known to the Hebrews as Ribleh. Here the
river left the precipitous, cañon-like valley in which it had
hitherto flowed, and for the first time permitted a crossing
to the west side on which Kadesh was, thus enabling an
army approaching the city from the south to cut off a con-
siderable bend in the river. Reaching the ford after a
march of three hours at most and probably less, Ramses
prepared for the crossing. Day after day his officers had
reported to him their inability to find any trace of the enemy
and had added their impression that he was still far in the
north. At this juncture two Beduin of the region appeared
and stated that they had deserted from the Hittite ranks,
and that the Hittite king had retreated northward to the
district of Aleppo, north of Tunip. In view of the failure
of his scouting parties to find the enemy, Ramses readily
believed this story, immediately crossed the river with the
division of Amon and pushed rapidly on, while the divisions
of Re, Ptah and Sutekh, marching in the order named,
straggled far behind. Anxious to reach Kadesh and begin
the siege that day, the Pharaoh even drew away from the
division of Amon and with no van before him, accompanied
only by his household troops, was rapidly nearing Kadesh
as midday approached. Meantime Metella, the Hittite king,
had drawn up his troops in battle-array on the northwest
of Kadesh, and Ramses, without hint of danger was ap-
proaching the entire Hittite force, while the bulk of his
army was scattered along the road some eight or ten miles
in the rear, and the officers of Re and Ptah were relaxing
in the shade of the neighbouring forests after the hot and
dusty march. The crafty Metella, seeing that the story of
his two Beduin, whom he had sent out for the very purpose
428
· A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Division
Kadesh
Re
Brook El Muka
of deceiving Ramses, had been implicitly accepted, fully
appreciated how best to utilize the rare opportunity. He
does not attack Ramses at once, but as the Pharaoh ap-
proaches the city the Hittite quickly transfers his entire
army to the east side of the river, and while Ramses passes
northward along the west side of Kadesh, Metella deftly
dodges him, moving southward along the east side of the
city, always keeping it between him and the Egyptians to
prevent his troops from being seen. As he draws in on the
east and southeast of the city he
has secured a position on Ramses
Campof
flank which is of itself enough, if
of Amon
diyeh
properly utilized, to ensure him an
overwhelming victory, even involv-
ing the destruction of Ramses and
his army. The Egyptian forces were
now roughly divided into two
groups: near Kadesh were the two
divisions of Amon and Re, while
far southward the divisions of Ptah
and Sutekh have not yet crossed at
the ford of Shabtuna. The division
O Shabtuna
of Sutekh was so far away that
nothing more was heard of it and it
Aranami
/ Sutekh
took no part in the day's action.
Ramses halted on the northwest of
mm Asiatics
-Egyptians
the city, not far from and perhaps
5Km. on the very ground occupied by the
Asiatic army a short time before.
Here he camped in the early after-
KADESH.
noon, and the division of Amon, com-
Positions of the opposing
forces at the time of the ing up shortly afterward, bivouack-
Asiatic attack.
ed around his tent. A barricade
of shields was erected around the
camp, and as the provision trains came up the oxen were
unyoked and the two-wheeled carts were parked at one end
ORONTES
881
money
Ford
(Ribleh)
Ptah'
0
0
5M.
MAP 9.
THE BATTLE OF
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
429
of the enclosure. The weary troops were relaxing, feeding
their horses and preparing their own meal, when two Asiatic
spies were brought in by Ramses' scouts and taken to
the royal tent. Brought before Ramses after a merciless
beating, they confessed that Metella and his entire army
were concealed behind the city. Thoroughly alarmed, the
young Pharaoh · hastily summoned his commanders and
officials, chided them bitterly for their inability to inform
him of the presence of the enemy, and commanded the vizier
to bring up the division of Ptah with all speed. In all
probability the frightened vizier himself undertook the dan-
gerous commission, in the hope of retrieving his reputation.
Ramses' dispatch to the division of Ptah alone, shows that
he had no hope of bringing up the division of Sutekh, which
was, as we have seen, straggling far in the rear above Shab-
tuna. At the same time it discloses his confidence that the
division of Re, which had been but a few miles behind him
at most, was within call at the gates of his camp. He there-
fore at this juncture little dreamed of the desperate situa-
tion into which he had been betrayed, nor of the catastrophe
which at that very moment was overtaking the unfortunate
division of Re. “Lo, while his majesty sat talking with
his nobles," rebuking them for their negligence, “the Hit-
tite king came, together with the numerous countries that
were with him, they crossed the ford [of the Orontes] on
the south of Kadesh," "they came forth from the south
side of Kadesh, and they cut through the division of Re in
its middle, while it was on the march, not knowing and not
drawn up for battle.” A modern military critic could
hardly better describe, in a word, what had happened than
do these brief words from the ancient account of the affair.
The attacking force was entirely chariotry and Ramses'
marching infantry was of course cut to pieces under the
assault. The southern portion of this disorganized division
must have entirely melted away, but the rest fled northward
toward Ramses' camp in a wild rout, having lost many pris-
oners and strewing the way with their equipments. They
430
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Re
kadiyeh
BrookEl-M
ORONTES
.
Ver
had at the first moment sent a messenger to inform Ramses
of the catastrophe, but in so far as we know, the first inti-
mation received by the Pharaoh of the appalling disaster
which now faced him was the headlong flight of these fugi-
tives of the annihilated division, among whom were two of
his own sons. They burst over the barricade into the aston-
ished camp with the Hittite chariotry in hot pursuit close
upon their heels. Ramses' heavy
Amon
$8000 Asiatic
infantry guard quickly dragged
{Infantry
liyely Kadesh these intruders from their chariots
and dispatched them; but behind
these was swiftly massing the whole
body of some twenty five hundred
Asiatic chariots. As they pressed
in upon the Egyptian position their
wings rapidly spread, swelled out
on either hand and enfolded the
camp. The division of Amon, weary
|Ptah
with the long and rapid march, in
total relaxation, without arms and
Oshabtuna
without officers, was struck as by an
avalanche when the fleeing remnants
Aranami
of the division of Re swept through
Asiatics
-Egyptians
the camp. They were inevitably in-
O: Fugitive Egyptians
volved in the rout and carried along
* Ramses Egyptian Camp
5Km.
with it to the northward. The bulk
of Ramses' available force was
MAP 10. THE BATTLE OF thus in flight, his southern divisions
were miles away and separated from
Showing Ramses II's di-
vided forces and his envelop-
him by the whole mass of the
ment by the enemy in the enemy's chariotry; the disaster was
second stage of the battle. complete.
Taken with but short shrift for preparation, the young
Pharaoh hesitated not a moment in attempting to cut his
way out and to reach his southern columns. With only his
household troops, his immediate followers and the officers,
who happened to be at his side, he mounted his waiting
Ford
Allement
I Sutekh
Ribleh
0
0
5M.
KADESH.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
431
chariot and boldy charged into the advance of the Hittite
pursuit as it poured into his camp on the west side. The
instant's respite thus gained he utilized to push out on the
west or south side of his camp a few paces and there, per-
ceiving how heavily the enemy was massed before him,
immediately understood that further onset in that direction
was hopeless. Retiring into the camp again, he must have
noted how thin was the eastern wing of the surrounding
chariots along the river where there had not yet been time
for the enemy to strengthen their line. As a forlorn hope
he charged this line with an impetuosity that hurled the
Asiatics in his immediate front pell-mell into the river.
Metella, standing on the opposite shore amid a mass of
eight thousand infantry, saw several of his officers, his
personal scribe, his charioteer, the chief of his body-guard
and finally even his own royal brother go down before the
Pharaoh's furious onset. Among many rescued from
the water by their comrades on the opposite shore was the
lialf drowned king of Aleppo, who was with difficulty resus-
citated by his troops. Again and again Ramses renewed the
charge, finally producing serious discomfiture in the enemy's
line at this point. At this juncture an incident common in
oriental warfare saved Ramses from total destruction. Had
the mass of the Hittite chariotry swept in upon his rear
from the west and south he must certainly have been lost.
But to his great good fortune his camp had fallen into the
hands of these troops and, dismounting from their chariots,
they had thrown discipline to the winds as they gave them-
selves up to the rich plunder. Thus engaged, they were
suddenly fallen upon by a body of Ramses' recruits who
may possibly have marched in from the coast to join his
army at Kadesh.
At any rate, they did not belong to either
of the southern divisions. They completely surprised the
plundering Asiatics in the camp and slew them to a man.
The sudden offensive of Ramses along the river and the
unexpected onslaught of the “recruits' must have consider-
ably dampened the ardour of the Hittite attack, giving the
1
wi
432
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Pharaoh an opportunity to recover himself. These newly
arrived “recruits,” together with the returning fugitives
from the unharmed but scattered division of Amon, so aug-
mented his power that there was now a prospect of his
maintaining himself till the arrival of the division of Ptah.
The stubborn defense which now followed forced the Hittite
king to throw in his reserves of a thousand chariots. Six
times the desperate Pharaoh charged into the replenished
lines of the enemy, but for some reason Metella did not send
against him the eight thousand foot which he had stationed
on the east side of the river opposite Ramses' position;
and the struggle remained a battle of chariotry as long as
we can trace it. For three long hours, by prodigies of
personal valour, the Pharaoh kept his scanty forces together,
throwing many an anxious glance southward toward the
road from Shabtuna, along which the division of Ptah
was toiling in response to his message. Finally, as the long
afternoon wore on and the sun was low in the west, the stand-
ards of Ptah glimmering through the dust and heat glad-
dened the eyes of the weary Pharaoh. Caught between the
opposing lines, the Hittite chariotry was driven into the
city, probably with considerable loss; but our sources do
not permit us to follow these closing incidents of the battle.
As evening drew on the enemy took refuge in the city and
Ramses was saved. The prisoners taken were led before
him while he reminded his followers that these captives had
been brought off by himself almost single handed.
The records describe how the scattered Egyptian fugi-
tives crept back and found the plain strewn with Asiatic
dead, especially of the personal and official circle about
the Hittite king. This was undoubtedly true; the Asiatics
must have lost heavily in Ramses' camp, on the river north
of the city and at the arrival of the division of Ptah; but
Ramses' loss was certainly also very heavy, and in view
of the disastrous surprise of the division of Re, probably
much greater than that of his enemies. What made the
issue a success for Ramses was his salvation from utter
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
433
destruction, and that he eventually held possession of the
field added little practical advantage.
One of the Egyptian accounts claims that Ramses re-
newed the action on the following day with such effect that
Metella sent a letter craving peace, whereupon the request
was granted by the Pharaoh who then returned in triumph
to Egypt. The other sources inake no reference to the
second day's action and the events of the battle which we
have just followed make it evident that Ramses would have
been glad enough to secure a respite and lead his shattered
forces back to Egypt. None of his records makes any claim
that he captured Kadesh, as is so frequently stated in the
current histories.
Once safely extricated from the perilous position into
which his rashness had betrayed him, Ramses was very
proud of his exploit at Kadesh. Throughout Egypt on
his more important buildings he had over and over de-
picted what were to him and his fawning courtiers the
most important incidents of the battle. On the temple
walls at Abu Simbel, at Derr, at the Ramesseum,
his mor-
tuary temple at Thebes, at Luxor, at Karnak, at Abydos
and probably on other buildings now perished his artists
executed a vast series of vivacious reliefs depicting Ram-
ses' camp, the arrival of his fugitive sons, the Pharaoh's
furious charge down to the river and the arrival of the
recruits who rescued the camp. Before Ramses the plain
is strewn with dead, among whom the accompanying bits
of explanatory inscription furnish the identity of the
notable personages whom we mentioned above. On the op-
posite shore where their comrades draw the fugitives from
the water a tall figure held head downward that he may dis-
gorge the water which he has swallowed is accompanied by
the words: “The wretched chief of Aleppo, turned upside
down by his soldiers, after his majesty had hurled him into
the water” (Fig. 160). These sculptures are better known
to modern travellers in Egypt than any other like monu-
ments in the country. They are twice accompanied by a
:
28
434
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
report on the battle which reads like an official document.
There early arose a poem on the battle, of which we shall
later have more to say. The ever repeated refrain in all
these records is the valiant stand of the young Pharaoh
“while he was alone, having no army with him." These
sources have enabled us to trace with certainty the maneu-
vres which led up to the battle of Kadesh, the first battle
in history which can be so studied; and this fact must
serve as our justification for treating it at such length. We
see that already in the thirteenth century B. C. the com-
manders of the time understood the value of placing troops
advantageously before battle. The immense superiority to
SAS
6
W'
ma
IM AVA
W
Fig. 160.
SCENE FROM THE RELIEFS OF TIE BATTLE OF KADESTI.
The Asiatics fleeing across the Orontes, are drawn from the water by their
comrades on the farther shore. The king of Aleppo is held head downward
by his soldiers, that he may disgorge the water he has swallowed.
be gained by clever maneuvres masked from the enemy was
clearly comprehended by the Hittite king when he executed
the first flank movement of which we hear in the early orient;
and the plains of Syria, already at that remote epoch, wit-
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
435
nessed notable examples of that supposedly modern science,
which was brought to such perfection by Napoleon,- the
science of winning the victory before the battle.
Arrived in Thebes, Ramses enjoyed the usual triumph
in the state temple, accompanied by four of his sons, as he
offered to the gods the “captives from the northern coun-
tries, who came to overthrow his majesty, whoin his
majesty slew and whose subjects he brought as living cap-
tives to fill the storehouse of his father, Amon." He
assumed among his titles on his monuments the phrase,
"Prostrator of the lands and countries while he was alone,
having no other with him.”2 While he might satisfy his
vanity with such conventional honours and take great satis-
faction in the reputation for personal valour which the ex-
ploit at Kadesh undoubtedly brought him; yet when he
carne to weigh and seriously consider the situation which
he had left in Syria he must have felt dark forebodings
for the future of Egyptian power in Asia. The moral effect
of his return to Egypt immediately after the battle without
even laying siege to Kadesh, and having lost nearly a whole
division of his army, even though he had shown a brilliant
defense, could only be subversive of Egyptian influence
among the dynasts of Syria and Palestine. Nor would
the Hittites fail to make every possible use of the doubtful
battle to undermine that influence and stir up revolt. Seti I
had secured northern Palestine as Egyptian territory, and
this region was so near the valley of the Orontes that the
emissaries of the Hittites had little difficulty in exciting it
to revolt. The rising spread southward to the very gates
of Ramses' frontier forts in the northeastern Delta. We
see him, therefore, far from increasing the conquests of
his father, obliged to begin again at the very bottom to re-
build the Egyptian empire in Asia and recover by weary
campaigns even the territory which his father had won.
Our sources for this period are very scanty and the order
of events is not wholly certain, but Ramses seems first to
1 III, 351.
Battle of Kadesh, p. 47.
436
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
3
have attacked the later Philistine city of Askalon and taken
it by storm. By his eighth year he had forced his way
through to northern Palestine, and we then find him taking
and plundering the cities of western Galilee, one after an-
other. Here he came in contact with the Hittite outposts,
which had been pushed far southward since the day of
Kadesh. He found a Hittite garrison in the strong town
of Deper, which seems to be the Tabor of Hebrew history;
but assisted by his sons he assaulted and took the place,
and the Hittite occupation of the region could have endured
but a short time. It was perhaps at this time that he pene-
trated into the Hauran and the region east of the Sea of
Galilee and left a stela there recording his visit.
Having thus in three years recovered Palestine, Ramses
was again at liberty to take up his ambitious designs in
Asia at the point where he had begun them four years
earlier. The vigour with which he now pushed his campaigns
is quite evident in the results which he achieved, although
we are entirely unable to follow their course. Advancing
again down the valley of the Orontes, he must have finally
succeeded in dislodging the Hittites. None of the scanty
records of the time states this fact; but as he made con-
quests far north of Kadesh that place must certainly have
fallen into his hands. In Naharin he conquered the country
as far as Tunip, which he also reduced and placed a statue
of himself there. But these places had been too long ex-
empt from tribute to the Pharaoh to take kindly to his
yoke. Moreover, they were now occupied by Hittites, who
possibly continued to reside there under the rule of Ramses.
In any case, the Hittites soon stirred the region to revolt
and Ramses found them in Tunip, when he again came north
to recover them. In this it would seem that he was success-
ful, and in storming Tunip he again met with some adven-
ture involving his fighting without his coat-of-mail; but
the record is unhappily too fragmentary to disclose the
1 III, 355. 2 III, 356. 3 III, 357, 359-60. + III, 358. SIII, 365.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
437
exact nature of his exploit. His lists credit him with hav-
ing subdued Naharin, Lower Retenu (North Syria), Arvad,
the Keftyew and Ketne in the Orontes valley. It is thus
evident that Ramses' ability and tenacity as a soldier had
now really endangered the Hittite empire in Syria, although
it is very uncertain whether he succeeded in holding these
northern conquests.
When he had been thus campaigning probably some
fifteen years an important event in the internal history of
the Hittite empire brought his wars in Asia to a sudden
and final end. Metella, the Hittite king, either died in
battle or at the hands of a rival, and his brother, Khetasar,
succeeded him upon the throne.3 Khetasar, who may have
had quite enough to do at home to maintain himself with-
out carrying on a dangerous war with Ramses for the
possession of northern Syria, proposed to the Pharaoh a
permanent peace and a treaty of alliance. In Ramses
twenty first year (1272 B. C.) Khetasar's messengers bear-
ing the treaty reached the Egyptian court, now in the
Delta, as we shall later see. The treaty which they bore
had of course been drafted in advance and accepted by
representatives of the two countries, for it was now in its
final form. It contained eighteen paragraphs inscribed
on a silver tablet, surmounted by a representation showing
engraved or inlaid figures of "Sutekh embracing the like-
ness of the great chief of Kheta"; and of a goddess simi-
larly embracing the figure of Khetasar's queen, Putukhipa;
while beside these were the seals of Sutekh of Kheta, Re
of Ernen, as well as those of the two royal personages.
It is to be supposed that the Hittite king received a similar
copy of the document from Ramses. This earliest surviving
international treaty bore the title: “The treaty which the
great chief of Kheta, Khetasar, the valiant; the son of
Merasar, the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, the grand-
son of Seplel, the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, made,
upon a silver tablet for Usermare-Setepnere [Ramses II],
IIII, 364-5.
? III, 366.
3 III, 375, 1. 10.
438
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant, the son of Seti I, the
great ruler of Egypt, the valiant; the grandson of Ramses I,
the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant; the good treaty of peace
and of brotherhood, setting peace between them forever."
It then proceeded to review the former relations between
the two countries, passed then to a general definition of
the present pact, and thus to its special stipulations. Of
these the most important were: the renunciation by both
rulers of all projects of conquest against the other, the
reaffirmation of the former treaties existing between the
two countries, a defensive alliance involving the assistance
of each against the other's foes; coöperation in the chastise-
ment of delinquent subjects, probably in Syria; and the
extradition of political fugitives and immigrants. A codicil
provides for the humane treatment of these last. A thou-
sand gods and goddesses of the land of the Hittites, and
the same number from the land of Egypt are called upon to
witness the compact; some of the more important Hittite
divinities being mentioned by the names of their cities.
The remarkable document closes with a curse on the violat-
ors of the treaty and a blessing upon those who should keep
it; or would logically so close save that the codicil already
mentioned is here attached. Ramses immediately had two
copies of the treaty engraved on the walls of his temples at
Thebes, preceded by an account of the coming of the Hittite
messengers, and followed by a description of tlie figures
and other representations depicted on the silver tablet.?
Recently a preliminary draught of the littite rop in
cuneiform on it clay tablet, was found by Winckler at
Boghaz-köi in Asia Minor.
It will be noticed that the treaty nowhere refers to the
boundary recognized by both countries in Syria; and we can
only suppose that it may have been contained in one of the
earlier treaties reaffirmed by it. It is difficult to determine
the exact location of this boundary. The cuneiform docu-
ments found by Winckler at Boghaz-köi since 1906 (see p.
i lll, 373.
? III, 367-301.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
439
381) show that the Hittite kings continued to control Amor
on the upper Orontes. It is not safe to affirm that he had
permanently advanced the boundary of his father's king-
dom in Asia, save probably on the coast, where he carved
two more stelæ on the rocks near Berût, beside that of his
fourth year, with which we are already acquainted. The
Hittite king is recognized in the treaty as on an equality
with the Pharaoh and receives the same conditions; but as
cominonly in the orient the whole transaction was inter-
preted by Ramses on his monuments as a great triumph for
himself, and he now constantly designated himself as the
conqueror of the Hittites.Once consummated, the peace
was kept, and although it involved the sacrifice of Ramses'
ambitions for conquest in Asia, the treaty must have been
entirely satisfactory to both the parties. Thirteen years
later (1259 B. C.) the Hittite king himself visited Egypt
to consummate the marriage of his eldest daughter as the
wife of Ramses. Bearing rich gifts in a brilliant proces-
sion, with his daughter at its head, Khetasar, accompanied
by the king of Kode, appeared in Ramses' palace, and his
military escort mingled with the Egyptian troops whom
they had once fought upon the Syrian plains. The Hittite
princess was given an Egyptian name, Matnefrure, “Who
Sees the Beauty of Re," and assumed a prominent position
at court.
The visit of her father was depicted on the front of
Ramses' temple at Abusimbel, with accompanying narra-
tive inscriptions, and she was given a statue beside her
royal husband in Tanis. Court poets celebrated the event
and pictured the Hittite king as sending to the king of Kode
and summoning him to join in the journey to Egypt that
they might do honour to the Pharaoh. They averred that
Ptah revealed himself to Ramses as the divine agent in the
happy affair: “I have made the land of Kheta," said the
god to him, “into subjects of thy palace; I have put it
See above, p. 423.
+ III, 394-424.
· III, 392.
6 III, 410-417.
SIII, 410, 420, 424.
• III, 425-6.
440
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
into their hearts to present themselves with fearful steps
before thee bearing their impost, which their chiefs have
captured, all their possessions as tribute to the fame of
his majesty. His eldest daughter is in front thereof to sat-
isfy the heart of the Lord of the Two Lands." The event
made a popular impression also, and a folk-tale, which was
not put into writing, so far as we know, until Greek times,
began with the marriage and told how afterward, at the
request of her father, an image of the Theban Khonsu was
sent to the land of the princess, that the god's power
might drive forth the evil spirits from her afflicted sister.
The land of the Hittite princess is called Bekhten, probably
meaning Bactria; and it is not improbable that some such
occurrence took place during the intercourse between
Khetasar and Ramses. In any event the friendly relations
between the two kingdoms continued without interruption,
and it is even probable that Ramses received a second
daughter of Khetasar in marriage. Throughout Ramses'
long reign the treaty remained unbroken and the peace con-
tinued at least into the reign of his successor, Merneptah.
Ramses' conflict with the Hittites, involving probably
fifteen or sixteen years of severe campaigning in Asia,
constitutes the basis of the claim to a high place as a soldier
usually advanced in his behalf. His only battle which we
can closely follow bears unmistakable testimony to his
bravery, but does not exhibit him as a skilful commander.
From the day of the peace compact with Khetasar, Ramses
was never called upon to enter the field again. Perhaps
as early as his second year he had quelled unimportant
revolts in Nubia," and these continued after the Hittite
war, but it is not known that any of these Nubian expedi-
tions was ever conducted by him in person. A Libyan cam-
paign is often vaguely referred to on his monuments, and
it is probable that Sherden sea-rovers were involved with
the Libyans in aggressions upon Ramses' western Delta
1 III, 410. 2 III, 429-447. sIII, 427-8. • III, 478. 5 III, 448-400.
THE WARS OF RAMSES II
441
frontier,' but we can gather nothing as to the character
of this war.
With the Asiatic campaigns of Ramses II the military
aggressiveness of Egypt which had been awakened under
Ahmose I in the expulsion of the Hyksos was completely
exhausted. Nor did it ever revive. It was with mercenary
forces and under the influence of foreign blood in the royal
family that sporadic attempts to recover Syria and Pales-
tine were made in later times. Henceforward for a long
time the Pharaoh's army is but a weapon of defense against
foreign aggression; a weapon, however, which he was him-
self unable to control,- and before which the venerable
line of Re was finally to disappear.
1 III, 491.
CHAPTER XXII
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
The dominance of Egypt in Asiatic affairs had irresist-
ibly drawn the centre of power on the Nile from Thebes
to the Delta. Ikhnaton had rudely broken with the tradi-
tion of the Empire that the Pharaoh must reside at Thebes.
It is probable that Harmhab returned thither but we have
seen that after the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty Seti I
was obliged to spend the early part of his reign in the north,
and we find him residing for months in the Delta.' Ramses
II's projects of conquest in Asia finally forced the entire
abandonment of Thebes as the royal residence. It remained
the religious capital of the state and at the greater feasts
in its temple calendar the Pharaoh was often present, but
his permanent residence was in the north. His constant
presence here resulted in a development of the cities of the
eastern Delta such as they had never before enjoyed. Tanis
became a great and flourishing city, with a splendid temple,
the work of Ramses’ architects. High above its massive
pylons towered a monolithic granite colossus of Ramses,
over ninety feet in height, weighing nine hundred tons, and
visible across the level country of the surrounding Delta for
many miles. The Wadi Tumilat, along which the canal
from the Nile eastward to the Bitter Lakes probably already
ran, forming a natural approach to Egypt from Asia, was
also the object of Ramses' careful attention, and he built
upon it, half way out to the Isthmus of Suez, a “store-city,'
which he called Pithom, or “House of Atum.
At its wes-
tern end he and Seti founded a city just north of Heliopolis,
now known as Tell el-Yehudîyeh. Somewhere in the eastern
Delta he founded a residence city, Per-Ramses, or “House
1 III, 82, 2.
2 Petrie, Tanis, I, 22-4
442

Fig. 161.-FRAGMENTS OF THOUSAND-TON COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II.
From a sitting statue of elephantine granite erected before the second pylon of the Ramesseum.

FIG. 162.--STORE CHAMBERS AT PITHOM,
Part of a city affirmed by the Hebrew tradition to have been built by them. See pp. 446-47-
(Stereograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood.)
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
443
of Ramses.” Its location is not certain, although it has
often been thought to be identical with Tanis; but it must
have been close to the eastern frontier, for a poet of the
time singing of its beauties refers to it as being between
Egypt and Syria. It was also accessible to seafaring traffic.
Per-Ramses became the seat of government and all records
of state were deposited there, but the vizier resided at
Heliopolis. Ramses himself was one of the gods of the
city. Through these cities and Ramses' other great enter-
prises in this region the central portion of the eastern Delta
became known as “the land of Ramses,” a name so com-
pletely identified with the region that Hebrew tradition read
it back into the days of Joseph and his kindred, before any
Ramses had ever sat on the throne. If the flourishing devel-
opment now enjoyed by the Delta was an almost unavoid-
able accompaniment of Ramses' projects in Asia, his ener-
getic spirit was not less felt throughout the kingdom, where
no such motives operated. Of his buildings at Heliopolis
nothing remains, and only the scantiest fragments of his
temples at Memphis have survived.2 We have already
noticed his extensive building operations at Abydos, in the
completion of his father's splendid temple there. With
this he was not content, but erected also his own mortuary
temple not far from that of Seti. At Thebes he spent enor-
mous treasure and vast resources of labour in the comple-
tion of his father's mortuary temple, another beautiful sanc-
tuary for his own mortuary service, known to all visitors
at Thebes as the Ramesseum; a large court and pylon in
enlargement of the Luxor temple; while, surpassing in size
all buildings of the ancient or modern world, his architects
completed the colossal colonnaded hall of the Karnak temple,
already begun under the first Ramses, the Pharaoh's grand-
father. Few of the great temples of Egypt have not some
chamber, hall, colonnade or pylon which bears his name, in
perpetuating which the king stopped at no desecration or
destruction of the ancient monuments of the country. A
1 Mes Inscription.
3 III, 530–37.

wa
East Gats
Girale wallo
Tample of Osiris
Small Temple of Ramses II.
Colonnada.of Ramsee I.
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TEMPLE OF
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RAMSES TIL
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GREAT TEMPLE OF AMMON
VILPRutale
Statues of Kings
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Statue of Ramses II
iconswoi:1
Inscriptions
of Merenptah
Centro : Court
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TEMPLE
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י"ז־־־ד־צדד־י־
of Ramses I.
Tespis
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Temple of Osiris
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PLAN OF KARNAK,
actories
Muhusu
1
Row or Sphinxes
400
BOO
no
poolist of Sethos I.
Zest
444
MAP 11. PLAN OF THE KARNAK TEMPLES
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
445
2
building of king Teti of the Sixth Dynasty furnished mate-
rial for Ramses's temple at Memphis;' he ransacked the
pyramid of Sesostris II at Illahun, tore up the pavement
around it and smashed its beautiful monuments to obtain
materials for his own neighbouring temple at Heracleopolis.
In the Delta he was equally unscrupulous in the use of Middle
Kingdom monuments, while to make room for his enlarge-
ment of the Luxor temple he razed an exquisite granite
chapel of Thutmose III, reusing the materials, with the
name of Thutmose thereon turned inward. Numberless
were the monuments of his ancestors on which he placed
his own name. But in spite of these facts, his own legiti-
mate building was on a scale quite surpassing in size and
extent anything that his ancestors had ever accomplished.
The buildings which he erected were filled with innumerable
supplementary monuments, especially colossal statues of
himself and obelisks. The former are the greatest mono-
lithic statues ever executed. We have already referred to
the tallest of these in the temple at Tanis; there was another
granite monolith towering over the pylons of the Rames-
seum at Thebes (Fig. 161) which, although not so high,
weighed about a thousand tons. As the years passed and
he celebrated jubilee after jubilee the obelisks which he
erected in commemoration of these festivals rapidly rose
among his temples. At Tanis alone he erected no less than
fourteen, all of which are now prostrate; three at least of
his obelisks are in Rome; and of the two which he erected
in Luxor, one is in Paris. Besides the wealth involved in
its erection, every such temple demanded a rich endow-
ment. After telling how his Abydos temple was built of
fine limestone, with granite door-posts and doors of copper
wrought with silver-gold alloy, Ramses says of its endow-
ment that there were “established for him (the god) per-
manent daily offerings, at the beginnings of the seasons, all
feasts at their times. . . . He (Ramses) filled it with every-
1 Annales, III, 29
i Petrie, Illahun, p. 4; Kahun, p. 22; Naville, Ahnas, pp. 2, 9-11, pl. I.
SIII, 543-9.
446
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
A
thing, overflowing with food and provision, bulls, calves,
oxen, geese, bread, wine, fruit. It was filled with peasant
slaves, doubled in its fields, made numerous in its herds; the
granaries were filled to overflowing, the grain-heaps ap-
proached heaven, ... for the store house of divine offer-
ings, from the captivity of his victorious sword. His treas-
ury was filled with every costly stone: silver, gold in blocks;
the magazine was filled with everything from the tribute of
all countries. He planted many gardens, set with every
kind of tree, all sweet and fragrant woods, the plants of
Punt." This was for the equipment of one temple only;
similar endowment for all his numerous temples must have
been a serious economic problem.
Notwithstanding the shift of the centre of gravity north-
ward, the south was not neglected. In Nubia Ramses
became the patron deity; no less than six new temples arose
there, dedicated to the great gods of Egypt, Amon, Re, and
Ptah; but in all of them Ramses was more or less promi-
nently worshipped, and in one his queen, Nefretiri, was
the presiding divinity. Of his Nubian sanctuaries, the
great rock-temple at Abu Simbel is the finest and deservedly
the goal of modern travellers in Egypt. Nubia became more
and more Egyptianized, and between the first and second
cataracts the country had received an indelible impression
of Pharaonic civilization. Here the old native chiefs had
practically disappeared, the administrative officials of the
Pharaoh were in complete control, and there was even an
Egyptian court of justice, with the viceroy as chief judge.
Ramses' great building enterprises were not achieved
without vast expense of resources, especially those of labour.
While he was unable to draw upon Asia for captive labour
as extensively as his great predecessors of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, yet his building must have been largely accom-
plished by such means. There is probably little question of
the correctness of the Hebrew tradition in attributing the
oppression of some tribe of their ancestors to the builder of
1 III, 526–7. • III, 492-501. 3 Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 504.
3

Tomos
?
Kurna
N
Tomas of the
02
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N
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E
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KAIR
den
ankmento
Later
Tombs
3
NILE
Temple
Lixor
Luxor
1:45.300
3 אינץ
Yards.
Totates of the rings
(West Tella)
Tomas of Use Kings
(East Valley)
N I I
Der e bathri
Drah Abull Neggae
desastle
shdan bosh
d-hung,
Later
TomRDS
Medinet.
Habu
of Aneniophes
a noi ent.
Birket Ha bu
Rom a ins
Gr. Hot
Assua
Sta.
MAP 6.—THE PLAIN OF THEBES (after Baedeker).
The "Birket Habu” is the probable site of Amenhotep III's artificial lake (p. 349); his palace is marked north of it; the place of his great mortuary temple is marked by the
two "Colossi of Memnon," which stood before it. See Fig. 131.
448
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
fine horses of Babylon and cattle of the Hittite country.
The appurtenances of a rich man's estate included a galley
plying between Egypt and the Syrian coast to bring to
the pampered Egyptian the luxuries of Asia ;2 and even
Seti I's mortuary temple at Abydos possessed its own sea-
going vessels, given by Ramses, to convey the temple offer-
ings from the east.3 The houses of the rich were filled
with the most exquisite products of the Asiatic craftsman
and artist; and these works strongly influenced the art
of the time in Egypt. The country swarmed with Semitic
and other Asiatic slaves, while Phænician and other alien
merchants were so numerous that there was a foreign quar-
!
0
FIG. 163.
HEAVY-ARMED SIERDEN OF RAMSES I l's MERCEXABY BODYGUARI).
ter in Memphis, with its temples of Baal and Astarte; and
these and other Semitic gods found a place in the Egyptian
pantheon. The dialects of Palestine and vicinity, of which
Hebrew was one, lent many a Semitic word to the current
language of the day, as well as select terms with which the
1 Pap. Anast., IV, 15, 2-17 = III, 8.
% Ibid., IV., 3, 10-11.
SIII, 274.
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
447
Pithom (Fig. 162) and Ramses; that a tribe of their fore-
fathers should have fled the country to escape such labour
is quite in accord with what we know of the time. Inter-
course with Palestine and Syria was now more intimate
than ever.
A letter of a frontier official, dated in the reign
of Ramses II's successor, tells of passing a body of Edomite
Beduin through a fortress in the Wadi Tumilat, that they
might pasture their herds by the pools of Pithom as the
Hebrews had done in the days of Joseph. In the rough
memoranda of a commandant's scribe, probably of the fron-
tier fortress of Tharu, in the Isthmus of Suez, we find also
noted the people whom he had allowed to pass : messengers
with letters for the officers of the Palestinian garrisons, for
the king of Tyre, and for officers with the king (Merneptah)
then campaigning in Syria, besides officers bearing reports,
or hurrying out to Syria to join the Pharaoh. Although
there was never a continuous fortification of any length
across the Isthmus of Suez, there was a line of strongholds,
of which Tharu was one and probably Ramses another,
stretching well across the zone along which Egypt might
be entered from Asia. This zone did not extend to the
southern half of the isthmus, but was confined to the ter-
ritory between Lake Timsah and the Mediterranean, whence
the line of fortresses extended southward, passed the lake
and bent westward into the Wadi Tumilat. Hence Hebrew
tradition depicts the escape of the Israelites across the
southern half of the isthmus south of the line of defences,
which might have stopped them. The tide of commerce that
ebbed and flowed through the Isthmus of Suez was even
fuller than under the Eighteenth Dynasty, while on the Medi-
terranean the Egyptian galleys must have whitened the sea.
On the Pharaoh's table were rarities and delicacies from
Cyprus, the land of the Hittites and of the Amorites, Baby-
lonia and Naharin. Elaborately wrought chariots, weapons,
whips and gold-mounted staves from the Palestinian and
Syrian towns filled his magazine, while his stalls boasted
IIII, 036-38.
: III, 630-635.
THE EMPIRE
349
with graceful columns, in which the king showed himself to
his favourites on occasion (Fig.139). The art which adorned
such a palace was as exquisite in its refined æsthetics as in its
technical skill. Innumerable products of the industrial artist
which fill the museums of Europe indicate with what tem-
pered richness and delicate beauty such a royal chateau was
furnished and adorned. Magnificent vessels in gold and
silver with figures of men and animals, plants and flowers
rising from the rim, glittered on the king's table among
crystal goblets, glass vases, and gray porcelain vessels inlaid
with pale blue designs. The walls were covered with woven
tapestry of workmanship so fine and colour and design so
exquisite that skilled judges have declared it equal to the
best modern work. Besides painted pavements (Fig. 138)
depicting animal life, the walls also were adorned with fine
blue glazed tiles, the rich colour of which shone through elab-
orate designs in brilliant gold leaf, while glazed figures were
employed in encrusting larger surfaces. All this was done
with fine and intelligent consideration of the whole colour
scheme. In all the refined arts it is an age like that of Louis
XV, and the palace everywhere reflects the spirit of the age.
Here too Amenhotep laid out an exclusive quarter which
he gave to his queen, Tiy. He excavated a large lake in the
enclosure about a mile long and over a thousand feet wide,
and at the celebration of his coronation anniversary in his
twelfth year, he opened the sluices for filling it, and sailed
out upon it in the royal barge with his queen, in doubtless
just such a gorgeous festival “fantasia” as we find in the
“Arabian Nights" in the days of the inevitable Harûn
er-Rashid. The music on such occasions was more elaborate
than ever before, for the art had make progress since the
days of the old simplicity. The harp was now a huge instru-
ment as tall as a man, and had some twenty strings; the lyre
had been introduced from Asia, and the full orchestra now
contained the harp, the lyre, the lute and the double pipes.
As a souvenir of the celebration another series of scarabs,
or beetle-amulets, was issued, inscribed with a brief narra-
350
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
tive of the event. 1 Such festivals were now common in
Thebes and enriched the life of the fast growing metropolis
with a kaleidoscopic variety which may be only compared
with similar periods in Babylon or in Rome under the em-
perors. The religious feasts of the seventh month were
celebrated with such opulent splendour that the month
quickly gained the epithet, “That of Amenhotep," a desig-
nation which clung to it until it became the usual name for
it in later ages, and in corrupt form it still survives among
the natives of modern Egypt, who employ it without the
faintest knowledge of the imperial ruler, their ancestor,
whose name is perpetuated in it. In such an age literature
doubtless throve, but chance has unfortunately preserved to
us little of the literature of the Eighteenth Dynasty. We
have heard a portion of the triumphant hymn to Thutmose
III and we shall read the remarkable sun-hymn of Ikhnaton;
but of narrative, song and legend, which must have flour-
ished from the rise of the Empire, our surviving documents
date almost exclusively from the Nineteenth Dynasty.
Among the king's favourite diversions was the hunt, which
he practiced on an unprecedented scale. When his scouts
brought him word that a herd of wild cattle had appeared
among the hills bordering the Delta, he would leave the
palace at Memphis in the evening, sail north all night and
reach the herd in the early morning. A numerous body of
troops, with children from the villages, then surrounded the
herd and drove them into a large enclosure, a method also
employed in earlier times. On one occasion his beaters
counted no less than one hundred and seventy wild cattle in
the enclosure. Entering it in his chariot the king himself slew
fifty six of the savage beasts on the first day, to which num-
ber he added probably twenty more at a second onslaught,
which followed after four days' interval of rest. Amenhotep
thought the achievement worthy of commemoration and
issued a series of scarabs bearing a record of the feat.?
When the chase-loving king had completed ten years of lion-
ill, 868-9.
* II, 883-4.

Fig. 130.-COLUMNS OF THE NAVE OF AMENHOTEP III'S UNFINISHED HALL.
The side aisles and smaller columns should have been ranged on either side of this nave. The low wall on either side of the nave was erected
by Ikhnaton's successors who were unable to complete the gigantic hall.

ON
US
Fig. 164.-RESTORATION OF THE GREAT HALL AT KARNAK.
Nineteenth Dynasty Hypostyle in the state temple of Amon. See pp. 408, 417, 443, and 450-51. (After Perrot and Chipiez.)

Fig. 165.--NAVE OF THE GREAT HALL OF KARNAK.
Looking westward toward the Nile from behind the hall (see plan, p. 444). The cliffs behind the western plain
are seen through the main doorway.
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
449
learned scribes were fond of garnishing their writings. We
find such words commonly in the Nineteenth Dynasty
papyri four or five centuries before they appear in the
Hebrew writings of the Old Testament. The royal family
was not exempt from such influence; Ramses' favourite
daughter was called “Bint-Anath," a Semitic name, which
means “Daughter of Anath” (a Syrian goddess), and one
of the royal steeds was named “Anath-herte," “Anath is
Satisfied."
The effect of the vast influx of Asiatic life already appar-
ent under the Eighteenth Dynasty was now profound, and
many a foreigner of Semitic blood found favour and ulti-
mately high station at the court or in the government. A
Syrian named Ben-'Ozen was chief herald or marshal of
Merneptah's court,' but he was never regent as sometimes
stated. The commercial opportunities of the time brought
wealth and power to such foreigners in Egypt; a Syrian sea-
captain named Ben-Anath was able to secure a son of Ramses
II as a husband for his daughter. In the army great careers
were open to such foreigners, although the rank and file
of the Pharaoh's forces were replenished from western
and southern peoples rather than from Asia. In a body of
five thousand troops sent by Ramses to the Wadi Ham-
mamat for service in the quarries there, not a single native
Egyptian was to be found; over four thousand of them
were Sherden and Libyans and the remainder were negroes,
such as we have already seen in the Egyptian ranks as
early as the Sixth Dynasty. The dangerous tendencies
inherent in such a system had already shown themselves
and were soon felt by the royal house, although powerless
to make head against them. The warlike spirit which had
made Egypt the first world power had endured but a few
generations, and a naturally peaceful people were returning
to their accustomed peaceful life; while at the very moment
1 Mar. Ab. II, 50; Cat. gen. d'Ab., No. 1136, p. 422; RIH, 32; BT, VI, 437.
& Ostracon, Louvre, Inv. 2202, Devér. Cat., p. 202; Rec, 16, 64.
* Battle of Kadesh, 9.
29
150
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
when this reversion to their old manner of living was taking
place, the eastern Mediterranean and the Libyan tribes
offered the Pharaoh an excellent class of mercenary sol-
diery which under such circumstances he could not fail to
utilize.
While the wars in Asia had not recovered the empire of
Thutmose III, all Palestine and possibly some of northern
Syria continued to pay tribute to the Pharaoh, while on the
south the boundary of the Empire was as before at Napata,
below the fourth cataract. There were stately pageants
when the magnificent Pharaoh, now in the prime of life,
received the magnates of his empire, from the crown-prince
down through all his exalted dignitaries to the mayors of
the outlying towns, a brilliant procession, bringing him the
tribute and impost of his realm from the southern limits
of Nubia to the Hittite frontier in Syria. The wealth thus
gained still served high purposes.
Art still flourished.
Nothing better was ever produced by the Egyptian sculptor
than the superb statue of the youthful Ramses (Fig. 168),
which forms the chef d'avre of the Turin Museum; and
even the colossal statues like those of Abu Simbel (Fig. 167)
are fine portraits. Granting that art was on the decline,
there were still masters of relief who could put into stone
the exquisite, even if cold, features of Bint-Anath, the
Pharaoh's favourite daughter. How ever much the refine-
ment of the Eighteenth Dynasty may be wanting in
the great hall at Karnak (Figs. 164-5), it is nevertheless
the most impressive building in Egypt, and at the last, as
even Ruskin admits, size does tell. He who stands for the
first time in the shadow of its overwhelming colonnades, that
forest of mighty shafts, the largest ever erected by human
hands, --crowned by the swelling capitals of the nave, on
each one of which a hundred men may stand together,--he
who observes the vast sweep of its aisles — roofed with hun-
dred-ton architraves- and knows that its walls would con-
tain the entire cathedral of Notre Dame and leave plenty
1 III, 481-4.

80
Fig. 166.-THE RAMESSEUM, MORTUARY TEMPLE OF RAMSES II.
The western cliffs of the necropolis, pierced with many tomb doors, rise behind the temple.
See p. 451.

Fig. 167.-THE CLIFF TEMPLE OF ABU SIMBEL.
Looking southward across the front. See p. 451.

1
FIG. 168. - BLACK GRANITE STATUE OF RAMSES II.
See p. 450. (Turin Museum.)
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
451
of room to spare,- he who notes the colossal portal over
which once lay a lintel block over forty feet long and
weighing some hundred and fifty tons, will be filled with
respect for the age that produced this the largest columned
hall ever raised by man. And if the discerning eye is rather
impressed by its size than by the beauty of its lines, it should
not be forgotten that the same architects produced Ramses'
mortuary temple, the Ramesseum (Fig. 166), a building
not inferior in refined beauty to the best works of the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty. In Nubia also, where the scanty margin
between the Nile and the cliffs was either insufficient or
could not be spared for temples of masonry, the rock-
hewn sanctuaries of Ramses form distinct contributions to
architecture. No visitor to the temple of Abu Simbel (Fig.
167) will ever forget the solemn grandeur of this lonely
sanctuary looking out upon the river from the sombre cliffs.
But among the host of buildings which Ramses exacted from
his architects, there were unavoidably many which were
devoid of all life and freshness, or like his addition to the
Luxor temple, heavy, vulgar and of very slovenly workman-
ship. All such buildings were emblazoned with gayly col-
oured reliefs depicting the valiant deeds of the Pharaoh in
his various wars, especially, as we have already noticed,
his desperate defence at the battle of Kadesh (Fig. 169).
This last was the most pretentious composition ever
attempted by the Egyptian draughtsman. The winding
river, the moated city, the flying foe, the prudent king of
the Hittites surrounded by masses of his foot, discreetly
withholding his own person from the combat, in striking
contrast with the furious onset of the Pharaoh;---all this is
wrought out with skill, although obscured by unconscious-
ness of the proper relations of time and place, always char-
acteristic of Egyptian as well as all other early oriental com-
positions. Although the reliefs of the time thus show
marked progress in the art of composition, the innumerable
figures included in such a work individually receive too
little attention and are often badly drawn. But no such

8
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WIRD
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FIG. 169.
BATTLE SCENE FROM THE GREAT KADESH RELIEFS OF RAMSES II ON THE WALLS OF THE RAMESSEUM.
It shows Ramses alone (though, of course, he should be accompanied by his household troops), surrounded by Asiatic chariotry
(above and below). Before him are the fallen lords of the Hittite King's army, each accompanied by his name and titles (engraved
beside him). The scene depicts the moment of the Pharaoh's charge, when he drove the eastern wing of the enemy into the river
(Map 10). The fugitives swim across and are pulled out by their comrades on the other shore (see king of Aleppo, Fig. 160). On
the right of the king of Aleppo, where the wall is broken, stands the Hittite King in his chariot, among a mass of 8,000 Asiatic foot.
In the upper right hand corner is the doubly moated city of Kadesh.
452
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
453
ambitious compositions are elsewhere found in the oriental
world for six hundred years or more.
This last incident was not only influential in graphic art;
it also wrought powerfully upon the imagination of the
court poets, one of whiom produced a prose poem on the
battle, which displays a good deal of literary skill, and is
the nearest approach to the epic to be found in Egyptian
literature. We are told how the foe covered the hills like
grass-hoppers, the incidents that led up to the catastrophe
are narrated with precision and clearness, and then as the
Pharaoh finds himself alone in the midst of the foe the poet
pictures him calling upon his father Amon for aid while
the god in distant Thebes, hearing the cry of his son,
answers and nerves his arm for the ordeal in a response
which has all the fine and heroic spirit of the epic poem.
The author's perception of dramatic contrasts is remarkable.
He depicts the dismay of the royal charioteer that he may
contrast it with Ramses' undaunted spirit and may put
into the Pharaoh's mouth a fiery speech of encouragement.
When it is all over and the crisis passed there is, among
other incidents, a pleasing epic touch in Ramses' vow that
the brave chariot-horses which bore him safely through
the conflict shall always be fed by his own hand. A copy
of this composition on papyrus was made by a scribe named
Pentewere (Pentaur), who was misunderstood by early stu-
dents of the document to be the author of the poem. The
real author is unknown, although “Pentaur'' still commonly
enjoys the distinction. In manner this heroic poem strikes
a new note; but it came at a period too late in the history
of the nation to be the impulse toward a really great epic.
The martial age and the creative spirit were passed in
Egypt. In the tale, however, the Nineteenth Dynasty really
showed great fertility, combined with a spontaneous natur-
alism, which quite swept away all trace of the artificialities
of the Middle Kingdom. Already in the Middle Kingdom
there had grown up collections of artless folk-tales woven
often about a historical motive, and such tales, clothed in
454
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the simple language of the people, had early in the Eigli-
teenth Dynasty gained sufficient literary respectability to
be put into writing. While the Eighteenth Dynasty pos-
sessed such tales as these, yet by far the larger part of our
surviving manuscripts of this class date from the Nine-
teenth Dynasty and later. It is now that we find the story
of the conflict between the Hyksos king Apophis and Se-
kenere at Thebes a tale of which the lost conclusion doubt-
less contained a popular version of the expulsion of the
Hyksos. The reader will recall its contribution to our
scanty knowledge of the Hyksos. The people now loved
to dwell upon the exploits of Thutmose III's commanders,
telling of Thutiy and his capture of Joppa by introducing
his soldiers into the city in panniers loaded on donkeys, a
tale which was perhaps the prototype of Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves. But the artless charm of the story of the
doomed prince quite surpasses such historical tales. An
only son, he is doomed by the Hathors at his birth to die
by a crocodile, a serpent or a dog. Journeying to Syria, he
succeeds in climbing a tower in which the king of Naharin
had confined his daughter, that he among the young nobles
of Syria whose strength of arm and steady nerve sliould
enable him to swing himself aloft to the young girl's window
might lead her away as his wife. But, as the prince had
not divulged his real identity, having given himself out
to be the son of an Egyptian officer, the king of Naharin
refused to give him his daughter and afterward would have
killed him. At this juncture the young girl saved her
lover by avowing her firm intention of slaying herself if
they slew him. The king then relented and the prince
received his bride. Having escaped the crocodile and the
serpent it is probable that he then fell a victim to his faith-
ful dog which had followed him from Egypt, but the end
of the story is wanting. It furnishes the earliest known
example of that almost universal motive in which a youth
must pass through some ordeal or competition in order to
I See above, pp. 215-16, 223-24.
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
455
win a wife; a motive which later found place in more pre-
tentious compositions, even Greek drama, as in the tale
of (Edipus and the Sphinx, immortalized in Sophocles'
tragedy. A pastoral tale of idyllic simplicity represents
two brothers as living together, the elder being married and
a householder, while the younger dwells with him much
after the manner of a son. There now befell the younger
brother an adventure later appropriated for the Hebrew
hero, Joseph. The wife of his elder brother tempted him
and lie, proving inflexible, the woman, to revenge herself,
maligned him to her husband. The youth, warned by the
cattle of his herd as he drove them to the stable, fled for his
life, and the tale here merges into a series of half mythical
incidents not so pleasing as the introductory chapter. The
number of such tales must have been legion, and in Greek
times they furnished all that many Greek writers, or even
the priest Manetho knew of early Egyptian kings.
While much of such literature is poetic in content and
spirit, it lacks poetic form. Such form, however, was not
wanting, and among the songs of this period are some
poems which might well find a place among a more preten-
tious literature.
There were love-songs also, which in a land where imagi-
nation was not strong possess qualities of genuine feeling
which do not fail to appeal to us of the modern world. Re-
ligious poems, songs and hymns are now very numerous,
and some of them display distinct literary character. We
shall revert to them again in discussing the religion of
this age. Numerous letters from scribes and officials of the
time, exercises and practice letters composed by pupils of
the scribal schools, bills, temple records and accounts, -all
these serve to fill in the detail in a picture of unusual fullness
and interest.
By far the larger portion of the surviving literature of the
time is religious and in so far as it is the outgrowth of the
state religion, the impression which it conveys is far from
gratifying. Since the overthrow of Ikhnaton and the return
456
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
to the conventions of the past, the state religion had lost
all vitality, and in the hands of the orthodox priests no
longer possessed the creative faculty. Yet the religion of
the time was making a kind of progress, or at least it was
moving in a certain direction and that very rapidly. The
state, always closely connected with religion, was gradually
being more and more regarded as chiefly a religious insti-
tution, designed to exalt and honour the gods through its
head the Pharaoh. Among other indications of this ten-
dency the names of the temples furnish a significant hint.
Sanctuaries which formerly bore names like "Splendour
of Splendours," "Splendid in Monuments," "Gift of Life,
and the like, were now designated “Dwelling of Seti in the
House of Amon,” or “Dwelling of Ramses in the House of
Ptah.” This tendency, already observable in the Middle
Kingdom, was now universal, and every temple was thus
designated as the sanctuary of the ruling Pharaoh. That
which had long been the sacerdotal theory and ideal of the
state was now beginning to be practically realized: the
Empire was to become the domain of the gods, and the
Pharaoh was to give himself up to the duties of a universal
high-priesthood. The temple endowments, not being sub-
ject to taxes, now played an important economic role, and
we have seen Seti I and Ramses in search of new sources
of revenue as the demands of the priesthoods increased.
The state was being gradually distorted to fulfill one func-
tion at the expense of all the rest, and its wealth and eco-
nomic resources were thus being slowly engulfed, until its
industrial processes should become but incidents in the main-
tenance of the gods. As the wealtlı and power of Amon in
particular increased, his High Priest at Thebes became a
more and more important political factor. We recall that
he was head of the sacerdotal organization embracing all
the priesthoods of the country; he thus controlled a most
influential political faction. Hence it was that the High
Priest of Amon under Merneptah (Ramses II's son and suc-
cessor) and possibly already under Ramses himself was able
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
457
to go further and to install his son as his own successor,
thus firmly entrenching his family at the head of the most
powerful hierarchy in Egypt. While such a family like a
royal dynasty might suffer overthrow, the precedent was
a dangerous one, and it ultimately resulted in the dethrone-
ment of the Pharaohs at the hands of the priests. That
event, however, was still some hundred and fifty years
distant, and meantime the High Priest employed his power
and influence with the Pharaoh in enforcing ever fresh
demands upon his treasury, until before the close of the
Nineteenth Dynasty Amon had even secured certain gold
country in Nubia in his own right. It was administered by
the viceroy of Kush, who therefore assumed the additional
title “Governor of the Gold Country of Amon."2 Thus there
was gradually arising the sacerdotal state described by
Diodorus, upon which the Egyptian priests of Greek times
looked back as upon a golden age. As the inward content
of the prevailing religion had already long been determined
by the dominant priesthood, so now its outward manifes-
tations were being elaborated by them into a vast and inflex-
ible system, and the popularity of every Pharaoh with the
priesthood was determined by the degree of his aquiescence
in its demands.
Though the state religion was made up of formalities,
the Pharaohs were not without their own ethical standards,
and these were not wholly a matter of appearances. We
have witnessed the efforts of Harmhab to enforce honesty
in the dealings of the government with its subjects; we have
noted Thutmose III's respect for truth. In the dedicatory
record of his mortuary temple at Thebes, Ramses III pro-
claims that he did not remove any old tombs to obtain
the necessary room for the building;' and he also wishes it
known that he gained his exalted station without depriving
any one else of his throne.' The barbarous disregard of the
sanctity of the monuments of his ancestors by Ramses II
however we have already noticed. The things for which these
III, 618.
i III, 640.
SIV, 4.
+ IV, 188.
I
458
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
kings prayed were not character nor the blameless life. It
is material things which they desire. Ramses IV prays to
Osiris, “And thou shalt give to me health, life, long exist-
ence and a prolonged reign; endurance to my every member,
sight to my eyes, hearing to my ears, pleasure to my heart
daily. And thou shalt give to me to eat until I am satisfied,
and thou shalt give to me to drink until I am drunk. And
thou shalt establish my issue as kings forever and ever.
And thou shalt grant me contentment every day, and thou
shalt hear my voice in every saying, when I shall tell them
to thee, and thou shalt give them to me with a loving heart.
And thou shalt give to me high and plenteous Niles in order
to supply thy divine offerings and to supply the divine offer-
ings of all the gods and goddesses of South and North; in
order to preserve alive the divine bulls, in order to pre-
serve alive the people of all thy lands, their cattle and their
groves, which thy hand has made. For thou art he who
has made them all and thou canst not forsake them to carry
out other designs with them; for that is not right.
A higher type of personal religion was developing among
the better class of the people than the sensual materialism
which this royal prayer displays. A fine hymn to Amon,
popular at this time, contains many of the old ideas preva-
lent in the Aton-faith, while other religious poems show
that a personal relation is gradually growing up between
the worshipper and his god, so that he sees in his god the
friend and protector of men. Thus one says: “Amon-Re,
I love thee and I have enfolded thee in my heart. ...I
follow not the care in my heart; what Amon says pros-
pers. "2 Or again:“Amon lend thine ear to him who stands
alone in the court of judgment,”3 and when the court is won
by rich bribes Amon becomes the vizier of the poor man.“
Man feels also the sense of sin and cries out:"Punish me not
for my many sins. 95 The proverbial wisdom of the time
shows much of the same spirit. Whereas it formerly incul-
991
I IV, 470.
* l'ap. Anast., II., 8, 6.
? Birch, Inscr, in the Hier. Char., pl. XXVI.
+ lid., 0,5-0.
8 Erman, Ilandluch.
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
459
The poor
cated only correct behaviour, it now exhorts to hate evil, and
to abhor what the god abhors. Prayer should be the silent
aspiration of the heart and to Thoth the wise man prays,
“O thou sweet Well for the thirsty in the desert! . It is
closed up for him who speaks, but it is open for him who
keeps silence. When he who keeps silence comes, lo he finds
the Well.'1 The poisonous power of the magical literature
now everywhere disseminated by the priests gradually
stifled these aspirations of the middle class, and these the
last symptoms of ethical and moral life in the religion of
Egypt slowly disappeared. It is at this time that we gain
our sole glimpse into the religious beliefs of the common
people. The appropriation of the temples by the state had
long ago driven them from their ancient shrines.
man had no place amid such magnificance, nor could he
offer anything worthy the attention of a god of such splen-
dour. The old modest cult of the great gods having long
since passed away, the poor man could only resort to the
host of minor genii or spirits of mirth and music, the demi-
gods, who, frequenting this or that local region, had interest
and inclination to assist the humble in their daily cares and
needs. Any object whatsoever might become the poor man's
god. A man writing from Thebes commends his friend to
Amon, Mut and Khonsu, the great divinities of that place,
but adds also, "to the great gate of Beki, to the eight apes
which are in the forecourt," and to two trees. In the
Theban necropolis Amenhotep I and the queen Nefretiri
have become the favourite local divinities, and a man who
accidentally thrust his hand into a hole where lay a large
serpent, without being bitten, immediately erected a tablet
to tell the tale and express his gratitude to Amenhotep,
whose power alone had saved him.' Another had in some
way transgressed against a goddess who, according to popu-
lar belief, resided in a hill-top of the same necropolis, and
when at last the goddess released him from the power of
the disease with which she was afflicting him, he erected a
i Pap. Sallier, I, 8, 2 ff.
. Erman, Handbuchi. 3 Turin Stela.
?
460
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
similar memorial in her honour. In the same way the dead
might afflict the living, and an officer who was tormented
by his deceased wife wrote to her a letter of remonstrance
and placed it in the hand of another dead person that it
might be duly delivered to his wife in the hereafter. Be-
sides the local gods, or demigods and the old kings, the
foreign gods of Syria, brought in by the hosts of Asiatic
slaves, appear also among those to whom the folk appeal;
Baal, Kedesh, Astarte, Reshep, Anath and Sutekh are not
uncommon names upon the votive tablets of the time, and
Sutekh, a form of Set which had wandered into Syria from
Egypt and had returned with the Hyksos, even became the
favourite and patron of the royal city of Ramses II. Animal
worship now also begins to appear both among the people
and in official circles.
The young Pharaoh under whom these momentous transi-
tions were slowly taking place was too plastic in dealing
with them for us to discover the manner of man he was.
For his records are almost all of sacerdotal origin, and in
them all the priestly adulation of the time, with its endless
reiteration of conventional flattery, prevails so largely, or we
may say often so exclusively that we can discern little indi-
viduality through the mass of meaningless verbiage. His
superb statue in Turin (Fig. 168) is proven by his surviving
body to be a faithful portrait, showing us at least the out-
ward man as he was. In person he was tall and handsome,
with features of dreamy and almost effeminate beauty, in no
wise suggestive of the manly traits which he certainly pos-
sessed. For the incident at Kadesh showed him unques-
tionably a man of fine courage with ability to rise to a
supreme crisis; while the indomitable spirit evident there
is again exhibited in the tenacity with which he pushed the
war against the great Hittite empire and carried his con-
quests, even if not lasting, far into northern Syria. After
his nearly fifteen years of campaigning, in which he more
than redeemed the almost fatal blunder at Kadesh, he was
quite ready to enjoy the well earned peace. He was inordi-
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
461
nately vain and made far more ostentatious display of his
wars on his monuments than was ever done by Thutmose
III. He loved ease and pleasure and gave himself up with-
out restraint to voluptuous enjoyments. He had an enor-
mous harem, and as the years passed his children multiplied
rapidly. He left over a hundred sons and at least half
as many daughters, several of whom he himself married.
He thus left a family so numerous that they became a
Ramessid class of nobles whom we still find over four hun-
dred years later bearing among their titles the name Ram-
ses, not as a patronymic, but as the designation of a class
or rank. Unable, perhaps, to find 'suitable wives of rank
and wealth for his army of sons, one of them, as we have
seen, received the daughter of a Syrian ship-captain. Ram-
ses took great pride in his enormous family and often
ordered his sculptors to depict his sons and daughters
in long rows upon the walls of his temples. The sons of
his youth accompanied him in his wars, and according to
Diodorus one of them was in command of each of the
divisions of his army. His favourite among them was
Khamwese, whom he made High Priest of Ptah at Memphis.
But his affection included them all, and his favourite wives
and daughters appear with noticeable frequency upon his
monuments.
As Ramses reached the thirtieth year of his reign he
celebrated his first jubilee, placing the ceremonies of the
celebration in charge of his favourite son, Khamwese, the
great magician and High Priest of Ptah, whose memory
still lived in the folk-tales of Egypt a thousand years later.
Twenty years more passed, during which Ramses celebrated
a jubilee every one to three years, instituting no less than
nine of these feasts, a far larger number than we are able
to find in the reigns of any of his predecessors. The
obelisks erected on these occasions have already claimed
our notice. With his name perpetuated in vast buildings
distributed at all points along the Nile from the marshes
| Diod., I, 47; comp. Battle of Kadesh, p. 34.
. III, 543-560.
462
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of the northern Delta to the fourth cataract, Ramses lived
on in magnificence even surpassing that of Amenhotep III.
His was the sunset glory of the venerable line which he
represented. As the years passed the sons of his youth
were taken from him and Khamwese was no longer there
to conduct the celebration of the old king's jubilees. One
by one they passed away until twelve were gone, and
the thirteenth was the eldest and heir to the throne. Yet
still the old king lived on. He had lost tlie vitality for
aggressive rule. The Libyans and the maritime peoples
allied with them, Lycians, Sardinians and the Ægean races
whom he had once swept from his coasts or impressed
into the service of his army now entered the western Delta
with impunity. The Libyans pushed forward, gradually
extending their settlements almost to the gates of Memphis
and crossed the southern apex of the Delta under the very
shadow of the walls of Heliopolis where the vizier lived.
Senile decay rendered him deaf to alarms and complaints
which would have brought instant retribution upon the
invaders in the days of his vigourous youth. Amid the
splendours of his magnificent residence in the eastern Delta
the threatening conditions at its opposite extremity never
roused him from the lethargy into which he had fallen.
Finally, having ruled for sixty seven years, and being over
ninety years of age, he passed away (1225 B. C.) none too
soon for the redemption of his empire. We are able to
look into the withered face of the hoary nonogenarian (Fig.
170), evidently little changed from what he was in those
last days of splendour in the city of Ramses, and the resem-
blance to the face of the youth in the noble Turin statue is
still very marked.
abably no Pharaoh ever left a more profound impres-
sion upon his age. A quarter of a century later began a
line of ten kings bearing his name. One of them prayed
that he might be granted a reign of sixty seven years like
that of his great ancestor, and all of them with varying suc-
*IV, 471.
A
THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II
463
cess imitated his glory. He had set his stamp upon them
all for a hundred and fifty years, and it was impossible to
be a Pharaoh without being a Ramses. Had they possessed
the aggressive vigour of the great Ramses' prime this influ-
ence might have been far less unwholesome, but in a time
when Egypt and entirely lost its expansive force the influ-
ence of Ramses' memory served only to foster the sacer-
dotal tendencies which were now dominant in the state.
It was thus the Ramses of the latter half of his reign, whose
influence was most potent, and in a day when Egypt should
have been girding her loins and husbanding her resources
for a struggle involving her very existence, she was relin-
quishing her sword to mercenary strangers and lavishing
her wealth upon temples already too richly endowed for the
economic safety of the state.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FINAL DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE: MERNEPTAH
AND RAMSES III
2
EGYPT was now on the defensive. This was the result
of conditions both within and without. As we have seen,
the nation had lost its expansive power and the impulse
which resulted from the expulsion of the Hyksos three
hundred and fifty years before was no longer felt. The
exploits of Thutmose III's generals were still narrated,
and garnished with legendary wonders they still circulated
among the people. But the spirit which had stirred the
heroes of the first Asiatic conquests had now vanished.
While this was the condition within, without all was tur-
bulence and unrest. The restless maritime peoples of the
northern Mediterranean, creeping along the coasts, sought
plunder or places for permanent settlement, and together
with the Libyans on the one hand and the peoples of remoter
Asia Minor on the other, they broke in wave on wave upon
the borders of the Pharaoh's empire. Egypt was inevitably
thrown on the defensive, her day of conquest and aggres-
sion was passed and for six hundred years no serious effort
to extend her borders was made. For the next sixty years
after the death of Ramses II we shall be able to watch the
struggle of the Pharaohs merely to preserve the empire,
which it had been the ambition of their great ancestors
rather to extend. At this crisis in the affairs of the nation,
after it had been under the rule of an aged man for twenty
years and much needed the vigourous hand of a young and
active monarch, the enfeebled Ramses was succeeded by
his thirteenth son, Merneptah, now far advanced in years.
Thus one old man succeeded another upon the throne. The
result was what might have been expected. Nothing was
464


Fig. 170.-HEAD OF RAMSES II.
From his mummy. (Cairo Museum.)
Fig. 171.–VICTORIOUS HYMN
OF MERNEPTAH.
Containing the earliest-known refer-
ence to Israel. See pp. 465, 466,
470, and 471-72.

1714
ON
Fig. 172.-PELESET OR PHILISTINE PRISONERS OF RAMSES III.
Relief on the second pylon at Medinet Habu.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 465
immediately done to check the bold incursions of the Liby-
ans and their maritime allies on the west. The death of
Ramses was not followed by any disturbance in the Asiatic
dominions in so far as we can see. The northern border
in Syria was as far north as the upper Orontes valley, in-
cluding at least part of the Amorite country in which Mer-
neptah had a royal city bearing his name, probably inherited
from his father and renamed. With the Hittite kingdom
he enjoyed undisturbed peace, doubtless under the terms
of the old treaty, negotiated by his father forty six years
before. Indeed Merneptah sent shiploads of grain to the
Hittites to relieve them in time of famine; but he must have
been fully paid for the shipment, although one might infer
from his reference to it that it was a work of philanthropy.
By the end of his second year, however, he had reason to
rue the good will shown his father's ancient enemy. It will
be remembered that among the allies of the Hittites at the
battle of Kadesh there were already maritime peoples like
the Lycians and Dardanians. In some way Merneptah
must have discovered that the Hittites were now involved
in the incursions of these peoples in the western Delta in
alliance with the Libyans. Perhaps for the sake of further
conquest in Syria, they had given the Libyans and their
allies at least moral support and actively stirred rebellion
among the Pharaoh's Asiatic cities. However this may be,
the year three (about 1223 B. C.) found widespread revolt
against him in Asia; Askalon at the very gates of Egypt,
the powerful city of Gezer at the lower end of the valley of
Ajalon, leading up from the sea-plain to Jerusalem; Ye-
noam, one of the Lebanon Tripolis given by Thutmose III
to Amon two hundred and sixty years before, the tribes
of Israel and all western Syria-Palestine as far as it was
controlled by the Pharaoh; all these rose against their
Egyptian overlord. We have nothing but a song of tri-
umph to tell us of the ensuing war; but it is evident that
Merneptah appeared in Asia in his third year, and in
I III, 580, I. 24.
III, 629-35.
30
466
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
791
spite of his advanced years carried the campaign to a suc-
cessful issue. It is probable, indeed, that even the Hittites
did not escape his wrath, though we cannot suppose that
the aged Merneptah could have done more than plunder a
border town or two. The revolting cities were severely
punished and all Palestine was again humiliated and
brought completely under the yoke. Among the revolters
who suffered were some of the tribes of Israel who had
now secured a footing in Palestine, as we saw at the close
of the Eighteenth and opening of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
They were sufficiently amalgamated to be referred to as
“Israel,” and they here make their first appearance in
history as a people. Gezer must have cost Merneptah some
trouble and perhaps withstood a siege; in any case he there-
after styled himself in his titulary “Binder of Gezer,”
as if its subjugation were a notable achievement. Such a
siege would explain why Merneptah was unable to move
against the invaders of the western Delta until his fifth
year, as the investment of such a stronghold as Gezer
might have occupied him another year. When he returned
the Egyptian domains in Asia had been saved, but it is
not probable that he had advanced the inherited frontier.
Meantime the situation in the west was serious in the
extreme; the hordes of Tehenu-Libyans were pushing fur-
ther into the Delta from their settlements along the northern
coast of Africa west of Egypt. It is possible that some of
their advance settlers had even reached the canal of Heli-
opolis.2 Little is known of the Libyans at this time. Im-
mediately upon the Egyptian border seems to have been
the territory of the Tehenu; further west came the tribes
known to the Egyptians as Lobu or Rebu, the Libyans of
· the Greeks, by which name also the Egyptians designated
these western peoples as a whole. On the extreme west, and
extending far into then unknown regions, lived the Mesh-
wesh, or Maxyes, of Herodotus. They were all doubtless
the ancestors of the Berber tribes of North Africa. They
1 III, 606.
* III, 576.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 467
were far from being totally uncivilized barbarians, but
were skilled in war, well armed and capable of serious en-
terprises against the Pharaoh. Just at this time they were
rapidly consolidating, and under good leadership gave
promise of becoming an aggressive and formidable state,
with its frontier not ten days' march from the Pharaoh's
residence in the eastern Delta. The whole western Delta
was strongly tinctured with Libyan blood and Libyan fam-
ilies were now constantly crossing the western border of
the Delta as far as the “great river" as the western or
Canopic mouth of the Nile was called. Others had pene-
trated to the two northern oases which lie southwest of the
Fayum. "They spend their time going about the land
tighting to fill their bodies daily," says Merneptah's record,
“they come to the land of Egypt to seek the necessities of
their mouths.''1 Emboldened by their long immunity, the
Libyans assumed an organized offensive, and what had
been but a scattered immigration now became a compact
invasion. Meryey, king of the Libyans, forced the Tehenu
to join him and, supported by roving bands of maritime
adventurers from the coast, he invaded Egypt. He brought
his wife and his children with him, as did also his allies3
and the movement was clearly an immigration as well as
an invasion. The allies were the now familiar Sherden
or Sardinians; the Shekelesh, possibly the Sikeli natives
of early Sicily; Ekwesh, perhaps Achæans, the Lycians,
who had preyed on Egypt since the days of Amenhotep III;
and the Teresh, doubtless the Tyrsenians or Etruscans.
It is with these wandering marauders that the peoples of
Europe emerge for the first time upon the arena of history,
although we have seen them in their material documents
since the Middle Kingdom. This crossing to Africa by the
northern Mediterranean peoples is but one of the many such
ventures which in prehistoric ages brought over the white
race whom we know as Libyans. Judging from the num-
bers who were afterward slain or captured, the Libyan king
1 III, 580.
' III, 570.
SIII, 595.
III, 579.
4
468
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
must have commanded at least some twenty thousand men
or more.
2
Merneptah, at last aroused to the situation, was fortify-
ing Heliopolis and Memphis,' when news of the danger
reached him late in March of his fifth year. Instantly
summoning his officials, he ordered them to muster the
troops and have the army ready to move in fourteen days.
The aged king had a reassuring dream, in which Ptah
appeared in gigantic stature beside him and extended him
a sword, telling him to banish all fear. By the middle
of April the Egyptian force was in the western Delta, and
on the evening of the same day came within striking dis-
tance of the enemy. Near a place called Perire, the loca-
tion of which, although not exactly certain, is to be placed
somewhere on the main road leading westward out of the
Delta into the Libyan country a few miles in from the fron-
tier fort and station guarding the road at the point where
it entered the Delta. In the vicinity of Perire,' among the
opulent vineyards of the region there was a chateau of
the Pharaoh and thence eastward extended the broad pros-
pect of nodding grainfields where the rich Delta harvest was
now fast ripening for the sickle. Upon such a prospect of
smiling plenty the barbarian host looked down as they
pushed past the western frontier forts. By the Pharaoh's
Perire chateau, on the morning of April fifteenth, battle
was joined. The contest lasted six hours when the Egyptian
archers drove the allies from the field with immense loss.
As is customary in modern times at this point in a battle,
Merneptah now immediately threw in his horse in pursuit
of the flying enemy, who were harried and decimated till
they reached the “Mount of the Horns of the Earth,” as
the Egyptians called the edge of the plateau on the west of
the Delta into which they escaped. King Meryey had fled
from the field as soon as he saw the action going against
him. He made good his escape, but all his household fur-
1 III, 576.
9 III, 581.
III, 582,
4 III, 583.
6 III, 000.
. III, 584, 600.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTANI AND RAMSES III 469
1
niture and his family fell into the hands of the Egyptians.
The energetic pursuit resulted in a great slaughter and
inany prisoners. No less than nine thousand of the in-
vaders fell, of whom at least one third were among the
maritime allies of the Libyans; while probably as many
more were taken prisoner. Among the dead were six sons
of the Libyan king. The booty was enormous; some nine
thousand copper swords and of weapons of all sorts and
similar equipment no less than over one hundred and twenty
thousand pieces. Besides these there were the fine weapons
and vessels in precious metal taken from the camp of the
Libyan king's household and chiefs, comprising over three
thousand pieces. When the camp had been thoroughly
looted its leathern tents were fired and the whole went up
in smoke and flame."
The army then returned in triumph to the royal residence
in the eastern Delta bearing laden upon asses the hands and
other trophies cut from the bodies of the slain. The booty
and the trophies were brought beneath the palace balcony,
where the king inspected them and showed himself to the
rejoicing multitude. He then assembled the nobles in the
great hall of the palace where he harangued them. What
was more important, there now came to him a letter from
the commandant of one of the fortresses on the frontier of
the western Delta, stating that the Libyan king had escaped
past the Egyptian cordon in the darkness of the night; and
adding information to the effect that the Libyans had repu-
diated and dethroned their discomfited king and chosen
another in his place who was hostile to him and would fight
him.' It was evident therefore that the aggressive party
in Libya had fallen and that no further trouble from that
quarter need be apprehended during the reign of Merneptah
at least.
In the rejoicing of the people which followed this great
deliverance, there is a note not only of exuberant triumph
* III, 589, 610.
I III, 584.
III, 587.
* III, 588.
6 Ibid.
SIII, 589.
III, 580, 610.
470
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
but also of intense relief. The constant plundering at the
hands of Libyan hordes, which the people of the western
Delta had endured for nearly a generation was now ended.
Not only was a great national danger averted, but an intol-
erable situation was relieved. Little wonder that the people
sang: “Great joy has come in Egypt, rejoicing comes forth
from the towns of Tomeri [Egypt]. They talk of the vic-
tories which Merneptah has achieved among the Tehenu:
'How amiable is he, the victorious ruler! How magnified
is the king among the gods! How fortunate is he, the com-
manding lord! Sit happily down and talk or walk far out
upon the way for there is no fear in the heart of the people.
The strongholds are left to themselves, the wells are opened
again. The messengers skirt the battlements of the walls,
shaded from the sun, until their watchmen wake. The sol-
diers lie sleeping and the border-scouts are in the field (or
not] as they desire. The herds of the field are left as
cattle sent forth without herdman, crossing at will the full-
ness of the stream. There is no uplifting of a shout in the
night:“Stop! Behold one comes, one comes with the speech
of strangers !” One comes and goes with singing, and there
is no lamentation of mourning people. The towns are settled
again anew; and as for one that ploweth his harvest, he shall
eat of it. Re has turned himself to Egypt; he was born des-
tined to be her protector, even the king Merneptah.'
The kings are overthrown, saying, “Salâm!”
Not one holds up his head ainong the nine nations of the bow.
Wasted is Tehenu,
The Hittite Land is pacified,
Plundered is the Canaan, with every evil,
Carried off is Askalon,
Seized upon is Gezer,
Yenoam is made as a thing not existing.
Israel is desolated, her seed is not,
Palestine has become a [defenseless) widow for Egypt.
All lands are united, they are pacified;
Every one that is turbulent is bound by king Merpeptah.'
IIII, 616-617.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 471
$
It is this concluding song, reverting also to Merneptah's
triumphs in Asia, which tells us nearly all that we know of
his Asiatic war. It is a kind of summary of all his victories,
and forms a fitting conclusion of the rejoicing of the people.
Thus the sturdy old Pharaoh, although bowed down with
years, had repelled from his empire the first assault, pre-
monitory of the coming storin. He reigned at least five
years longer, apparently enjoying profound peace in the
north. He strengthened his Asiatic frontier with a fortress
bearing his name,' and in the south he quelled a rebellion
in Nubia. The commonly accepted statement that toward
the end of his reign a Syrian at court gained control of
Merneptah and became regent is entirely without founda-
tion and due to misunderstanding of the titles of Ben-'Ozen,
the Syrian marshal of his court, to whom we have already
referred. The long reign of Ramses II, with its prodi-
gality in buildings, left Merneptah little means to gratify
his own desires in this respect. Moreover, his days were
numbered and there was not time to hew from the quarries
and transport the materials for such a temple as it had now
become customary for each Pharaoh to erect at Thebes for
his own mortuary service. Under these circumstances, Mer-
neptah had no hesitation in resorting to the most brutal
destruction of the monuments of his ancestors. To obtain
materials for his mortuary temple he made a quarry of the
noble sanctuary of Amenhotep III on the western plain,
ruthlessly tore down its walls and split up its superb statues
to serve as blocks in his own building. Among other things
thus appropriated was a magnificent black granite stela
over ten feet high (Fig. 171) containing a record of Amen-
hotep III's buildings. Merneptah erected it in his new
building with face to the wall, and his scribes cut upon the
back a hymn of victory over the Libyans, of which we have
quoted the conclusion above. It has become notable because
it contains the earliest known reference to Israel.8 Mer-
I Pap. Anast, VI, pl. 4, 1. 13-pl, 5, 1. 3.
· III, p. 259, note a.
* See above, p. 449. * II, 878 fr. SUI, 602-817. • See p. 470.
472
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
neptah's desecration of the great works of the earlier Phar-
aohs did not even spare those of his own father who, it
will be remembered, had set him a notorious example in this
respect. Ramses had the audacity, after a life time of such
vandalism, to record in his Abydos temple a long appeal to
his descendants to respect his foundations and his monu-
ments, but not even his own son showed them the respect
which he craved. We find Merneptah's name constantly
on the monuments of his father.
After a reign of at least ten years Merneptah passed away
(1215 B. C.) and was buried at Thebes in the valley with
his ancestors. His body has recently been found there,
quite discomfiting the adherents of the theory that, as the
undoubted Pharaoh of the Hebrew exodus, he must have
been drowned in the Red Sea ! However much we may
despise him for his desecration and shameful destruction
of the greatest works of his ancestors, it must be admitted
at the same time that at an advanced age, when such respon-
sibility must have sat heavily, he manfully met a grave
crisis in the history of his country, which might have thrown
it into the hands of a foreign dynasty.
The laxity which had accompanied the long continued rule
of two old men gave ample opportunity for intrigue, con-
spiracy and the machinations of rival factions. The death
of Merneptah was the beginning of a conflict for the throne
which lasted for many years. Two pretenders were at
first successful: Amenmeses and Merneptah-Siptah. The
former was but an ephemeral usurper, who through some
collateral line of the royal house perhaps possessed a dis-
tant claim to the throne. He was hostile to the memory of
Merneptah, while his successor, Merneptah-Siptah, who
quickly supplanted him, took possession of his monuments
in turn and destroyed his tomb in the western valley of
Thebes. We shall now find that Nubia was a fruitful source
of hostility to the royal house. As did the Roman provinces
in the days of that empire, Nubia offered a field, at a safe
* III, 486.
& III, 041.
TIIE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III
473
1
distance from the seat of power, where a sentiment against
the ruling house and in favour of some pretender might
be secretly encouraged without danger of detection. It was
perhaps in Nubia that Siptah gained the ascendancy. How-
ever this may be, we find him in his first year installing his
viceroy there in person, and sending one of his adherents
about distributing rewards there. By such methods and by
marrying Tewosret, probably a princess of the old Pharaonic
line, he succeeded in maintaining himself for at least six
years, during which the tribute from Nubia seems to have
been regularly delivered,2 and the customary intercourse
with the Syrian provinces maintained. The viceroy whom
he appointed in Nubia was one Seti, who was now also, as
we have before observed, “governor of the gold country of
Amon.”4 This brought him into intimate relations with
the powerful priesthood of Amon at Thebes, and it is not
impossible that he improved the opportunity of this inter-
course and of his influential position to do what Siptah had
himself done in Nubia. In any case, as Siptah now disap-
pears a Seti succeeds him as the second of that name. Не
was later regarded as the sole legitimate king of the three
who followed Merneptah. He seems to have ruled with
some success, for he built a small temple at Karnak and
another at Eshmunen-Hermopolis. He took possession of
the tomb of Siptah and his queen, Tewosret, although he
was afterward able to excavate one of his own. But his
lease of power was brief; the long uncurbed nobility, the
hosts of mercenaries in the armies, the powerful priest-
hoods, the numerous foreigners in positions of rank at court,
ambitious pretenders and their adherents,-all these aggres-
sive and conflicting influences demanded for their control a
strong hand and unusual qualities of statesmanship in the
ruler. These qualities Seti II did not possess, and he fell
a victim to conditions which would have mastered many a
stronger man than he.
With the disappearance of Seti II those who had over-
I III, 043-4,
III, 044.
* III, 651.
• III, 140.
474
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
thrown him were unable to gain the coveted power of which
they had deprived him. Complete anarchy ensued. The
whole country fell into the hands of the local nobles, chiefs
and rulers of towns, and the condition of the common people
under such misrule was such as only the orient ever expe-
riences. “Every man was thrown out of his right; they
had no chief [literally, chief mouth'] for many years
formerly until other times. The land of Egypt was in the
hands of nobles and rulers of towns; one slew his neighbour,
great and small." How long the period of “inany years
may have been we cannot now deterinine, but the nation
must have been well on toward dissolution into the petty
kingdoms and principalities out of which it was consolidated
at the dawn of history. Then came famine, with all the
misery which the Arab historians later depict in their annals
of similar periods under the Mamluke sultans in Egypt.
Indeed the record of this period left us by Ramses III in the
great Papyrus Harris, in spite of its brevity, reads like a
chapter from the rule of some Mamluke sultan of the
fourteenth century. Profiting by the helplessness of the
people and the preoccupation of the native rulers, one of
those Syrians who had held an official position at the court
seized the crown, or at least the power, and ruled in tyranny
and violence. “He set the whole land tributary before him
together; he united his companions and plundered their pos-
sessions. They made the gods like men and no offerings
were presented in the temples.' Property rights were
therefore no longer respected and even the revenues of the
temples were diverted.
As might have been expected the Libyans were not long in
perceiving the helplessness of Egypt. Immigration across
the western frontier of the Delta began again; plundering
bands wandered among the towns from the vicinity of Mem-
phis to the Mediterranean, or took possession of the fields
and settled on both shores of the Canopic branch. At this
juncture, about 1200 B. C., there arose one Setnakht, a strong
1 IV, 398.
* IV, 40, II. 20-22; 405.
& Ibid.
Ibid.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 475
man of uncertain origin, but probably a descendant of the
old line of Seti I and Ramses II; and although the land was
beset with foes within and without, he possessed the quali-
ties of organization and the statesmanship first to make
good his claims against the innumerable local aspirants to
the crown; and having subdued these, to restore order and
reorganize the almost vanished state of the old Pharaohs.
His great task was accomplished with brilliant success, but
all that we know of it is contained in the brief words left
us by his son, Ramses III, who says of him: “But when
the gods inclined themselves to peace, to set the land in its
right according to its accustomed manner, they established
their son, who came forth from their limbs to be ruler of
every land, upon their great throne, even king Setnakht.
He set in order the entire land, which had been rebel-
lious; he slew the rebels who were in the land of Egypt;
he cleansed the great throne of Egypt. . . . Every man
knew his brother, who had been walled in (obliged to live
behind protecting walls). He established the temples in
possession of the divine offerings to offer to the gods accord-
ing to their customary stipulations."! It will be seen that
the Syrian usurper had alienated the priesthoods by vio-
lating their endowments, and that Setnakht took advantage
of this fact and made head against him by conciliating these
the wealthiest and most powerful communities in Egypt.
We shall readily understand that Setnakht's arduous
achievement left him little time for monuments which inight
have perpetuated his memory. Indeed, he could not even
find opportunity to excavate for himself a tomb at Thebes;
but seized that of Siptah and his queen, Tewosret, which
had already been appropriated, but eventually not used by
Seti II. His reign must have been brief, for his highest
date is his first year, scratched on the back of a leaf of
papyrus by a scribe in trying his pen. Before he died
(1198 B. C.) he named as his successor his son, Ramses,
1 IV, 399.

93
Longitude
East
35
nom
40
Greenwich
SO
BLACK
SEA
Irw
• Boghaz-köt.
CASPIAN SEA
GBI
1" THE
MARSHES
S
A А.
M
R
MXCEN À E ÅN
troll D
HITTITES
Nintsel
River
ASSYRIA
"ISLANDŞIN THE MIDST OF THE SA
CATALKényew
MEDITERRANEAN
SE A Byblos os
Berat
Sidonge
Tyre
leset
Bagdad
Cyrene
• Damascus
КҮЕВ
LEBU
OR LIBYANS
Babylon
MESHWT
OR MAX
Jerusalem
Alexandria
Paraetonium
TEMEH
Memphis
Ammonium
or Oasis Siwa
DESERT
TEITENU Hell polis
Rhinocolura
SINAD
Sarbuhel Khadem
wady Naghara (Mines)
Oasis Parva
Quarry
Oasis Siut Quarryx
Leucos
Limer
Oasis
Oasis Magna
Thebes
2100 KUISHI
4
R
Assuan
First Cataract
Mines
Berenice
CANCER
TROPIC
LIBYAN
NILO
Second Cataract
River
Solet
Gem Aton
Third Cataract
Foruren
Cataract
Napata Filth (ataract
Α Ε Τ Η IDO PIA
E
Sixth Cutaruct
Meroe
Khartuing
H
Adulis
KORDOFAN
Nile
Blue
Axuihis
Seurar
DARFUR
Wild
wile
GULF OF A DEN
30 MAL!
Scale of Statute Miles
100 200 300
po
ago
THE MATTHEW
NORTHAUP WORKS, WITALO
MAP No. 12. EGYPT AND THE ANCIENT WORLD.
(Some modern places and names are inserted for convenience)
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 477
the third of the name, who had already been of assistance
to him in the government.
With the Ramessid line, now headed by Ramses III,
Manetho begins a new dynasty, the Twentieth, although the
old line was evidently already interrupted after Merneptah,
and as we have said, probably resumed again in the person
of Setnakht. Ramses III inherited a situation precisely
like that which confronted Merneptah at his accession; but
being a young and vigourous man, he was better able suc-
cessfully to cope with it. He immediately perfected the
organization for military service, dividing all the people
into classes successively liable for such service. A large
proportion of the standing army, not exactly determinable,
consisted of Sherden mercenaries, as in Ramses II's day,
while a contingent of the Kehek, a Libyan tribe, was also
in the ranks. These mercenaries of course served as long
as they were eligible. Since the native contingent was con-
stantly shifting, as class after class passed through the army,
the Pharaoh came more and more to depend upon the
mercenaries as the permanent element in his army. The
affairs of the newly organized government gave Ramses no
opportunity to deal with the chronic situation in the western
Delta until he was rudely awakened to the necessity for
action, as Merneptah had been. But more serious develop-
ments had taken place since the latter's Libyan war. The
restless and turbulent peoples of the northern Mediterranean,
whom the Egyptians designated the peoples of the sea,
were showing themselves in ever increasing numbers in the
south. Among these, two in particular whom we have not
met before, the Thekel and the Peleset, better known as the
Philistines (Fig. 172) of Hebrew history, were prominently
aggressive. The Peleset were one of the early tribes of
Crete, and the Thekel may have been another branch of the
pre-Greek Sikeli or Sicilians. Accompanied by contingents
of Denyen (Danaoi), Sherden, Weshesh and Shekelesh, the
first two peoples mentioned had begun an eastward and south-
'IV, 402.
* IV, 44.
478
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ward movement, doubtless impelled by pressure of other
peoples advancing in their rear. Knowing nothing of their
language or institutions, and having only a series of Egyp-
tian reliefs, which depict these men, their costumes, weapons,
ships and utensils, it is useless for us to speculate as to their
racial affinities; but their immigration evidently is one of the
earliest instances of that slow but resistless southern shift,
which, first observable here, is traceable far down in Euro-
pean history. Moving gradually southward in Syria, some
of these immigrants had now advanced perhaps as far as the
upper waters of the Orontes and the kingdom of Amor ;
while the more venturesome of their ships were coasting
along the Delta and stealing into the mouths of the river on
plundering expeditions. They readily fell in with the plans
of the Libyan leaders to invade and plunder the rich and
fertile Delta. Meryey, the Libyan king, deposed after his
defeat by Merneptah, had been followed by one, Wermer,
who in his turn was succeeded by a king Themer, the leader
of the present invasion of Egypt. By land and water they
advanced into the western Delta where Ramses III promptly
met them and gave them battle near a town called "User-
mare-Meriamon (Ramses III] is Chastiser of Temeh
[Libya]. Their ships were destroyed or captured and their
army beaten back with enormous loss. Over twelve thousand
five hundred were slain upon the field and at least a thou-
sand captives were taken. Of the killed a large proportion
were from the ranks of the sea-rovers. There was the
usual triumph at the royal residence, when the king viewed
the captives and the trophies from the balcony of the palace,
while his nobles rejoiced below. Amon, who had granted
the great victory, did not fail to receive his accustomed
sacrifice of living victims,Ⓡ and all Egypt rejoiced in re-
stored security, such that, as Ramses boasted, a woman
might walk abroad as far as she wished with her veil raised
without fear of molestation. To strengthen his frontier
1 IV, 39.
8 IV, 44.
's IV, 52.
• IV, 52-4.
IV42, 52-5. 61V, 57–8.
TIV, 47, 1. 73.
3
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III
479
against the Libyans Ramses now built a town and strong-
hold named after himself upon the western road where it
left the Delta and passed westward into the desert plateau.
It was upon an elevated point known as the “Mount of the
Horns of the Earth," already mentioned by Merneptah in his
war-records."
Meanwhile the rising tide from the north was threatening
gradually to overwhelm the Egyptian Empire; we have seen
its outermost waves breaking on the shores of the Delta.
The advanced galleys and the land forces of the northern
maritime peoples which supported the Libyans against
Ramses III in the year five were but the premonitory skir-
mish line of a far more serious advance, to which we have
already adverted. It was now in full motion southward
through Syria. Its hosts were approaching both by land,
with their families in curious, heavy, two-wheeled ox-carts,
and by sea in a numerous fleet that skirted the Syrian coast.
Well armed and skilled in warfare as the invaders were,
the Syrian city-states were unable to withstand their onset.
They overran all the Hittite country of northern Syria as
fas as Carchemish on the Euphrates, past Arvad on the
Phænician coast, and up the Orontes valley to the kingdom
of Amor, which they devastated. The Syrian dominions
of the Hittites must have been lost and the Hittite power in
Syria completely broken. The fleet visited Alasa, or Cyprus;
and nowhere was an effective resistance offered them. “They
came with fire, prepared before them, forward to Egypt.
Their main support was Peleset, Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen
and Weshesh. These lands were united and they laid their
hands upon the land as far as the circle of the earth.")
“The countries, which came from their isles in the midst of
the sea, they advanced to Egypt, their hearts relying upon
their arms." In Amor they established a central camp and
apparently halted for a time.
I IV, 102, 107; III, 588, 600.
* Around which the “Great Circle” (Okeanos) fowe (IV, 64).
· IV, 77.
* IV, 64.
480
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Ramses III threw himself with great energy into the
preparations for repelling the attack. He fortified his
Syrian frontier and rapidly gathered a fleet, which he dis-
tributed in the northern harbours. From his palace bal-
cony he personally superintended the equipment of the
infantry,2 and when all was in readiness he set out for
Syria to lead the campaign himself. Where the land-battle
took place we are unable to determine, but as the North-
erners had advanced to Amor, it was at most not further
north than that region. We learn nothing from Ramses
III's records concerning it beyond vague and general state-
ments of the defeat of the enemy, although in his reliefs
we see his Sherden mercenaries breaking through the scat-
tered lines of the enemy and plundering their ox-carts, bear-
ing the women and children and the belongings of the North-
As there were Sherden among the invaders, Ramses
III's mercenaries were thus called upon to fight their own
countrymen. Ramses was also able to reach the scene of
the naval battle, probably in one of the northern harbours
on the coast of Phænicia, early enough to participate in the
action from the neighbouring shore. He had manned his
fleet with masses of the dreaded Egyptian archers, whose fire
was so effective that the ranks of the heavy armed North-
erners were completely decimated before they could ap-
proach within boarding distance. This fire was augmented
and rendered still more effective by bodies of Egyptian
archers whom Ramses stationed along the shore, he himself
personally drawing his bow against the hostile fleet. As
the Egyptians then advanced to board, the enemy's ships
were thrown into confusion (Fig. 173). “Capsized and
perishing in their places, their hearts are taken, their souls
fly away, and their weapons are cast out upon the sea.
His arrows pierce whomsoever he will among them, and he
who is hit falls into the water. “They were dragged,
overturned and laid low upon the beach; slain and made
heaps from stern to bow of their galleys, while all their
LIV, 65.
& IV, 70-71.
• IV, 75.
13

FIG. 173.-NAVAL VICTORY OF RAMSES III OVER NORTHERN MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES.
Reliefs on the north wall at Medinet Habu. The Egyptian galleys (at the left), by heavy archery fire, are throwing the enemy (on the right) into confusion. One of
the northern galleys has capsized. See p. 480.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 481
things were cast upon the waters, for a remembrance of
Egypt." Those who escaped the fleet and swam ashore,
were captured by the waiting Egyptians on the beach. In
these two engagements the Pharaoh struck his formidable
enemy so decisive a blow that his suzerainty, at least as far
north as Amor, could not be questioned by the invaders.
They continued to arrive in Syria, but Ramses III's double
victory made these new settlers and their new settlements
vassals of Egypt, paying tribute into the treasury of the
Pharaoh. The Egyptian Empire in Asia had again been
saved and Ramses returned to his Delta residence to enjoy
a well earned triumph.
He was now given a short respite, during which he seems
not to have relaxed his vigilance in the least. This was
well, for another migration of the peoples in the far west
caused an overflow which again threatened the Delta. The
Meshwesh, a tribe living behind the Libyans, that is, on the
west of them, were the cause of the trouble. The Libyans
had undoubtedly received a chastisement in the fifth year
of Ramses III such that they had no immediate desire to
repeat their attempt upon the Delta; but the Meshwesh
invaded the Libyan country and laid it waste,' thus forcing
the unfortunate Libyans into an alliance against Egypt.
Other tribes were involved, but the leader of the move-
ment was Meshesher, son of Keper, king of the Mesh-
wesh, whose firm purpose was to migrate and settle in the
Delta. "The hostile foe had taken counsel again to spend
their lives in the confines of Egypt, that they might take
the hills and plains as their own districts." ««•We will
settle in Egypt, so spake they with one accord, and they
continuously entered the boundaries of Egypt.'" By the
twelfth month in Ramses' eleventh year they had begun
the invasion, entering along the western road as in the
time of Merneptah and investing the fortress of Hatsho,
some eleven miles from the edge of the desert plateau, near
the canal called “The Water of Re." Ramses attacked
3
* IV, 87.
* IV, 86, 95.
• IV, 96.
* IV, 88.
I IV, 66.
31
482
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
them under the walls of Hatsho, froin the ramparts of
which the Egyptian garrison poured a destructive archery
fire into the ranks of the Meshwesh, already discomfited
by the Pharaoh's onset. The invaders were thus thrown
into a tumultuous rout and received the fire of another
neighbouring stronghold as they fled.' Ramses pressed
the pursuit for eleven miles along the western road to the
margin of the plateau, thus fairly driving the invaders out
of the country. He halted at the fortified town and station,
“Town (or House] of Usermare-Meriamon [Ramses III],
which, it will be remembered, he had founded upon some
high point at the edge of the plateau, the “Mount of the
Horns of the Earth.” Meshesher, the chief of the Mesh-
wesh, was slain and his father Keper was captured, two
thousand one hundred and seventy five of their followers
fell, while two thousand and fifty two, of whom over a
fourth were females, were taken captive.“ Ramses tells
of the disposition which he made of these captives: “I
settled their leaders in strongholds in my name.
to them captains of archers and chief men of the tribes,
branded and made into slaves, impressed with my name;
their wives and their children likewise."6 Nearly a thou-
sand of the Meshwesh were assigned to the care of a temple-
herd called “Ramses III is the Conqueror of the Meshwesh
at the Waters of Re.'* Similarly he established in cele-
bration of his victory an annual feast which he called in his
temple calendar, “Slaying of the Meshwesh”;' and he
assumed in his elaborate titulary after his name the epithets,
“Protector of Egypt, Guardian of the Countries, Conqueror
of the Meshwesh, Spoiler of the Land of Temeh.'»8 The
western tribes had thus been hurled back from the borders
of the Delta for the third successive time, and Ramses had
no occasion to apprehend any further aggressions from that
quarter. The expansive power of the Libyan peoples,
I gave
"IV, 102, 107.
3 IV, 90, II. 11-12; 97; 103, 11. 11-12; 111.
IV, 405.
. IV, 224.
TIV, 145.
IV, 102.
. IV, 111.
SIV, 84.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAIL AND RAMSES III 483
although by no means exhausted, now no longer appeared
in united national action, but as they had done from pre-
historic times they continued to sift gradually into the Delta
in scattered and desultory migration, not regarded by the
Pharaoh as a source of danger.
The coinmotion among the northern maritime peoples,
although checked by Ramses III upon his Syrian frontier,
ad evidently greatly disturbed the vassals of Egypt there.
Whether as of old in the days of Hittite aggression the
king of Amor had made common cause with the invader we
cannot now discern; but following closely upon the last
Libyan campaign, Ramses found it necessary to appear
in Amor with his army. The limits and the course of the
campaign are but obscurely hinted at in the meagre records
now surviving. He stormed at least five strong cities, one
of which was in Amor; another depicted in Ramses' reliefs
as surrounded by water was perhaps Kadesh; a third, rising
upon a hill, cannot be identified; and both of the remaining
two, one of which was called Ereth, were defended by Hit-
tites. He probably did not penetrate far into the Hittite ter-
ritory, although its cities were rapidly falling away from the
Hittite king and much weakened by the attacks of the sea-
peoples. It was the last hostile passage between the Pharaoh
and the Hittites; both empires were swiftly declining to their
fall, and in the annals of Egypt we never again hear of the
Hittites in Syria. Ramses places in his lists' of conquered
regions the cities of northern Syria to the Euphrates, includ-
ing all that the Empire had ever ruled in its greatest days.
These lists, however, are largely copied from those of his
great predecessors, and we can place no confidence in them.
He now organized the Asiatic possessions of Egypt as stably
as possible, the boundary very evidently not being any fur-
ther north than that of Merneptah, that is, just including
the Amorite kingdom on the upper Orontes. To ensure the
stability which he desired he built new fortresses wherever
1 IV, 115-135.
. IV, 120.
IV, 131, 135.
484
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
necessary in Syria and Palestine;' somewhere in Syria he
also erected a temple of Amon, containing a great image of
the state god, before which the Asiatic dynasts were obliged
to declare their fealty to Ramses by depositing their tribute
in its presence every year. Communication with Syria
was facilitated by the excavation of a great well in the desert
of Ayan,' east of the Delta, supplementing the watering
stations established there by Seti I. Only a revolt of the
Beduin of Seir interrupted the peaceful government of the
Pharaoh in Asia from this time forth.*
The influence of Egyptian commerce and administration
in Syria was evident in one important particular especially,
for it was now that the cumbrous and inconvenient clay tablet
was gradually supplemented in Syria by the handy papyrus
on which the Phænician rulers began to keep their accounts.
To supply the demand the papyrus factories of the Delta were
exporting their products in exchange for Phænician commod-
ities. It was of course impracticable, if not impossible, for
the Phænicians to keep rapid daily records on paper with pen
and ink in the cuneiform hand which was totally unsuited
to such writing materials. With the papyrus paper, there-
fore, the hand customarily written upon it in Egypt now
made its way into Phænicia, where before the tenth cen-
tury B. C. it developed into an alphabet of consonants, which
was quickly transmitted to the Ionian Greeks and thence
to Europe.
The chief function of an oriental despotism, the collec-
tion of tribute and taxes, now proceeded with the greatest
regularity. “I taxed them for their impost every year,'
says Ramses, "every town by its name gathered together
bearing their tribute." The suppression of occasional dis-
orders in Nubia? caused no disturbance of the profound
peace which now settled down upon the Empire. Ramses
himself depicts it thus: “I made the woman of Egypt to
go with uncovered ears to the place she desired, for no
• IV, 404.
1 IV, 141.
6 IV, 570, 582.
IV, 219.
. IV, 141.
8 IV, 408.
"IV, 136-8,
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAIL AND RAMSES III 485
stranger, nor any one upon the road molested her. I made
the infantry and chariotry to dwell at home in my time; the
Sherden and the Kehek (mercenaries] were in their towns
lying the length of their backs; they had no fear, for there
was no enemy from Kush, nor foe from Syria. Their
bows and their weapons reposed in their magazines, while
they were satisfied and drunk with joy. Their wives were
with them, their children at their side; they looked not be-
hind them, but their hearts were confident, for I was with
them as the defence and protection of their limbs. I sus-
tained alive the whole land, whether foreigners, common
folk, citizens or people male or female. I took a man out
of his misfortune and I gave him breath. I rescued him
from the oppressor who was of more account that he. I
set each man in his security in their towns; I sustained
alive others in the hall of petition. I settled the land in
the place where it was laid waste. The land was well satis-
fied in my reign.
Intercourse and commerce with the outside world were
now fostered by the Pharaoh as in the great days of the Em-
pire. The temples of Amon, Re and Ptah had each its own
fleet upon the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, transporting to
the god's treasury the products of Phænicia, Syria and
Punt.Ramses exploited the copper mines of Atika, a
region somewhere in the Peninsula of Sinai, sending a spe-
cial expedition thither in galleys from some Red Sea port.
They returned with great quantities of the metal which the
Pharaoh had displayed under the palace balcony that all the
people might see it. To the malachite workings of the Pen-
insula he likewise sent his messengers, who brought back
plentiful returns of the costly mineral for the king's splendid
gifts to the gods. A more important expedition consisting
of a fleet of large ships was sent on the long voyage to Punt.
The canal from the Nile through the Wadi Tumilat to the
Red Sea, existent long before this age (see p. 188), was now
seemingly stopped up and in disuse, for Ramses' ships,
1 IV, 410. . IV, 211, 270, 328.
• IV, 408.
• IV, 409.
486
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
after a successful voyage, returned to some harbour opposite
Coptos, where the entire cargo of the fleet was disembarked,
loaded on donkeys and brought overland to Coptos. Here
it was reëmbarked upon the river and floated down stream to
the royal residence in the eastern Delta. Navigation was
now perhaps on a larger and more elaborate scale even
than under the great Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Ramses tells of a sacred barge of Amon at Thebes, which
was two hundred and twenty four feet long, built in his
yards, of enormous timbers of cedar of Lebanon.?
The Pharaoh's wealth now enabled him to undertake
works of public utility and improvement. Throughout the
kingdom, and especially in Thebes and the royal residence,
he planted numerous trees, which under a sky so prevail-
ingly cloudless as that of Egypt, offered the people grate-
ful shade, in a land devoid of natural forests. He also
resumed building, which had been at a standstill since the
death of Ramses II. On the western plain of Thebes, at
the point now called Medinet Habu, he built a large and
splendid temple (Figs. 174-5) to Amont which he began
early in his reign. As the temple was extended and en-
larged from rear to front the annals of his campaigns found
place on the walls through successive years following the
growth of the building until the whole edifice became a vast
record of the king's achievements in war which the modern
visitor may read, tracing it from year to year as he passes
from the earliest halls in the rear to the latest courts and
pylon at the front. Here he may see the hordes of the
North in battle with Ramses' Sherden mercenaries, who
break through and plunder the heavy ox-carts of the in-
vaders, as we have already noticed. The first naval battle
on salt water, of which we know anything, is here depicted,
and in these reliefs we may study the armour, clothing,
weapons, war-ships and equipment of these northern
peoples with whose advent Europe for the first time emerges
upon the stage of the early world. There was a sacred
2 IV, 209.
SIV, 213, 215, 410.
* IV, 1-20, 199-194. 5 IV, 69-82.
1 IV, 407.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 487
lake before the temple with an elaborate garden, extensive
out-buildings and magazines, a palace of the king with
massive stone towers in connection with the temple struc-
ture, and a wall around the whole forming a great com-
plex which dominated the whole southern end of the west-
ern plain of Thebes, whence from the summits of its tall
pylons one might look northward along the stately line of
mortuary temples, built by the emperors. It thus formed,
as it still does, the southern terminus and the last of that
imposing array of buildings, and suggests to the thoughtful
visitor the end of the long line of imperial Pharaohs, of
whom Ramses III was indeed the last. Other buildings of
his have for the most part perished; a small temple of
Amon at Karnak (Fig. 183), which Ramses, quite sensible
of the hopelessness of any attempt to rival the vast Kar-
nak halls, placed across the axis of the main temple there,
still bears witness to his good sense in this respect.' Some
small additions to the Karnak temple,2 besides that of Mut
on the south of the Karnak group, a small sanctuary for
Khonsu only begun by Ramses III;4 sanctuaries of which
little or no trace has been discovered at Memphis and Heli-
opolis, and many chapels to various gods throughout the
land have for the most part perished entirely or left but
slight traces. In the residence city he laid out a magnificent
quarter for Amon; "it was furnished with large gardens
and places for walking about, with all sorts of date groves
hearing their fruits, and a sacred avenue brightened with
the flowers of every land." The quarter possessed nearly
eight thousand slaves for its service. He also erected
in the city a temple of Sutekh in the temenos of Ramses
II's temple. The art displayed by these buildings, in so
far as they have survived, is clearly in a decadent stage.
The lines are heavy and indolent, the colonnades have
none of the old time soaring vigour, springing from
"IV, 105.
: IV, 107-213.
SIV, 196.
* IV, 214.
o IV, 250-265, 311-328.
SIV, 355-361.
*IV, 215.
& IV, 225.
: IV, 362, 369.
$
488
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
The
the pavement and carrying the beholder's eye involun-
tarily aloft; but they visibly labour under the burden
imposed upon them and clearly express the sluggish
spirit of the decadent architect who designed them. The
work also is careless and slovenly in execution.
reliefs which cover the vast surfaces of the Medinet Habu
temple are with few exceptions but weak imitations of the
fine sculptures of Seti I at Karnak, badly drawn and exe-
cuted without feeling. Only here and there do we find a
flash of the old-time power, as in the representation of
Ramses hunting the wild bull (Fig. 176) on the walls of
this same temple, a relief which, in spite of some bad faults
in the drawing, is a composition of much strength and feel-
ing, with a notable sense of landscape. A bold and entirely
new effort of the time is the representation of the Pharaoh's
naval victory on the Syrian coast (Fig. 173), a relief re-
quiring some originality and invention, but too involved
for strength and effect.
The imitation so evident in the art of Ramses III's reign
is characteristic of the time in all respects. The records of
the reign are but weak repetitions of the earlier royal en-
comiums, embellished with figures so extremely far-fetched
as to be often unintelligible. It was with a feeling of de-
pression not easily shaken off that the author emerged from
months of application to the vast walls of the Medinet Habu
temple covered with hundreds on hundreds of lines of arid
verbiage ever reiterating the valour of the king on this or
that occasion in conventional terms which dropped from
the pen of the fawning scribe, as such words had done for
centuries. Taking up any given war, one finds that after
working through difficult inscriptions covering several
thousand square feet of wall surface, the net result is but a
meagre and bald account of a great campaign the facts of
which are scattered here and there and buried so deeply be-
neath scores of meaningless conventional phrases that they
can be discovered only with the greatest industry. The inspir-
ing figure of a young and active Pharaoh hurrying his armies
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAIL AND RAMSES III 489
from frontier to frontier of his empire and repeatedly
hurling back the most formidable invasions Egypt had ever
suffered, awoke no response in the conventional soul of the
priestly scribe, whose lot it was to write the record of these
things for the temple wall. He possessed only the worn
and long spent currency of the older dynasties from which
he drew whole hymns, songs and lists to be furbished up
and made to do service again in perpetuating the glory of
a really able and heroic ruler. Perhaps we should not com-
plain of the scribe, for the king himself considered it his
highest purpose to restore and reproduce the times of
Ramses II. His own name was made up of the first half
of Ramses II's throne-name, and the second half of his
personal name; he named his children and his horses after
those of Ramses II, and like him, he was followed on his
campaigns by a tame lion who trotted beside his chariot on
the march. The achievements of Ramses III were entirely
dictated by the circumstances in which he found himself,
rather than by any positive tendencies in his own character.
But it must be admitted that he was confronted by a situa-
tion against which he could have done little even if he had
attempted to make head against it. All immediate danger
from without had now apparently disappeared, but the
nation was slowly declining as a result of decay from within.
While Ramses III had shown himself fully able to cope
with the assaults from the outside, he did not possess the
qualities of virile independence which in some men would
have dictated strenuous opposition to the prevailing ten-
dencies of the time within the state.
This was especially evident in his attitude toward the
religious conditions inherited from the Nineteenth Dynasty.
We have already pointed out that Setnakht, Ramses III's
father, gained the throne by conciliating the priesthoods,
as so many of his successful predecessors had done. Ram-
ses III made no effort to shake off the priestly influences
with which the crown was thus encumbered. The temples
were fast becoming a grave political and economic menace.
490
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
In the face of this fact Ramses III continued the policy of
his ancestors, and with the most lavish liberality poured
the wealth of the royal house into the sacred coffers. He
himself says: “I did mighty deeds and benefactions, a nu-
merous multitude, for the gods and goddesses of South and
North. I wrought upon their images in the gold-louses, I
built that which had fallen to ruin in their temples. I made
houses and temples in their courts; I planted for them
groves; I dug for them lakes; I founded for the divine
offerings of barley and wheat, wine, incense, fruit, cattle
and fowl; I built the [chapels called] 'Shadows of Re' for
their districts, abiding, with divine offerings for every
day." He is here speaking of the smaller temples of the
country, while for the three great gods of the land: Amon,
Re and Ptah, he did vastly more. The opulent splendour
with which the rituals of these gods were daily observed
beggars description. “I made for thee,” says Ramses to
Amon, “a great sacrificial tablet of silver in hainmered
work, mounted with fine gold, the inlay figures being of
Ketem-gold, bearing statues of the king of gold in ham-
mered work, even an offering tablet bearing thy divine
offerings, offered before thee. I made for thee a great
vase-stand for thy forecourt, mounted with fine gold, with
inlay of stone; its vases were of gold, containing wine and
beer in order to present them to thee every morning.
I made for thee great tablets of gold, in beaten work,
engraved with the great name of thy majesty, bearing my
prayers. I made for thee other tablets of silver, in beaten
work, engraved with the great name of thy majesty, with
the decrees of thy house."2 All that the god used was of
the same richness;8 Ramses says of his sacred barge: “I
hewed for thee thy august ship ‘Userhet,' of one hundred
and thirty cubits (nearly two hundred and twenty four feet
length] upon the river, of great cedars of the royal domain,
of remarkable size, overlaid with fine gold to the water
line, like the barque of the sun, when he comes from the
1 IV, 363.
? IV, 199, 202.
• IV, 198–210.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTATI AND RAMSES III 191
۶l
east, and every one lives at the sight of him. A great shrine
was in the midst of it, of fine gold, with inlay of every costly
stone like a palace; rams'-heads of gold from front to rear,
fitted with uræus-serpents wearing crowns." In making
the great temple balances for weighing the offerings to Re
at lieliopolis nearly two hundred and twelve pounds of
gold and four hundred and sixty one pounds of silver were
consumed. The reader may peruse pages of such descrip-
tions in the great Papyrus Harris, of which we shall later
give some account. Such magnificence, while it might fre-
quently be due to incidental gifts of the king, must never-
theless be supported by an enormous income, derived from
a vast fortune in lands, slaves and revenues. Thus, to
the god Khnum at Elephantine, Ramses III confirmed the
possession of both sides of the river from that city to
Takompso, a strip over seventy miles in length, known to
the Greeks as the Dodekaschoinos or Twelve Schøni. The
records of Ramses III for the first and only time in the
course of Egyptian history, enable us to determine the
total amount of property owned and controlled by the
temples. An inventory in the Papyrus Harris covering
almost all the temples of the country shows that they pos-
sessed over one hundred and seven thousand slaves ;5 that
is, one person in every fifty to eighty of the population was
temple property. The first figure is the more probable, so
that in all likelihood one person in every fifty was a slave of
some temple. The temples thus owned two percent of the pop-
ulation. In lands we find the sacred endowments amounting to
nearly three quarters of a million acres, that is, nearly one
seventh, or over fourteen and a half percent of the cultivable
land of the country; and as some of the smaller temples
like that of Khnum just mentioned, are omitted in the in-
ventory it is safe to say that the total holdings of the temples
amounted to fifteen percent of the available land of the
country. These are the only items in the temple estates
"IV, 209.
• IV, 146-150.
180
: IV, 250, 285.
SIV, 186.
IV, 161-412.
• IV, 167.
492
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
which can be safely compared with the total national
wealth and resources, but they by no means complete the
list of property held by the temples. They owned nearly a
half million head of large and small cattle; their combined
fleets numbered eighty eight vessels, some fifty three work-
shops and ship-yards consumed a portion of the raw ma-
terials, which they received as income; while in Syria, Kush
and Egypt they owned in all one hundred and sixty nine
towns. When we remember that all this vast property in
a land of less than ten thousand square miles and some five
or six million inhabitants was entirely exempt from tax-
ation” it will be seen that the economic equilibrium of the
state was endangered.
These extreme conditions were aggravated by the fact
that no proper proportion had been observed in the dis-
tribution of gifts to the gods. By far too large a share of
them had fallen to the lot of Amon, whose insatiable priest-
hood had so gained the ascendancy that their claims on the
royal treasury far exceeded those of all other temples put
together. Besides the great group of temples at Thebes,
the god possessed numerous other sanctuaries, chapels and
statues, with their endowments scattered throughout the
land. He had a temple in Syria,' as we have already
noticed, and a new one in Nubia, besides those built there
by Ramses II. In his twelfth year after the victorious
conclusion of all his wars, the finally completed temple,
which he had erected for Amon at Medinet Habu (Thebes),
was inaugurated with a new and elaborate calendar of
feasts, the record of which filled all one wall of the temple
for almost its entire length. The feast of Opet, the greatest
of Amon's feasts, which in the days of Thutmose III was
eleven days long, is credited in this calendar with twenty
four days; and summarizing the calendar as far as pre-
served, we find that there was an annual feast day of Amon
on an average every three days, not counting the monthly
* IV, p. 97.
PIV, 146.
. IV, 189-226.
• IV, 219.
*IV, 218.
6 IV, 139–146.

DREI
Fig. 176.-RAMSES III HUNTING THE WILD BULL.
Relief on the back of the first pylon of the Medinet Habu temple. See p. 488.


Fig. 174.-RAMSES III'S MEDINET HABU TEMPLE.
Looking across first court and second pylon northward from top of
first pylon.
Fig. 175.-RAMSES III'S MEDINET HABU TEMPLE.
View of the first pylon from the wall of the palace gate ("pavilion")
which stands before the temple.
THIE DECLINE: MERNEPTAIL AND RAMSES III
19:
feasts." Yet Ramses III later lengthened even the feasts
of this calendar, so that the feast of Opet became twenty
seven days long and the feast of his own coronation, which
lasted but one day as prescribed by the calendar, finally
continued for twenty days each year. Little wonder that
the records of a band of workmen in the Theban necropolis
under one of Ramses III's successors show almost as many
holidays as working days.: All these lengthened feasts of
course mean increased endowment and revenue for the ser-
vice of Amon. The treasure rooms of this Medinet Habu
temple still stand, and their walls bear testimony to the
lavish wealth with which they were filled.' Ramses himself
in another record says: “I filled its treasury with the
products of the land of Egypt: gold, silver, every costly
stone by the hundred-thousand. Its granary was overflow-
ing with barley and wheat; its lands, its herds, their mul-
titudes were like the sand of the shore. I taxed for it the
Southland as well as the Northland; Nubia and Syria came
to it, bearing their impost. It was filled with captives,
which thou gavest me among the Nine Bows, and with
classes (successive enforced levies), which I created by the
ten-thousand. ... I multiplied the divine offerings pre-
sented before thee, of bread, wine, beer and fat geese;
numerous oxen, bullocks, calves, cows, white oryxes and
gazelles offered in his slaughter yard." As in the days
of the Eighteenth Dynasty conquerors, the bulk of the spoil
from his wars went into the treasury of Amon. The result
of this long continued policy was inevitable. Of the nearly
three quarters of a million acres of land held by the temples,
Amon owned over five hundred and eighty three thousand,
over five times as much as his nearest competitor, Re of
Heliopolis, who had only one hundred and eight thousand;
and over nine times the landed estate of Ptah of Memphis.
Of the fifteen percent of the lands of the entire country held
by all the temples, Amon thus owned over two thirds. While,
7
1 IV, 144.
• IV, 25-34.
* IV, 236-7.
BIV, 190.
s Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt.
• IV, 224, 405.
TIV, 167.
494
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
as we have stated, the combined temples owned in slaves
not more than two percent of the whole population, Amon
held probably one and a half percent, in number over
eighty six thousand five hundred, which exceeded by seven
times the number owned by Re.' In other items of wealth
the same proportion is observable; Amon owned five great
herds, numbering over four hundred and twenty one thou-
sand large and small cattle, of the less than half a million
head held by all the temples; of five hundred and thirteen
temple gardens and groves, Amon owned four hundred and
thirty three; of the fleet of temple ships, numbering eighty
eight, all but five were the property of Amon; and forty
six work shops of the fifty three owned by the temples were
his. He was the only god possessing towns in Syria and
Kush, of which he had nine, but in towns of Egypt he was
surpassed by Re, who owned one hundred and three, as
against only fifty six held by Amon. As we know nothing
of the size and value of these towns, the number is hardly
significant in view of the immense superiority of Amon in
acreage of temple lands. In income Amon received an
annual item of twenty six thousand grains of gold, which
none of the other temples received. This doubtless came
from the "gold country of Amon," of which he had gained
possession toward the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty, as
we have seen. In silver his income exceeded by seventeen
times, in copper by twenty one times, in cattle by seven
times, in wine by nine times, in ships by ten times, the
income of all the other temples combined.' His estate and
his revenues, second only to those of the king, now assumed
an important economic role in the state, and the political
power wielded by a community of priests who controlled
such vast wealth was from now on a force which no Pharaoh
could ignore. Without compromising with it and contin-
ually conciliating it, no Pharaoh could have ruled long,
although the current conclusion that the gradual usurpa-
tion of power and final assumption of the throne by the
1 IV, 165,
8 IV, 165.
* IV, 170-171.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAI AND RAMSES III
495
High Priest of Amon was due solely to the wealth of Amon
is not supported by our results. Other forces contrib-
uted largely to this result, as we shall see. Among these
was the gradual extension of Amon's influence to the other
temples and their fortunes. His High Priest had in the
Eighteenth Dynasty become head of all the priesthoods
of Egypt; in the Nineteenth Dynasty he had gained
hereditary hold upon his office; his Theban temple now
became the sacerdotal capital, where the records of the
other temples were kept; his priesthood was given more or
less supervision over their administration, and the furtive
power of Amon was thus gradually extended over all the
sacred estates in the land.
It is a mistake to suppose, as is commonly done, that
Ramses III was solely or even chiefly responsible for these
conditions. However lavish his contributions to the sacer-
dotal wealth, they never could have raised it to the propor-
tions which we have indicated. This is as true of the for-
tune of Amon in particular as of the temple wealth in gen-
eral. The gift of over seventy miles of Nubian Nile shores
(the Dodekaschoinos) to Khnum by Ramses III was but
the confirmation by him of an old title; and the enormous
endowments enumerated in the great Papyrus Harris, long
supposed to be the gifts of Ramses III, are but inventories
of the old sacerdotal estates, in the possession of which the
temples are confirmed by him. These long misunderstood
inventories are the source of the above statistics, which
reveal to us the situation and they show that it was an
inherited situation, created by the prodigal gifts of the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, beginning at least
as far back as Thutmose III, who presented three towns in
Syria to Amon. By generations of this policy the vast
wealth of the temples had gradually been accumulated, and
against the insatiable priesthoods long accustomed to the
gratification of unlimited exactions, Ramses III was unable,
and indeed did not attempt to make a stand. On the con-
IV. 202.
IV, 157-8.
496
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
trary, as we have seen, being evidently in need of sacerdotal
support to maintain himself, he deliberately continued the
traditional policy. Yet his treasury must have sorely felt
the draughts upon it, with its income gradually shrinking,
while the demands upon it in nowise relaxed. Although
we know that payments from the government treasury were
as slow in ancient, as they have been until recently in
modern Egypt, yet, making all due allowance for this fact,
it can hardly be an accident that under the reign of Ramses
III we can follow the painful struggles of a band of necrop-
olis workmen in their endeavours to secure the monthly
fifty sacks of grain due them. Month after month they are
obliged to resort to the extremest measures, climbing the
necropolis wall and driven by hunger, threatening to storm
the very granary itself if food is not given them. Told
by the vizier himself that there is nothing in the treasury
or deceived by the glib promises of some intermediate scribe
they would return to their daily task only to find starvation
forcing them to throw down their work and to gather with
cries and tumult at the office of their superior, demanding
their monthly rations. Thus while the poor in the employ
of the state were starving at the door of an empty treasury,
the store houses of the gods were groaning with plenty, and
Amon was yearly receiving over two hundred and five
thousand bushels of grain for the offerings at his annual
feasts alone.2
The only forces which Ramses III and his contemporaries
could bring into play against the powerful priestly coteries
were the numerous foreigners among the slaves owned by
the crown. These, branded with the name of the king, were
poured into the ranks of the army in large numbers," aug-
menting the voluntary service of the mercenaries already
there. The armies with which Ramses III beat off the
assailants of his empire were, as we have already remarked,
largely made up of foreigners, and their numbers constantly
increased as the Pharaoh found himself less and less able
1 Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 124-126.
. IV, 174.
• IV, 405.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III 497
to maintain the mastery in a situation of ever increasing
difficulty and complication. He was soon forced also to
surround his person with numbers of these foreign slaves.
A class of personal attendants, already known in the Middle
Kingdom by a term which we may best translate as “but-
ler," originally rendered service to the table and larder of
the nobles or the king. These slaves in Ramses III's ser-
vice were largely natives of Syria, Asia Minor and Libya,
especially Syria, and as the king found them more and more
useful, they gradually, although only slaves, gained high
office in the state and at the court. It was a situation, as
Erman has remarked, precisely like that at the court of
the Egyptian sultans of the Middle Ages. Of eleven such
“butlers” known to us in the service of Ramses III, five
were foreigners in places of power and influence,' and we
shall soon have occasion to observe the prominent role they
played at a fatal crisis in his reign. While all was out-
wardly splendour and tranquillity and the whole nation was
celebrating the king who had saved the Empire, the forces
of decay which had for generations been slowly gathering
in the state were rapidly reaching the acute stage. An insa-
tiable and insidious priesthood commanding enormous
wealth, a foreign army ready to serve the master who paid
most liberally, and a personal following of alien slaves
whose fidelity likewise depended entirely upon the imme-
diate gain in view,--these were the factors which Ramses
III was constantly forced to manipulate and employ, each
against the others. Add to these the host of royal rela-
tives and dependents, who were perhaps of all the most dan-
gerous element in the situation, and we shall not wonder at
the outcome.
While the whole situation abounded in unhealthy symp-
toms, the first specific instance of the danger inherent in
it, which we are able to discern, is the revolt of Ramses'
vizier, who shut himself up in the Delta city of Athribis;
but he had miscalculated the power at his command; the
I IV, 419 ff.
32
498
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
place was taken by Ramses and the revoli suppressed."
Peace and outward tranquility were again restored. As
the thirtieth anniversary of the king's appointment as
crown prince approached, elaborate preparations were made
for its commemoration. He sent his new vizier, Ta, south-
ward in the year twenty nine to collect the processional
images of all the gods who participated in a celebration of
the usual splendour at Memphis. Something over a year
after this stately commemoration, as the old king was begin-
ning to feel his years, a more serious crisis developed. The
harem, the source of so many attempts against the throne,
was the origin of the trouble. In the early orient there is
always among the many mothers of the king's children a
princess or queen who feels that her son has a better claim
to the succession than the son of the fortunate rival, who
has succeeded in gaining for him the nomination as the
king's successor. Such a queen in Ramses III's harem,
named Tiy, now began furtive efforts to secure for her
son, Pentewere, the crown, which had been promised to
another prince. A plot against the old king's life was rap-
idly formed, and Tiy enlisted as her chief coadjutors the
"chief of the chamber," Pebekkamen, and a royal butler
named Mesedsure. With oriental superstition, Pebekkamen
first procured an outfit of magical waxen figures of gods
and men, by which he believed he was empowered to dis-
able or evade the people of the harem guard, who might
otherwise have discovered and intercepted one of their
numerous messages necessary to the development of the
plot. Pebekkamen and Mesedsure then secured the coöp-
eration of ten harem officials of various ranks, four royal
butlers, an overseer of the treasury, a general in the army
named Peyes, three royal scribes in various offices, Pebek-
kamen's own assistant, and several subordinate officials. As
most of these people were in the personal service of the
Pharaoh, the dangerous character of the complot is evident.
Six wives of the officers of the harem gate were won to
I IV, 381.
IV, 335, 413-15.
3 All the following, from IV, 410-456.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAH AND RAMSES III
499
the enterprise, and they proved very useful in securing the
transmission of messages from inmates of the harem to their
relatives and friends outside. Among these inmates was
the sister of the commander of archers in Nubia, who smug-
gled out a letter to her brother and thus gained his support.
All was ripe for a revolt and revolution outside the palace,
intended to accompany the murder of the king and enable
the conspirators the more easily to seize the government and
place their pretender, Pentewere, on the throne. At this
juncture the king's party gained full information of the
conspiracy, the attempt on the king's life was foiled, the
plans for revolt were checkmated, and the people involved
in the treason were all seized. The old Pharaoh, sorely
shaken by the ordeal, and possibly suffering bodily injury
from the attempted assassination, immediately appointed a
special court for the trial of the conspirators. The very
words of the commission empowering this court indicate
his probable consciousness that he would not long survive
the shock, while at the same time they lay upon the judges a
responsibility for impartial justice on the merits of the case,
with a judicial objectivity which is remarkable in one who
held the lives of the accused in his unchallenged power and
had himself just been the victim of a murderous assault
at their hands. The king thus commissioned this special
court: “I commission the judges [here follows a list of
their names and offices), saying: 'As for the words which
the people have spoken, I know them not. Go ye and ex-
amine them. When ye go and ye examine them, ye shall
cause to die by their own hand those who should die without
my knowing it.
Ye shall execute punishment upon the
others likewise without my knowing it. ... Give heed and
have a care lest ye execute punishment upon [anyone)
unjustly. . . . Now I say to you in very truth, as for all
that has been done, and those who have done it, let all that
they have done fall upon their own heads; while I am pro-
tected and defended forever, while I am among the just
kings, who are before Amon-Re, king of gods, and before
500
A A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Osiris, ruler of eternity.” As Osiris is the god of the dead,
the king's closing words possibly indicate that he expected
his demise to occur before the conclusion of the trials.1
The court thus commissioned consisted of fourteen officials,
seven of whom were royal “butlers," and among these were
a Libyan, a Lycian, a Syrian named Maharbaal (“Baal
hastens”), and another foreigner, probably from Asia
Minor. We see how largely the Pharaoh depended in his
extremity upon the purchased fidelity of these foreign
slaves. The flaccid character of the judges and the dan-
gerous persistence of the accused is shown by a remarkable
incident which now followed the appointment of the court.
Some of the women conspirators, led by the general, Peyes,
gained such influence over the bailiffs in charge of the pris-
oners that they went with Peyes and the women to the
houses of two of the judges, who, with amazing indiscretion,
received and caroused with them. The two indiscreet
judges, with one of their colleagues, who was really inno-
cent, and the two bailiffs, were immediately put on trial.
The innocence of the third judge was made evident and he
was acquitted, but the others were found guilty, and were
sentenced to have their ears and noses cut off. Imme-
diately following the execution of the sentence, one of the
unfortunate judges committed suicide. The trials of the
conspirators continued with regularity, and from the rec-
ords of three different prosecutions we are able to trace
the conviction of thirty two officials of all ranks including
the unhappy young pretender himself, who was doubtless
only an unfortunate tool, and the audacious Peyes, the
general who had compromised the two judges. The records
of the trial of queen Tiy herself are not preserved, so that
we cannot determine her fate, but we have no reason to sup-
pose that it was better than that of all the others, who, as
ordered by the king, were allowed to take their own lives.
Meantime the thirty second anniversary of the Pharaoh's
1 IV, 424.
IV, 451-3.
* IV, 416-450.
THE DECLINE: MERNEPTAIL AND RAMSES III
501
accession was celebrated with the gorgeous twenty days'
feast customary since his twenty second year. But the
old king survived only twenty days more and before the
prosecution of his would-be assassins was ended he passed
away (1167 B. C.) having ruled thirty one years and forty
days.
1 IV, 237,
BOOK VII
THE DECADENCE
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
THE death of Ramses III introduced a long line of nine
weaklings all of whom bore the great name Ramses. They
were far from bearing it worthily, and under them the
waning power of the Pharaohs declined swiftly to its fall
in a few decades. We see Ramses IV, the son of Ramses
III, struggling feebly with the hopeless situation which
he inherited about 1167 B. C. Immediately on his accession
the new king prepared in his own behalf and that of his
father, one of the most remarkable docuinents which has
reached us from the civilization of ancient Egypt. In order
that his father might prosper among the gods and that he
himself might gain the benefit of his father's favour among
them, the young king compiled for burial with the departed
Pharaoh a list of the deceased's good works. It contained
an enormous inventory of Ramses III's gifts to the three
chief divinities of the nation; Amon of Thebes, Re of Heli-
opolis and Ptah of Memphis, as well as those also to the
minor gods, in so far as the data could be obtained; be-
sides a statement of his achievements in war and of his
benefactions toward the people of his empire. All this
recorded on papyrus formed a huge roll one hundred and
thirty feet long containing one hundred and seventeen col-
umns about twelve inches high. It is now called Papyrus
Harris, and is the largest document which has descended to
us from the early orient. As the gifts enumerated therein
are largely the long inherited estates of the gods merely
confirmed by Ramses III at his accession, this unique
document enables us to determine the proportion of the
wealth of ancient Egypt held by the temples, as the reader
II, IV, 151-412.
505
506
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
has already noticed in the preceding chapter. Accompanied
by this extraordinary statement of his benefactions toward
gods and men, Ramses III was laid in his tomb, in the
lonely Valley of the Kings. In its efficacy in securing him
unlimited favour with the gods there could be no doubt; and
it contained so many prayers placed in the mouth of Ramses
III on behalf of his son and successor that the gods, unable
to resist the appeals of the favourite to whom they owed so
much, would certainly grant his son a long reign. Indeed
it is clear that this motive was powerfully operative in the
production of the document. In this decadent age the
Pharaoh was more dependent upon such means for the
maintenance of his power than upon his own strong arm,
and the huge papyrus thus becomes a significant sign of the
times. At Abydos Ramses IV has left a unique prayer to
Osiris, having the same practical purpose in view,-a
prayer which he placed there in his fourth year: “Thou
shalt double for me the long life, the prolonged reign of
king Ramses II, the great god; for more are the mighty
deeds and the benefactions which I do for thy house, in order
to supply thy divine offerings, in order to seek every excel-
lent thing, every sort of benefaction, to do them for thy
sanctuary daily, during these four years, [more are they]
than those things which king Ramses II, the great god, did
for thee in his sixty seven years."'ı With fair promises of
a long reign the insatiable priesthoods were extorting from
the impotent Pharaoh all they demanded, while he was
satisfied with the assured favour of the gods. The sources
of that virile political life that had sprung up with the ex-
pulsion of the Hyksos were now exhausted. The vigourous
grasp of affairs which had once enabled the Pharaoh to
manipulate with ease the difficult problems of the dominant
oriental state had now given way to an excessive devotion
to religious works and superstitious belief in their effective-
ness, which were rapidly absorbing every function of the
state. Indeed, as we have before indicated, the state was
TIV, 471.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
507
rapidly moving toward a condition in which its chief func-
tion should be religious and sacerdotal, and the assumption
of royal power by the High Priest of Amon but a very
natural and easy transition.
Naturally the only work of Ramses IV, of which we
know, is an enterprise for the benefit of the gods. Early in
his second year he went out in person to the quarries of the
Wadi Hammamat, five days from the Nile, to look for stone
for his temple buildings, and he then followed this journey
of inspection by a great expedition of over nine thousand
men, which reached the quarries nearly two years later.
Although maintained by a long train of pack-bearers and
ten carts, each drawn by six yoke of oxen, yet no less than
nine hundred of the expedition perished in the heat and
exposure, being about ten percent of its people. The desti-
nation of the materials secured at so great cost is uncertain;
the only surviving building of any extent erected by Ramses
IV is the continuation of the rear chambers and the small
hypostyle of the Khonsu temple at Thebes already begun
by his father. After an inglorious reign of six years he
was succeeded in 1161 B. C. by the fifth Ramses, probably
his son. The exploitation of the mines of Sinai now ceased,
and the last Pharaonic name found there is that of Ramses
IV. In quick succession these feeble Ramessids now fol-
lowed each other; after a few years a collateral line of the
family gained the throne in the person of a usurper, prob-
ably a grandson of Ramses III, who became Ramses VI,
having succeeded in supplanting the son of Ramses V. The
seventh and eighth Ramses quickly followed. They all ex-
cavated tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but we know
nothing of their deeds. Now and again the obscurity
lifts, and we catch fleeting glimpses of a great state totter-
ing to its fall. Under Ramses VI, nevertheless, the tomb of
Penno, one of his deputies at Ibrim, in Nubia, shows us a
picture of peaceful and prosperous administration there
under Egyptian officials who have now replaced the native
1 IV, 457-468.
IV, 472.
: IV, 473 ff.
508
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
chief, the ruler of this locality at the close of the Eighteenth
Dynasty. Penno's family and relatives are found hold-
ing the important offices of the region, and it is evident
that Egyptian families have now migrated to Nubia and
more fully Egyptianized the country than ever. Penno
himself is sufficiently wealthy to erect a statue of Ramses
VI in the temple at Derr, built by Ramses II, and to endow
it with the income from six parcels of land; whereupon
the Pharaoh honours him with a gift of two vessels of silver,
a distinction which the grateful Penno does not fail to re-
cord in his toinb.
From the close of Ramses III's reign to the first years
of Ramses IX, only some twenty five or thirty years elapsed,
and the same High Priest at El Kab who assisted in the
celebration of Ramses III's jubilee was still in office under
Ramses IX. Likewise the High Priest of Amon at Thebes
under Ramses IX, Amenhotep, was the son of the high .
priest Ramsesnakht, who held the office under Ramses III
and IV.3 The high priesthood of Amon which had at least
once descended from father to son in the Nineteenth
Dynasty had thus become permanently hereditary, and
while it was passing from the hands of Ramsesnakht to
his son Amenhotep, with a single uninterrupted transmis-
sion of authority, six feeble Ramessids had succeeded
each other, with ever lessening power and prestige, as each
struggled for a brief time to maintain himself upon a
precarious throne. Meanwhile Amenhotep, the High Priest
of Amon, flourished. He sumptuously restored the refec-
tory and kitchen of the priests in the temple of his god at
Karnak4 built 800 years before by Sesostris I. We see
the crafty priest manipulating the pliant Pharaoh as he
pleases, and obtaining every honour at his hands. In his
tenth year Ramses IX summoned Amenhotep to the great
forecourt of the Amon-temple, where in the presence of the
High Priest's political associates and supporters, the king
presented him with a gorgeous array of gold and silver
! IV, 474-483.
.IV, 414-15.
SIV, 486 ff
"IV, 488 f.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
509
vessels, with costly decorations, and precious ointments.
The days when such distinctions were the reward of valour
on the battle fields of Syria are long passed; and skill in
priest-craft is the surest guarantee of preferment. As the
king delivered the rich gifts to the High Priest he accom-
panied them with words of praise such that one is in doubt
whether they are delivered by the soverign to the subject
or by the subject to his lord. At the same time he informs
Amenhotep that certain revenues formerly paid to the
Pharaoh shall now be rendered to the treasury of Amon,
and although the king's words are not entirely clear it
would seem that all revenues levied by the king's treasury
but later intended for the treasury of the god, shall now be
collected directly by the scribes of the temple, thus putting
the temple to a certain extent in the place of the state. All
these honours were twice recorded by Amenhotep, together
with a record of his buildings on the walls of the Karnak
temple. Both the records of his gifts and honours are ac-
companied each by a large relief (Fig. 177) showing Amen-
hotep receiving his gifts from the king, and depicting his
figure in the same heroic stature as that of the king, -an
unprecedented liberty, to which no official had ever before
in the history of Egypt dared to presume. In all such
scenes from time immemorial the official appearing before
the king had been represented as a pigmy before the tower-
ing figure of the Pharaoh; but the High Priest of Amon was
now rapidly growing to measure his stature with that of
the Pharaoh himself, both on the temple wall and in the
affairs of government. He had a body of temple troops at
his command, and as he gathered the sinews of the state
into his fingers, gradually gaining control of the treasury,
as we have seen, he did not hesitate to measure his strength
with the Pharaoh. Naturally no records of such struggles,
of the daily friction which must have existed between them,
have survived; but a woman giving testimony in a court
during the reign of Ramses IX dated a theft in her father's
I IV, 480-408.
510
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
house by telling the court that it happened when the revolt
of the High Priest of Amon took place!”
The state of disorganization and helplessness which was
gradually evolving is revealed to us in a chapter from the
government of the Theban necropolis, preserved in certain
legal archives of Ramses IX's reign. Thebes was now
rapidly declining; it had been forsaken as a royal residence
by the Pharaohs two hundred years before, but it continued
to be the burial place of all the royal dead. There had thus
been gathered in its necropolis a great mass of wealth in
the form of splendid regalia adorning the royal bodies. In
the lonely valley behind the western plain, deep in the
heart of the cliffs, slept the great emperors, decked in all
the magnificence which the wealth of Asia had brought
them; and now again, as at the close of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, their degenerate descendants, far from maintain-
ing the empire which they had once won, were not even able
to protect their bodies from destruction. In the sixteenth
year of Ramses IX's reign the royal tombs of the plain
before the western cliffs were found to have been attacked;
one of them, that of Sebekemsaf,' of the Thirteenth Dynasty,
had been robbed of all its mortuary furniture and his royal
body and that of his queen violated for the sake of their
costly ornaments. Although the authors of this deed were
captured and prosecuted, the investigation shows sinister
traces that the officials engaged in it were not altogether dis-
interested. Three years later, when Ramses IX had made
his son, Ramses X, coregent with himself, six men were con-
victed of robbing the tombs of Seti I and Ramses II, show-
ing that the emboldened robbers had now left the plain and
entered the cliff tombs of the valley behind. Ramses II,
who had himself despoiled the pyramid of Sesostris II at
Illahun, was now receiving similar treatment at the hands
of his descendants. The tomb of one of Seti I's queens
followed next, and then that of the great Amenhotep III.
Within a generation, as the work of plunder continued, all
1 IV, 486. ? IV, 499-558. s See Thieves' Confession, above, p. 214.

Fig. 177.-THE HIGH PRIEST OF AMON AMENHOTEP DECORATED BY RAMSES IX.
Contrary to tradition his figure (on the left) is as tall as that of the king (on the right).


AS
GATO
.
Tulf
FIG. 178.-SCRIBE'S NOTES ON COFFIN OF
SETI I.
They are records of the removals of the body, till its
final deposit in the Der el-Bahri cache (Fig. 179)
under the priest-kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty.
FIG. 179.-THE DER EL-BAHRI HIDING-
PLACE.
Shaft where royal bodies were concealed is seen as dark
point at top of path leading up beyond the donkeys.
See p. 525.
TIIE FALL OF TIIE EMPIRE
511
the bodies of Egypt's kings and emperors buried at Thebes
were despoiled, and of the whole line of Pharaohs from the
beginning of the Eighteenth to the end of the Twentieth
Dynasty, only one body, that of Amenhotep II, has been
found still lying in its sarcophagus; although it had by no
means escaped spoliation. Thus while the tombs of the
Egyptian emperors at Thebes were being ransacked and
their bodies rifled and dishonoured, the empire which they
conquered was crumbling to ruin.
While we can find nothing of the reign of Ramses X to
record, beyond the riling of the royal tombs, and our
knowledge of his successor, the eleventh of the name, is
still more meagre, at the accession of Ramses XII we are
able to discern the culmination of the tendencies which we
have been endeavouring to trace. Before he had been reign-
ing five years a local noble at Tanis named Nesubenebded,
the Smendes of the Greeks, had absorbed the entire Delta
and made himself king of the North. It was such an enter-
prise as the unnamed vizier had attempted at Ath ribis in
the time of Ramses III, who was too able and energetic for
the audacious noble to succeed. But no longer commanding
the undivided resources of Upper Egypt, which he might
otherwise have employed against Nesubenebded, there was
now nothing for the impotent Pharaoh to do but retire to
Thebes,- if this transfer had not indeed already occurred
before this, where he still maintained his precarious throne.
Thebes was thus cut off from the sea and the commerce of
Asia and Europe by a hostile kingdom in the Delta, and its
wealth and power still more rapidly declined. The High
Priest of Amon was now virtually at the head of a Theban
principality, which we shall see becoming gradually more
and more a distinct political unit. Together with this
powerful priestly rival, the Pharaoh continued to hold
Nubia.
The swift decline of the Ramessids was quickly noticed
I IV, 557, 581.
See above, pp. 497–98.
512
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
and understood in Syria long before the revolution which
resulted in the independence of the Delta. The Thekel
and Peleset-Philistines, whose invasion Ramses III had for
a time halted, as we have before stated, had continued to
arrive in Syria. They had moved gradually southward,
pushing before them the Amorites and scattered remnants
of the Hittites, who were thus forced to enter Palestine,
where they were found later by the Hebrews. Seventy five
years after Ramses III had beaten them into submission,
the Thekel were already established as an independent king-
dom at Dor, just south of the seaward end of Carmel. As
we do not find them mentioned in the surviving records of
the Hebrews, they must have merged into the larger mass
of the Philistines, whose cities gradually extended prob-
ably from Beth-Shean in the Jordan valley westward and
southward, through the plain of Jezreel or Megiddo to the
southern sea-plain, cutting off the northern tribes of Israel
from their kinsmen in the south. Their pottery, as found
at Lachish and Gezer in southern Palestine, is Cretan, con-
firming the Hebrew tradition that the Philistines were
strangers who wandered in from Crete (Caphtor). Con-
tinually replenished with new arrivals by sea, they threat-
ened to crush Israel, as they had done the kingdom of Amor,
before the Hebrew tribal leaders should have welded the Pal-
estinian Semites into a nation. With their extreme southern
frontier at the very gates of Egypt, these hardy and warlike
wanderers from the far north could not have paid tribute
to the Pharaoh very long after the death of Ramses III
(1167 B. C.). In the reign of Ramses IX (1142-1123 B.
C.), or about that time, a body of Egyptian envoys were
detained at Byblos by the local dynast for seventeen years,
and unable to return, they at last died there. The Syrian
princes, among whom Ramses III had built a temple to
Amon, to which they brought their yearly tribute, were thus
indifferent to the power of Egypt within twenty or twenty
five years of his death.
I IV, 558.
& Jer. 47: 4; Amos 9: 7.
SIV, 585.
TIIE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
513
A few years later, under Ramses XII, these same condi-
tions in Syria are vividly portrayed in the report of an
Egyptian envoy thither. In response to an oracle, Wena-
mon, the envoy in question, was dispatched to Byblos, at
the foot of Lebanon, to procure cedar for the sacred barge
of Amon. Hrihor, the High Priest of Amon, was able to
give him only a pitiful sum in gold and silver, and there-
fore sent with him an image of Amon, called “ Amon-of-the-
Way," who was able to bestow “life and health,” hoping
thus to inpress the prince of Byblos and compensate for the
lack of liberal payment. As Wenamon was obliged to pass
through the territory of Nesubenebded, who now ruled the
Delta, Hrihor supplied him with letters to the Delta prince,
and in this way secured for him passage in a ship com-
manded by a Syrian captain. Nothing more eloquently por-
trays the decadent condition of Egypt than the humiliating
state of this unhappy envoy, dispatched without ships, with
no credentials, with but a beggarly pittance to offer for the
timber desired, and only the memory of Egypt's former
greatness with which to impress the prince of Byblos.
Stopping at Dor on the voyage out, Wenamon was robbed
of the little money he had, and was unable to secure any
satisfaction from the Thekel prince of that city. After
waiting in despair for nine days, he departed for Byblos
by way of Tyre, having on the way somehow succeeded in
seizing from certain Thekel people a bag of silver as security
for his loss at Dor. He finally arrived in safety at Byblos,
where Zakar-Baal, the prince of the city, would not even
receive him, but ordered him to leave. Such was the state
of an Egyptian envoy in Phænicia, within fifty or sixty
years of the death of Ramses III. Finally, as the despairing
Wenamon was about to take passage back to Egypt, one of
the noble youths in attendance upon Zakar-Baal was seized
with a divine frenzy, and in prophetic ecstasy demanded that
Wenamon be summoned, honourably treated and dismissed.
This earliest known example of Old Testament prophecy in
0
83
514
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
its earlier form thus secured for Wenamon an interview with
Zakar-Baal, which the envoy himself thus relates :
“When morning came he sent and had me brought up,
when the divine offering occurred in the fortress wherein
he was, on the shore of the sea. I found him sitting in his
upper chamber, leaning his back against a window, while
the waves of the great Syrian sea were beating against the
shore behind him. I said to him, 'Kindness of Amon!
He said to me: 'How long is it until this day, since thou
camest away from the abode of Amon?' I said, “Five
months and one day until now.' He said to me, ‘Behold
if thou art true, where is the writing of Amon, which is in
thy hand? Where is the letter of the High Priest of Amon,
which is in thy hand?' I said to him, 'I gave them to
Nesubenebded. ...? Then he was very wroth, and he
said to me, “Now behold the writing and the letter are not
in thy hand! Where is the ship of cedar which Nesube-
nebded gave thee? Where is the Syrian crew! He would
not deliver thy business to this ship-captain, to have thee
killed! That they might cast thee into the sea ! From
whom would they have sought the god [Amon-of-the-Way]
then? And thee! From whom would they have sought
thee then?' So spake he to me. I said to him, "There are
indeed Egyptian ships and Egyptian crews which sail under
Nesubenebded, but he hath no Syrian crews.' He said to
me, "There are surely twenty ships here in my harbour
which are in connection with Nesubenebded; and at this
Sidon, whither thou also wouldst go, there are indeed 10,000
ships also, which are in connection with Berket-El (probably
a merchant of Tanis], and sail to his house.' Then I was
silent in that great hour. He answered and said to me, 'On
what business hast thou come hither?' I said to him, 'I
have come after the timber for the great and august barge
of Amon-Re, king of gods. Thy father did it, and thou wilt
also do it.' So spake I to him. He said to me, "They did
it truly. If thou give me something for doing it I will do
it. Indeed my agents transacted the business; the Pharaoh
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
515
sent six ships laden with the products of Egypt, and they
were unloaded into their store-houses. And thou also shalt
bring something for me.' He had the journal of his fathers
brought in, and he had them read it before me. They
found one thousand deben (about 244 Troy pounds) of every
kind of silver, which was in his book. He said to me, If
the ruler of Egypt were the owner of my property and I
were also his servant, he would not send silver and gold,
saying, "Do the commandment of Amon.” It was not the
payment of tribute which they exacted of my father. As
for me, I am myself neither thy servant, nor am I the ser-
vant of him who sent thee. If I cry out to the Lebanon, the
heavens open and the logs lie here upon the shore of the sea.
Give me the sails which thou hast certainly brought to pro-
pel thy ships which bear thy logs to Egypt! Give me the
cordage (which thou hast of course brought to bind], the
trees which I fell, in order to make them fast for thee!
[What then if a storm comes up) and they break and thou
die in the midst of the sea, when Amon thunders in heaven.
.. For [I admit that] Amon equips all lands; he equips
them, having first equipped the land of Egypt, whence thou
comest. For artisanship came forth from it to reach my
place of abode; and teaching came forth from it to reach my
place of abode. What then are these miserable journeys
which they have had thee make!' I said to him, 'O guilty one!
They are no miserable journeys on which I am. There is
no ship upon the river which Amon does not own. For his
is the sea, and his is Lebanon, of which thou sayest, “It is
mine." It grows for the divine barge of Amon, the lord
of every ship. Yea, so spake Amon-Re, king of gods, saying
to Frihor, my lord, “Send me," and he made me go, bearing
this great god [Amon-of-the-Way). But behold, thou hast
let this great god wait twenty nine days, when he had landed
in thy harbour, although thou didst certainly know that he
was here. He is indeed still what he once was, while thou
standest and bargainest for the Lebanon with Amon, its
lord. As for what thou sayest, that the former kings sent
516
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
silver and gold; if they had given life and health, they would
not have sent the valuables; but they sent the valuables to
thy fathers instead of life and health. Now as for Amon-Re,
king of gods, he is the lord of life and health; and he was
the lord of thy fathers, who spent their lives offering to
Amon. And thou also art the servant of Amon. If thou
sayest to Amon, “I will do it! I will do it!" and thou exe-
cutest his command, thou shalt live, and thou shalt be pros-
perous, and thou shalt be healthy, and thou shalt be pleasant
to thy whole land and thy people. Wish not for thyself a
thing belonging to Amon-Re, king of gods. Yea, the lion
loveth his own. Let my scribe be brought to me, that I
may send him to Nesubenebded and Tentamon [his wife),
the rulers, whom Amon hath given to the North of his land,
and they will send all that of which I shall write to them,
saying, “Let it be brought," until I return to the South and
send to thee all, all thy trifles again [the balance still due].
So spake I to him."
The observing reader will have drawn many conclusions
from this remarkable interview. The Phænician prince
quite readily admits the debt of culture which his land owes
Egypt as a source of civilization, but emphatically repu-
diates all political responsibility to the ruler of Egypt, whom
he never calls Pharaoh, except in referring to a former sov-
ereign. The situation is clear. A burst of military enthu-
siasm and a line of able rulers had enabled Egypt to assume
for several centuries an imperial position, which her unwar-
like people were not by nature adapted to occupy; and their
impotent descendants, no longer equal to their imperial role,
were now appealing to the days of splendour with an almost
pathetic futility. It is characteristic of the time that this
appeal should assume a religious or even theological form,
as Wenamon boldly proclaims Amon's dominion over Leb-
anon, where the Phænician princes had, only two generations
before, worshipped and paid tribute at the temple of Amon,
erected by Ramses III. With oracles and an image of the
god that conferred “life and health” the Egyptian envoy
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
517
sought to make his bargain with the contemptuous Phoe-
nician for timber which a Thutmose III or a Seti I had
demanded with his legions behind him. We can hardly
wonder that the image of “Amon-of-the-Way” failed to
impress Zakar-Baal, as the Pharaoh's armies had impressed
his ancestors; and it was only when Wenamon's messenger
to Egypt returned with a few vessels of silver and gold,
some fine linen, papyrus rolls, ox-bides, coils of cordage, and
the like, that the Phænician ruler ordered his men to cut
the desired logs; although he had sent some of the heavier
timbers for the hull of the barge in advance, as an evidence
of his good faith. As Wenamon was about to depart with
his timber, some eight months after he had left Thebes,
Zakar-Baal tells him with grim humour of the fate of the
Egyptian envoys of a former reign who had been detained
seventeen years and had ultimately died in Byblos. He
even offers to have Wenamon taken and shown their tombs.
This privilege the frightened envoy declines, adding that
the embassy which had been so treated was one of merely
human envoys, while Zakar-Baal was now honoured with
an unparalleled distinction in receiving the god himself!
Promising the prince the payment of the balance due him,
Wenamon proceeded to embark, when he discovered in the
offing a fleet of eleven Thekel ships, coming with instruc-
tions to arrest him, doubtless for the seizure of the silver
which he had taken from the Thekel on the voyage from
Tyre to Byblos. The unhappy Wenamon now lost all hope,
and throwing himself down upon the shore burst into weep-
ing. Even Zakar-Baal was touched by his misery and sent
to him a reassuring message, with food and wine and an
Egyptian chanteuse. The next day the prince succeeded
in holding the Thekel of the fleet to an interview, while
Wenamon embarked and escaped. But a tempest drove him
far out of his course and cast him upon the coast of Cyprus,
where the populace was about to slay him at the palace of
Hatiba, the queen. Her he fortunately intercepted as she
was passing from one palace to another. Among her follow-
518
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
part."
ing, Wenamon by inquiry found a Cyprian who spoke Egyp-
tian, and he bade this new-found interpreter speak to the
queen for him. “Say to my mistress: 'I have heard as far
as Thebes, the abode of Amon, that in every city injustice
is done; but that justice is done in the land of Alasa
[Cyprus]. But, lo, injustice is done every day here.'”
She said, “Indeed! What is this that thou sayest?” I said
to her, “If the sea raged and the wind drove me to the land
where I am, thou wilt not let them take advantage of me
to slay me, I being a messenger of Amon. I am one for
whom they will seek unceasingly. As for the crew of the
prince of Byblos whom they sought to kill, their lord will
surely find ten crews of thine, and he will slay them on his
Wenamon's crew was then summoned, and he him-
self bidden to lie down and sleep. At this point his report
breaks off, and the conclusion is lost; but here again, in
Cyprus, whose king, as practically his vassal, the Pharaoh
had been wont to call to account for piracy in the old days
of splendour, we find the representative of Egypt barely able
to save his life. It is to be noticed that his reminder of
unpleasant consequences makes no reference to the Pharaoli,
while it places fully as much emphasis upon the vengeance
of the prince of Byblos as upon that of Egypt; this only two
generations after a great war-fleet of Ramses III had de-
stroyed the powerful united navy of his northern enemies
in these very waters. This unique and instructive report
of Wenamon, therefore, reveals to us the complete collapse
of Egyptian prestige abroad and shows with what appalling
swiftness the dominant state in the Mediterranean basin had
declined under the weak successors of Ramses III. When
Tiglath-pileser I appeared in the West about 1100 B. C., a
Pharaoh, who was probably Nesubenebded, feeling his ex-
posed position in the Delta, deemed it wise to propitiate the
Assyrian with a gift, and sent him a crocodile. Thus all
Egyptian influence in Syria had utterly vanished, while in
Palestine a fiction of traditional sovereignty, totally without
I IV, 557-591.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
513
practical political significance, was maintained at the Phar-
aoh's court. In resumption of that sovereignty we shall see
future kings inaking sporadic campaigns thither after the
establishment of the Hebrew monarchy.
Meanwhile there was but one possible issue for the condi-
tions at Thebes. The messenger who procured the timber
for the sacred barge of Amon was no longer dispatched by
the Pharaoh, but as we have seen, by the High Priest of
Amon, Hrihor. The next year he had gained sufficient con-
trol of the royal necropolis at Thebes to send his people
thither to rewrap and properly reinter the bodies of Seti I
and Ramses II, which had been violated and robbed in the
first year of Ramses X. The temple of Khonsu (Fig. 183),
left with only the holy of holies and the rear chambers
finished since the time of Ramses III, was now completed
with a colonnaded hall preceded by a court and pylon. The
walls of these new additions bear significant evidence of the
transition which was now going on in the Egyptian state.
In the new hall the official dedications on the architraves
are strictly in accordance with the conventional form, cus-
tomary since the Old Kingdom: “Live king Ramses XII!
He made it as his monument for his father, 'Khonsu in
Thebes, Beautiful Rest,' making for him [the hall called]
'Wearer of Diadems,' for the first time, of fine white lime-
stone, making splendid his temple as a beautiful monument
forever, which the Son of Re, Ramses XII, made for him."
But around the base of the walls are words which have never
been found in a Pharaonic temple before; we read: “High
Priest of Amon-Re, king of gods, commander in chief of the
armies of the South and North, the leader, Hrihor, tri-
umphant; he made it as his monument for 'Khonsu in
Thebes, Beautiful Rest'; making for him a temple for the
first time, in the likeness of the horizon of heaven.s
That the commander in chief of the armies of the South and
North was the real builder of the hall we can hardly doubt.
On either side of the central door which leads out into the
IV, 592-4.
SIV, 002.
* IV, 609.
520
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
court, lying before the hall, is a pair of reliefs, each showing
a festal procession of the god, before whom, in the place for
thousands of years occupied by the Pharaoh, stands the
High Priest Hrihor, offering incense; while strangely
enough, the conventional blessings regularly recorded over
the god, and supposed to be uttered by him to the king, are
still addressed to Ramses XII! Like the shadowy caliph,
whom the Egyptian sultans brought from Bagdad to Cairo,
and maintained for a time there, so the unfortunate Ramses
XII had been brought from his Delta residence to Thebes,
that the conventionalities of the old Pharaonic tradition
might still be continued for a brief time. A letter written
to his Nubian viceroy in his seventeenth year shows that he
still retained some voice there up to that time at least;2 but
the door (Fig. 183), bearing the two reliefs just mentioned,
shows him deprived of his authority there also, for it bears
an inscription of Hrihor, still dated under Ramses XII (the
year is unfortunately broken out), in which the High Priest
appears as "viceroy of Kush."? Already at the close of
the Nineteenth Dynasty we recall that Amon had gained
possession of the Nubian gold-country;4 the High Priest has
now gone a step further and seized the whole of the great
province of the Upper Nile. The same inscription calls him
also “overseer of the double granary,” who, as grain was
always Egypt's chief source of wealth, was the most impor-
tant fiscal officer in the state, next the chief treasurer himself.
There is now nothing left in the way of authority and power
for the High Priest to absorb; he is commander of all the
armies, viceroy of Kush, holds the treasury in his hands, and
executes the buildings of the gods. When the fiction of the
last Ramessid's official existence had been maintained for
at least twenty seven years the final assumption of the High
Priest's supreme position seems to have been confirmed by
an oracle of Khonsu, followed by the approval of Amon.
It is recorded in the above inscription, a document very frag-
mentary and obscure, engraved on that same fatal door,
6
1 IV, 611.
: IV, 505-600.
FIV, 015.
* III, 040.
. IV, 014-818.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
521
which in the growth of the Khonsu temple, as in the history
of the state, marks the final transition. For through this
door the modern visitor passes from the inner hall bearing
the names of both Hrihor and Ramses XII, to the outer
court, built by Hrihor, where the shadowy Pharaoh vanishes,
and the High Priest's name, preceded by the Pharaonic titles
and enclosed in the royal cartouche at last appears alone.
Henceforth the name “Ramses” is no longer a personal
name, but is worn as a title designating a descendant of the
once mighty line.
CHAPTER XXV
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE SUPREMACY OF
THE LIBYANS
The result of the development of Thebes into an inde-
pendent sacerdotal principality was not only the downfall
of the empire, but of course also the end of the unity of
the kingdom. From now on the sacerdotal princes of Thebes,
the High Priests of Amon, will either rule the country them-
selves or maintain Theban independence. As they rarely
succeeded in doing the former the result was constant dis-
union and division, which continued in more or less pro-
nounced form from the rise of Hrihor and Nesubenebded,
in the latter part of the eleventh century, for four hundred
and fifty years or more. The complacent Hrihor maintained
the fiction of a united “Two Lands," of which he called him-
self the lord, as if he really ruled them both. With amaz-
ing mendacity he filled his titulary with references to his
universal power, and affirmed that the Syrian princes bowed
down every day to his inight.2 Fortunately we are well
informed as to the real attitude of the Syrian dynasts toward
Hrihor by the experiences of the redoubtable Wenamon
at Dor and Byblos. The High Priest's methods and theory
of government were not calculated to compel the respect of
the Syrians. The state which he founded was a theocracy,
pure and simple. As far back as the days of Thutmose III
and Hatshepsut there are remarkable examples of Amon's
intervention in the affairs of practical government. Thut-
mose III himself was crowned by an oracle of the god; Hat-
shepsut erected her obelisks at his beliest and sent her fleet
to Punt in response to his special oracular command. But
these and other examples of the god's intervention occurred
IV, 620.
IV, 02:3.
522
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
523
on extraordinary occasions. Under Hrihor's theocracy such
oracles became part of the ordinary machinery of govern-
ment. Whatever the High Priest wished legally to effect
could be sanctioned by special oracle of the god at any time,
and by prearrangement the cultus image before which the
High Priest made known his desires invariably responded
favourably by violent nodding of the head, or even by
speech. All wills and property conveyances of members of
the High Priest's family were oracles of Amon, and civil
documents thus became divine decrees. Banished political
exiles were recalled by oracle of the god, criminal cases
were tried before him, and by his decision the convicted were
put to death. In the case of a temple official, undoubtedly a
favourite of the High Priest, two documents were placed
before the god, one declaring the accused guilty of embez-
zlement of temple income, and the other declaring him inno-
cent. The god seized the latter document, thus determining
the innocence of the accused.? Priestly jugglery, ruling if
necessary in utter disregard of law and justice, thus enabled
the High Priest to cloak with the divine sanction all that he
wished to effect.
Hrihor must have been an old man at his accession (1090
B. C.). He did not long survive Ramses XII, and at his
death his son, Payonekh, also advanced in years, was unable
to maintain the independence of Thebes against Nesube-
nebded at Tanis, who extended his authority over the whole
country for a brief time. He is called the first king of the
Twenty First Dynasty by Manetho, who knows nothing of
the independence of Thebes. Payonekh's son, Paynozem
I, quickly succeeded him," and while he was ruling at Thebes
in more or less independence, but without royal titles, Nesu-
benebded was followed at Tanis by Pesibkhenno I, probably
his son. Although unable to regain the royalty of his grand-
father, Paynozem I showed considerable energy in his gov.
ernment of the Theben principality. He continued the
Khonsu temple, restored some of the older temples, and,
IIV, 705. : IV, 670-074. $ IV, 627, 631. . 11, 631. 6 IV, 633-5.
1
524
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
2
unable to protect the royal bodies in the western necropolis
from further molestation, began the policy of transferring
them to a tomb which might be better guarded, selecting for
this purpose the tomb of Seti I. He now achieved a master
stroke of diplomacy and gained in marriage the daughter
of the Tanite, Pesibkhenno I. Thus on the death of the
latter (1067 B. C.), he obtained through his wife the Tanite
crown and the sovereignty over a united Egypt. He in-
stalled his son as High Priest at Thebes, but both he and a
second son whom he appointed to the office died. His third
son, Menkheperre, who now obtained the high priesthood,
appeared at Thebes in the twenty fifth year of his father,
and assumed authority not without suppression of some hos-
tility. The political turmoil of the time is evident in the
fact that he was immediately obliged to appear before Amon
and secure an oracle approving of the return of a body of
political exiles who had been banished to one of the oases.
Exactly who these exiles were does not appear; but we can
surmise that the recall was effected to conciliate the Thebans,
who now began to show themselves as turbulent as they were
in the days of the revolts, which made Thebes notorious
under the Ptolemies. 3
Paynozem I reigned some forty years at Tanis, and
although his son Menkheperre seems to have gained some
royal titles on his father's death (1026 B. C.)' he did not
succeed to the crown, which was obtained by one Amenem-
opet, whose connection with Paynozem I is entirely prob-
lematical. Of the course of events during his long reign
of half a century we can now discern nothing. These Tanite
kings were not great builders, although Pesibkhenno I raised
a massive enclosure wall eighty feet thick around his temple
at Tanis. As they show little initiative in other directions,
the century and a half during which they maintained them-
selves was apparently one of steady industrial and economic
decline. We have no data from other periods to aid us hy
comparison, but even so it is evident that the price of land
1 IV, 642. ? IV, 650.
• IV, 650-058. IV, 661.
• Petrie, Tanis, I, 19.
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
525
2
was very low. Ten "stat” (about six and three quarters
acres) of land at Abydos sold for one deben (a little over
fourteen hundred grains) of silver at this time. While
Nesubenebded did send a large body of men to Thebes to
repair the damage done by an unusually high inundation,
the Tanites as a whole did nothing for the great capital of
the empire, and its decline was steady and rapid. They
respected the memory of their royal ancestors and vied with
the high priests at Thebes in protecting the bodies of the
emperors. During the reign of Siamon, Amenemopet's suc-
cessor, the bodies of Ramses I, Seti I and Ramses II were
taken from the tomb of Seti I and hidden in that of a
queen named Inhapi. But such was the insecurity of the
times that after a few years, under Pesibkhenno II, the
last king of the Tanite Dynasty, they were hurriedly re-
moved to their final hiding place, an old and probably unused
tomb of Amenhotep I, near the temple of Der el-Bahri (Fig.
179). Here they were concealed for the last time, and as
the officials who superintended the transfer left the place a
scribe hurriedly wrote upon the coffins the records of their
last removal alongside similar graffiti hastily scrawled there
under similar circumstances after earlier transfers begin-
ning as far back as a hundred and fifty years before (Fig.
178). These successive records on the royal coffins and
bodies, in which one may trace their transfer from tomb to
tomb in the vain effort to find a place of safety, form per-
haps the most eloquent testimony of the decadence of the
age. The rough passage entering the cliff at the base of
a shaft in which they were now deposited was sealed for the
last time a few years later, early in the Twenty Second
Dynasty, not long after 940 B. C. Here the greatest kings
of Egypt slept unmolested for nearly three thousand years,
until about 1871 or 1872, when the Theban descendants of
those same tomb-robbers whose prosecution under Ramses
IX we can still read, discovered the place and the plundering
of the royal bodies was begun again. By methods not
* IV, 681.
! IV, 627 i.
'IV, 664-7.
• IV, 691-2.
526
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
greatly differing from those employed under Ramses IX the
modern authorities forced the thieves to disclose the place.
Thus nearly twenty nine centuries after they had been sealed
in their hiding place by the ancient scribes, and some three
thousand five hundred years after the first interment of the
earliest among them, the faces of Egypt's kings and emper-
ors were disclosed to the modern world, and hence the reader
of these pages is frequently able to look upon the fleshly
features of the monarchs whose deeds of three millenniums
ago he has been reading.
Abroad, the Twenty First Dynasty was as feeble as its
predecessors at the close of the Twentieth had been. They
probably maintained Egyptian power in Nubia, but in Syria
they were in no better reputation than in the days of Wena-
mon's ill-starred mission to the prince of Byblos. A nominal
suzerainty over Palestine was probably one of the court
fictions in continuance of a century-long tradition. During
this period of Egypt's total eclipse the tribes of Israel thus
gained the opportunity to consolidate their national organi-
zation and under Saul and David they gradually gained
the upper hand against the Philistines. Whether the Egyp-
tians had a hand in these events, thus enabling the Israelites
to subdue this hardy people of the coast, it is as yet impos-
sible to determine as we have no monuments which throw
any light upon Egypt's connection with Asiatic politics in
this period. The sea-peoples no longer appear upon the
monuments, and from the west the Delta was now the peace-
ful conquest of the Libyans, who accomplished by gradual
immigration what they had failed to gain by hostile invasion.
Although there was a native militia, chiefly under com-
mand of the High Priest of Amon at Thebes, Libyan mer-
cenaries now filled the ranks of the Egyptian army, and the
commanders of the Meshwesh in control of the fortresses
and garrisons of the importarit Delta towns soon gained
positions of power and influence. A Tehen-Libyan named
Buyuwawa settled at Heracleopolis early in the Twenty
First Dynasty; his son Musen was installed as a priest of
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: TIIE LIBYANS
527
the Heracleopolitan temple and commander of the mer-
cenaries of the town, and these offices became hereditary
in the family. Musen's great grandson, Sheshonk, was a.
"great chief of the Meshwesh," and a man of wealth and
power. He buried his son Namlot at Abydos in great
splendour and richly endowed the mortuary service of the
tomb with lands, gardens, slaves, attendants and daily obla-
tions. When the administrators of this property proved
untrue to their trust Sheshonk was possessed of sufficient
influence with one of the Twenty First Dynasty kings, whose
name is unfortunately lost, to secure their punishment by
oracle of Amon at Thebes.2 While we cannot follow the
fortunes of the other Libyan commanders throughout the
Delta in this way, there can be no doubt that they were all
enjoying similar prosperity in a greater or less degree, and
gradually gathering the reins of authority into their hands.
The weak and inglorious Twenty First Dynasty had now
been ruling nearly a century and a half and the descendants
of the Libyan Buyuwawa at Heracleopolis had been con-
stantly increasing their local authority for an equal length
of time, through five generations, when Sheshonk, the grand-
son of that Sheshonk of whom we have just spoken, suc-
ceeded as the representative of the family there. Either
this Sheshonk or his immediate ancestors had extended
Heracleopolis until it controlled a principality reaching
probably as far as Memphis on the north and on the south
as far as Siut. Whether the Tanite line died out or its
last representative was too feeble to maintain himself we
shall probably never know, but such was the power of the
Heracleopolitan mercenary commander that he transferred
his residence to Bubastis in the eastern Delta, where he
seized the royal authority and proclaimed himself Pharaoh
about 945 B. C. His line was known to Manetho as the
Twenty Second Dynasty. Thus in a little over two cen-
turies after the death of Ramses III, who had smitten them
so sorely, the Libyans gained the crown of Egypt without
1 IV, 785-793.
IV, 600-687.
SIV, 785 ff.
528
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
so much as drawing the sword. The change which thus
placed a soldier and a foreigner upon the venerable throne
of the Pharaohs had gone hand in hand with that which had
delivered the country to the priests; but the power of the
priest had culminated a little more rapidly than that of
the soldier, although both were equally rooted in the im-
perial system of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Sheshonk immediately gave to the succession of his line
a legitimacy which he could not himself possess. He mar-
ried his son to the daughter of Pesibkhenno II, the last of
the Tanite kings of the Twenty First Dynasty, and thus
gained for him the right to the throne through his wife, as
well as unquestionable legitimacy for his son.' A vigourous
and an able ruler, it might have been expected that Sheshonk
I, as we shall now call him, would be able to weld Egypt anew
into a powerful nation; but those elements with which he
was obliged to deal in the building up of a new state were
not such as could possibly be wrought into any stable fabric.
It was essentially a feudal organization which was now
effected by Sheshonk I, and the princes who owed him
fealty were largely the turbulent Meshwesh chiefs like him-
self, who would naturally not forget his origin nor fail
to see that a successful coup might accomplish for any one
of them what he had achieved for himself. Though we
cannot demark their geographical power with certainty, it
is evident that they ruled the Delta cities, rendering to
the Pharaoh their quota of troops, as did the Mamlukes
under the Sultans of Moslem Egypt. Upper Egypt was
organized into two principalities; that of Heracleopolis em-
bracing, as we have seen, northern Upper Egypt as far
south as Siut, where the Theban principality began, which
in its turn included all the country to the cataract and per-
haps Nubia also. The country thus already fell into three
divisions roughly corresponding to those of Ptolemaic and
Roman times. Sheshonk by his origin controlled Heracle-
opolis, and he and his family after him maintained close
1 IV, 738.
. IV, 745-7.
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
529
relations with the High Priests of Ptah at Memphis. Not
later than his fifth year he had also acquired Thebes. He
attempted to hold its support to his house by appointing
his own son as High Priest of Amon there;? but it still
remained a distinct principality, capable of offering serious
opposition to the ruling family in the Delta. The city itself
at least was not taxable by the Pharaoh, and was never
visited by his fiscal officials.3 Under these circumstances
an outbreak among the Libyan lords of the Delta or in the
powerful principalities of the South might be expected as
soon as there was no longer over them a strong hand like
that of Sheshonk I.
Under the energetic Sheshonk Egypt's foreign policy
took on a more aggressive character, and her long merely
formal claims upon Palestine were practically pressed.
Solomon was evidently an Egyptian vassal who possibly
received in marriage a daughter of the Pharaoh and whose
territory his Egyptian suzerain extended by the gift of the
important city of Gezer.* We last heard of it under Mer-
neptah three hundred years before; but never having been
subdued by the Israelites, its Canaanite lord had now re-
belled. The Pharaoh captured and burned it and presented
it to Solomon, who rebuilt it. The Pharaoh with whom
Solomon had to deal, a Pharaoh who captured and burned
strong cities in Palestine like Gezer, cannot have been one of
the degenerate kings at the close of the Twenty First Dy-
nasty, but an aggressive ruler who resumed Egypt's con-
trol in Palestine; and we know of no other king at this time
who answers this description save Sheshonk I. After the
division of the kingdom of the Hebrews under Solomon's
successor, Rehoboam, Sheshonk I, who had already har-
boured the fugitive Jeroboam, Rehoboam's northern enemy,
thought it a good opportunity to make his claims in Pales-
tine unquestionable, and in the fifth year of Rehoboam,
probably about 926 B. C., he invaded Palestine. His cam-
1 IV, 700.
LIV, 699.
*IV, 750.
• I Kings, 0: 16.
* I Kings, : 13-17.
84
530
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
paign penetrated no further north than the latitude of the
Sea of Galilee and extended eastward probably as far as
Mahanaim on the east of Jordan. Egyptian troops had not
penetrated Asia for over two hundred and seventy years,
and Sheshonk let loose his Libyan mercenaries among the
towns of the plain of Jezreel, which they plundered from
Rehob on the north, through Hapharaim, Megiddo, Taanach
and Shunem, to Beth-shean in the Jordan Valley on the east.
In the South they spoiled Yeraza, Bethhoron, Ajalon,
Gibeon, Socoh, Beth Anoth, Sharuhen and Arad, the last
two places marking their extreme southern activity. Ac-
cording to the Hebrew records2 they also entered Jerusalem
and despoiled it of the wealth gathered there in Solomon's
day; but it is clear that Sheshonk's campaign was directed
impartially against the two kingdoms and did not affect
Judah alone. He afterward claimed to have pushed as
far north as Mitanni; but this is evidently a mere boast, for
Mitanni had at this time long ceased to exist as a kingdom.
Among other Palestinian towns which Sheshonk records as
taken by him is a place hitherto unnoticed called “Field of
Abram," in which we find the earliest occurrence of the
name of Israel's eponymous hero (Fig. 180). Sheshonk was
able to return with great plunder with which to replenish
the long depleted Pharaonic coffers. He placed a record of
the tribute of Palestine and of Nubia, of which he had now
gained control, beside those of the great conquerors of the
Empire on the walls of the Karnak temple at Thebes." He
installed a new Libyan governor in the Great Oasis, and one
of his Libyan vassal chiefs governed the western Delta and
administered the caravan communication with the oases.
Thus for a time at least the glories of the Empire of the
Nineteenth Dynasty were restored with tribute flowing into
the treasury from a domain extending from northern Pales-
tine to the upper Nile, and from the oases to the Red Sea.
With his treasury thus replenished Sheshonk was able
0
1 IV, 709 ff., see also my essay, Amer. Jour. of Sem. Lang., XXI, 22-36.
? I Kings, 14: 25. 3 IV, 709-722. IV, 710. SIV, 723-4 A. IV, 782-4.
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
531
to revive the customary building enterprises of the Pharaohs
which had been discontinued for over two hundred years.
He beautified Bubastis, his Delta residence, and at Thebes
undertook a vast enlargement of the Karnak temple. His
son Yewepet, who was High Priest of Amon there, dis-
patched an expedition to Silsileh to secure the stone for an
enormous court and pylon which were to complete the Kar-
nak temple on the west and give it a magnificent front
toward the river. The side walls and colonnades of the
court had been planned and erected at some time after the
Nineteenth Dynasty, but the pylon was still lacking. It
was, and is today, the largest temple court in existence,
being over three hundred and fourteen feet wide by two
hundred and sixty nine feet deep, fronted by the largest
pylon in Egypt, thirty six feet thick, one hundred and fifty
feet high and with a front of three hundred and fifty seven
feet (Map 11). Sheshonk intended that it should be used at
the celebration of his thirty years' jubilee; whether it was
ever so used we do not know; but he never lived to see it com-
pleted, and the builder's scaffolding and ramps of sun-dried
brick still cumber the walls beneath the debris of many cen-
turies. Part of its decoration was however completed, and
by the south gate, now known as the Bubastite Portal, the
Pharaoh had executed a huge relief in the old style, depict-
ing himself smiting the Asiatics before Amon, who, to-
gether with the presiding goddess of Thebes, leads and pre-
sents to Sheshonk ten lines of captives, containing one hun-
dred and fifty six Palestinian prisoners, each symbolizing
a town or locality captured by Sheshonk and bearing its
name. 1 A number of Biblical names may be recognized
among them, the chief of which we have already noted.
When Osorkon I, Sheshonk I's son and heir, followed him,
probably about 920 B. C., he succeeded by right of inherit-
ance through his wife, the daughter of Pesibkhenno II, the
last king of the old line of the Twenty First Dynasty. He
inherited a prosperous kingdom and great wealth. During
1 IV, 709-722.
532
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
a little more than the first three years of his reign he gave
to the temples of Egypt a total of no less than four hundred
and eighty seven thousand pounds Troy of silver, while of
gold and silver together he gave over five hundred and sixty
thousand pounds Troy, a sum which doubtless includes the
above total of silver. These enormous donations form the
most striking evidence in our possession for the wealth and
prosperity of the Libyan dynasty in its earlier days. In
order to control the Heracleopolitan principality, Osorkon
I built a stronghold at the mouth of the Fayum,? while in
the matter of Thebes he followed his father's example and
installed one of his sons as High Priest of Amon there.
After the death of two of his sons while holding this office,
his third son Sheshonk succeeded to the position. This
Sheshonk maintained himself at Thebes in great splendour,
assumed the titles of royalty and so increased his power
that he was able to ensure the succession as sacerdotal prince
of Thebes to his son,3 Thus about 895 B. C., when Takelot
I succeeded his father Osorkon I at Bubastis, he had his
powerful brother Sheshonk as his rival at Thebes. But
after Takelot I's short reign his son Osorkon II was able
to regain control of Thebes and executed repairs in the
Luxor temple after a great food there. A prayer of Osor-
kon II preserved on a statue of his found at Tanis contains
a petition which significantly hints at the precarious situa-
tion in which the Libyan dynasty now found itself. He
prays that his seed may rule over “the High Priests of
Amon-Re, king of gods; the great chiefs of the Meshwesh
...; and the prophets of Harsaphes, '' the last being the
Libyan dynasts ruling at Heracleopolis, from which the
family of the Pharaoh sprang. He adds, “Thou shalt es-
tablish my children in the offices which I have given them;
let not the heart of brother be exalted (against] his
brother." Between the lines of this prayer one can read
the story of a dynasty rent asunder by family feuds and con-
stantly threatened by revolt of this or that powerful mer-
1 IV, 729-737. IV, 953.
3 IV. 738,
+ IV, 742-4. SIV, 747.
6 Tbiil.
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
533
cenary commander who feels himself aggrieved or able by
force of arms to improve his position.
In all essential particulars these Libyan rulers of Egypt
were completely Egyptianized. The grandfather of the
first Sheshonk had buried his son in the Egyptian man-
ner at Abydos, and had endowed the tomb in accordance
with Egyptian mortuary belief. Although they retained
their Libyan names, the Bubastites assumed the full
Pharaonic titulary of the form which had been customary
for fifteen hundred years in Egypt. Their mercenary vas-
sal commanders still retained their old time native titles,
translated into Egyptian as “great chief of the Mesh-
wesh," or as frequently abbreviated on the monuments
“great chief of the Me”; but they worshipped the Egyptian
gods and presented to the temples.endowments of land for
the sake of procuring the divine favour as did the Egyptians
themselves. While Egyptian culture may have been but
a slight veneer and they may have remained Libyan bar-
barians, yet the process of Egyptianizing was rapidly going
on, and in the case of the ruling family was now doubtless
practically complete. Thus in his twenty second year we
find Osorkon II building an imposing hall at Bubastis for
the purpose of celebrating after the old Egyptian manner
the thirtieth anniversary of his appointment as crown-
prince. But the splendour of this gorgeous jubilee cannot
blind us to the decline in which the dangerous forces inher-
ent in the situation were involving the Bubastite family.
After a short coregency with his son, Sheshonk II, and the
death of this prince,4 Osorkon II associated with himself
another son, who after seven years coregency succeeded as
Takelot II, about 860 B. C.
The declining fortunes of the Twenty Second Dynasty
from now on can only be traced in the career of the Theban
principality, which, however, clearly exhibits the turbulent
and restless character of the feudal princes who now make
up the state. Here the High Priest Osorkon, who arrived
1 IV, 009 ff.
: IV, 782-4.
• IV, 748–51.
• IV, 697, No. 13; 772.
534
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
at Thebes in the eleventh year of Takelot II, began a series
of annals on the walls of the Karnak temple recording
his deeds and his gifts to the temples in his own name.
These records show that after courting the favour of the
Thebans by the inauguration of a new and richly endowed
temple calendar he was nevertheless driven from the city
by a revolt, which finally spread, involving the North and
the South alike in civil war. The High Priest fled and the
war lasted for years, until he was finally able to gain the
support of his father's followers, when he returned to
Thebes amid great rejoicing, as his long fleet of ships on
the river drew near the city. He immediately repaired to
the temple, from which Amon came forth to meet him in
gorgeous procession, and the god thereupon delivered an
oracle exempting the Thebans from punishment for revolt.
These significant events, preserved in a few meagre and
fragmentary lines of the High Priest's annals,' are doubtless
such as filled the reigns of the last three Bubastites who
continued to hold Thebes and ruled for a hundred years;
although their city of Bubastis has perished so completely
that little or no record of their careers has survived. To
revolt must be added hostilities between the two principali-
ties of Thebes and Heracleopolis, of which there are plain
traces, and feuds among the mercenary lords of the Delta.
The situation will have closely resembled that under the
Mamlukes, when the people, groaning under every oppres-
sion and especially exorbitant taxation, often successively
taxed by two different lords, rose in revolt after revolt,
only to be put down by the mercenaries with slaughter and
rapine. Under such circumstances the Pharaoh's influence
in Palestine must have totally vanished; but, alarmed at
the growing power of Nineveh in Syria, one of the Bubas-
tites, probably Takelot II, contributed a quota of a thousand
men to the western coalition against the Assyrians, which
was defeated by Shalmaneser II at Qarqar on the Orontes
in 854 B. C.
TIV, 756-770.
2 IV, 703-9.
IV, 700.
1
PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE LIBYANS
535
It is impossible to determine with certainty the family
connection of the last three Bubastites, who followed Takelot
II. Sheshonk III, Pemou and Sheshonk IV may have had
no connection with him. They held Memphis and Thebes,
and their names occasionally appear here and there on
minor monuments. The memorials of Egypt's ancient
splendour suffered flagrant destruction at their hands and
the vast colossus of Ramses II at Tanis with other earlier
monuments were broken up and employed by Sheshonk III
in the construction of his Tanis pylon. It is evident that
during their rule the local lords and dynasts of the Delta
were gradually gaining their independence, and probably
many of them had thrown off their allegiance to the Buba-
stite house long before the death of Sheshonk IV, about 745
B. C., with whom the Twenty Second Dynasty certainly
reached its end.
One of these Delta lords, named Pedibast, who had cast
off the suzerainty of the Bubastites, gained the dominant
position among his rivals at the death of Sheshonk IV, and
founded a new house known to Manetho as the Twenty Third
Dynasty. Manetho places this dynasty at Tanis, but, as
Pedibast's name shows, he was of Bubastite origin, like the
family which he unseated, and as we shall later see, his suc-
cessor ruled at Bubastis. Pedibast gained Thebes and held
it until his twenty third year, although from his fourteenth
year he was obliged to share its control with king Yewepet,
a dynast of the eastern Delta. A late Demotic papyrus in
Vienna contains a folk-tale which significantly reveals the
unsettled conditions of the time among the turbulent dynasts,
whom, like Yewepet, Pedibast was unable to control. It
narrates the course of a long and serious feud between
Kaamenhotep, the dynast of Mendes in the Delta, and
Pemou, the mercenary commander in Heliopolis. The occa-
sion of the quarrel is the seizure of a valuable coat-of-mail
by Kaamenhotep, and Pedibast is unable to prevent wide-
spread hostilities among the Delta dynasts, as they pro-
1 IV, 704, 878, No. 2.
536
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
nounce for one or the other of the contending principals.'
Under Pedibast's successor, Osorkon III, the power of the
dominant house rapidly waned until there was at last an
independent lord or petty king in every city of the Delta
and up the river as far as Hermopolis. We are acquainted
with the names of eighteen of these dynasts, whose strug-
gles among themselves now led to the total dissolution of
the Egyptian state. The land again resolved itself into
those small and local political units of which it had consisted
in prehistoric days, before there existed any consolidated
and centralized government. Its power was completely
paralyzed and the political sagacity of such statesmen as
the Hebrew prophets was of itself, without the aid of pro-
phetic vision, quite sufficient to perceive how utterly futile
was the policy of the Egyptian party in Israel, which would
have depended upon the support of Egypt against the op-
pression of Assyria. When the troops of Tiglath-pileser III
devastated the West down to the frontier of Egypt in 734
732 B. C., the kings of the Delta were too involved in their
own complicated and petty wars to render the wretched
Hebrews any assistance; nor did they foresee that the day
must soon come when the great power on the Tigris would
cross the desert that separated Egypt from Palestine and
absorb the ancient kingdom of the Nile. But before this
inevitable catastrophe should occur, another foreign power
was to possess the throne of the Pharaohs.
i Wiener Zeitsch. fiir die Kunde des Morgenlandes, XVII, sequel to Mitth. aus
der Samml. der Pap. Erzherzog Rainer, VI, 18 ff.
IV, 796 ff.; 830, 878.
9

FIG. 180.—“THE FIELD OF ABRAM."
Geographical name in the list of Sheshonk I at Karnak, containing the earliest
occurrence of the name of Abram. See p. 530.


in 21
ce
Fig. 181.-SENJIRLI STELA
OF ESARHADDON.
He leads captive Baal of Tyre
and Taharka, the kneeling
figure, with negroid features.
(Berlin Museum.)
Fig. 182.-SERAPEUM STELA OF
PSAMTIK I.
Recording the death of an Apis in Psamtik I's
twenty-first year which was born twenty-
one years earlier, in the twenty-sixth year
of Taharka.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF
ASSYRIA
LOWER NUBIA had now been dominated by the Egyptians
for over eighteen hundred years, while the country above the
second cataract to the region of the fourth cataract had for
the most part been under Egyptian control for something
like a thousand years. We have seen the country gradually
being Egyptianized until there was an imposing Egyptian
temple in every larger town of Lower Nubia, and since
Ramses II's time the Egyptian gods were everywhere wor-
shipped. While the native language still remained the
speech of the people, Egyptian was the language of adminis-
tration and government and of the Egyptian immigrants
who had settled in the country. The fertile and productive
lands of Upper Nubia, the rich mines in the mountains east
of Lower Nubia, which compensated in some measure for
its agricultural poverty, and the active trade from the Sudan
which was constantly passing through the country, made it
a land of resources and possibilities, which the Egyptianized
Nubians, slowly awakening to their birth-right, were now
beginning to realize. Nor could the occasional raids of the
hostile tribes of the eastern desert, or the negroes of the
Sudan, which still continued, essentially interfere with the
development of the country.
Sheshonk I had still held Nubia,' and the High Priest of
Amon at Thebes, in the second half of Takelot II's reign, was
able to offer to the god the gold of Nubia,? which to be sure
may possibly have been obtained in trade. It is probable,
however, that the cataract country was still a dependency
of Egypt until the middle of the Twenty Second Dynasty,
I IV, 724.
: IV, 770.
637
538
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
about 850 B. C. It will be recalled that Nubia had for some
centuries been very closely connected with Thebes and the
temple of Amon. There was a “gold country of Amon" there
with its own governor as far back as the close of the Nine-
teenth Dynasty; the High Priest of Amon became viceroy
of Nubia at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty; while in the
Twenty First Dynasty the sacerdotal princesses of Thebes
held the same office. Thus after the Theban hierarchy had
been maintaining a strong hold upon Nubia for over a hun-
dred years from the end of the thirteenth century, their con-
trol had strengthened into full possession for two hundred
and fifty years more. When we recollect that the Tanites
of the Twenty First Dynasty had banished to one of the
oases the turbulent families of Thebes, who had opposed
their suzerainty; and that they were later obliged to recall
the exiles; when we remember the long and dangerous revolt
of Thebes under Takelot II, and the pardon of the rebel-
lious city by oracle of Amon, it will be evident that under
such conditions the priestly families at Thebes may easily
have been obliged on some occasion to flee from the ven-
geance of the northern dynasty and seek safety among the
remote Nubian cataracts, which would effectually cut off
pursuit. Such a flight would not be likely to find record,
and hence we have no direct documentary evidence that it
took place; but by the middle of the eighth century B. C. a
fully developed Nubian kingdom emerges upon our view,
with its seat of government at Napata, just below the fourth
cataract. Napata had been an Egyptian frontier station
from the days of Amenhotep II, seven hundred years earlier;
and long before it was held by Egypt, it had doubtless been
an important trading station on the route between Egypt
and the Sudan. It was, moreover, the remotest point in
Egyptian Nubia, and hence safest from attack from the
North.
The state which arose here was, in accordance with our
explanation of its origin, a reproduction of the Amonite
? IV, 798.
: IV, 704 ff.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 539
theocracy at Thebes. The state god was Amon, and he con-
tinually intervened directly in the affairs of government by
specific oracles. The control of the god was even more abso-
lute than at Thebes, and eventually even the king was obliged
to abdicate at the god's demand, who then installed another
ruler. This last condition of things was, however, the out-
come of a gradual development, and did not obtain at first.
In Greek times the priests in Egypt were wont to depict
the Ethiopian theocracy as the ideal state, and closely con-
nected with this conception of it was the false notion that
Ethiopia was the source of Egyptian civilization, a belief
commonly held by the Greeks. The king bore all the Phar-
aonic titles, calling himself Lord of the Two Lands, as if
he governed all Egypt. In the beginning he might be known
by an Egyptian name, although this soon disappeared and
was replaced by a personal name of pure Nubian origin, the
throne-name and other state designations still remaining
Egyptian for a long time. He built temples of Egyptian
architecture, decorated with Egyptian reliefs and bearing
hieroglyphic inscriptions and dedications of the traditional
Egyptian form. The ritual depicted on the walls was that
in use at Thebes. Of the Egyptian origin of this state there
is no doubt; nor can there be any doubt of its Theban char-
acter, although there may be some difference of opinion as
to how this last fact is to be accounted for
As we gain our first glimpse of this new kingdom of the
upper Nile, just before the middle of the eighth century B.
C., it is ruled by a king Kashta. We are unable to trace
the extent of his power northward, nor do we know anything
of his reign. His son, Piankhi, who succeeded him about
741 B. C. probably began the absorption of Egypt. In any
case, by 721 or 722 B. C., he was already in possession of
Upper Egypt as far north as Heracleopolis, just south of
the Fayum, with Nubian garrisons in the more important
towns. At this time the Twenty Third Dynasty, represented
by Osorkon III at Bubastis, no longer actually ruling more
TIV, 040,
540
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
than the district of Bubastis and surrounded by rivals in
every important town of the Delta, was confronted by an
aggressive and powerful opponent in Tefnakhte, the dynast
of Sais, in the western Delta." In Piankhi's twenty first
year his commanders in Upper Egypt reported to him that
Tefnakhte had defeated the dynasts of the entire western
Delta, and of both shores of the Nile above the Delta, almost
as far south as the vicinity of Benihasan. Besides these he
had also gained control of all the eastern and middle Delta
lords, so that he was practically king of all Lower Egypt,
as well as the lower portion of Upper Egypt. Only Hera-
cleopolis, which we have already seen as a powerful princi-
pality, was holding out against him, and was suffering a
siege at his hands; while all his vassal lords of the Delta
were lending him aid against it, and personally assisting
in the investment. The wily Piankhi, perceiving that the
balance of power in the North was now destroyed, and
desirous of drawing his enemy further southward, away
from the safety of the impenetrable Delta swamps, quietly
awaited developments. A second appeal from his northern
commanders then informed him that Namlot, king of Her-
mopolis, had submitted to Tefnakhte. Thereupon Piankhi
sent his commanders in Egypt northward to check Tef-
nakhte's further southern advance and to besiege Hermop-
olis. This they did while Piankhi was at the same time
dispatching from Nubia a second army for their support.
Having left Thebes, this second Nubian force met Tef-
nakhte's fleet coming up and defeated it, capturing many
ships and prisoners. Continuing northward, in all proba-
bility down the Bahr Yusuf, they struck Tefnakhte's forces
engaged in the investment of Heracleopolis, and put it to
flight both by land and water. The northerners fled to the
west side of the Bahr Yusuf, whither they were pursued the
next morning by the Nubians, again discomfited and forced
to retreat toward the Delta. Namlot, king of Hermopolis,
who had fought among Tefnakhte's vassals, escaped from
1 From here on, after the Piankhi Stela (IV, 796–883).
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
541
the disaster and returned to protect his own city of Her-
mopolis against the Nubians. Hearing of this, the Nubian
commanders returned up the Bahr Yusuf to Hermopolis,
which they then closely beset.
On receiving reports of these operations, Piankhi was
incensed that the northern army had been allowed to escape
into the Delta. It was now late in the calendar year, and
Piankhi determined, after the celebration of the New Year's
feast at home, to proceed to Thebes to celebrate there the
great feast of Opet in the third month, and then to lead the
campaign against the North in person. Meanwhile his com-
manders in Egypt captured the towns below and in the vicin-
ity of Hermopolis, including the important Oxyrhyncus, but
Hermopolis itself still held out against them. In accord-
ance with his plan, Piankhi then proceeded northward early
in the calendar year, celebrated the feast of Opet at Thebes
as anticipated, in the third month, and went on to assume
charge of the investment of Hermopolis, which had now been
going on for certainly four and probably five months.
Piankhi vigourously pushed the siege; from embankments
and high towers the doomed city was daily showered with ar-
rows and stones; foul odours arose from the masses of dead,
and not long after Piankhi's arrival the place was ripe for
surrender. Namlot, its king, finding that gifts, even when
his own royal crown was cast down among them, availed
nothing with Piankhi, sent out his queen to plead with the
women of the Nubian that they might intercede with him on
Namlot's behalf. This device was successful, and assured
at last of his life, Namlot surrendered and turned over the
city and all his wealth to Piankhi, who immediately took
possession of the place. After an inspection of Namlot's
palace and treasury, Piankhi entered the stables of the Her-
mopolitan: “His majesty proceeded to the stable of the
horses, so say his annals, "and the quarters of the foals.
When he saw that they had suffered hunger, he said: 'I
swear as Re loves me ... it is more grievous in my heart
that my horses have suffered hunger than any evil deed that
>
542
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ance.
thou hast done in the prosecution of thy desire.'" Nam-
lot's wealth was then assigned to the royal treasury of
Piankhi and the sacred fortune of Amon.
Heracleopolis being already exhausted after its invest-
ment at the hands of Tefnakhte, its king, Pefnefdibast,
now came to greet Piankhi and praise him for his deliver-
The advance to the Delta, sailing down the Bahr
Yusuf, was then begun, and all the chief towns of the west
side surrendered one after another on seeing Piankhi's force
except Crocodilopolis in the Fayum, which would have car-
ried him too far from his course past Illahun at the mouth
of the Fayum. On the other hand, he did not touch Aphro-
ditopolis, which lay on the east side of the river, equally
far removed from his route past Medum and Ithtowe to
Memphis. The Nubian king offered sacrifice to the gods
in all the cities which he passed, and took possession of all
the available property for his own treasury and the estate
of Amon.
On reaching Memphis it was found to have been very
strongly fortified by Tefnakhte, who now counted the city
as part of his kingdom. He had long held possession of it
and was priest of Ptah, its great god. Hence in answer
to Piankhi's demand to surrender, the Memphites closed the
gates and made a sortie, which was evidently not very effect-
ive. Under cover of night Tefnakhte succeeded in entering
the city and exhorted the garrison to rely on their strong
walls, their plentiful supplies and the high water, which pro-
tected the east side from attack, urging them to hold out
while he rode away northward for reinforcements. Having
landed on the north of the city, Piankhi was surprised at
the strength of the place. Some of his people favoured a
siege, others desired to storm the walls upon embankments
and causeways to be raised for the purpose. Piankhi him-
self decided to assault, but rejecting labourious works, which
besides being too slow would give the enemy exact indication
of the place of attack, he devised a shrewd plan of assault,
I IV, 850.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 543
which speaks highly for his skill as a strategist. The high
walls on the west of the city had been recently raised still
higher, and it was evident that the east side, protected by
waters perhaps artificially raised, was being neglected. Here
was the harbour, where the ships now floated so high that
their bow ropes were fastened among the houses of the city.
Piankhi sent his fleet against the harbour and quickly cap-
tured all the shipping. Then taking command in person,
he rapidly ranged the captured craft together with his own
fleet along the eastern walls, thus furnishing footing for his
assaulting lines, which he immediately sent over the ram-
parts and captured the city before its eastern defenses could
be strengthened against him. A great slaughter now ensued,
but all sanctuaries were respected and protected, and Ptah
of course repudiated Tefnakhte and recognized Piankhi as
king.
The entire region of Memphis then submitted, whereupon
the Delta dynasts also appeared in numbers with gifts for
Piankhi and signified their submission. After dividing the
wealth of Memphis between the treasuries of Amon and
Ptah, Piankhi crossed the river, worshipped in the ancient
sanctuary of Khereha-Babylon, and followed the old sacred
road thence to Heliopolis, where he camped by the harbour.
His annals narrate at length how he entered the holy of
holies of the sun-god here, that he might be recognized as
his son and heir to the throne of Egypt, according to custom
usual since the remote days of the Fifth Dynasty. Here
king Osorkon III of the Twenty Third Dynasty at Bubastis,
now but a petty dynast like the rest, visited Piankhi and
recognized the Nubian's suzerainty. Having then moved
his camp to a point just east of Athribis, by a town called
Keheni, Piankhi there received the submission of the Delta
lords. Of these there were fifteen : being two kings, the said
Osorkon III, who was still with him, and king Yewepet of
Tentremu in the eastern Delta, who had once shared Thebe:
with Pedibast, Osorkon III's predecessor; nine princes, who
governed Mendes, Sebennytos, Saft el-Henneh, Busirin.
544
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Hesebka (the eleventh nome), Phagroriopolis, Khereha-
Babylon, and other towns of the Delta and vicinity which
cannot be identified with certainty; and finally a mercenary
commander in Hermopolis Parva, son of the prince of
Mendes, besides a priest of Horus who had founded a sacer-
dotal principality at Letopolis, like that of the priests at
Heracleopolis, from whom the Twenty Second Dynasty
sprang. Among all these, Pediese, prince of Athribis,
showed himself especially loyal to Piankhi and invited him
thither, placing all his wealth at the Nubian's disposal.
Thereupon Piankhi proceeded to Athribis, received the gifts
of Pediese, and that he might choose for himself the best
steeds, even entered Pediese's stables, which the shrewd
Athribite, observing his love for horses, had particularly
invited him to do. The fifteen Delta lords, except of course
Pediese, were here dismissed at their own request, that they
might go back to their cities and return to Piankhi with
further gifts, in emulation of Pediese.
Meantime the desperate Tefnakhte had garrisoned Mesed,
a town of uncertain location, but probably somewhere on
his Saite frontier. Rather than have them captured by
Piankhi he burned the ships and supplies which he could
not save. Piankhi then sent a body of troops against Mesed,
and they slew the garrison. Tefnakhte had meanwhile taken
refuge on one of the remote islands in the western mouths
of the Nile. Many miles of vast Delta morass and a network
of irrigation canals separated Piankhi from the fugitive. It
would have been a hazardous undertaking to dispatch an
army into such a region. When, therefore, Tefnakhte sent
gifts and an humble message of submission requesting that
Piankhi send to him a messenger with whom he might go to
a neighbouring temple and take the oath of allegiance to his
Nubian suzerain, Piankhi was very glad to accept the pro-
posal. In this less humiliating, not to say much less danger-
ous manner, Tefnakhte then accepted the suzerainty of
Piankhi. When, therefore, the two kings of the Fayum and
Aphroditopolis whom, as we have seen, he had not molested
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
545
on his way northward, appeared with their gifts a Nubian
Pharaoh had obtained complete recognition, had supplanted
the Libyans and was lord of all Egypt.
When his Delta vassals had paid Piankhi a last visit he
loaded his ships with the wealth of the North and sailed
away for his southern capital amid the acclamations of the
people. If we have devoted an apparently disproportionate
amount of space to the campaign which was now concluded
it is because it displays to us more clearly than ever before
or after, the conditions which always arose in Egypt when-
ever any weakening of the central power betrayed to the
local dynasts that they might without danger assume their
independence or even gradually usurp the crown of the
Pharaoh. Arrived at Napata, Piankhi erected in the temple of
Amon a magnificent granite stela,' inscribed on all four sides,
recording in detail the entire campaign, in which he, the
son of Amon, had humiliated the rivals of that god in the
North. With the possible exception of the Annals of Thut-
mose III and the documents of Ramses II on the battle of
Kadesh, this remarkable literary monument is the clearest
and most rational account of a military expedition which
has survived from ancient Egypt. It displays literary skill
and an appreciation of dramatic situations which is notable,
while the vivacious touches found here and there quite re-
lieve it of the arid tone usual in such hieroglyphic docu-
ments. The imagination endues the personages appearing
here more easily with life than those of any other similar
historical narrative of Egypt; and the humane Piankhi es-
pecially, the lover of horses, remains a man far removed
from the conventional companion and equal of the gods who
inevitably occupies the exalted throne of the Pharaohs in
all other such records. It is this document of course which
has enabled us to follow Piankhi in his conquest of the
North.
Tefnakhte, while he had nominally submitted to Piankhi,
only awaited the withdrawal of the Ethiopian to resume his
1 IV, 796–883.
85
546
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
designs. He eventually succeeded in establishing a king-
dom of Lower Egypt, assumed the Pharaonic titles and
ruled at least eight years over a feudal state like that of
the Twenty Second Dynasty. His reign is parallel with the
last years of the Twenty Third Dynasty, which seems to
have struggled on at Bubastis as vassal princes under him.
It is evident that Tefnakhte was of a type far superior to
the ordinary Delta dynast; he must have greatly increased
the power and prestige of Sais, for his son Bocchoris, on
succeeding to his father's throne, was later regarded as
the founder of the Twenty Fourth Dynasty. In Upper
Egypt Piankhi's rule continued for a brief period. He con-
trolled Thebes long enough to do some slight building in
the temple of Mut, where he left a relief representing a
festal voyage of his ships, perhaps his return from the
North; for among the vessels appears the state barge of
Sais, captured from Tefnakhte's fleet in the northern war.
Piankhi was then still in control as far north as Heracle-
opolis, whose commandant appears in the relief as admiral
of the Nubian fleet. In order to gain control of the fortune
of Amon with an appearance of legitimacy, Piankhi caused
his sister-wife, Amenardis, to be adopted by Shepnupet, the
daughter of Osorkon III, who was sacerdotal princess of
Thebes.? The device was probably not new. But as Piankhi
withdrew the decadent Twenty Third Dynasty put forth
its last expiring effort and established an ephemeral au-
thority in Thebes, where Osorkon III seems to have ruled
for a short time as coregent with an otherwise unknown
Takelot, the third of the name. Piankhi's invasion of Egypt
and entire reign there seem therefore to have fallen within
the reign of Osorkon III. But the rising power of Sais soon
overwhelmed the failing Bubastites, and, as we have noted,
Bocchoris, son of Tefnakhte of Sais, gained the throne of
Lower Egypt probably about 718 B. C. to be later known
as the founder, and in so far as we know, the sole king of
the Twenty Fourth Dynasty. We know nothing from the
IIV, 811.
:IV, 940.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 547
Egyptian monuments regarding his brief reign; the only
contemporary monument bearing his name is an inscription
dating the burial of an Apis bull in the Memphite Serapeum
in his sixth year.' A doubtless reliable tradition of Greek
times makes him a wise lawgiver who revised the laws of
the land and himself rendered the legal decisions of the
most remarkable shrewdness. We may easily believe that
the agitated times through which the country had passed
made such new legislation necessary. A remarkable De-
motic papyrus dated in the thirty fourth year of the Roman
Emperor Augustus narrates the prophecies of a lamb ut-
tered in the sixth year of Bocchoris, in which the imminent
invasion of Egypt and its conquest by the Assyrians are
foretold seemingly accompanied by the assurance that the
misfortunes of the unhappy country should continue nine
hundred years. It is the last example of that school of pro-
phetic literature of which Ipuwer of the Middle Kingdom
was the earliest representative known to us.2 Manetho char-
acteristically narrates this marvellous tale as an important
occurrence of Bocchoris's reign.
Egypt had now been under the divided authority of nu-
merous local dynasts for probably over a century and a
half. The total disintegration of centralized power had
unavoidably involved the sacrifice of economic prosperity.
Egypt's foreign commerce inevitably dwindled to the van-
ishing point; agriculture and industry were at the lowest
ebb and the resources of the country, at the mercy of irre-
sponsible lords and princes, were necessarily being rapidly
drained. With its vast works of irrigation slowly going
to ruin, its roads unprotected, intercourse between cities
unsafe and the larger communities suffering from constant
turmoil and agitation, the productive capacity of the country
was steadily waning. While these conclusions are not based
upon contemporary documents,- for such conditions in such
an age are rarely even indirectly the subject of record,
yet they may be safely inferred from the known results of
1 IV, 884,
: Krall, in Festgabea für Büdinger, Innsbruck, 1898.
* See above, pp. 204-05.
548
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
similar political conditions in later times. The hopeless
state of the country was clearly understood by the sagacious
Isaiah, who declared to his people: “Behold the Lord rideth
upon a swift cloud and cometh unto Egypt; and the idols
of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart
of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will stir up
the Egyptians against the Egyptians; and they shall fight
every one against his brother, and every one against his
neighbour; city against city and kingdom against king-
dom. .. And I will give over the Egyptians into the
hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them,
saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts. . . . The princes of Zoan
are utterly foolish; the counsel of the wisest counsellors of
Pharaoh is become brutish. ... The princes of Zoan
[Tanis] are become fools, the princes of Noph [Napata ?]
are deceived; they have caused Egypt to go astray that are
the corner stone of her tribes. The Lord hath mingled a
spirit of perverseness in the midst of her; they have caused
Egypt to go astray in every work thereof, as a drunken
man staggering in his vomit. Neither shall there be for
Egypt any work which head or tail, palm-branch or rush,
may do." No truer picture could possibly be portrayed.
In spite of these unfavourable conditions, one important
element of culture in Egypt was inspired with new life. As
in the turbulent age of the Medicis, Italy, and especially
Florence, enjoyed an artistic transformation, in which works
of the highest genius were produced with an amazing fecun-
dity; as in Cairo under the constant revolutions, assassina-
tions, usurpations and incessant oppression of the Mam-
lukes, while the land was economically going to ruin, the
mosque form was developed, perfected and the noblest monu-
ments of Saracen architecture were erected; so now under
similar seemingly adverse influences the sculptors of Egypt
were slowly ushering in a new era in the history of art and
feeling impulses which we shall find attaining their highest
fruition in the Restoration which was to follow after an-
other half century of foreign aggression and political decay.
* Isaiah, 19.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
549
Naturally little of such work has survived, but a modest
chapel, erected under Osorkon III at Thebes, contains re-
liefs showing clearly the new capacity which needed only
social, political and economic opportunity to produce the
greatest works of oriental art.
Meantime those profound political changes, fraught with
the greatest danger to Egypt, which the reader has fore-
seen, were taking place in Asia. The powerful military
state on the Tigris had for centuries been seeking to estab-
lish itself as the dominant power in western Asia. As far
back as 1100 B. C. Nesubenebded, the first of the Tanites,
had sent a gift to Tiglath Pileser I on his appearance in the
west; and two hundred and fifty years later the Pharaoh
had contributed a quota to the western alliance which had
hoped to break the power of Shalmaneser II at Qarqar in
854 B. C. Rousing Assyria from a period of temporary
decadence, Tiglath-pileser III had brought her full power
to bear upon the West, and in 734 to 732 B. C. had ravaged
Syria-Palestine to the very borders of Egypt. The Ara-
mæan kingdom of Damascus fell and the whole west was
organized as dependencies of Assyria. In the short reign
of Shalmaneser IV, who followed Tiglath Pileser III, Israel
with others was encouraged to revolt by Sewa or So, who
was either an otherwise unknown Delta dynast or ruler
of Musri, a kingdom of North Arabia, the name of which is
so like that of Egypt as to cause confusion in our under-
standing of the documents of the time, a confusion which
perhaps already existed in the minds of the cuneiform
scribes. Before the Assyrian invasion which resulted,
Samaria held out for some years; but under Shalmaneser
IV's great successor, Sargon II, it fell in 722 B. C. The
chief families of Israel were deported and the nation as
such was annihilated. Unable to oppose the formidable
armies of Assyria, the petty kinglets of Egypt constantly
fomented discontent and revolt among the Syro-Palestinian
states in order if possible to create a fringe of buffer states
I II Kings, 17: 4.
550
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
between them and the Assyrian. In 720 B. C. Sargon again
appeared in the west to suppress a revolt in which Egypt
doubtless had a hand. Completely victorious in the north,
he marched southward to Raphia, where he totally defeated
the allies of the south, among whom Egypt had a levy of
troops under a commander named Sib'i.' The Assyrian
hosts had now twice swept down to the very borders of
Egypt and the dynasts must by this time have been fully
aware of their danger. Probably nothing but the tradi-
tional reputation of Egypt, the memory of the old days
when she had been supreme in Asia, and Ninevite kings had
sought her friendship with gifts, kept Tiglath Pileser III
and Sargon from invading her frontier and discovering how
lamentably weak she was. The situation was now reversed;
in 715 B. C. Sargon's records report the reception of gifts
from Pir'u (Pharaoh) of Egypt, who will probably have
been Bocchoris.
Such was the threatening situation of Egypt when, prob-
ably about 711 B. C., after an interval of some ten years
since the retirement of Piankhi, the Nubian kings again
appeared in the North. Piankhi had now been succeeded
by his brother, Shabaka, with whom the uninterrupted
series of pure Ethiopian royal names begins. He had
married Piankhi's daughter and of course based his claim
to the throne, as in Egypt, not only upon his own birth,
but also upon this alliance. We possess no native records
of his conquest of the country, but Manetho states that he
burned Bocchoris alive. Lower Egypt was completely sub-
dued, Ethiopian supremacy acknowledged and Shabaka en-
trenched himself so firmly that he became the founder of
the Twenty Fifth or Ethiopian Dynasty, as reported by
Manetho. Appreciating the serious danger of the presence
of so formidable a state as Assyria on his very borders,
Shabaka immediately sent his agents among the Syro-
Palestinian states to excite them to revolt. In Philistia,
· Winckler, Unters. zur Altoriental. Geschichte, p. 93.
: Winckler, Ibid., p. 94.
3 IV, 020.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 551
Judah, Moab and Edom' he promised the vassals of Assyria
support in rebellion against their Ninevite suzerain. Re-
membering the ancient supremacy of Egypt, failing to un-
derstand the state of decadent impotence into which she
had fallen, and anxious to shake off the oppressive Assyrian
yoke, they lent a ready ear to the emissaries of Shabaka.
Only in Judah did the prophet-statesman Isaiah foresee the
futility of depending upon Egypt, and the final catastrophe
which should overtake her at the hands of Assyria. The
vigilant Assyrian, however, hearing of the projected alli-
ance, acted so quickly that the conspirators were glad to
drop their designs and protest fidelity. In spite of diffi-
culties in Babylon and rebellions in the north, the able and
aggressive Sargon pushed the consolidation of his power
with brilliant success and left to his son Sennacherib in 705
B. C. the first stable and firmly compacted empire ever
founded by a Semitic power.
Sennacherib was embarrassed in his earlier years with
the usual complications in Babylon. Mardukbaliddin, an
able and active claimant of the Babylonian throne, who had
already caused Sennacherib's father much trouble, now
sent his emissaries to stir up defection and create a diver-
sion in his favour in the west. As a result Luli, the energetic
king of Tyre, Hezekiah of Judah, the dynasts of Edom,
Moab and Ammon, with the chiefs of their Beduin neigh-
bours, in fact, all the southern half of the Assyrian con-
quests in the west besides Egypt were finally organized in
a great alliance against Ninevah. Before the allies could
act in concert, Sennacherib suddenly appeared in the west,
marched down the Phænician coast, capturing all its strong-
holds save Tyre; and pressed on southward to the revolting
Philistine cities. Here having punished Askalon, he ad-
vanced to Altaqu, where he came upon the motley army
gathered by the tardy Shabaka among his northern vassals,
whom Sennacherib calls “the kings of Musri” (Egypt).
We know nothing of the strength of this force, although
I Winckler, Ibid.
* Isaiah 20.
552
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Sennacherib claims that they were “without number"; but
it is safe to conclude that it was not a formidable army.
With the dissolution of the central government in Egypt
the standing army, even made up chiefly of mercenaries as
it was, had disappeared and the illy organized aggregation
of levies from the domains of the local Delta princes was
little fitted to meet the compact and finely organized armies
which the Assyrian kings had gradually developed, till they
had become the dread and terror of the west. Although
small Egyptian contingents had before served as auxiliaries
against the Assyrians, the armies of the two empires on
the Nile and the Tigris had never before faced each other.
Sennacherib led his own power in person while the Egyp-
tian army was entrusted by Shabaka to his nephew, a son
of Piankhi, named Taharka,' who some thirteen or fourteen
years afterward became king of Ethiopia, a fact which led
the Hebrew annalist to give him that title already at the
time of this campaign. There was but one possible issue
for the battle; Sennacherib disposed of Taharka's army
without difficulty, having meanwhile beleaguered Jerusalem
and devastated Judah far and wide. He had effectually
stamped out the disaffection in the west and completely dis-
comfited the allies, but before he could take Jerusalem the
plague-infected winds from the malarial shores of the east-
ern Delta had scattered death among his troops. This over-
whelming catastrophe, together with disquieting news from
Babylon, forced him hastily to retire to Nineveh, thus bring-
ing to Jerusalem the deliverance promised by Isaiah, an
event in which pious tradition afterward saw the destroying
angel of the Lord. This deliverance was perhaps as fortu-
nate for Egypt as for Jerusalem. For the third time the in-
vincible Assyrian army had stood on the very threshold of
Egypt, while favouring circumstances had each time caused
its withdrawal and saved the decrepit nation on the Nile for a
little time from the inevitable humiliation which was now 80
near. The Syro-Palestinian princes, however, were so thor-
t
TIV, 802.
* II Kings, 19: 0.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 553
oughly cowed that the inglorious Ethiopians were thenceforth
unable to seduce them to rebellion. Like the Hebrews, they
at last recognized the truth, as mockingly stated by the
officers of Sennacherib to the unhappy ambassadors of Jeru-
salem: “Now behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this
bruised reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean it
will go into his hand and pierce it; so is Pharaoh king of
Egypt unto all that trust on him."1
Shabaka apparently ruled his vassal Egyptian states for
the remainder of his reign in peace. The fragments of a
clay tablet bearing the seal of Shabaka and a king of Assyria,
found at Kuyunjik, may indicate some agreement between
the two nations. Shabaka showed great partiality to the
priesthoods and favoured the temples. His restoration of
an ancient religious text of great importance in the temple
of Ptah rescued and enabled us to employ in this work one
of the most remarkable documents surviving from ancient
Egypt.2 At Thebes he reinstated Amenardis, his sister,
who must have been temporarily expelled by Osorkon III.
Together with her, he built a chapel at Karnak, and his
building operations necessitated an expedition to the distant
quarries of Hammamat. We also find records of his temple
restorations at Thebes, and it is evident that he governed
Egypt at least in his relations with the temples, precisely
as a native Pharaoh would have done. His sister, Amenar-
dis, seems to have actually ruled Thebes with a large degree
of independence, and in spite of his partiality to the priests,
it was probably Shabaka who broke the power of the High
Priest of Amon, of whose impotence we shall see further
evidence as we proceed.
About 700 B. C., having reigned probably twelve years
in Egypt, although he may have ruled over Nubia for some
years before his advent in Egypt, Shabaka was succeeded
by Shabataka, another Ethiopian, whose connection with the
reigning Ethiopian or Nubian family is a little uncertain,
although Manetho, who calls him Sebichos, makes him a son
· II Kings, 18: 21.
. See p. 357.
SIV, 880, 889.
554
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of Shabaka. As the western vassals remained quiet and
Sennacherib was now absorbed in his operations at the other
extremity of his empire, Shabataka was unmolested by the
Assyrian. His name is rare in Egypt, but it is evident from
the conditions which survived him that he was entirely
unable to exterminate the local dynasts and consolidate the
power of Egypt for the supreme struggle which was before
her. It was indeed now patent that the Ethiopians were
quite unfitted for the imperial task before them. The
southern strain with which their blood was tinctured began
to appear as the reign of Shabataka drew to a close about
688 B. C.
It is at this juncture that we can trace the rising fortunes
of prince Taharka, a son of Piankhi, who had gone north
from Napata as a youth of only twenty years with a king
whose name is unfortunately lost, who nevertheless must
have been Shabaka.' He was the son of a Nubian woman
and his features, as preserved in contemporary sculptures,
show unmistakable negroid characteristics. A son of the
great Piankhi, he played a prominent role, and as we have
seen, he was entrusted with the command of the army in the
campaign against Sennacherib. We know nothing of the
circumstances which brought about his advent to the throne,
but Manetho states, that leading an army from Ethiopia he
slew Sebichos, who must be Shabataka, and seized the crown.
Having thus disposed of the usurper, the contemporary mon-
uments without intimation of these events, abruptly picture
him in Tanis as king, summoning his mother, whom he has
not seen for many years, from Napata to Tanis, that she
may assume her proper station as queen-mother there. In
view of this fact and the trouble to be anticipated from
Assyria, it is not improbable that the Ethiopians at this time
maintained Tanis as their Egyptian residence.
For some thirteen years Taharka ruled his kingdom with-
out molestation from Asia. Meantime he was able to exe-
cute buildings of minor importance in Tanis and Memphis,
TIV, 892, 895.
SIV, 892-0.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
555
and more considerable monuments in Thebes. But he evi-
dently foresaw the coming struggle and duly made his prep-
arations to meet it. The west had for twenty years seen
nothing of Sennacherib, who was now assassinated by his
sons, in 681 B. C. As soon as his son, Esarbaddon, could
arrange the affairs of the great empire to which he had suc-
ceeded, he determined to resort to the only possible remedy
for the constant interference of Egypt with the authority
of Assyria in Palestine, viz., the conquest of the Nile coun-
try and humiliation of the Pharaoh. With farseeing thor-
oughness, he laid his plans for the execution of this pur-
pose, and his army was knocking at the frontier fortresses
of the eastern Delta in 674 B. C. But Taharka, who was
a man of far greater ability than his two predecessors on
the throne, must have made a supreme effort to meet the
crisis. The outcome of the battle (673 B. C.) was unfavour-
able for the Assyrian if, as the documents perhaps indicate,
he did not suffer positive defeat. But Esarhaddon never-
theless quietly continued his preparations for the conquest
of Egypt. Baal, king of Tyre, perhaps encouraged by the
undecisive result of the first Assyrian invasion, then rebelled,
making common cause with Taharka. In 670 B. C. Esar-
haddon was again in the West at the head of his forces.
Having invested Tyre, he was aided in his march across the
desert to the Delta by the native Beduin, whose camel-car-
avans furnished him with water. Taharka was now no
longer equal to the persistent struggle maintained against
him by the obdurate Esarhaddon, and the Egyptian army
was defeated and scattered. As the Ethiopian fell back
upon Memphis, Esarhaddon pressed him closely, and be-
sieged and captured the city, which fell a rich prey to the
cruel and rapacious Ninevite army. Taharka fled south-
ward, abandoning Lower Egypt, which was immediately
organized by Esarhaddon into dependencies of Assyria. He
records the names of twenty lords of the Delta, formerly
I See the sources for the following campaigns of Esarhaddon in Winckler,
Ibid., pp. 07-106.
556
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Ethiopian vassals, who now took the oath of fealty to him.
Among these names, written in cuneiform, a number may be
recognized as those of the same men, or at least the same
families, with whom Piankhi had to deal in the same region.
Necho, doubtless a descendant of Tefnakhte, occupies the
most prominent place among them as prince of Sais and
Memphis. The list also includes a prince of Thebes, but
Esarhaddon certainly possessed no more than a merely
nominal authority in Upper Egypt at this time. As he re-
turned to Ninevah, northward along the coast road, he hewed
in the rocks at the Nahr el-Kelb, beside the triumphant stelæ
of Ramses II, a record of his great achievement (Fig. 158);
while in Samal (Senjirli), in north Syria, he erected a
similar monument representing himself of heroic stature,
leading two captives, of whom one is probably Baal of Tyre,
and the other, as his negroid features indicate, is the unfor-
tunate Taharka (Fig. 181).
After the domination of Libyan and Nubian in turn,
Egypt was now a prey to a third foreign conqueror, whose
supremacy was however totally different from that of the
aliens who had preceded. Both Libyan and Nubian were
largely Egyptianized and, as we have seen, ruled as Egyp-
tian Pharaohs; whereas the Delta was now subject to an
overlord, who was the head of a great Asiatic empire, having
not the slightest sympathy with Egyptian institutions or
customs. The result was that the Delta kinglets, who had
sworn allegiance to the Ninevite, immediately plotted with
Taharka for the resumption of his rule in Lower Egypt,
which he thereupon assumed without much delay on the
withdrawal of the Assyrian army. Esarhaddon as thus
forced to begin his work over again; but in 668 B. C., while
on the march to resume operations in Egypt, he died. With
but slight delay the campaign was continued by his son,
Ashurbanipal, who placed one of his commanders in charge
of the expedition. Between Memphis and the frontier of
the eastern Delta, Taharka was again routed. Not attempt-
ing to hold Memphis, he fled southward, this time pursued
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 557
by the enemy, and took refuge in Thebes; but the Assyrians,
reinforced by native levies among their Delta vassals, made
the forty days' march thither, determined to expel him from
Egypt. They did force him to abandon Thebes, but he
entrenched himself further up the river and the Assyrians
did not push the pursuit against him. Whether the enemy
actually captured Thebes at this time is somewhat doubtful.
In any case, Ashurbanipal was still unable to extend his
authority to Upper Egypt. He had hardly restored his
supremacy in the Delta when his vassals there again began
communicating with Taharka, purposing his restoration as
before. The ringleaders were Necho, whom Esarhaddon
had established as king of Sais, Sharuludari of Tanis and
Pakruru of Persepet (Saft el-Henneh); but their correspon-
dence with Taharka was discovered by the Assyrian officials
in Egypt, and they were sent to Nineveh in chains. There
the wily Necho was able to win the confidence of Ashurba-
nipal, who pardoned him, loaded him with honours and
restored him to his kingdom in Sais, while his son was
appointed to rule Athribis. At the same time Ashurbanipal
accompanied him with Assyrian officials, intended of course
to be a check upon his conduct. This plan worked well and
Taharka was unable to gain any further foothold among the
Assyrian vassals in the Delta, although the priesthood of
the Ptah temple secretly dated in his name the record of an
Apis burial in one of the subterranean passages of the Sera-
peum at Memphis in his twenty fourth year? (664 B. C.).
Several years passed in this way; Upper Egypt continued
under the actual authority of Taharka. At Thebes the
High Priest of Amon was now a mere figure-head. The real
authority was in the hands of one Mentemhet, who, as
"prince of Thebes” and “governor of the South,” also held
the sacerdotal primacy of Egypt. His rank in the Theban
priesthood, however, was only that of “fourth prophet.
The Theban hierarchy as a political power had thus been
dissolved; while the power and wealth of this prince of
* IV, 917 ff.
558
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
Thebes, who completed costly restorations in the temples,
perhaps after destruction by the Assyrians, were consider-
able, even in these days of Egypt's poverty and disorgani-
zation.' Taharka held the fortune of Amon at his disposal
by causing his sister, Shepnupet, to be adopted by Amenar-
dis the “Divine Votress," or sacerdotal princess of Thebes,
who had been appointed by Piankhi in the same way. At
Napata Tabarka either built or enlarged two considerable
temples, and the Ethiopian capital evidently became a
worthy royal residence in his time.3
Taharka had now been ruling twenty five years and he
was growing old, when in 663 B. C. he accepted as coregent,
perhaps not voluntarily, a son of Shabaka, named Tanuta-
mon, whom he appointed over Upper Egypt. Tanutamon
probably resided at Thebes, where Mentemhet, the prince
of the Theban principality, was still in control, while
Taharka himself, worn out with the unequal struggle against
Assyria, had long before retired to Napata. There he sur-
vived the appointment of Tanutamon less than a year, dying
in 663 B. C., whereupon the latter hastened to Napata to
assume the sole kingship. Before these events, Tanuta-
mon had been informed in a dream that he was to gain the
sovereignty of both the North and the South, and in response
to this vision, he now immediately invaded Lower Egypt
(663 B. C.). All was repeated as in the days of Taharka.
Upper Egypt of course received him with acclamation, and
it was not until he arrived in the vicinity of Memphis that
he met hostile opposition. The Assyrian garrison and
doubtless some of the Delta lords, who now stood in great
fear of their Ninevite suzerain, gave him battle; but he
defeated them and succeeded in taking Memphis. Necho
of Sais probably fell in the action, and according to Hero-
dotus, his son Psamtik fled to Syria. Elated with his tri-
umph, Tanutamon sent some of the spoil immediately to
Napata with orders to erect new temple buildings there."
1 IV, 901 ff.
2 IV, 940.
SIV, 897 i.
• IV, 923 fr.
6 IV, 922.
. IV, 925-8. FIV, 929.
0
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA
559
2
Meanwhile the Delta vassals of Assyria dared not yield to
the Ethiopian, in view of the inevitable consequences, and
he therefore advanced against them, but was unable to draw
them into battle or capture their towns.' On his return to
Memphis after this fruitless attempt a number of the Delta
lords finally came to do him homage, but undoubtedly in
such a form as to save their standing with their Assyrian
over-lord.
Content with the appearance of unchallenged supremacy
in Lower Egypt, Tanutamon settled himself in Memphis as
Pharaoh of all Egypt, in fulfillment of his divine vision.
Meanwhile, on the first news of his departure from Napata,
the Assyrian officers in the Delta had sent with all haste to
Nineveh to notify Ashurbanipal, and in 661 B. C. the great
king's army drove the Ethiopian for the last time from
Lower Egypt. The Assyrians pursued him to Thebes, and
as he ingloriously withdrew southward, they sacked and
plundered the magnificent capital of Egypt's days of splen-
dour. The rich cultus images, the gorgeous ritual furniture
and implements, with which the pious Theban prince, Men-
temhet, had equipped the temples, fell a prey to the fierce
Assyrian soldiery, while “two enormous obelisks, wrought of
bright silver, whose weight was 2,500 talents, the adornment
of a temple-door," which they carried off to Ninevah, indi-
cate the wealth still remaining in the temples of the long de-
vastated nation.3 The story of the ruin of Thebes spread to
all the peoples around. When the prophet Nahum was de-
nouncing the coming destruction of Ninevah, fifty years later,
the desolation of Thebes was still fresh in his mind as he
addressed the doomed city: “Art thou better than No-Amon
[Thebes], that was situate among the rivers, that had the
waters round about her; whose rampart was the sea, and her
wall was of the sea? Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength
and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. Yet
was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young
children also were dashed to pieces at the top of all the
"IV, 030.
% IV, 031.
• Winckler, op. cit.
560
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all
her great men were bound in chains.''! From this time the
fortunes of the venerable city steadily declined and its splen-
dours, such as no city of the early orient had ever displayed,
gradually faded. It entered upon the long centuries of
lingering decay which have left it at the present day still the
mightiest ruin surviving from the ancient world (Fig. 183).
The retirement of Tanutamon to Napata was the termi-
nation of Ethiopian supremacy in Egypt. His whole career
was characteristic of the feeble and inglorious line from
which he sprang. Emerging from the remote reaches of
the upper Nile, the Ethiopians had attempted an imperial
role and aspired to intervene in the international politics
of western Asia. At a time when Assyria was dominating
the East, without a worthy rival elsewhere to stay her hand,
it was to be expected that the historic people of the Nile
should confront her and dispute her progress on even terms.
To this great task the Ethiopians were appointed; but there
was never a line of kings so ill suited to their high destiny.
Unable to weld together the nation they had conquered into
any effective weapon against the Assyrians, every attempt
to stay the advance of their formidable enemy furnished
only another example of feebleness and futility. Only once
does Taharka seem to cope successfully with the internal
difficulties of his situation and to check for a brief moment
the triumphant progress of Esarhaddon; but the indomitable
Assyrian quickly breaks the resistance of the Ethiopian,
and Taharka seeks ignoble security on the upper Nile. In
a word, Assyria was never dealing with a first class power
in her conquest of Egypt, when the unhappy Nile-dwellers
were without a strong ruler; and for such a ruler they
looked in vain during the supremacy of the inglorious Ethi-
opians.
Withdrawing to Napata, the Ethiopians never made an-
other attempt to subdue the kingdom of the lower river, but
gave their attention to the development of Nubia. As the
Egyptians resident in the country died out and were not
replaced by others, the Egyptian gloss which the people had
· Nahum, 3: 8-10.

H
FIG. 183.-GENERAL VIEW OF KARNAK FROM THE SOUTH.
From the pylon of the Khonsu temple begun by Ramses III. Rear halls of the latter in the foreground; the light in the deep shadow is seen through
the door referred to on pp. 520-21.
ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY: TRIUMPH OF ASSYRIA 561
received began rapidly to disappear, and the land relapsed
into a semi-barbaric condition. The theocratic character of
the government became more and more pronounced until
the king was but a puppet in the hands of the priests, at
whose behest he was obliged even to take his own life and
make way for another weakling whom the priests might
choose. While the earlier kings had built up and beautified
Napata, their successors were obliged to move the royal
residence up the river. The first impulse toward this change
was doubtless due to the campaign of Psamtik II against
lower Nubia early in the sixth century. In any case at this
time the kingdom began to expand southward. The rich
lands on the Blue Nile of which the most important district
was known to the Arab geographers as Aloa, were added to
the kingdom. Napata was separated from all this by the
upper cataracts. As trade connections with the south were
established and new acquisitions there developed more fully
the royal residence was transferred above the cataracts, and
by 560 B.C. the Nubian kings were occupying their new capi-
tal, known to the Greeks as Meroe. Apart from other con-
siderations, the wisdom of thus placing the difficult cataract
region between the capital and invaders from the north
was shown by the discomfiture of Cambyses' expedition
against Nubia at the hands of its king Nastesen in 525 B.
C. As the nation shifted southward it was completely with-
drawn from contact with the northern world; and Ethiopia
gradually lost behind a mist of legend, became the wonder-
land celebrated in Greek story as the source of civilization.
The Egyptian language and hieroglyphics, which the kings
had hitherto used for their records, now slowly disappeared,
and by the beginning of our era the native language was
finally written in a script which as yet is undeciphered.
When a century or two after the Roman conquest the Ethi-
opian kingdom slowly collapsed and fell to pieces, its north-
ern districts were absorbed by wild hordes of the Blemmyes
who pushed in from the east; while in the south it was suc-
ceeded by the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia, which rose
at the sources of the Blue Nile in the fourth century A. D.
and assumed the name of its ancient predecessor.
38
BOOK VIII
THE RESTORATION AND THE END
4
CHAPTER XXVII
THE RESTORATION
On the death of Necho of Sais, probably at the hands of
Tanutamon, Psamtik his son, as we have seen, had fled
to the Assyrians. Having thus shown his fidelity, he was
installed over his father's kingdom of Sais and Memphis
by Ashurbanipal. Egypt now seemed more hopelessly in
the grasp of the Assyrians than ever. Deportations of for-
eigners were brought in and the vassal organization was
strengthened. The Delta thus continued under the mer-
cenary lords in control there with some interruptions since
the Twenty First Dynasty. The condition of Upper Egypt
is uncertain, but Mentemhet still maintained himself as
prince there. Outwardly there was little indication of the
brilliant day which was now dawning upon the long afflicted
nation. As the years passed Psamtik was gradually reach-
ing out for the control of those resources which should en-
able him to realize the ambitious designs always cherished
by his house. He was a descendant of the aggressive Tef-
nakhte, the head of the Saitic family in Piankhi's day, and
all his line, as far as known to us, had been men of marked
power and political sagacity. He soon shook off the re-
straint and supervision of the resident Assyrian officials.
He can hardly have been unaware that Ashurbanipal was
ere long to be engaged in a deadly struggle with his brother,
the king of Babylon, involving dangerous complications with
Elam. As this war came on (652 B, C.) an attempt of the
Arabian tribes to send aid to Babylon demanded an Assyrian
expedition thither; while disturbances among the peoples
on the northern borders of the Ninevite empire and the
necessity of meeting the Cimmerians in Cilicia required
liberal assignments of Ashurbanipal's available military
565
566
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
forces to these regions. It was over twelve years before
these difficulties were all adjusted, and when in 640 B. C.
peace at last settled upon the Assyrian empire, Psamtik's
movement had gone too far and Ashurbanipal evidently did
not care to risk opposing it.
With Psamtik, the Greek traditions regarding Egypt be-
gin to be fairly trustworthy, if the folk-tales which the
Greeks so readily credited be properly sifted. Herodotus
tells the familiar story of how Psamtik was one of twelve
kings who had amicably divided all Egypt between them and
ruled in the greatest harmony. There came an oracle, how-
ever, which declared that whosoever of them should offer
a libation in the temple of Vulcan from a brazen bowl should
be king of all Egypt. Some time afterward, as they were
all offering libations in the temple, the officiating priest
failed to supply them with enough golden bowls, and Psam-
tik, taking off his brazen helmet, used it in lieu of the lack-
ing bowl. He was thereupon banished to the Delta swamps
by his companions, and being warned by another oracle
that he should be revenged upon them when brazen men
from the sea should appear, he awaited his opportunity.
Certain Carian and Ionian mercenaries, having been di-
verted to the coast of the Delta by a tempest, now suddenly
appeared in brazen armour, plundering the rich Delta
plains. Psamtik secured their services and subduing his
rivals, made himself king of all Egypt. Divested of the
folk-lore, with which the tale is distorted, it contains the
essential facts of Psamtik's early operations. The twelve
kings are of course the mercenary lords of the Delta with
whom we are so familiar; while the lonians and Carians, as
Meyer has seen, are the levies of mercenaries dispatched
from Asia Minor by Gyges, king of Lydia, who at this
juncture, after courting the Assyrians to save himself from
the Cimmerian hordes, is anxious to combine with Egypt in
common opposition to Ninevite aggression. The Assyrian
annals state that he sent assistance to Egypt. It is not to
be doubted that Psamtik took advantage of these favouring
THE RESTORATION
567
circumstances in the creation of which he had of course had
a hand, and by such means gained permanent ascendency
over the local dynasts.
His progress was rapid. By 654 B. C., just as Ashurbani-
pal was advancing on Babylon, he had gained Thebes, where
Mentemhet, Taharka's favourite, acknowledged him.' The
political power of the Theban hierarchy, as we have seen,
had been completely shattered under the Ethiopians, so
that Psamtik was not called upon to meet that perplexing
problem. In order to obtain legitimate control of the fortune
of Amon, now of course much depleted, he decreed that his
daughter Nitocris should be adopted by the Divine Votress
at Thebes, Shepnupet, the sister of the deceased Taharka.
The decree of adoption, which has survived, is the only con-
siderable hieroglyphic document of the reign of Psamtik I
known to us; it contains the transfer of all Shepnupet's
property and revenues to Nitocris. The collapse of the high
priesthood of Amon was now so complete that within sixty
years the once powerful office was actually held by these
sacerdotal princesses. The High Priest of Amon was a
woman 13 In the suppression of the mercenary lords and
local dynasts, Psamtik made an end of the intolerable con-
ditions of semi-anarchy which had so long blighted an
unhappy land. The nation was at last rescued from the un-
stable rule of a body of feudal lords and their turbulent mili-
tary adherents, under whose irresponsible tyranny it had suf-
fered, with but brief respites, for some four hundred years.
This remarkable achievement of Psamtik I places him among
the ablest rulers who ever sat on the throne of the Pharaohs.
Indeed the conditions by which he was confronted were so ad-
verse, and the evils with which he was obliged to cope were so
old, persistent and deeply rooted that his success should
perhaps rank him higher than either Amenemhet I, the
founder of the Twelfth Dynasty, or Ahmose I, the con-
queror of the Hyksos. He was not, however, able completely
to exterminate the dynasts, as is commonly stated. Some
I IV, 037, 049.
IV, 035-058.
S IV, 088 D.
568
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of them would of course espouse his cause and thus gain
immunity, and of such we find clear traces. At Thebes Men-
temhet remained as prince and “governor of the South”;1
and in Heracleopolis, the other principality of Upper Egypt,
we find prince Hor, with the rank of a general, building a
temple in his own name at least a generation after Psamtik
I's time. Such an enormous tomb as that of Pediamenem-
opet at Thebes could only have been excavated by a noble
of immense wealth and extensive power. It is to be noticed,
however, that at Thebes Mentemhet is called upon to make
liberal contributions to the revenues of Nitocris, Psamtik's
daughter;3 and what is still more important, he was not
succeeded by his eldest son Nesuptah, but by one Pedihor,
who gained the titles, "prince of Thebes and governor of
the South." It was perhaps Psamtik I's policy to with-
draw from the feudal lords their rights of inheritance and
thus to rid himself of them as an hereditary class. Enjoy-
ing certain privileges, some of the old dynasts therefore
still survived, but the strong and skilful hand of Psamtik
held them firmly in check, as in the days of the early Middle
Kingdom under Amenemhet I. They no longer endangered
the unity of the nation.
A not less troublesome problem was the organization
of the military class. The now completely Egyptianized
Libyans who had lived in Egypt for centuries had finally de-
veloped into a warrior-class of no great effectiveness, whose
numbers at this time, absurdly exaggerated by Herodotus,
we cannot determine. In two classes, the Hermotybies and
Calasiries, enigmatical designations employed by Herodo-
tus, they inhabited chiefly the Delta cities and contributed
nothing to the economic life of the nation. Besides that
of the feudal lords, it was also the opposition of this class
which Psamtik had been obliged to face; and he had no re-
course but to pit against them his northern mercenaries,
the Greeks and Carians. Thus Egypt, having suffered the
inevitable fate of a military kingdom in the ancient world,
1 IV, 949.
! IV, 967-973.
SIV, 949.
* IV, 002 end.
THE RESTORATION
569
was passing into the control of one foreign warrior-class
after another. The army which Psamtik I now put together
was made up of Greeks, Carians and Syrians on the one
hand, and on the other of Libyans and their Egyptianized
kindred. The Ionians and Carians were stationed on the
northeastern frontier near Daphnæ, with a branch of the
Nile running through their camp; while the border of the
western Delta was secured by a body of the warrior-class
in a stronghold at Marea, not far from the site of later
Alexandria. At Elephantine a similar garrison was main-
tained against any invasion from the south. Herodotus re-
lates that two hundred and forty thousand of the warrior-
class, having been kept at one station for three years without
being relieved, thereupon deserted and departed in a body
southward to offer their services to the king of Ethiopia
at Meroe. While his numbers are incredibly exaggerated,
as usual, the story must contain a germ of fact as it accords
with all that we know of the conditions in Psamtik's time.
As a concession to this class his body-guard contained a
thousand men from each of the two classes, the Hermotybies
and Calasyries; but he will have had many more of his
hardy Greeks and Carians at his hand on all occasions.
The prosperous and powerful Egypt which was now
emerging from the long Decadence was totally different
from the Egypt of any earlier renascence. It was impos-
sible again to rouse the nation to arms as in the days when
the Hyksos were expelled; it was therefore inevitably the
deliberate policy of Psamtik I, while expending every effort
to put the nation on a sound economic basis, at the same
time to depend upon foreign soldiery for the military power
indispensable to an oriental ruler. His necessarily con-
stant care was to transmute the economic prosperity of the
land into military power. In a word, the wealth of the land
must nourish and maintain a formidable army, even though
the effective portion of this army might be aliens. This was
an evil which Psamtik was powerless to alter. In such a
state the conservation of the productive capacities of the
570
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
nation is as important as, or we may better say, indispen-
sable to, the maintenance of the army. Neither can live
without the other. In this respect Psamtik I was confronted
by the same problem which faced Omar and the early Ca.
liphs. A revival under such conditions as these is due al-
most solely to the personal initiative of the sovereign who
manipulates the available forces: those of power and those
of industry; so employing them all in harmonious interac-
tion that prosperity and effective power result. Psamtik
was himself the motive and creative power, while the people
were but given the opportunity to fulfil their proper func-
tions and to move freely in their wonted channels. There
was no longer any great relative vitality in the nation (and
here Psamtik's task differed strikingly from that of the
early Caliphs), and the return of ordered government and
consequent prosperity enabled them to indulge the ten-
dency to retrospect already observable in the Twenty Third
Dynasty. Instead of an exuberant energy expressing itself
in the spontaneous development of new forms, as at the
beginning of the Empire, the nation fell back upon the past
and consciously endeavoured to restore and rehabilitate the
vanished state of the old days before the changes and inno-
vations introduced by the Empire. Seen through the mist
of over a thousand years, what was to them ancient Egypt
was endowed with the ideal perfection of the divine regime
which had preceded it. The worship of the kings who had
ruled at Memphis in those remote days was revived and
the ritual of their mortuary service maintained and en-
dowed. Their pyramids were even extensively restored and
repaired. The archaic titles and the long array of dignities
worn by the lords at the court and in the government of the
pyramid-builders were again brought into requisition, and
in the externals of government everything possible was done
to clothe it with the appearance of remote antiquity. The
writing of the time was also given an archaic colour on for-
mal and official monuments, and its antique forms must have
cost the Saite scribes long and weary study. In religion
THE RESTORATION
571
every effort was made to purify the pantheon of all modern
interlopers and to rid the ritual of every innovation. Every-
thing foreign in religion was banished, and Set, the god of
the waste and the desert, was everywhere exterminated.
An inexorable exclusiveness like that which was soon to
take possession of the new-born Jewish community was also
now universally enforced. The ancient mortuary texts of
the pyramids were revived, and although frequently not
understood were engraved upon the massive stone sar-
cophagi. The Book of the Dead, which now received its last
redaction, becoming a roll sixty feet long, shows plain traces
of the revival of this ancient mortuary literature. In the
tomb-chapels we find again the fresh and pleasing pictures
from the life of the people in marsh and meadow, in work-
shop and ship-yard. They are perfect reproductions of
the relief scenes in the mastabas of the Old Kingdom, so
perfect indeed that at the first glance one is not infrequently
in doubt as to the age of the monument. Indeed, a man
named Aba at Thebes sent his artists to an Old Kingdom
tomb near Siut to copy the reliefs thence for use in his own
Theban tomb, because the owner of the ancient tomb was also
named Aba.
In this endeavour to reconstitute modern religion, society
and government upon ancient lines, the archaizers must
consciously or unconsciously have been constantly thwarted
by the inevitable mutability of the social, political and eco-
nomic conditions of a race. The two thousand years which
had elapsed since the Old Kingdom could not be annihilated.
Through the deceptive mantle of antiquity with which they
cloaked contemporary conditions, the inexorable realities
of the present were discernible. The solution of this diffi-
culty, when perceived, was the same as that attempted by
the Hebrews in a similar dilemma: it was but to attribute
to the modern elements also a hoary antiquity, as the whole
body of Hebrew legislation was attributed to Moses. The
theoretical revival was thus rescued. This was especially
easy for the Egyptian of the Saitic restoration; for, long
572
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
before his time it had been customary to attribute to the
Old Kingdom especially sacred mortuary texts, favourite
medical prescriptions and collections of proverbial wisdom.
While in some cases such attribution may have been cor-
rect in the days of the Empire, this was no longer generally
true in the Twenty Sixth Dynasty. In one particular es-
pecially, it was impossible to force the present into the
ancient mould; I refer to the artistic capacity of the people.
This always fruitful element of their culture was now a
marked exception to the lifeless lack of initiative displayed
in all other functions of life. Here their creative vitality,
already revived in the Ethiopian period, was still unblighted
and their artistic sense was keenly alive to the new possi-
bilities open to them under the new order. We have seen
that the Restoration in religion demanded the revival of
the old subjects in the tomb-chapel reliefs, and in spite of
the likeness of these copies to their ancient models, more
than a superficial examination invariably discloses a dis-
tinct character and manner peculiarly their own. There is
just that touch of freedom which the art of the Old King-
dom lacked, and a soft beauty in their sinuous and sweeping
lines which adds an indescribable grace to the reliefs of the
Saitic school. If this tendency be sometimes extreme to
the point of effeminacy, it is compensated for by the quali-
ties which the new freedom brought with it. While the old
canons and conventionalities still prevailed in general, there
was now and then an artist who could shake them off and
place the human body in relief with the shoulders drawn
in proper relations and freed from the distortion of the Old
Kingdom. It was this freedom and ability to see things as
they are which led to a scliool of portraiture far surpassing
the best work of the Old Kingdom. Among the Saitic mor-
tuary reliefs the conventional heads prescribed by the Old
Kingdom canons are still almost invariable; but the artist
could now and then insert a portrait of such marked indi-
viduality as to stand out in sharp contrast with the uni-
formity of the neighbouring heads. Portraits of the same
THIE RESTORATION
573
character appear also in the round (Fig. 186), displaying a
study of the bony conformation of the skull, the folds and
wrinkles of the skin, in fine a mastery of the entire anatomical
development and a grasp of individual character such as no
early art had yet achieved. Such works can only be com-
pared with the portraits of the Greek sculptors at the height
of their skill, and they do not suffer by the comparison. The
artist in bronze was now supreme, hollow casts of consider-
able size were made and animal forms are especially fine
(Fig. 185). Superb bronze statues elaborately inlaid with
rich designs in gold, silver and electrum display surprising
refinements in technique. Works in bronze are now very
numerous and most of those which fill the modern museums
were produced in this age. Industrial art flourished as
never before and the Egyptian craftsman was rarely rivalled.
In fayence the manufactories of the time were especially suc-
cessful and prolific, and the museum collections are filled with
works of this period. The architecture of the time has, alas,
perished, and if we may judge from the achievements of the
Saitic sculptor, we have in this respect suffered irreparable
loss; for it is probable that we owe the origin of the rich and
beautiful columns of Ptolemaic temples to the Saite architect.
While the material products of art offered visual evidence
of marked divergence from the ancient prototype which it
was supposed to follow, such incongruities in the organiza-
tion of the government, while not less real, were probably
not so evident. From the few surviving monuments of the
period the real character of the state is not clearly deter-
minable. Geographically the Delta had forever become the
dominant region. The development of commerce with the
northern world and related political reasons had made this
northward shift inevitable and permanent. Psamtik and
his descendants lived in their native Sais, which now became
a great and splendid city, adorned with temples and palaces.
Thebes no longer possessed either political or religious sig-
nificance. The valley of the Nile was but an appendage
upon the Delta. We have already referred to the survival
574
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
of certain of the feudal lords. They may have retained
their lands, but judging from the case of Mentemhet of
Thebes, they could not bequeath them to their sons. With
these exceptions all the land belonged to the crown and was
worked by the peasant serfs, who rendered twenty percent
of the yield to the Pharaoh. Priests and soldiers were
exempt from taxation. The administration must have been
conducted as under the Empire by local officials of the cen-
tral government, who collected the taxes and possessed
judicial powers. The archaic titles which they bear, as far
as I have been able to trace them, usually correspond to
no real functions in government. In education and training
these men are fundamentally different from the scribal
officials of the Empire, in that they are not of necessity pos-
sessed of a knowledge of the old hieroglyphic. Since the
Ethiopian Dynasty there has grown up a very cursive form
of hieratic, the ancient running hand. This new and more
rapid form, an unconscious development, is better suited to
the needs of practical business and administration, and
being in common and everyday use, was therefore known to
the Greeks as “demotic" writing, a term now usually
applied to it at the present day. It represented the lan-
guage then spoken, while the hieroglyphic of the time, which
continued to lead an artificial existence, employed the archaic
form of the language which had prevailed centuries before.
That this fundamental change was but one among many
modifications and alterations in the government, must of
necessity have resulted from the changed conditions. So-
cially, the influence of revived industry had divided the
people into more or less sharply defined classes or guilds, de-
termined by their occupations; but “caste" in the proper
significance of the term, was as unknown as at any time in
Egyptian history.
The priests succeeded little better than the officials in
their revival of the good old times. It is, indeed, to the
priesthoods in general that the attempted restoration must
be largely attributed. The religious, like the political,
THE RESTORATION
575
enues.
centre, had completely shifted; Thebes, as we have stated,
no longer possessed any religious significance. In the Delta
cities of Sais, Athribis and Buto were the wealthiest temples.
Quite in contrast with conditions in the Old Kingdom, the
priests now constituted a more exclusive and distinct class
than ever before, and the office had become inalienably hered-
itary. Venerated by the people, it was a political necessity
that their maintenance should be provided for by liberal rev-
While they no longer possessed any political in-
fluence to be compared with that which they exercised under
the Empire, yet we find the old count of Thinis deprived
of his ancient revenues from the oases and the local ferry,
that they may be transferred to Osiris. The reverse was,
however, the rule, as we shall see. The old gods could not
be resuscitated; among them only Osiris still maintained
himself. His consort, Isis, contrary to the ancient customs,
acquired an elaborate cultus, and the wide celebrity which
afterward brought her such general favour in the classic
world. Imhotep, the wise man of Zoser's court twenty five
hundred years earlier, now gained a place among the gods,
as son of Ptah, an innovation of which the priests were
unconscious. The religion which the priests represented
was the inevitable result of the tendencies observable at
the close of the Empire. It consisted as far as daily life
and conduct were concerned, like the Rabbinical faith born
under very similar conditions, in innumerable external
usages, and the most painful observance of the laws of cere-
monial purity. We find nobles and officials everywhere
erecting sanctuaries to the gods. While formerly only one
of a class of animals was sacred, now in many cases every
representative of that class was inviolable. The increased
reverence for these manifestations of the gods is especially
illustrated in the elaborate worship of the Apis-bull, a form
of Ptah, and the vast sepulchre, where they now received
their gorgeous burial, the Serapeum of Memphis became
famous among the Greeks. While a slight inclination
1
IV, 1016, 1024.
IV, 987 8, 989 8, 2015 8.
576
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
toward this tendency was observable already in the Old
Kingdom, it now took on the crass form, which finally led
to the fanatical excesses of the Alexandrians in Roman times.
It is probable that the priests read into all these outward
manifestations, as into their mythological tales, a higher
meaning, which they never originally possessed. Of this pro-
cedure we have already seen an example in the Empire,
but we are unable to determine whether they actually
taught all that the Greeks attribute to them of this charac-
ter. While their education in the Empire had kept them
in contact with the living times, they were now obliged to
learn a language and a method of writing, and to acquaint
themselves with a mass of inherited literature, with which
the busy world around them had long parted company. It
was by this process that the ancient writing, already early
regarded as of divine origin, became a sacred accomplish-
ment, the especial characteristic of sacred learning, and was
therefore called by the Greeks “hieroglyphs" or sacred
glyphs. Such an education necessarily projected the priests
far into a long forgotten world, whose inherited wisdom, as
among the Chinese or the Mohammedans, was the final word.
The writings and sacred rolls of the past were now eagerly
sought out, and with the dust of ages upon them, they were
collected, sorted and arranged. Thus the past was supreme;
the priest who cherished it lived in a realm of shadows, and
for the contemporary world he had no vital meaning. Like-
wise in Babylon the same retrospective spirit was now the
dominant characteristic of the reviving empire of Nebuchad-
rezzar. The world was already growing old, and every-
where men were fondly dwelling on her faraway youth.
While the internal aspects of the Saitic period are so
largely retrospective that it has been well called the Resto-
ration, yet its foreign policy shows little consideration for
the past. In sharp contrast with the attempted restoration
and especially with the national exclusiveness, now more
intense than ever, was the foreign policy of Psamtik I. The
See above, pp. 356–58.

Fig. 184.-ALABASTER STATUE OF AMENARDIS, SISTER OF PIANKHI. CAIRO MUSEUM.
THE RESTORATION
577
reorganization of ordered and centralized government, and
the restoration of the elaborate irrigation system, were quite
sufficient to ensure the internal prosperity of the country
along traditional lines. But Psamtik's early life and train-
ing led him to do more than this. He had personally seen
the great arteries of trade throbbing from one end to the
other of the vast Assyrian Empire; he comprehended the
great economic value of foreign traffic to the nation he was
building up; nor did he fail to perceive that such traffic might
be variously taxed and made to yield very considerable rev-
enues for his own treasury. He therefore revived the old
connections with Syria; Phænician galleys filled the Nile
mouths, and Semitic merchants, forerunners of the Ara-
inaans so numerous in Persian times, thronged the Delta.
If Psamtik was able to employ the Greeks in his army he
found them not less useful in the furtherance of his com-
inercial projects. From the eighth century B. C. those
southern movements of the northerners, of which the incur-
sions of the “sea-peoples" over five hundred years earlier
were the premonitory symptom, had now become daily
occurrences. The Greeks, pushing in from the far North,
and emerging clearly for the first time into history, had
long since gained possession of the Greek peninsula and its
adjacent archipelago, with their centres of Mycænean civi-
lization, and they now appeared as prosperous communities
and rapidly growing maritime states, whose fleets, pene-
trating throughout the Mediterranean, offered the Phæni-
cians arp and incessant competition. Their colonies and
industrial settlements, with active manufactories, rapidly
fringed the Mediterranean and penetrated the Black Sea.
Psamtik was probably the first of the Egyptian rulers who
favoured such colonies in Egypt. Ere long the country
was filled with Greek merchants, and their manufacturing
settlements were permitted, especially in the western Delta,
near the royal residence at Sais. There was a Greek and
also a Carian quarter in Memphis, and not unlikely other
1
I See pp. 477-83.
37
578
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
large cities were similarly apportioned to accommodate for-
eigners, especially Greeks.
Lines of communication between the Greek states and
Egypt soon established direct, continuous and in some re-
spects intimate relations between them. Greek recruits for
the army of course followed constantly upon those whom
Psamtik had employed in his conquest, and these, with the
active intercourse of the indefatigable Greek merchants, car-
ried back to the mother-country an ever increasing fund of
folk-tales, telling of the wondrous Egyptian world, which
was so new and strange to them. The marvels of Thebes
were celebrated in the Homeric songs, now assuming their
final form, and Egyptian gods appeared in their myths.
Ultimately the Greeks became very familiar with the
externals of Egyptian civilization, but they never learned to
read its curious writing sufficiently well to understand its
surviving records, or to learn the truth as to its ancient his-
tory. As time passed a body of interpreters arose, who
became so numerous as to form a recognized class. By
these such questioners as Herodotus were often grossly im-
posed upon. The impenetrable reserve of the Egyptians,
and again their unlimited claims, profoundly impressed the
imaginative Greek. This impression could only be deep-
ened by the marvels with which the land was filled: the
enormous buildings and temples, whose construction was
often a mystery to him; the mystic writing which covered
their walls; the strange river, unlike any he had ever seen;
the remarkable religion, whose mysterious ritual seemed to
him the cloak for the most profound truths; the unquestion-
ably vast antiquity of countless impressive monuments all
about him; all this, where an unprejudiced, objective study
of the people and their history was impossible, inevitably
blinded even the Greek of the highest intelligence and cul-
ture, who now visited the country. Thus the real char-
acter of the Egyptian and his civilization was never cor-
rectly understood by the Greeks, and their writings regard-
ing the Nile country, even though often ridiculing its strange
THE RESTORATION
579
customs, have transmitted to us a false impression as to
the value especially of its intellectual achievements. The
Greek, with his insatiable thirst for the truth, and his con-
stant attitude of healthy inquiry, was vastly superior, I
need hardly say, to the Egyptian, whose reputed wisdom
he so venerated. Under these circumstances it was only the
later political history of the country, the course of which
came under their own immediate observation, with which
the Greeks were familiar. From the time of Psamtik I we
possess a fund of popular Greek tradition regarding the
Twenty Sixth Dynasty, which, if properly used, throws an
invaluable light upon a time when native records and monu-
ments, located as they were in the exposed Delta, have almost
entirely perished.
Before the impact of the foreign life, which thus flowed
in upon Egypt, the Egyptian showed himself entirely
unmoved, and held himself aloof, fortified behind his cere-
monial purity and his inviolable reserve. If he could have
had his way he would have banished the foreigners one and
all from his shores; under the circumstances, like the modern
Chinese, he trafficked with them and was reconciled to their
presence by the gain they brought him. Thus while the
Saitic Pharaohs, as we shall further see, were profoundly
influenced by the character of the Greeks, the mass of the
Egyptians were unscathed by it. On the other hand, the
Greeks must have profited much by the intercourse with
Nile valley civilization, although it will have been chiefly
material profit which they gained. They found there, per-
fected and ready at hand, the technical processes, which
their unique genius was so singularly able to apply to the
realization of higher ends than those governing the older
civilizations. They certainly borrowed artistic forms in
plenty, and the artistic influences from the Nile, which had
been felt in the Mycenæan centres of civilizations as far
back at least as the Twelfth Dynasty (2000 B. C.), were still
a power in the same regions of the North. It can be no
accident, in spite of the wide spread ‘law of frontality,'
580
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
that the archaic (so-called) Apollos reproduce the standing
posture prevalent in Egypt in every detail, including
the characteristic thrusting forward of the left foot. Of
the Saitic portrait sculptor, the Greeks might have learned
much, even far down toward the days of their highest
artistic achievements. Evidence of intellectual influence is
more elusive, but there is a grain of truth in the Greek tra-
dition that they received their philosophy from Egypt. The
philosophizing theology of the Egyptian priests contained
suggestive germs, which may easily have found their way
into the early Ionian systems. The notion of the primeval
intelligence and the creative "word,” already conceived as
far back as the Eighteenth Dynasty, could hardly fail to
influence the educated Greeks who very early visited Egypt,
long before such a conception had arisen in Greece. The
insistent belief of the Egyptian in the life hereafter and his
elaborate mortuary usages, unquestionably exerted a strong
influence upon Greek and Roman alike; and the wide dis-
semination of Egyptian religion in the classic world, dem-
onstrates the deep impression which it now made. To this
day its symbols are turned up by the spade throughout
the Mediterranean basin. It was under Psamtik I that these
influences from Egypt began to be felt by the states, which
were then laying the foundations of later European civiliza-
tion; and it is significant as an indication of the great restor-
er's personal prestige in the Greek world that the powerful
Periander of Corinth named his nephew and successor
Psammetichos.
By 640 B. C. Psamtik felt himself strong enough to resume
the old projects of conquest in Asia, to revive Egypt's tradi-
tional claims upon Syria-Palestine, and to dispute their pos-
session with Assyria. He invaded Philistia and for many
years besieged Ashdod; but his ambitions there were rudely
dashed by the influx of Scythian peoples from the far north,
who overran Assyria and penetrated southward to the fron-
tier of Egypt. According to Herodotus they were bought
See above, pp. 356-58.
THE RESTORATION
581
off by Psamtik, who by liberal gifts succeeded thus in ran-
soming his kingdom. It was more probably his own strong
arm that delivered his land. He had already saved it from
centuries of weakness and decay, and when he died after a
reign of fifty four years, he left Egypt enjoying such peace-
able prosperity as had not been hers since the death of
Ramses III, five hundred years before.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA
WHEN Necho succeeded his father Psamtik I on the throne
of Egypt in 609 B. C., there seemed to be nothing to prevent
his reëstablishment of the Egyptian Empire in Asia. As
Psamtik's kingdom had prospered, that of the once powerful
Ninevites had rapidly declined. From the fearful visita-
tion of the Scythian bordes in the reign of Psamtik I, it
never recovered, and when Babylon made common cause with
Cyaxares, king of the rising Median states, Nineveh was
unable to withstand their united assaults. Its inevitable
fall was anticipated by the western peoples, and being clearly
foreseen by the Hebrew, Nalium, he exultingly predicted its
destruction. At the accession of Necho it was in such a
state of collapse that he immediately began the realization
of his father's imperial designs in Asia. He built a war-
fleet both in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and in
his first year invaded Philistia. Gaza and Askalon, which
offered resistance, were taken and punished, and with a
great army Necho then pushed northward. In Judah, now
freed from the Assyrians, the prophetic party was in the
ascendancy. As they had been delivered from Sennacherib
nearly a century before, so they fondly believed they might
now face Egypt with the same assurance of deliverance. On
the historic plain of Megiddo, where Egypt had first won the
supremacy of Asia nearly nine hundred years before, the
young Josiah recklessly threw himself upon Necho's great
army. His pitiful force was quickly routed and he himself,
fatally wounded, retired to die at Jerusalem. Expecting
to meet at least some attempt on the part of Assyria to save
her western dominions, Necho pressed on to the Euphrates
1 Jer. 47, 1 and 5.
582
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 583
without delay. But Assyria was now too near her end to
make even the feeblest effort to stay his progress; he found
no army there to meet him, and not feeling himself strong
enough to advance against Nineveh, he returned southward,
having gained all Syria, and at one stroke recovered the
whole of the old Egyptian conquests of the Empire. Arriv-
ing at Ribleh on the Orontes, three months after the battle
of Megiddo, he sent for Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, whom the
Judeans had placed upon his father's throne, and threw him
into chains. He then installed Eliakim, another son of
Josiah, as king of Judah under the name Jehoiakim, and
imposed upon him a tribute of one hundred talents of silver
and one of gold. The unfortunate Jehoahaz was carried
to Egypt by the Pharaoh and died there. It is characteristic
of the altered spirit of the times that Necho dedicated to the
Milesian Branchidæ the corselet which he had worn on this
victorious campaign, --of course in recognition of the Greek
mercenaries, to whom he owed his successes. How different
all this from the days of Amon's supremacy, when victory
came from him alone! Fragments of a stela dating from
Necho's supremacy in Syria and bearing his name in hiero-
glyphic, have been found at Sidon.
Necho's new Asiatic empire was not of long duration. In
less than two years the combined forces of Nabopolassar,
the king of Babylon, and of the Medes under Cyaxares, had
accomplished the overthrow of Nineveh. The city was
destroyed and the nation utterly annihilated as a political
force. The two conquerors divided the territory made avail-
able by their conquest, the Mede taking the north and north-
east and the Babylonian the south and southwest. Thus
Syria fell by inheritance tu Nabopolassar. He was now old
and unable to undertake its recovery; but he quickly dis-
patched his son, Nebuchadrezzar, to oppose Necho. Hear-
ing of his coming, Necho was wise enough to collect his forces
and hasten to meet him at the northern frontier on the Eu-
phrates in 605 B. C. At Carchemish the motley army of
Proceedings Soc. of Biblical Arch., XVI (1894), pp. 01 f.
1
584
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
the Pharaoh was completely routed by the Babylonians.
The victory was so decisive that Necho did not attempt to
make another stand or to save Palestine, but retreated in
haste to the Delta followed by Nebuchadrezzar. The igno-
minious retreat of Necho's proud army, as it hurried through
Palestine, created a profound impression among the Hebrews
of Judah, and Jeremiah, who was interpreting to his people
in Jerusalem the movements of the nations, hurled after the
discomfited Egyptians his burden of sarcasm and derision.'
Had not the young Kaldean prince now been summoned to
Babylon by the death of his father, the conquest of Egypt,
or at least its further humiliation, must inevitably have fol-
lowed. Unwilling to prolong his absence from the capital
under these circumstances, Nebuchadrezzar came to an un-
derstanding with Necho, and returned home to assume the
crown of Babylon. Thus Syria-Palestine became Baby-
lonian dominion.
Necho's agreement with Babylon involved the relinquish-
ment of his ambitious designs in Asia. He held to the com-
pact, and made no further attempt to maintain Egyptian
sovereignty there, as the Hebrew annals record: “And the
king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land : for
the king of Babylon had taken from the brook of Egypt unto
the river Euphrates, all that pertained to the king of
He even made no effort to intervene when
Nebuchadrezzar besieged and captured Jerusalem and de-
ported the chief families of Judah in 596 B. C. The Phar-
aoh's energies were now employed in the furtherance of his
father's commercial enterprises. He attempted to reëxca-
vate the ancient canal from the Delta, connecting the eastern
arm of the Nile with the Red Sea. Herodotus claims that
one hundred and twenty thousand men perished in this enter-
prise, from which the Pharaoh at last desisted, in response
to an oracle; while Diodorus avers that the king's engineers
warned him of the danger of flooding Egypt, demonstrating
that the Red Sea was higher than the Delta. This was prob-
Egypt."'2
i Jer. 46: 1-12.
2 II Kings 24: 7.
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 585
ably the real motive for discontinuing so important a work;
maritime connection between the Red Sea and the Mediter-
ranean by way of the Nile would have been of incalculable
commercial benefit to Egypt at this time, and would also
have involved valuable strategic advantages in case of war.
Necho's interest in maritime progress is further evidenced
by his famous exploring expedition. He dispatched a crew
of Phænician mariners with instructions to sail around
Africa, or as Herodotus calls it, Libya. As the Egyptians
had from the earliest time supposed their land to be eur-
rounded by sea, the Oceanos of the Greeks, with which the
Nile had connection in the south, the feat of the Phænicians,
which they actually accomplished in three years, excited no
surprise.
Psamtik II, who followed his father Necho about 593 B.
C., either regarded Egypt's prospects in Asia as hopeless
or continued the compact of his father with Babylon. Un-
able to accomplish anything in the North, he turned his
attention southward and attempted the recovery of Nubia,
lost to Egypt since the foundation of the Ethiopian king-
dom. He invaded lower Nubia, and an advanced body of
his troops pushed up almost to the second cataract, where
they left a record of their visit at Abu Simbel, in a Greek
inscription on one of the colossi of Ramses II, before his
great temple there. Although, as we have before remarked,
this invasion doubtless furnished the Ethiopians a further
reason for transferring their capital above the cataracts to
Meroe, yet the results of the expedition were probably not
lasting, and Lower Nubia never became an integral part of
the Saite kingdom. Relations with the Greeks continued
on the old friendly basis and Herodotus relates how the
Eleans sent a delegation to Psamtik II to obtain his judg-
ment on the fairness of their management of the Olympian
games. At home he continued the Saitic control of Thebes
by arranging for the adoption of his daughter, Enekhnes-
nefribre, by his aged aunt, the daughter of Psamtik I,
Nitocris, who still survived as Divine Votress or sacerdotal
586
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
princess of Thebes. Psamtik II conferred upon his daughter
the title “High Priest of Amon," and she received the for-
tune of Nitocris, who died nine years afterward. She con-
tinued in control of Thebes until the advent of the Persians
nearly seventy years later.
Meanwhile the Saites were still casting longing eyes upon
the ancient dominions of Egypt in Asia, and when Apries
(the Ha'abre' of the Egyptians, or Hophra' of the Hebrews)
succeeded his father Psamtik II early in 588 B. C., he imme-
diately resumed the old designs of his house to recover them.
Already under Necho, in 597 B. C., as we have seen, Nebu-
chadrezzar had been obliged to advance on Jerusalem in
consequence of the rebellion of Jehoiachin, an event in which
Necho may have secretly had a hand. The next year the
unhappy city capitulated, and some nine or ten thousand
of the better class were deported to Babylonia, leaving only
“the poorest sort of the people of the land." Jehoichin's
uncle, Zedekiah, was appointed by Nebuchadrezzar as king
over the afflicted land. When he had been ruling nine years
we find him in revolt against Babylon. The reasons for this
foolish policy are quite evident. The date of his rebellion
coincides with the accession of Apries. Tyre and Sidon,
Moab and Ammon had also sent their emissaries to the
Judean king, and when the weighty influence of Apries also
fell into the scales the vacillating Zedekiah was no longer
able to withstand, and he half-heartedly joined the rest in
casting off the sovereignty of Babylon. The events for-
merly following similar revolts from Assyrian authority
were now reënacted under the Babylonians; the allies were
unable to act quickly in concert. Indeed Apries made it im-
possible that they should do so by attacking Tyre and Sidon.
He dispatched an expedition to attempt the conquest of the
north by sea, perhaps hoping to meet Nebuchadrezzar on
the Euphrates as his grandfather Necho had done. He
fought a victorious naval engagement with the Tyrians and
Cyprians and landed enough troops to take Sidon, where-
upon the other Phænician cities yielded. It is possible
1 IV, 988 A-988 J.
2 II Kings 24: 15.
• Diodorus, I, 68.
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 587
also that he hoped thus to divert Nebuchadrezzar from the
south where a portion of his army had appeared early in
587, or to cut off this southern army now operating against
Jerusalem; and if so, the movement was brilliantly con-
ceived. But it was never pushed far enough to accomplish
anything inland; and Nebuchadrezzar wisely fixed his base
of operations well northward, at Ribleh on the Orontes,
where he was able to contemplate the Egyptian operations
without concern. His enemies were exhausting themselves
against each other, and had Apries advanced inland Nebu-
chadrezzar could have quickly confronted him with a force
from Ribleh. It is perhaps during this brief supremacy
of the Pharaoh in Phænicia that we should place the frag-
mentary Egyptian monuments, pieces of stone statues, altars
and bits of inscribed stone from the Saite age, found by
Renan at Arvad, Tyre and Sidon.' Now also the Pharaoh
apparently controlled for a time a domain in Lebanon.”
When in the spring of 586 B. C. the troops of Apries at last
appeared in the south to threaten the Babylonian besiegers
of Jerusalem, they brought the beleagured city a brief mo-
ment's respite only; for the Egyptian forces again showed
themselves unable to cope with the armies of Asia. Indeed,
it is possible that Apries relinquished his claims in Palestine
without a blow. Thus the predictions of Jeremiah, who had
constantly proclaimed the folly of depending upon assist-
ance from Egypt, were brilliantly confirmed; but the un-
happy prophet paid dearly for the sanity of his statesman-
like views and barely escaped with his life. In the summer
of 586 B. C. Jerusalem fell; it was razed to the ground and
the inglorious Zedekiah, having been taken to Nebuchad-
rezzar's camp at Ribleh, was blinded, after witnessing the
slaughter of his sons. The Judean nation was annihilated,
but no decisive blow had been struck which might cripple
the power of Egypt, the instigator of the trouble. It was
not for many years that Nebuchadrezzar was able to attempt
anything in this direction; his first obligation being the pun-
1 Rouge, letter to Renan, Revue arch. n. 8., VII, 1863, pp. 194-8.
* IV, 970.
588
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
1
ishment of Tyre, which maintained itself for thirteen years,
finally yielding in 573 B. C.
In spite of ill success in Asia, Apries enjoyed unbounded
prosperity in the internal administration of his realm, and
the kingdom flourished as only under his great grandfather.
its founder. From the west also he received the revenues of
the Oasis region and in the Northern Oasis his official Wah-
ibrenofer built a temple. But in the full enjoyment of his
wealth and splendour a tragic end was awaiting him from
an unexpected quarter. He found great difficulty in bridling
his troops, of whatever nationality. On one occasion the
Libyans, Greeks and Syrians attempted to desert and mi-
grate to Nubia, as in the days of Psamtik I a body of the
warrior-class had done. How many were involved in this
revolt under Apries it is impossible to establish, but they
were sufficiently numerous to render the king very appre-
hensive, and the record of the event distinctly states that
“his majesty feared.” As the deserters approached the
first cataract Nesuhor, the governor of Assuan, an astute
official, succeeded in dissuading them from their purpose
and delivering them to the king who then punished them.”
Another misunderstanding with the native warrior-class did
not end so happily. The new Greek settlement at Cyrene
was growing into a flourishing state and encroaching upon
the Libyans who lay between Cyrene and Egypt. Apries
deemed it wise to check the development of the Greek colony
and sent to the aid of the Libyans a body of Egyptian troops
naturally not including among them any of his Greek mer-
cenaries. Despising their adversaries, the Egyptians ad-
vanced in careless confidence, but were totally defeated and
almost annihilated by the Cyrenian Greeks. Smarting un-
der their discomfiture they were so filled with resentment
toward Apries that they concluded he had dispatched them
against Cyrene with the purpose of ridding himself of them.
A revolt of the warrior-class followed, which swelled to
dangerous proportions. A pries thereupon commissioned
Steindorff, Berichte der phil.-hist. Classe der Königl. Sichs, Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 1000, p. 220.
:IV, 980.
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 589
one Ahmose, or Amasis, as Herodotus calls him, a relative
of the royal house, to conciliate the revolters and curb them
into submission. Amasis was a chamberlain or marshal of
the palace, and besides this office at court he held an impor-
tant judicial position. Being a person of unusual shrewd-
ness and insight, his selection at this time might equally
well have been the salvation or the ruin of Apries. So
skilfully did Amasis manipulate the situation that the dis-
affected soldiery soon proclaimed him king, and a messenger
of Apries, sent to recall the traitor, was dismissed with in-
sult and contumely. The enraged Pharaoh was now so
foolish as to expend his wrath on the luckless messenger
who, although he was a man of rank, immediately suffered
the loss of nose and ears. Seeing one of their colleagues so
unjustly punished, many of Apries' nobles and adherents
forsook him and espoused the cause of Amasis. Herodotus
narrates that a battle now ensued in which the Greek mer-
cenaries of Apries, heavily outnumbered by the native
troops of Amasis, were beaten and Apries taken prisoner.
It is possible that he is here confusing the situation with the
later battle which, as we know from a contemporary docu-
ment, occurred between the forces of the two rivals. How-
ever this may be, Amasis, while treating Apries with kind-
ness and not yet dethroning him, laid a vigourous hand upon
the sceptre. A coregency ensued in which Apries doubtless
played but a feeble part; and a monument or two showing
the two rulers together has survived. Alongside the car.
touche, which he now assumed, Amasis continued to bear
the old titles belonging to his former less exalted offices.
In the third year of the coregency, however, a struggle
between the two regents arose. Apries, as Herodotus knew,
gained the adherence of the Greeks, and with an army of
these mercenaries, supported by a fleet, advanced upon Sais
from the North. Amasis quickly collected his forces and at-
tacked, putting Apries and his army to flight and scattering
them far and wide. As they continued for some months to
1 IV, 999 1.
590
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
rove the North, infesting the roads, and of course living by
plunder, Amasis dispatched a force against tnem. It would
seem that Apries had meantime been a fugitive. In any case,
he was slain during this pursuit, while taking his ease on one
of the surviving vessels of his fleet. Amasis gave him hon-
ourable burial, befitting a king, among his ancestors in Sais,
and established for him mortuary offerings endowed with a
liberal revenue.1
It might have been supposed that Amasis, who owed his
crown to an ebullition of national feeling, as opposed to the
partiality shown the Greeks, would now have evinced his
appreciation of this indebtedness in a marked reaction
against foreign influence; but for this he was too sagacious
a statesman. While seeming to curtail the privileges of the
Greeks, he really gave to them all they wanted. The Greek
merchants, who had hitherto enjoyed unlimited latitude in
their selection of a field for their merchandizing, were now
not allowed to land anywhere in the Delta, save at a city
appointed for them by Amasis. On the Canopic mouth of
the Nile in the western Delta, at a place where there was
probably an older settlement of but slight importance,
Amasis founded the new city of Naucratis as a home and
market for the Greeks, which they speedily made the most
important commercial centre of Egypt, if not of the whole
Mediterranean. It was in all essentials a Greek city, and
the wares which were manufactured within its walls were,
with but slight exceptions, in no sense Egyptian. The busy
life which throbbed in its thronging markets and factories,
the constitution of the city and its daily administration, were
just such as prevailed in any industrial and commercial
Greek community of the mother country. All the Greeks
'vere concerned more or less in its success and prosperity.
Hence when the chief temple of Naucratis was to be erected,
the Ionian cities of Chios, Teos, Phocæa and Clazomenæ,
with Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus and Phaselis of the
Dorians, and the Æolian Mitylene, together contributed a
IIV, 996 ff.

Fig. 185.-BRONZE IBEX FROM THE PROW OF A SHIP.
Saite age. See p. 573. (Berlin Museum.)
FIG. 186.-PORTRAIT HEAD OF THE SAITE AGE.
Green basaltic stone. See pp. 572-73. (Berlin Museum.)

THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 591
common fund to erect the Hellenium, a large and stately
sanctuary, with a spacious enclosure, protected by a massive
wall. The powerful states of Ægina, Miletus and Samos,
however, were able to possess each a temple of their own.
Thus while apparently restricted, the Greeks were still enjoy-
ing the greatest privileges in Egypt, nor did the regulations
of Amasis ever impress them as hostile to their welfare in
his land. When an einbassy of the Delphians approached
him for a contribution toward the erection of their temple,
which had been burned (548 B. C.), he responded liberally.
He sent gifts likewise to the temples of Lindos, Samos and
Cyrene, and presented a magnificent corselet to the Spartans.
He thus maintained close relations with the Greek world in
Europe and Asia, and with the wealthy and powerful Poly-
crates of Samos he sustained a friendship which amounted
to an alliance. He was always very popular with the Greeks,
both at home and abroad, and many tales of his career and
personal character circulated ainong them.
Unfortunately it is almost solely in his dealings with the
Greeks that we know anything of the achievements of
Amasis. He did not neglect his interests among the Egyp-
tians, as in view of the catastrophe which had overtaken
Apries, he was not likely to do. He built splendid addi-
tions to the temples of Sais and Memphis, and a vast mono-
lithic chapel from the quarries of the first cataract, which he
set up in Sais, excited the admiration of Herodotus. The
people enjoyed the greatest prosperity, and Herodotus avers
that the land "contained at that time twenty thousand
cities.” He again revised the system of laws, one of which,
demanding that every inhabitant “should annually declare
to the governor of his district by what means he maintained
himself," was adopted by Solon on his visit to Egypt, and
enforced at Athens. But eventually his evident liking for
the Greeks could not escape the notice of the Egyptian party.
He had two frontier forts in the northeastern Delta,' and
from Daphne, one of these two, he was obliged to transfer
I IV, 1014.
592
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
ា
the Greek garrison stationed there to Memphis, and thus
ensure the safety of the latter strong and populous city, so
near his residence at Sais. He was finally compelled to
throw off the mask, and for the support of his mercenary
army and fleet to draw upon the fortunes and revenues of
the temples. It was no longer compatible with modern
statesmanship that the priesthoods should be permitted to
absorb so large a proportion of the resources of the land. A
navy such as Egypt now possessed, and the large body of
mercenaries in his army, drew heavily upon the treasury
of Amasis; and his curtailment of the temple incomes was
inevitable. It was the beginning of still more serious inroads
upon the temple-estates in the Persian period, resulting
under the Ptolemies in great reduction of the priestly rev-
enues and the taxation of the temple-property. Politically
impotent, the priesthoods could only swallow their discon-
tent, which, however, gradually permeated all the upper
classes. But Amasis, with a cleverness which became
proverbial, was always able so to manipulate the forces at
his command that the Egyptian party found itself helpless
and obliged to accede to his wishes.
The good understanding which Amasis constantly main-
tained with the Greeks made him secure upon the Mediter-
ranean. In the west he controlled the oases and erected a
temple in the Northern Oasis;? but he was not so fortunate
in his relations with the east. His usurpation of the crown
had furnished Nebuchadrezzar with the coveted opportu-
nity of humiliating Egypt, which the Kaldean naturally
supposed would have been weakened by the internal dissen-
sions incident to such a revolution. Already before the
death of Apries in 568 B. C., the army of the Kaldeans
appeared on the Delta frontier, but the course of the subse-
quent operations is unknown. It is not probable that Ne-
buchadrezzar purposed the conquest of Egypt, which was
now in a condition very different from the state of impotent
1 Revillout, Revue égyptologique, I, 50 ff., III, 105.
Steindorff, Berichte der phil.-hist. Classe der Königl. Süchs, Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 1900, p. 220.
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 593
anarchy in which the Assyrians had found it under the
Ethiopians. In any case, he did not achieve the conquest
of the country; and Jeremiah ? and Ezekiel, who were
awaiting with feverish longing the complete overthrow of
the hated Pharaoh's kingdom, must have been sorely disap-
pointed that the catastrophe which they had confidently pre-
dicted to their countrymen failed to occur. As a result of
the campaign, however, Amasis was obliged to renounce any
ambitions which he may have cherished for the conquest of
Syria-Palestine. His strong navy, nevertheless, enabled him
completely to subdue Cyprus, which he organized as an
Egyptian dependency, paying tribute to him. His naval
strength, which now became formidable, was the foundation
of the sea-power, which, under the Ptolemies, made Egypt
the dominant state on the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile Nebuchadrezzar bad died (562 B. C.), and the
disappearance of his powerful personality distinctly dimin-
ished the prestige of the Babylonian Empire. As internal
dissensions arose, the alliance with the Medes was no longer
possible, and when finally Cyrus of Anshan, a Persian, suc-
ceeded in supplanting the Median dynasty by the overthrow
of the Median king, Astyages (550 B. C.), the position of
Babylon was critical in the extreme. The extraordinary
career of Cyrus was now a spectacle upon which all eyes in
the west were fastened with wonder and alarm. Amasis
was fully alive to the new danger which threatened his king-
dom in common with all the other powers of the West. He
therefore in 547 B. C. made common cause with them, form-
ing a league with Crosus of Lydia, and the Spartans in the
west; and in the east with Nabuna'id of Babylon. Before
the allies could move together, Cresus was defeated and
dethroned (546-5 B. C.); and the overflowing energies of
the new conqueror and his people, fresh and unspent for
centuries among their native hills, were then directed upon
Babylon, which fell in 539 B. C. Amasis was powerless to
check their progress, while the vast Persian Empire was
* Ezek. 40: 10-18.
1 Jer. 43: 8-13.
88
594
A A HISTORY OF EGYPT
being raised upon the ruins of the Semitic states in the val-
ley of the two rivers and the kingdoms of Asia Minor. It
was inevitable that the new world power should now look
toward Egypt, and the last years of Amasis must have been
darkened with anxious forebodings as he contemplated the
undisputed supremacy of Cyrus. But he was spared the
fate of Cresus, for when he died, late in 526 or early in 525
B. C., the impending catastrophe had not yet overtaken his
kingdom.
Amasis had ample opportunity during his long reign of
forty four years to display his qualities as a statesman.
With his fertility of resource and never-failing cleverness,
he belonged to and was largely the product of the Greek
world. His nature was fundamentally opposed to the con-
ventional and sacerdotal conception of the Pharaoh, which
so dominated the ancient kingship that its monuments,
largely of priestly origin, force all the Pharaohs into the
same mould, and depict them as rigid and colourless forms,
each like all the others, with the same monotonous catalogue
of divine attributes. These formal and priestly traditions
of what constituted a Pharaoh were treated with scant con-
sideration by Amasis. When he had devoted the morning
hours to the transaction of public business, lie loved to throw
aside the pomp and formalities of state, and gathering at
his table a few choice friends, he gave himself without re-
serve to the enjoyment of conviviality, in which wine played
no small part. A thorough man of the world of his day, not
too refined, open to every influence and to every pleasure
which did not endanger his position, he showed himself
nevertheless a statesman of the first rank. Of his wit and
humour the Greeks told many a tale, while the light and
skilful touch with which he manipulated men and affairs
won their constant admiration. But the character and poli-
cies of Amasis clearly disclose the fact that the old Egyp-
tian world, whose career we have been following, has already
ceased to be. Its vitality, which flickered again into a flame,
in the art of the Saitic age, is now quenched forever. The
THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA 595
Sastic state is but an artificial structure, skilfully built up
and sustained by sagacious rulers, but that national career,
the characteristics of which were determined by the initiative
and vital force of the nation itself had long ago ended. The
fall of Egypt and the close of her characteristic history, were
already an irrevocable fact long before the relentless Cam-
hyses knocked at the doors of Pelusium. The Saitic state
was a creation of rulers who looked into the future, who
belonged to it, and had little or no connection with the past.
They were as essentially non-Egyptian as the Ptolemies who
followed the Persians. The Persian conquest in 525 B. C.,
which deprived Psamtik III, the son of Amasis of his throne
and kingdom, was but a change of rulers, a purely external
fact. And if a feeble burst of national feeling enabled this
or that Egyptian to thrust off the Persian yoke for a brief
period, the movement may be likened to the convulsive con-
tractions which sometimes lend momentary motion to limbs
from which conscious life has long departed. With the fall
of Psamtik III, Egypt belonged to a new world, toward the
development of which she had contributed much, but in
which she could no longer play an active part. Her great
work was done, and unable, like Nineveh and Babylon, to
disappear from the scene, she lived on her artificial life for
a time under the Persians and the Ptolemies, ever sinking,
till she became merely the granary of Rome, to be visited as
a land of ancient marvels by wealthy Greeks and Romans,
who have left their names scratched here and there upon her
hoary monuments, just as the modern tourists, admiring the
same marvels, still continue to do. But her unwarlike peo-
ple, still making Egypt a garden of the world, show no signs
of an awakening and the words of the Hebrew seer, “There
shall be no more a prince out of the land of Egypt,
been literally fulfilled.
1 Ezek. 30: 13.
"1 have
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF KINGS.
(See Ancient Records of Egypt, I, 38–75.)
NOTE: All dates with asterisk are astronomically fixed.
Introduction of calendar
4241 B. C.
Accession of Menes and Beginning of Dynasties 3400 B. C.
FIRST AND SECOND DYNASTIES, 3400–2980 B. C.
Eighteen Kings, 420 years.
THIRD DYNASTY, 2980-2900 B. C.
Zoser to Snefru, 80 years.
FOURTH Dynasty, 2900-2750 B. C.
23 years.
8
Khufu.......
Dedefre....
Khafre.
Menkure...
X
18
4
Shepseskaf .....
Total ...
Known minimum 150 years.
FIFTH DYNASTY, 2750-2625 B. C.
7 years.
12
X
7
X
Userkaf .....
Sahure
Neferirkere..
Shepseskere
Khaneferre.
Nuserre.
Menkuhor....
Dedkere-Isesi ...
Unis ....
Total ..
30 (+ x) years.
8 years.
28
30
122 (+ 3x) years. Minimum 125 years.
SIXTH DYNASTY, 2625-2475 B. C.
x years.
Teti II .........
Userkere ....
597
598
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
21 years
Pepi I........
Mernere I ........ 4
Pepi II......
90 (+ x) years.
Mernere II .......
Total......... 116 (+ 3x) years. Known length 150 years.
1 year.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH DYNASTIES, 2475-2445 B. C.
Known total 30 years.
NINTH AND TENTH DYNASTIES, 2445-2160 B. C.
Eighteen Heracleopolitans, estimated 285 years.
X
ELEVENTH DYNASTY.
Horus Wahenekh-Intef I............... 50 (+ x) years.
Horus Nakhtneb-Tepnefer-Intef II
I years.
Horus Senekhibtowe-Mentuhotep I
Nibhapetre-Mentuhotep II
Nibtowere-Mentuhotep III....
2 (+ x) years.
Nibhepetre-Mentuhotep IV
46 (+ x)
Senekhkere-Mentuhotep V...........
8 (+ x)
Total......
... 106 (+ x)
" Known total 160 years
TWELFTH DYNASTY, 2000-1788 B. C.
COREGENCIES.
2000-1980 B. C., alone.
Amenemhet I., 30 years 2000*-1970* B. C. 1980-1970 with his
son.
Sesostris I...... 45 years 1980*-1935* B. C.
1980-1970 B. C., with his
father.
1970–1938 B. C., alone.
1938-1935
with his
son.
Amenemhet II. 35 years 1938*-1903* B. C.
1938-1985 B. C., with his
father.
1935-1906 B. C., alone.
1906-1903
with his
SOD.
1906–1903 B, C., with his
Sesostris II...... 19 years 1906*-1887* B. C. father.
1903–1887 B. C., alone.
Sesostris III.... 38 years 1887*-1849* B. C. | Uncertain period with his
son,
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF KINGB
601
TWENTY THIRD DYNASTY, 745-718 B. C.
Pedibast......
23 (+ x) years, 745-721 B. C.
Osorkon III ...
14 (+ x)
Takelot III.....
Total ....
87 (+ 3x)
Allowance for coregencies... 10
Final total......
27 (+ x)
Minimum 27 years.
X
TWENTY FOURTH DYNASTY, 718-712 B. C.
Bekneranef (Bocchoris) 6 (+ x) years, 718-712 B. C.
Minimum 6 years.
TWENTY FIFTH DYNASTY, 712-663 B. C.
Shabaka......... 12 years, 712-700 B. C.
Shabataka 12
700*-688
Taharka
26
688-663
Total....... 50 Minimum 50 years.
TWENTY SIXTH Dynasty, 663-525 B. C.
Psamtik I.......
54 years, 663-609 B. C.
Necho..
16
609-593
Psamtik II........
5
593-588
Apries (Hophra).....
19
588-569
Ahmose II .....
44
669-525
Psamtik III.....,A few months
525
Total.......
188
CONQUEST BY THE PERSIANS (TWENTY SEVENTH DYNASTY), 525 B. C.
Egypt a Persian province with short interruptions by ephemeral native
dynasties (Twenty Eight to Thirty) 525–332, B. C.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT SEIZED EGYPT 832 B. C.
Egypt under Alexander and his successors, the Ptolemies, 382 to 80 B. C.
EGYPT BECAME A ROMAN PROVINCE 80 B. C.
INDEX
NOTE: Names of Pharaohs and queens who served as such are in small
capitals.
Ægina, 591
Æolians, 590
Aba, 571
Africa, 3; inner, 6, 138; earliest ex-
Ababdeh, 6
ploration of inner, 138-42; pigmies
Abbasids, 214
of inner, 139–40; northern Mediter-
Abdashirta, 352, 382
ranean peoples migrating to, 467;
Abdkhiba, 387, 388
circumnavigated by Necho's expedi-
Abimilki, 336, 383
tion, 585
Abram, earliest mention of, 530, Fig.
Africans (see also Nubians and Ne.
180
groes), kinship with Egyptians and
Abram, field of, 530
imigration into Egypt, 7, 25-26
Absha, 188
Africans, 14
Abshai, 188
Agriculture, 9, 28-29, 92
Aburoash, 120
ANMORE I, reign of, 225–33, 233-35,
Abu Simbel, 451; begun by Seti I, 416; 252, 253; rebellions against, 226,
visit of Khetasar depicted at, 439; 228; buildings of, 252; mother of,
Psamtik's Il's expedition reaches, 252; age of, 252; tomb of, 252;
585
body of, 252, Fig. 252; compared
Abusir, pyramids of, 129
with Psamtik I, 507
Abydos, 37,44, 132, 168; reputed home AHMOSE II, see Amasis
of Osiris, 60; northern boundary of Ahmose (wife of Thutmose I), 255;
Theban Kingdom, 150, 151; sanctity death of, 266; children of, 266;
of burial at, 172; memorial tablets
mother of Hatshepsut by Amon, 273
at, 172, 182, 185-86, 187, 212; as Ahmose-Pen-Nekhbet, under Ahmose
abode of the dead, 174; access to I, 227; under Amenhotep I, 253;
oases from, 182; new Twelfth Dy. under Thutmose I, 256, 263-64; un-
nasty temple at, 106; Seti I's tem- der Thutmose II, 270; under Hat-
ple at, 415, 416, 417, 420-21; shepsut, 272
Ramses II completes Seti I's temple Ahmose Son of Ebana, under Ahmose
at, 420-21; Ramses II's temple at, I, 225, 226-27, 228, 234; under
443, 445-46
Amenhotep I, 253, 254 ; under Thut.
Abyssinia, 4, 8; Christian kingdom of, mose I, 256, 263-64
561
Ajalon, 387, 530
Achæans, 467
Akhetaton, founding of, 304-86; land-
Acre, 204
marks (stelas) of, 365, Fig. 140;
Administration, Local, in Old King- decay of, 302-93; destruction of
dom, 79, 80; in Middle Kingdom, temples of, 402; destruction of
see Nomarch; in Empire, 236-37 tombs of, 402
Adultery, 173
Akhthoes, 148
Ægean, 260, 261, 262; ware in Egypt Akizzi, 335-36, 352
in first two dynasties, 49; com- Akko, 389
merce with, in Old Kingdom, 142- Alabaster, source of, 6, 93; vessels of,
43; commerce with, in Middle King- 39; floors of, 120
dom, 188-89; influence of Thutmose Alabastronopolis, 399, 400, 402
III in, 305; commerce with Egypt Alasa (see Cyprus), 618
in Empire, 337–38; races plunder Aleppo, 303, 314, 427; as ally of Hit.
Delta, 462
tites, 424; rescue of king of, 433-34
809
604
INDEX
Alexander, 320
Alexandria, 5, 569
Alexandrians, 576
Algebra, 100
Ali Baba, tale of, 312, 453
Allah, 248
Aloa, 561
Alphibet, earliest appearance of, 45;
introduced into Syria from Egypt,
484; transmitted to Greeks, 484
Altaqu, scene of first battle between
Assyria and Egypt, 551-52
Altar, 62
Amada, 317, 414, Amenhotep II's tab.
let at, 326
AMASIS (AHMOSE II), rise of, 589;
defeats Apries, 589, 589–90; co-
regency with Apries, 580; treat-
ment of the Greeks, 590-91; build-
ings of, 591; prosperity under, 591;
draws upon temple wealth, 592;
thwarted in Asia by Nebuchadrez-
zar, 592-93; acquires Cyprus, 593;
alliances against Persia, 503–04;
character of, 594-95
Amenardis, adopted by Shepnupet I,
546; reinstated by Shabaka, 553;
adopts Shepnupet II, 558
Amenemhab, 301, 302, 303, 304, 311,
313, 314, 315, 316
AMENEMHET I, rise of, 155; treat-
ment of nomarchs, 155-56, 161_62;
prosperity under, 177; conspiracy
against, 177-78; campaign in Nubia,
178; instruction of, 178-79, 204;
pyramid of, 198, 201; portrait-
statues of, 201; compared with
Psamtik I, 567
AMENEMHET II, 201, as crown prince
in Nubia, 181; reign of, 182-83;
pyramid of, 198, 201; portrait-
statues of, 201
AMENEMHET III, reign of, 180-95,
208; equipment of stations in
Sanai, 100-01,208; irrigation works
of, 191-05; prosperity under, 195;
buildings of, 196; pyramid of, 108;
St. Petersburg portrait of, 202, Fig.
90
AMENEMHET IV, reign of, 208; pyra-
mid of, 198
Amenemhet (vizier of Mentuhotep
IV), 153-55; possible identity with
Amenemhet I, 154-55
AMENEMOPET, 524-25
AMENHOTEP I, 252, 296; reign of,
253–55; Nubian campaign, 253–54 ;
Libyan campaign, 254; Asiatic cam-
paign, 254, 257, 263; in Phænicia
(!), 298; death of, 255; tomb of,
278, 525; becomes local god of
Thebes, 459; royal mummies con-
cealed in old tomb of, 525
AMENHOTEP II, coregency of, 318;
Asiatic war, 323-25; Nubian cam-
paign of, 325-26; buildings of, 326 ;
jubilee of, 326-27; body of, 327,
Fig. 121, 511
AMENHOTEP III, 242; parentage of,
328; accession of, 329; marriage to
Tiy, 329-30; Nubian campaign,
330-31; supremacy in Asia, 332;
letter to Kallimmasin of Baby.
lon, 332; royal marriage betweeen
Babylon and house of, 333; mar.
riage to Gilukhipa, 333; at Sidon,
337, 352; luxury of, 339; develop
ment of architecture by, 343-48;
monumental development of Thebes
by, 344-46; buildings of, 343–46,
348, 351; obelisks of, 344, 345;
mortuary temple of, 345–40, 348,
471; splendour of, 348-52; month
named after, 350; as hunter, 350-
51; modern tendency of, 351; wor.
ship of, 351; jubilecs of, 351-52 ;
Hittites invade dependencies of,
352-53; death of, 353-54; Ikhnaton
erases name of, 363–64; Merneplah
destroys mortuary temple of, 471;
robbery of tomb of, 510
AMENHOTEP IV, see IKHNATON
Amenhotep, son of Hapi, 341, 344
Amenhotep (High Priest of Amon),
508-10
Ameni, 100-01, 102, 180, 181, 182
AMENMESES, 472
Amki, 382
Ammon, 551, 586
Amon (see also High Priest of Amon,
Priests and Karnak), rise of, 170-
71; estate of, 239; organization of
priests under high priest of, 247;
supremacy of, 248, 302; father of
Hatshepsut, 273; oracle of,274,277,
400, 520-21, 522-23, 524, 527, 534;
royal mortuary temples of, 270;
Thutmose III's gifts to, 204; re-
organization of temple of, 310;
hymn to Thutmose III, 310; love
of truth, 320; claims to be univer.
sal god, 359; hostility toward Aton,
301-02, 390_91; victory of Aton
over, 362-63; persecution of, 363-
64; restoration of worship of, 393;
triumph of, 403; reinsertion of
name of, 393, 402; barge of, 410,
480, 513-19; Seti l's restoration of
inscriptions to, 414; growth in
power of, 456-57; disproportionate
INDEX
605
Over
wealth of, 492-96; gains gold.
country in Nubia, 457, 494; hymn
to, 458; personal faith in, 458;
temple of, in Syria, 298, 484;
Ramses III's temple of, in Delta
residence, 487; Ramses III's splen-
did gifts to, 490-91, 492-96; feasts
of, 492-93; gains enlarged control
revenues, 509; bestower of
civilization, 615, 510; god of the
Nubian kingdom, 538; wealth con-
trolled by Nubians, 540, 558; wealth
controlled by Saites, 507, 585; de-
cay of, 583
Amon-of-the-Way, 513, 515, 517
Amon, high priest of, 239, 272, 362,
508, 513, 514; also chief treasurer,
302; also vizier, 272, 302; power
of, 302; growth in power of, 456-57,
494-95, 507, 508-10, 511, 510, 520;
gains hereditary control of office,
450-57, 508; gains throne, 494-95,
507, 520-21; becomes commander-
in-chief of the army, 519; becomes
viceroy of Nubia, 520; theocratic
rule introduced by, 522-23; in
Twenty First Dynasty, 520-28;
commands native militia, 526; in
the Twenty Second Dynasty, 520–
31, 532, 533–34; declining power of,
553; final fall of, 557, 507; woman
becomes, 567, 580
Amon-Re, see Amon
Amor, 382, 383, 412; Egyptian trade
with, 447-48; city of Merneptah in,
406; occupied by Northern peoples,
478, 479; Ramses III in, 483; in-
cluded in empire of Ramses III, 483
Amorite, see Amor
Amusements, in Old Kingdom, 89–91
Anath, in Egypt, 449, 460
Anath-herte, 449
Animals, extinct, 30
Animals, sacred, 60; worship of, 460;
Saite excesses, 676-70
Annals, earliest, 46, 100; of Thutmose
III, 312-13
Anshan, 593
Anubis, 40; as embalmer, 58
Aphroditopolis, nomarch of, surviving
under Empire, 228, 542, 544
Apion, Josephus against, 215
Apis, 48, 557; Saite popularity of,
576
Apollos, archaic, 580
Apophis, in Avaris, 216, 223; altar
of, 217; wide rule of, 218; three
kings named, 221; mathematical
papyrus of, 221, 222; relations with
Thebes, 223–24; tale of, 215-16,
223–24, 453-54
APRIES, 580; resumes attempt to re-
cover Syria-Palestine, 586; Asiatic
war, 586-87; attacks Tyre and
Sidon, 580; repelled by Nebuchad-
rezzar, 587; prosperity of, 588;
trouble with mercenaries, 588–89;
Cyrenian expedition, 588; forsaken
by the Egyptians, 589; defeated
by Amasis, 589, 589-90; coregent
with Amasis, 589; slain, 590; buried
by Amasis, 590
Arabia, 258, 259, 549, 565
Arabians, 217, 219
Arad, 530
Araina, 314
Aramæans, 259, 577
Arch, 101
Archery, 234
Architect, earliest, 42; chief, in Old
Kingdom, 83; Imhotep, 112; in
Empire, 254–55, 265, 266, 271–72,
278-79, 295, 306, 340-41, 366
Architecture (see also Dwelling, Tem-
ple, Tomb), earliest, 27-28; early
dynasties, 41-42; earliest stone, 42,
Fig. 25; in Old Kingdom, 106-07;
of temple, 106-07; Babylonian, 107;
progress of, under Imhotep, 113;
in Twelfth Dynasty, 200-01; in
Empire, 340-46, 417, 450, 486-88;
Egyptian origin of cathedral of
architecture, 343–44; in Twenty
Second Dynasty, 531; in Saite
period, 573 and frontispiece
Archives of State, 82, 240; vizier
in charge of state, 240–41; legal,
610-11
Arko, Sebekhotep the Great at, 212,
257; Thutmose I at, 256
Armour, Syrian, 292
Army (see also Troops, and Mercen-
aries), in Old Kingdom, 84, 134_35;
provisioning of, 163; in Middle
Kingdom, 107-88; in Empire, 233-
35, 243, 285, 404; weapons of, 234;
of Thutmose III, 285; lack of dis-
cipline in, 299; mercenaries in, see
Mercenaries; size of, 424, 425; de-
cline of, 441, 464; reorganized by
Ramses III, 477; in Nubian period,
652; in Saite period, 568-69, 568–70
Arrapakhitis, 316
Arsinoe, 194
Art, of early dynasties, 39-40; of
Old Kingdom, 102–07, 129; of Mid-
dle Kingdom, 201-02; impersonal
characters of, 207; of Empire, 341-
49, 378, 417, 448, 450, 487-88; in-
606
INDEX
terpretation of life in, 346-47; of
Amarna period, 378; decadence of,
487–88; of the Libyan-Nubian pe-
riod, 548–49; of the Saite period,
· 571, 572–73, 579-80
Artatama, 333; Thutmose IV marries
daughter of, 328
Aruna, 286 (map), 287, 288
Arvad, 260, 479; Thutmose III cap-
tures, 298; revolt of, 301; as ally
of Hittites, 424; monuments of
Necho at, 587
Ashdod, 580
Ashurbanipal, 556-66; defeats Ta-
harka, 556-57; retakes Memphis
and possibly captures Thebes, 556_
57; drives out Tanutamon, 559;
captures Thebes, 559-60; relin-
quishes hold on the West, 565–66
Asia (see also Syria, Palestine and
Syria-Palestine), 136, 180, 203,280;
desert of, 3; invasion from, 7, 25-
28, 214-19; intimate intercourse
with, 322; Egyptian boundary in,
264, 303, 324; supremacy of Egypt
in, 332-37; loss of Egyptian Em-
pire in, 389; Egyptian trade with,
447-48; gods of, in Egypt, 460
Asia Minor, 3, 188, 260, 560; Egyptian
notion of, 261; peoples of, 262–63,
424; high position in Egypt gained
by natives of, 497, 500
Asiatics, 178, 239, 263, 319; in Egypt,
215; Hyksos called, 217; as cap-
tives in Egypt, 308-09
Askalon, 387; taken by Ramses II,
435_36; revolts against Merneptah,
465; captured by Merneptah, 470;
captured by Sennacherib, 551; cap-
tured by Necho, 582
Assuan, 7; tombs of, 138
Assyria, 259, 322; beginnings of As-
syria, 263; kings of, 292; gends
gifts to Thutmose III, 296; seeks
Egyptian alliance, 332; Amenhotep
III sends gold to king of, 334-35;
some Tanite sends crocodile to Tig-
lath-Pileser I of, 518; Takelot II
sends thousand
against
Shalmaneser II of, 534; Western
supremacy of, 549-60; fall of, 582,
Assyrians, 557; great religious
centre in Saite period, 575
Atika, 485
Atlantic, 3
Aton, rise of, 360; identity of Re and,
360; nature of, 360-61; symbol of,
361; temples of, 361, 364, 366-67,
389, 393, 402; hostility toward
Amon, 362; becomes sole god, 362-
64; city of, see Akhetaton; inaug-
uration of temple of, 368-87; high
priest of, 360, 367; hymns to, 371-
76; name changed, 390; decline of,
393, 402; fall of, 402-03; temples
of, destroyed, 402
Attendants," 167
Atum, 59
Augustus, 186, 547
Avaris, 217; Asiatics in, 215; siege
of, 215, 220; length of siege of,
226-27; Apophis in, 218; Sutekh,
god of, 217; disappearance of, 218;
canal of, 228; capture of, 226
Ayan, 252, 484; quarries at, 93
Aziru, 352, 382, 383, 386; Egyptian
deputy slain by, 386
583
Assyrians, 216, 217, 534
Astarte, in Egypt, 448, 460; temple
in Memphis, 448
Astronomy, 100
Astyages, 593
Atbara, 4, 127
Athens, 591
Athribis, 497, 643, 644; under the
B.
Baal, 22, 259; in Egypt, 448, 460;
temple in Memphis, 448
Baal (King of Tyre), 565
Baba, 225
Baboons, 276
Babylon, 259, 595; Middle Kingdom
commerce with, 188; decline of,
263; sends gifts to Thutmose III,
304; loses commercial leadership,
263, 322; struggle with Assyria,
505, 567; retrospective character of
revival in, 576
Babylon (in Egypt), 543, 544
Babylonia, 28, 447; life after death,
173; influence of, in the West, 282;
loss of influence in the West, 322;
Thutmose IV in alliance with, 328;
Amenhotep III in alliance with,
332; royal marriages between Egypt
and, 333, 379; Egyptian trade with,
388–89, 447-48; decline and fall of
Second Empire of, 503
Bagdad, 520
Bahr Yusuf, 5, 6; used by Piankhi,
540, 542
Balances, 277, 491
Ba'lat, 250
Banishment, 404, 624
Barge, temple, 410
Barley, 92
Barque of the sun-god, see Sun-god
a
men
INDEX
607
Barter, 97
Basilica, 344
Bast, 59
“ Beautiful are the Ways of Khe-
kure," 183
Beduin, in Sanai, 48, 134-35, 190, 191;
in Palestine, 135, 270, 316, 386, 409--
10, 484; on west shore of Red Sea,
142; as mercenaries, 386, 387; ab-
sorb Palestine, 387-89, 409-10; de-
feated by Seti I, 410; admitted to
Egypt, 187-88, 447
Bega, 26
Beket, 102
Bek, 366, 378
Beketaton, 366
Bekhten, 440
Belgium, 6
Ben-Anath, 449
Beni-Hasan, 160, 170, 187; birth place
of Khufu, 118; tombs of, 156, 160;
inscription of Hatshepsut at, 215,
280
Ben-'Ozen, 449, 471
Berber, 466
Berat, during Hittite invasion, 386;
stelæ near, 423, 439, Fig. 159
Beth-Anoth, 530
Bethhoron, 530
Beth-Shean, 512, 530
Bet Khallaf, 114; great mastaba of,
113, Fig. 62
Bikhuru, 386, 388
Bint-Anath, 440, 450
Biography, 109, 134; earliest, 133
Birds, as souls, 64
Birket el-Kurun, 192-93
Bitter Lakes, 116
Black Sea, 677
Blasphemy, 173
Blemmyes, 561
Boat (see also Ships), earliest dynas.
tic; Fig. 27; earliest hunting, 30;
earliest cargo, 30; earliest sail, 30;
as shrine, 62; of ferryman of the
dead, 15, 176; building in Old King-
dom, 95, 130, 137; kinds of, 95;
Nile traffic in, 97, 114, 136, 164;
model, 178; Sesostris III's mortu.
ary, 176, Fig. 82; heavy transpor-
tation in, 286, 281, 282
BOOOHORIS, reign of, 546-47; sends
gifts to Sargon, 560; death of, 550
Body-guard, of Pharaoh, 236, 243, Fig.
163
Book of the Dead, 250; rise of, 175;
growth of, 249; Saite recension of,
571
“ Book of the Portals," 250
« Book of the Two Ways," 175
“ Book of What is in the Nether-
world," 250
Bow and arrows, earliest use of, 30
“ Bow-Land," 178
Branchidæ, Milesian, 583
Brick, earliest, 27-28; making as an
industry, 94-95; pyramids of, 198_
200, 224
Briefs, legal, old Kingdom, 81-82
Bronze, 93, 263, 274; Saite plastic in,
573
Bubastis, 59, 119, 216, 414; Twelfth
Dynasty in, 197, 201; Twenty
Second Dynasty makes residence
at, 527; Twenty Second Dynasty
buildings in, 531, 533
Building (see also Architecture), cap-
tives employed in, 309, 414
Burded, 128, 140
Burial, archaic, 34-35; at Abydos,
172, 196
Burraburyash, 379, 389
Business, 97-98, 195; records, 98
Busiris, 60, 543
Butlers of Pharaoh, 497, 498, 500
Buto (city), 34, 44; religious impor.
tance in Saite times, 575
Buto (goddess), 34, 38
Buyuwawa, 526, 527
Byblos, 259, 260, 352; Egyptian tem-
ples at, 323; during Hittite inva-
sion, 382, 383, 385, 386; Egyptian
envoye detained at, 512; mission of
Wenamon at, 513-18
C.
Cairo, 520, 548; museum, 224; citadel
of, 309
Calasiries, 568, 569
Calendar, introduction of, 32; charac-
ter of, 32–33; dating, 44; year, 44;
control of, 244
Caliph, 520, 570
Cambyses, 326, 595; expedition to
Nubia, 561
Canaan, 410; Merneptah wastes, 470
Canaanites, 259
Canal, through First Cataract, 136,
183, 184, 256, 257, 318; into Fayum,
193; canal out of Fayum, 6; of
Avaris, 226; connecting Nile with
Red Sea, 142, 276, 277, 411, 486–86,
684; at Tharu, 411
Canopic Branch, 474, 590
Caphtor, 512
Cappadocia, 188, 380
Captives, foreign, arrival of, 308–09,
325, 411, 412; disposal of, 309, 328,
329, 339, 414, 482; sacrifice of, 325,
411; labour of, 309, 414, 446
608
INDEX
-
Caravan-conductor, 138
Carchemish, 303; as ally of Hittites,
424; battle of, 583-84
Carians, 586; as mercenaries, 566,
568, 569; Memphite quarter for, 577
Carmel, 188, 258, 287, 288, 387
Carthaginian colonies of Phænicia,
261
Caste, unknown in Egypt, 574
Cataracts, 4, 6; commerce through, 7;
canal through first, 136, 183, 184,
256; as a barrier, 136; region of,
136-37; tribes of, 136–37
Cattle (see also Herds), 237; yards
as Department of White House,
237-38; due from officials, 238;
wild, 350; owned by temples, 492
Cavalry, 234
Cedar, 252, 328, 410; source of, 95,
168, 265, 513-17
Cemeteries, archaic, 34; Old King-
dom, 116
Census, 44, 165-66, 211
Chapel, mortuary, see Temple, Mor-
tuary
Chapters of Going Forth by Day,"
175
Chariot, 226, 264, 289, 290, 292, 319,
381, 447; making, 235, 260
Chariotry, 234, 381; at battle of Ka-
desh, 428-32
Charms, protecting the dead, 69
Chiaroscuro, earliest, 378
“ Chief of All Works of the King,"
83
China, 351
Chinese, 576, 679
Chios, 690
Christian, 64
Chronology, 21-23, 597-601
Cilicians, 565; as allies of Hittites,
424
Cimmerians, 565, 566
Cinnamon, 276
Circle, Great, 56, 261, 319
Citizen, 167, 168
"Citizens of the Army," Middle King.
dom, 240; in Empire, 246, 404
Civilization, earliest, 26-31
Clazomene, 590
Clear-Story, Egyptian origin of, 344
Climate, 7-8, 9-10
Cnidus, 590
Cnossos, Hyksos remains in, 218;
monuments of Khian in, 218;
Egyptian commerce with, 337
Coffin, 69
Colonnade, 274, Fig. 113, Egypt the
source of the, 107, Fig. 61, 198; at
Luxor, 343, Fig. 128
Colossi, see Statue
Column, 107, Figs. 60 and 61; Saite
origin of Ptolemaic, 573
Commerce, 260, 485; with the North,
337–39, 381, 447; regulation of,
338-39; Saite revival of, 577
Commodus, 214
“ Divine Consort,” 248, 546, 558, 587,
585
Conspiracy, 134, 177--78, 241, 242, 498-
500
Constantinople, obelisk, 306
Contracts, 70-71, 165, 240
Copper, earliest use of, 28; protody.
nastic vessels of, 39; tools of, 39,
93; Sinaitic mines of, 48; smith,
93, 169; vessels of, 94; as money,
97, 195; life-size statue of, 104;
mines of Cyprus, 200, 313; from
Syria, 325; weapons of, 469; mines
of Atika, 485
Coptos, 212; route to Red Sea, 128,
169, 182; nomarch of, 159; organ.
ization of gold-country of, 310
Corinth, 580
Cornelius Gallus, 166
Cosmetic, 187-88, 276
Costume, primitive, 27; royal, see
Pharaoh; in Old Kingdom, 88–89;
in Empire, 340
Council," 241
Count, in the Middle Kingdom, 167-
68, 161; in the Empire, 237; be-
comes administrative title, 237
Court of Pharaoh, 74–75, 243
Courts of Justice, see Justice
Cow of the sky, 54, Fig. 30, 56
Craftsmen, see also Industries, 169,
170, 202–03, 346, 573
Crete, 281; Egyptian influence in,
338; Philistines migrating from,
512
Criminals, trial of, 240; punishment
of, 404, 500, 523, 527
Crocodile, 91, 319; as foe of the dead,
176, 194
Crocodilopolis, 194, 542
Crosus, 593
Crowns, 32, 38
Crystal, rock, 39
Cultus, earliest, 62
Cuneiform, use in the West, 262;
used by Hittites, 380
Currency, see Money
Custodian, under-, 134; superior, 134
Custom houses, 338
Cyaxares, 582, 583
Cyprus, 260, 319, 338, 381, 479, 517;
vassal of Egypt, 306; tribute of,
313, 316, 411; Egyptian commerce
INDEX
609
with, 337, 447; defeated by Necho,
686
Cyrene, 588, 591
Cyrus, 593
D.
Dahabiyeh, 95
Dalailama, 351
Damascus, 352, 353; taken by Tig-
lath-pileser III, 549
Damiette, 5
Danaoi, 477
Daphnae, 509, 591
Dardanians, as allies of Hittites, 424
Dashur, stone pyramids
pyramids of, 114;
double slope pyramid of, 115;
Middle Kingdom pyramids of, 198
Dating, method of, 44
David, 205
Daughter, inheritance through eldest,
161
Dead, equipment of, 63, 67-73, 176,
Fig. 81, 251-52; equipment of
royal, 41, 71-73, 170, 251; abode
of, 64-65, 174, 175; food and cloth-
ing for, 65, 69, 70; endowment of,
70, 71, 285; ferryman of, 65; voy.
age of, 65, 176; earliest ethical
test awaiting, 65, 67; dwelling in
tomb, 67-68; burial of, 69; charms
for protecting, 69 (see also Book
of the Dead); cultus statue of,
69-70; Osirian judgment of, 173-
74, 175; destiny of, 64-65, 174;
dangers and foes of, 174-75; inter-
cede with gods for the living, 421,
506; afilict the living, 460–61
Dead Sea, 258
Deben, 105
Decadence, history of, 505-84; nine
Ramessids, 505-21; final loss of
Asiatic empire in, 511-19; triumph
of priests of Amon in, 508-10, 510-
26; Tanitic supremacy in, 523-28;
Libyan supremacy in, 528-36;
Nubian supremucy in, 537-61; As-
syrian conquest in, 555-87; rise of
Saites in, 540-46, 556, 565
Dedefre, 119–20, 123
Dedu, home of Osiris, 60
Dedwen, 184
Deeds and transfers, 567
Delphians, 591
Delta (see also Delta), Kingdom of
the, 31-32; symbols of, 32, 38;
capitals, 33-34 ; patron divinities,
34; history of, 36-38; union with
Upper Egypt, 36, 42-44, 47; rebel-
lions against Upper Egypt, 47; door
of, in the palace, 78; administra.
tion of, 79_80; reestablished by
Nesubenebded, 511
Delta (see also Kingdom of), 5, 214:
marshals of, 5; coast of, 6; immi.
gration through, 7; rains in, 7, 10;
eastern frontier fortresses of, 115,
178, 188, 447, 669, 591; buildings
and prosperity under the Twelfth
Dynasty, 188, 197; in Thirteenth
Dynasty, 211; Hyksos rule in east-
ern, 215, 216; Libyan invasion of
western, 47, 49, 179, 254, 411, 462,
466-71, 474, 477-79, 481-83, 526–
27; Thutmose III restores, 309;
center of commerce, 322; becomes
seat of power, 442; Nineteenth
Dynasty develops eastern, 442-43;
frontier fortresses of western, 469,
478–79,481, 482,569; royal residence
in, 442-43, 486; absorbed by Nesu-
benebded, õll, 515; Libyan absorp-
tion of, 526-27; Libyan lords of,
528-29, 532-33, 534, 535-36, 555-
56, 568; conquered by Piankhi,
543-44; conquered by Esarhaddon,
555–56 ; plots with Taharka against
Esarhaddon, 556; against Ashur.
banipal, 557; finally lost to As-
syria, 565; plundered by Greeks
and Carians, 566; Psamtik I sup-
presses dynasts of, 567; final su-
premacy of, 573
Demotic, rise and introduction of, 574.
Dendera, temple, 35, 59; goddess of,
50; temple built by Khufu, 119
Denyen, 477, 479
Deper, 436
Der el-Bahri, Hatshepsut's temple at,
begun, 269; Thutmose II's reliefs
in, 270-71; birth reliefs in, 272-
73; building resumed, 273; charac-
ter of, 274, 277-78; Punt reliefs,
277-78; reliefs of obelisk-transport,
282; concealment of royal mum-
mies at, 525
Der el-Bahri, Mentuhotep II's temple
at, 152; royal mummies discovered
at, 224; Hatshepsut's temple at,
269, 270–71
Desert, of northern Africa continued
in Asia, 3; limestone plateau of,
5; Libyan, 6, 192; Arabian, 6;
earliest man in Libyan, 26
Destruction of man, 58
Desuk, 119
Diodorus, 242, 584
Diorite, 28, 39, 93
Districta, administrative, in Qid
Kingdom, 79; in Middle Kingdom,
185; in Empire, 236–37
89
610
INDEX
Dodekaschoinos, gift of, by Zoser,
112, by Ramses III, 491, 495
Dogs, 276
Dog River (Nahr el-Kelb), 423; stela
of Esarhaddon at, 556
Door, false, 68
“ Door of the North," Abydos as, 151
“ Door of the South," 135; keeper
of the, 135, 150, 152-53, 154
Dor, Thekel kingdom at, 512, 513
Dorians, 590
Drama, earliest known, 171, 207
Dream, 468, 558
Dushratta, 33, 381; letter to Amen-
hotep III from, 333; repels Hit-
tites, 352; writes to Tiy, 379;
writes to Ikhnaton, 379
Dwarf, 41, 139–40
Dwelling, earliest, 27-28; of lower
classes, 86–87; Map l; of the
nobles, 88, 89, 90; architecture of,
106, 200
Dynasties, 13-14
First and Second, 127; civiliza-
tion of, 37-40; history of, 36–37,
40–50; tombs of, 40-42, 49; fate
of tombs of, 49-50, 420; prosperity
of, 48; public works of, 48; com-
merce with Ægean, 49; later rev.
erence for, 415; Seti I's list of,
415; Abydos chapel to, 415
Third, 40; neglect of Horus-wor-
ship by, 46; war with Delta, 47;
history of, 112-16
Fourth, 127; history of, 116-23;
inner circle of related officials of,
77; origin of, 116; folk-tale of fall
of, 122-23
Fifth, 156; folk-tale of rise of,
122-23, 203; history of, 123-30
Sixth, history of, 131-44
Seventh and Eighth, 147; state
of country during, 148-49
Ninth and Tenth (see also Hera-
cleopolis), 148; supported by Siut,
149
Eleventh, 160; history of, 149_
55
Twelfth, origin of, 154-55; resi.
dence of, 157, 194; history of, 177-
208; Nubian conquest of, 180-87;
relations with Asia, 187-91; irri.
gation enterprises of, 191-94; de-
velopment of eastern Delta by, 188;
exploitation of Sinai, 163, 164,
182, 190-91; buildings of, 195-200;
art of, 201-02; literature of, 203-
08; fall of, 208
Thirteenth, reign of, 211-13;
at Thebes, 212-13
Dynasty, Fourteenth, 214
Fifteenth to Seventeenth, 221
Seventeenth, 225
Eighteenth (see also Empire,
First Period), rise of, 225-29; his-
tory of, 253-365
Nineteenth (see also Empire,
Second Period), vandalism of, 195;
history of, 399–474; anarchy at
close of, 473-74
Twentieth (see also Empire,
Second Period and Decadence), ac-
cession of, 474-77; history of, 477–
521; power of priests and fall of
Empire in, 489-521
Twenty First, accession of, 511,
513, 514, 615; history of, 522-27;
decline under, 524-25; weakness
abroad, 526; rise of Israel during,
526
Twenty Second (see also Lib.
yans), rise and accession of, 520-
27; history of, 527-35; transfers to
Bubastis, 527; Egyptianized char.
acter of, 533; civil war during,
532, 534; vandalism of, 535
Twenty Third (Nubian Period),
535–36, 543, 540; decline of Egypt
under, 647-48; conquest by Nu-
bians in, 539-50
Twenty Fourth (Nubian Period),
546-47
Twenty Fifth (Nubian Dynasty),
history of, 550-60
Twenty Sixth, see Restoration
Earth-god, 54, 55
Eavesdropping, 173
Ebgig, 194
Ebony, 39, 127, 138, 276, 277
Ecstacy, 513-14
Edfu, 4, 37, 113, 178, 196
Edom, plots with Egypt against As.
syria, 550-51, 551
Edomite, 447
Education, in Old Kingdom, 98-100
Egypt, extent of, 4; area of, 6–8;
natural boundaries of, 7; shape of,
7; local differences produced by
shape of, 7; climate, 7-8; aspect of
land, 10-11; isolation of, 8, 10; in-
fluence of land on people, 10-11, 63,
81; influence of, abroad, 11-12; an-
ciently regarded as source of civi.
lization, 515, 516
Lower, kingdom of, see Delta
Upper, kingdom of, 33; capitals
of, 33; symbols of, 33, 38; divini-
INDEX
611
ties of, 34; history of, 35-38;
recovery of Asiatic em-
union with Delta, 38, 42-44, 47;
pire, 423–41; cosmopoli.
door of, in the palace, 78; admin-
tan character of, 447-50;
istration 70-80; governing
limits of empire, 450;
Delta, 132; becomes two principali-
army in, 404, 424-25, 448
ties (see Heracleopolis and Thebes),
49, Fig. 163, 485; art of,
528-29, 532; conquered by Piankhi,
417, 448, 450-53, 487-88;
530-42; conquered by Esarhaddon,
literature of, 453–55; re-
556
ligion of, 401-03, 455-60;
Egyptians, ethnic affinities, 25; phys-
sacerdotalization of State
ical characteristics, 26-27; civiliza-
in, 456–57
tion of, earliest, 26–31; love of Emu, 276
nature, 01; love of beauty, 102; Enekhnes-Merire, 134, 139
unwarlike spirit of, 135
Enekhnesneferibre, adopted by Nito-
Ekereth, see Ugarit
cris, 585; becomes High Priest of
Ekwesh, 407
Amon, 586
El Bersheh, 103, 108
Enenkhet, 142
Eleans, 585
Enkhosnepaaton, 392
Electrum, Fig. 27, 127, 187; by the Enkhu, 221
bushel, 281; by the ton, 308
Enneads, 56
Elephant, 30, 181; in Syria, 271, 304 Ensigns, on early boats, 30
Elephantine, 4, 30, 112, 132, Fig. 74, Eratosthenes, 143
138, 141; Old Kingdom nobles of, Ereth, 483
135, 137-38, 139–42, 168; expedi- Erkatu, 316
tions of nobles of, 137-42; Middle Ernen, 437
Kingdom nobles of, 181; Amen. Erwenet, 424
hotep II's tablet at, 326; Saite gar- Esarhaddon, 655-56; conquest of
rison at, 569
Delta by, 555-56; takes Memphis,
Eleutheros, 259, 209
555; controls Upper Egypt, 558;
Eliakim, 583
Dog River (Nahr el-Kelb) stela of,
El Kab, 33, 38, 44, 226, 228; early 550, Fig. 158; Senjirli stela of, 556,
Nubian frontier at, 186, 253-54, Fig. 181; death of, 556
265; great wall built by Amenem- Esdraelon, plain of (see also Jezreel),
het III, 196, 208; as ally of Thebes, 258, 287, 288, 291; harvest of, 292
225-29; survival of nomarchs of, Eshmunen, 473
229; nomarch's rule south of Thebes, Esneh, 160; El Kab nomarchs hold,
229; country south of, transferred 229
to vizier, 238; northern Nubia gov- Ethics, earliest, 65-66, 67; influence
erned by mayor of, 253–54
from Osiris myth, 173–74, 250
El Khargeh, first intercourse with, 182 Ethiopia, see Nubia
Elam, 585
Ethiopian Dynasty, see Twenty Fifth
Eloquent Peasant, tale of the, 204 Dynasty
Embalmers, 141, 261
Ethiopiane, see Nubians
Empire, rise of, 225–33; State in, Etruscans, 487
233-45; society in, 245-47; army Euphrates, 3, 259, 284; Egyptian
in, 233-35, 243, 285
designation of, 11; Middle Kingdom
First Period:
commerce on, 188; first campaign
History of, 266-395; internal to (1), 254; northern boundary of
feuds, 266-83; conquest of conquest, 257; valley of, 258;
Syria-Palestine, 284-354; sources of, 261; Mitannians on, 262
religious revolution, 355 63; Thutmose I's boundary tablet
78; loss of Asiatic empire, at, 264, 303; Thutmose III crosses,
379-89; fall of, 389-95; 303, 306; Thutmose III's boundary
religion in, 247–52, 355 tablet at, 303; Amenhotep II's
78; literature in, 350; art boundary tablet at, 324; reached by
in, 341_49, 378; luxury in, Necho, 582, 683
339-40, 348-51; changes Europe (see also Ægean, Greek,
in life in, 340
Ionians, Mycenaan, etc.), earliest
Sooond Period:
traces of, in Egypt, 189
Restoration, 399_422; partial Eusebius, 14
612
INDEX
Giraffe, 30
Gizeh, pyramids of, 101, 117-19, 120,
121, 122, Map 2; museum of, 139
Glaze, earliest, 28, 39; Old Kingdom,
96
God, rise of idea of universal, 369,
376–77; Ikhnaton expunges plural
of, 363; beneficence of, 376-77
Gods, chief, 53-60; expungement of
names of, 363–64; Ikhnaton ex-
punges the word, 363; triumph and
restoration of, 401-02; reinsertion
of names of, 402; Semitic, in Egypt,
448, 460; of Asia in Egypt, 448,
460
“God's-Land," 127, 274, 276, 280, 319
Gold, sources of, 8, 94, 130, 181,
310, 314, 317, 331, 490, 491, 494 ;
earliest use of, 28; as money, 97;
royal income from Nubian, 163;
royal income from Coptos, 183, 181;
of Wadi Alaki, 181, 416, 421-22;
of Punt, 276; of Syria, 292, 293,
325; relative value of silver and,
98, 185, 338; due from officials, 238;
images of, 246; commercial rings
of, 277, 307; king of Mitanni asks
for, 334; mines of Gebel Zebara,
416; country of Amon, 457, 494;
Osorkon I gives vast weight of,
531-32
“ Gold of Praise," 141, 307, Fig. 139,
399, Fig. 148, 509, Fig. 177
“Gold of Valor," 226, 227
“Gold-house," 104, 245; double, 164
Goldsmith, earliest, 39; in Old King-
dom, 94, 104; in Middle Kingdom,
169, 201-02
." Good God," 74, 324
Governor (of a town), 237
“ Governor of Foreign countries," 141
Governor of Gold Country of Amon,
457, 473
“ Governor of the North," office not
found, 132
Governor of the north countries, 312,
322, 323
Governor of the (Residence) City,"
139, 164, 162; vizier appointed 28,
133, 139
“ Governor of the South," 132, 133,
134, 135, 138; as honourary title,
138; disappearance of, 186; reap.
pearance
Nubian and Saite
times, 657, 508
“ Governor of the South Countries "
Ewibre, 202, Fig. 88, 208
Extradition, treaty of, 438
Eye, as a noble, 355, 369; ag king,
394; tomb at Akhetaton, 394; tomb
at Thebes, 394
Ezekiel, 593
F.
Family, 85
Famine, 160, 161
“Favourite Place of Re," 124
Fayence, 95, 573
Fayum, 5; 544; origin of, 6; irriga-
tion works of Twelfth Dynasty in,
191–95, 198; submits to Piankhi,
544_45
Feasts, religious, 62, 401; of victory,
294, 482; of Opet, 294, 309, 393,
400, 420, 492, 541
Fenkhu, 287
Feudal, age, 151-229; lords disap-
pear, 229; organization of Shes-
honk I, 528; lords under Psamtik
I, 567–88; lords in Saite period,
667–68, 575
Fief, 161
“ First of the Westerners," 66
Fish, 93
Fishing, 90-91
Flax, 96
Flint, early wrought, 28
Florence, 548
Fly, Order of the, 301
“ Followers of His Majesty," 187
Food, 88
Furniture, earliest, 28; of royal pal-
ace, 39, 88; in royal tomb, 41; of
nobles, 88; of leather, 96; Syrian,
292
G.
Galilee, taken by Ramses II, 436
Galla, 25
Gaza, 285, 409; captured by Necho,
582
Gebelen, 160; Hyksos monuments at,
221
Gebel Zebara, 416
Gem-Aton, 361, 364, 393
Geometry, 100-01
Gezer, 387; Sixth Dynasty scarab at,
135; Middle Kingdom monuments
at, 187; Hittite pottery at, 262;
Philistine pottery at, 512; Thut-
mose IV at, 328; revolts against
Merneptah, 465; captured by Mer-
neptah, 466, 470; presented by
Sheshonk I to Solomon, 529
Gibeon, 530
Gilia, 334
Ginti-Kirmil, 387
(see also Nubia, viceroy of), first
appointment of, 255
Governor, local, 79, 84; hereditary
succession, 120, 131; becomes hered.
in
INDEX
613
itary noble, 131-32; disappearance
of, 131
Graffiti, archaic, 30
Grain, 92, 237; due from officials,
238
Granary, royal, 164, 237–38; of
nomarch, 158, Fig. 70; as depart-
ment of White House, 237-38
Granite, 4, 6, 42, 49, 61, 104, 201,
266, 442; quarries, 93, 135, 136,
281; Khafre's portal of, 120
“Great Chief," 131
“Great Chief of Artificers," 63
“Great Circle," 50, 261, 319
Great Council, 241
'Great House," centralization of local
administration in, 80
“Great Houses," six, 184, 186, 240
“ Great Lord," local governor be-
comes, 131; appointment by Phar.
aoh, 131-32; solicitude for domain
by, 132; of Hare-nome, 133, 134;
of Middle Egypt, 150
“ Great Men of the Town," 241
“ Great Seer,” 63, 300, 367
Greece (see also Greek), 260; Egyp-
tian commerce with, 337
Greek, traditions of Egypt, 215, 566,
678-79; mercenaries, 586, 508, 569,
578, 588, 589; portraiture, 573;
states arise, 577-78; colonies in
Egypt, 577-78, 590; quarter in
Memphis, 577; acquaintance with
Egypt, 578–79; debt to Egypt, 579–
80; philosophy derives ideas from
Egypt, 580
Gryphon, 81
Gyges, 566
H.
HA'ABREʻ, 586
Hadadnirari, 362
Halicarnassus, 680
Hamath, southern limit of Hittite
monuments, 380
Hammamat, quarries at, 03, 159;
Isebi in, 128; Pepi I in, 133; Iti in,
143; Imhotep in, 143; gap in rec-
ords during Seventh and Eighth
Dynasties at, 147; Mentuhotep III
(Henu) in, 163; Mentuhotep IV in,
163–64; largest expedition to, 163-
84; Middle Kingdom revenue from,
163, 164; Amenemhet I in, 178;
Ramses IV in, 507
Hands (cut off as trophies), 264, 290
Hapharaim, 630
Hapuseneb, 272, 279, 362; fall of, 283
Harem, 75, 85, 134, 179, 498-500
Hare-nome, 133, 134, 159, 162, 163,
201
Harkhuf, career of, 138-39, 139–40
HARMHAB, 154, 242; as a noble, 391,
399; reign of, 400–08; rise of, 399–
400; restoration of, 401-06; reforms
of, 403-06; foreign policy of, 406-
07; tomb of, 408, Fig. 119, Fig. 147,
Fig. 148, Fig. 150
Harp, 349
Harris, Papyrus, 491; origin of, 505-06
Harsaphes, 196
Harun er-Rashid, 349
Harzozef, 123, 206
Hathor, 46; as a destroyer of men,
56; of Dendera, 59; of Sanai, 115,
190
Hatiba, 517
Hatnub, 93; opened by Khufu, 119;
Pepi I at, 133; records of nomarche
of Hare-nome during Seventh and
Eighth Dynasties at, 148; colossus
cut from, 159
HATSHEPBUT, 215, 222, 228; parent-
age of, 266; rise of party of, 266–
67; reign of, 267, 269–70, 271-83;
rise of, 269; deposition of, 271; co-
regency of, 271; triumph of party
of, 271; leaders of the party of,
272, 283; their fall, 283; court fic-
tion of birth of, 272-73; coronation
by the gods, 273; tomb of, 279;
extent of empire of, 279-80; restor-
ation of temples by, 280; jubilee of,
280-82; obelisks of, 280–82, Fig.
114; Sinai expeditions, 282; death
of, 282; Thutmose III's treatment
of deceased, 282-83
Hatshepsut-Meretre, 318
Hatsho, 481, 482
Haunebu, 188-89
Hauran, stela of Seti I in, 410; stela
of Ramses II in, 436
Hawara, pyramid of, 198–200
Hawk (sacred animal), 38, 40, n. 2,
319; as sun-god, 54; bearing dead,
65; golden, of Hieraconpolis, 104-05
Heart, as mind, 357-58
Hebrews (see also Israel), Egyptian
origin of Messianic prophecy of,
205; in Egypt, 220, 447; tradition
of Joseph, 229; tradition of, 238;
strategic situation of, 262; settle in
Palestine, 409-10; Ramses II prob-
able oppressor of, 446_47; exodus
of, 447, Egyptian larded with lan-
guage of, 448-49; prophets of the,
836; retrospection of, 571; rejoico
at Necho's defeat, 584
Heh, 184
614
INDEX
Heliopolis, 44, 121, 268; High Priest
of, 62-63, 126; Middle Kingdom
temple at, 196–97; residence of
northern vizier, 236, 240, 405, 443;
judicial court of, 241; sacerdotally
inferior to Thebes, 247; origin of
Aton theology at, 360; temple of
Seti I at, 415; Ramses II's build-
ings at, 443
Hellenium, 591
Hemset, 103
Henu, 153
Heracleopolis, 44, 150; supremacy of,
148-51; supported by Siut no-
marchs, 149-51; war with Thebes,
149-51, 534; fall of, 152; temple
at, 196; Ramses II's temple at, 445;
absorbed by Libyan family, 526-27;
Post-Empire principality of, 527,
528, 532, 534, 540-42, 569
Herald, royal, 226; duties of, 311
Herds, 92-93
Hereditary succession in office, rise
of, 126-27, 131
Herenkeru, 293
Hermes, Thoth, 59
Hermonthis, 149-50
Hermopolis, 59, 473, 540-42; captured
by Piankhi, 541
Hermopolis Parva, 544
Hermotybies, 568, 569
Herodotus, in Egypt, 578
Hesebka, 544
Hesire, wooden panels of, 105, Fig.
59
Hezekiah, 551
Hieraconpolis, 33, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49,
119
Hieratic, 99-100; displaced by demot-
ic, 574
Hieroglyphic (see also Writing), Saite
revival of archaic, 574, 576
“ High Place," at Gezer, 187
High Priest (see also Amon), 62; in
Empire, 248
Hippopotamus, 30, 91; slain by
Pharaoh, 39; noise of, 223
Hittites, 447; earliest industries of,
188; civilization of, 379-81; use of
cuneiform by, 262; send gifts to
Thutmose III, 304, 315; invade
Mitanni, 352; invade Syria, 352-
53; absorb Syria, 379-87, 413;
writing of, 380; early relations of
Egypt and, 381; embassy to Ikh.
naton, 381; and Harmhab, 407;
treaty with Seti I, 412, 423; war
with Ramses II, 423-41; allies of,
424, 465; temporarily dislodged
from southern Syria, 436; Ramses
II concludes treaty of peace with,
437-39; gods of, 438; Ramses II
marries princess of, 439–40; Egyp:
tian trade with, 447-48; Merneptah
at peace with, 465; Merneptah's
war with, 465-66, 470; lose Syria,
479; Ramses III fighting, 483; last
hostilities between Egypt and, 483;
sift into Palestine, 512
HK', 217
Holy of Holies, 61
HOPHRA', 586
Hor, 568
“i Horizon of Horus," 162
Horse, introduced by Hyksos, 222,
234; as tribute, 271; in Syria, 289,
290, 292, 316; from Babylon, 296;
kindness to, 541
Horus, 38, 40, n. 2, 40; temple of, 40,
46; Thinite worship of, 46; as son
of Osiris and Isis, 58; feud with
Set, 58; popularity of, 69; four
sons of, 65; of Heracleopolis, 148;
Pool of, 331; of Alabastronpolis,
400, 402
“ Horus
(royal title), 38, 122, 124;
applied to a queen!, 260
" Horus, Worshippers of,” 38, 46
“ Worship of Horus” (feast called),
46
Hotep-Sesostris, 87, 194, 198
“ House of the North," 47
" House of Thirty," 184, 166
HRIHOB, 513, 515, 510, 520; usurpa.
tion of, 520-21; reign of, 522-23
Hua, 331
Hunting, in first two dynasties, 39;
in Old Kingdom, 89-90; in Empire,
350-51
Iluy, 394
“ Hyk," 217
Hyksos, 214-27; origin of, 216, 217,
218, 219-20; origin of name of,
217; in Memphis, 216; called Asi.
atics, 217; Upper and Lower Egypt
tributary to, 216, 221; Josephus on
the, 210-17; monuments of, in
Crete, 218; in Bagolad, 218; in Pal.
estine, 218; wide empire of, 218--19;
Kadeshi, scat of empire of, 219-20,
317; rcign of, 220–22; date of riac
of, 221; length of rule of, 221; bar.
barities of, 221-22, 264; benefits
from rule of, 22; expulsion of,
223-27
Hypostyle, 343
L
IANNAS, 221
Ibhet, 330
INDEX
615
Ibis, bearing dead, 65
Ibrim, 250, 330, 331, 507
Ikathi, 323, 324
Ikhernofret, 186, 185
IKHNATON, parentage of, 355; acces-
sion of, 355; advisers of, 355-56;
idealistic character of, 355-56,
376-77; religious revolution of,
350-78; changes his name, 363–
04; as high priest of Aton,. 360;
abandons Thebes, 364; conciliation
of officials by, 367-69; composes
hymns to Aton, 371-76; naturalism
of, 377-78; influence on art, 378;
Asiatic rule of, 379-89; leniency,
385-88; loss of Asiatic empire by,
382–89; consequences of religious
revolution of, 390-91; failure of,
390-91; foes of, 390-91, 402; de-
struction of tomb of, 402; later
designation of, 402
Ikudidi, 182
Illahun, 87, 198
Image, cultus, 61-62
Imhotep (king), 143
Imhotep, 83, 107, 200; career of, 112-
13; popularity in Saite period, 575
Immorality, 88
Immortality, 66; conferred by Osiris,
66
Incense, 276
Industries, in Old Kingdom, 92-98;
in the nomes, 160
Ineni, 285; under Thutmose I, 265,
266, 278–79; under Hatshepsut,
271-72
Inheritance, line of, 86; of avocation,
169
Instruction, literature of, see Litera-
ture
INTEFS, of the Eleventh Dynasty,
150-56; of the Thirteenth Dy.
Desty: 212; pyramids of Thirteenth
Dynasty, 212
Intef (nomarch), 150
INTEF I, reign of, 161
INTET II, 161
INTEF III, 152
Intef (Thuthione III's herald), 310-
11; governor of the oases, 305
Interpreters, in Greek times, 578
Inundation, 7-9; influence on
chanical skill, 9; government ob-
servation of, 101, 211, 239
Ionians, 566, 500; as mercenaries,
588, 588, 569
Ipuwer, 204, 546
Irem, 313
Iri, 138
Iron, source (!) of, 136
Irrigation, 8-9, 160; by Twelah Dy.
nasty, 191–94; controlled by vizier,
244
Irthet, 137; location of, 137, expe-
dition to, 139, 141
Isaiah, 548, 551, 552
ISESI, expedition to Hammamat, 128;
expedition to Punt, 128, 140
Ishtar, 334; sent to Egypt, 353-54
Isis, 66; parentage of, 56; nyth of
Isis, 58, 59; Aourishes in Saite
times, 575; popularity of, 59-60
Isis (wife of Thutmose I), 207
“ Isles of the Sea," 201, 424; con-
trolled by Egypt, 305; Syria in-
vaded by peoples of, 479
Israel (see also Hebrews and Pales-
tine), life hereafter in, 173;
Hyksos king, a chief of Israel, 220;
entrance into Egypt, 220; revolts
against Merneptah, 465; punished
by Merneptah, 466; earliest refer-
ence to, 486, 470; stela, 471-72;
rise of the nation, 626; Egyptian
party in, 536; revolts against Shal.
maneser IV, 540; fall of, 549
Itakama, 382, 387
Ithtowe, 157, 179, 196; founding of,
157; seat of six courts of justice,
164
Iti, 142
Ivory, 28, 39, 136, 141, 276, 277;
from Libya, 280
J.
Jackal, 319
Jackal-nome, 162
Jacob, 220
Jacob-EI, 220
Jacob-Her, 220, 221
Jehoahaz, 583
Jehoiachin, 586
Jehoiakim, 583
Jeremiah, 584, 587, 593
Jeroboam, 529
Jerusalem, earliest mention of, 387;
plundered by Sheshonk I, 530; de.
livered from Sennacherib, 552; cap-
tured by Nebuchadrezzar (first
time), 584; (second time), 586-
587; destruction of, 587
Jewelry, earliest, 30-40; Thinite, 50;
in Old Kingdom, 94; in Middle
Kingdom, 202-03. Figs. 97-98, 213;
in Empire, 262, Fig. 103
Jezreel (see also Esdraelon), 287,
410, 512, 530
Joppa, 312; tale of capture of, 312,
464
me-
1
616
INDEX
Jordan, 258, 530
Joseph, 229, 238, 244, 443, 447; offi-
cial position of, 244; Egyptian
origin of tale of temptation of, 455
Josephus, 14, 214, 215, 216
Josiah, 582
Jubilee, royal, 39
Judah (see also Palestine), 227, 258,
530; plots with Egypt against
Assyria, 550-51; devastated by
Sennacherib, 552; resists Necho,
582; rejoices at Necho's defeat,
584; Nebuchadrezzar deports chief
families of, 584; carried captive
by Nebuchadrezzar, 586-87
Judea, 284
Judge, 7, 134, 165; in Old Kingdom,
79, 80–82, 126; vizier as chief, 82,
119, 139; chief, son of Khufu, 119;
chief, in Middle Kingdom, 154; in
Empire, 239–42, 405-06, 499-500;
Harmhab remits tax on office of,
405
Judgment of dead, earliest, 65, 67;
Osirian, 173–74, 175, 249–50; eva-
sion of, 249-50
Justice, administration of, in First
and Second Dynasties, 42; in Old
Kingdom, 80-82, 134; in nome,
158; in Middle Kingdom, 164-65,
166; in Empire, 239-42, 405-06,
499-500, 510–11; corruption in,
241-42, 405-06, 500, 510-11
K.
Kalliinmasin (Kadashman-Bel), let.
ters of, to Ainenhotep, III, 332-33
Karnak, 252; plan of, 444; Ahmose
I in, 252; gate of Amenhotep I in,
254, 296; building of Thutmose I
in, 263-66; halls of Thutmose III,
294-95, 296–297; Hatshepsut in,
280-82; royal list of, 297; building
of Amenhotep II, 326; building of
Amenhotep liat, 344; garden,
344; building of Seti I, 414-15;
great hall of, 408, 414-15, 417, 443,
450-51; Ranses II at, 443; temple
of Ramses III at, 487; Khonsu tem-
ple of, 487, Fig. 183, 507, 519-21,
523–24; Twenty Second Dynasty
buildings, 531; first pylon, 531;
Shabaka's buildings at, 563
Karoy, 325; southern boundary at,
330; gold of, 331
Kash, 387
Kashta, 539
Kasr-Sayyad, 132
Katna, 302, 335–36, 352, 353
Keb, 54, 55, 50; parentage of, 56
Kebehu-Hor, 331
Kedesh, 400
Keftyew, 201, 319; character and
home of, 261; in Egypt, 338
Kegemne, instruction of, 83, 107, 204
Kehek, 477, 485
Keheni, 543
KEMOSE, reign of, 224, 225
Keper, 481, 482
Ketne, same as Katna, q. v.
Kezweden, 424
Khabiri, 353; absorb Palestine, 387-
89
KHAFRE, reign of, 120, 121
Khai, 385
Khamwese, 461, 462
Khani, 385
Khartum, 4
KHASEKHEM, statues of, 40, 47, Figs.
20, 21; war with Delta, 47; Hiera.
conpolis vase of, 47 (Figs. 20, 21).
KITASEKHEMUI, 111; tomb of, 42, Fig.
25; last king of Second Dynasty,
111
Khayu, 36
KHENZEB, 221
Khepri, 59
Khereha, 543, 544
Kheta, see Hittites
Kheta, Great, 381
Khetasar, accession of, 437; makes
treaty of peace with Ramses II,
437-39; gives daughter to Ramses
II, 439-40; visits Egypt, 439;
Ka, 63-64
Kaamenhotep, 535
Kabyles, 26
Kadesh, 219, 259, 263, 483; map of
vicinity of, 426; seat of Hyk808
power, 219-20, 259; commanding
location of, 259, 299-300; leader-
ship against Thutmose III, 284-85,
315-16; king of, 290, 291, 293, his
family, 292; spoil of, 202; strength
of, 290-300; first siege of, 301;
first capture of, 301; second siege
and capture of, 316; final suppres-
sion of, 317; seized by Itakama,
382; held by Hittites, 413, 423;
as ally of Hittites, 424, battle of,
427–35; report of battle of, 433-
34; Ramses II takes, 436; poem on
battle of, 434, 453; reliefs of battle
of, 433-34, 451-53
Kadesh (in Galilee), 412
Fafr, 119
KAKAI, birth of, 123
Kalabsheh, 317
INDEX
617
gives second daughter to Ramses 84, 229, 237; held by nobles, 84-85,
II, 440
237; held by middle class, 85, 169,
Kheti I (nomarch of Siut), 149
237; held by nomarch, 101; office,
Kheti II (nomarch of Siut), 150-51 165; of El Kab nomarchs not con-
Kheti (treasurer of Mentuhotep II), fiscated, 229; of feudal lords con-
152
fiscated, 229; cases (legal), 240;
Kheti (daughter of nomarch), 102 held by temples, 491, 493; price of,
KHIAN, 217, 221, wide range of monu- 524–25; in Saite period, 574
ments of, 218; in Crete, 218; in Language, Egyptian, Semitic struc-
Bagdad, 218; same as Iannas, 221 ture of, 25; African tincture, 25
Klinum, receives Dodekaschoinos, 112, Lapis-lazuli, 296, 304, 344
491, 495
Law, in Old Kingdom, 81; in Middle
Khnumhotep I, 156, 161-02
Kingdom, 165, 242; in Empire, 242,
Khnumhotep II, 102; Asiatics in 404-06; public access to code of,
tomb of, 187
242; Pharaoh subject to, 242;
KUNUM-Kuuru, 110
Pharaoh source of, 242, 404-06;
Khonsu, Ramses Ill's temple of, 487, against corrupt officials, 405-06;
Fig. 183; continued by Ramses IV, Bocchoris giver of, 547; Amasis re-
507; continued by Ramses XII and vises system of, 591
Hrihor, 519-21; continued by Pay- Lead, earliest use of, 28
nozem I, 523-24
Learning, 98-100
KHUFU, parentage of, 110; reign of, Leather, 96, 404; manuscript rolls of,
118-20, 121; folk-tale of, 122-23 197, 313
Kina, 288, 289
Lebanon, 259, 260, 515; intercourse
Kinanat, 353
with, in Old Kingdom, 116–42; in
Kingahip, origin of, 74
Middle Kingdom, 108; conformation
" King's-Son of Kush," first appoint- of, 258; anti-, 258, 259; Tripolis in,
ment of, 255
293; Thutmose III's fortress in,
Kode, as ally of Hittites, 424, 439
293; revolt against Amenhotep II,
Korusko, 178
324; Thutmose IV in, 328; Seti I
Koner, 142, 183
in, 410; city of Ramses II in, 425;
Kubban, 265, 330, 410; stela, 422 controlled by Necho, 587
Kumidi, 385, 388
Lebu, 406
Kummeh, 181, 317; fortress of, 184, Lector (or Ritual Priest), 171
186
Letopolis, 544
Kurigalzu, fidelity toward Amenhotep Letters, 98, 455, 514, 516; of Pharaoh,
III, 332
77, 140, 141, 168, 185, 520; model,
Kurna, 415
203, 455
Kush (see also Nubia), location of, Leucos Limen, 142, 183
136–37; first mention of, 137, 141; Libya, 585
first campaign in, 180; campaigns Libyans, 319; immigration into Egypt,
of Sesostris I in, 180-81; cam- 7, 31, 32, 47, 49, 179, 254, 411, 462,
paigns of Sesostris III in, 184-87;. 461–71, 474, 477-78, 481–83, 526-27;
King'8-son of, see Nubia; limits of, kinship with Egyptians, 25-26, 31-
255; government of, 255, 256, 317;
32; earliest wars of Egypt with,
viceroy of, see Nubia.
47, 49; Amenemhet I's war with,
Kuyunjik, 553
179; Amenhotep I's war with, 254;
L.
Seti's war with, 411-12; peoples of
the, 466-67; origin of, 467; Merne.
Labour (=Taxes ), 238
ptah's war with, 468–71; northern
Labourers, treatment of, 414, 496
allies of, 467-68, 477-78; first de-
Labyrinth, 194, 200; Cretan, 194
feat by Ramses III, 478; invaded
Lachish, 387; Hittite pottery at, 262; by Meshwesh, 481; second defeat
Philistine pottery at, 512
by Ramses III, 481-83; gain high
Lake, artificial, 349
oficial position at court, 497, 500;
LAMARES, 193
absorb the Delta, 526-27; gain the
Lamb, prophesying, 547
throne, 527-28; lords of, in Twenty
Land, ownership of, in first two dy- Second Dynasty, see Meshwesh; de-
nasties, 44; registration of, in oid cline of Egypt under, 547-48; be-
Kingdom, 82; owned by Pharaoh, come a military class in Egypt, 668;
1
618
INDEX
Manakhbiria, 317, 383
Manetho, 13-14, 36
Mani, 334
Mardukbaliddin, forms coalition in
west, 551
Marea, 569
Mariette, 252
Marriage, 85, 86
Maryland, 6
Masonry, earliest, 27-28; brick, 41,
42; stone, 42, Fig. 25; of great
pyramid, 118; temple, 343
Mastaba, 68-69, Fig. 34, Fig. 57; of
Zoser, 113; disappearance of, 176,
198; Saite revival of sculptures of
as mercenaries, 449, 477, 485, 526,
528–29, 532–33, 534, 568, 588; Cy-
rene encroaches upon, 588
Libyan Dynasty, see Twenty Second
and Twenty Third Dynasties; see
Libyans
Limestone, 5
Linen, 96; fineness of, 96; due from
officials, 238
Lion, 30, 319, 372; order of the, 301;
hunting, 350-51; king's tame, 489
Lisht, 157, 198
Litany, 425
Literature, of the Old Kingdom, 107-
08; of the Middle Kingdom, 203-08;
earliest, of entertainment, 203; arti-
ficial style in, 204; of instruction,
204, 458–59; impersonal character
of, 207; form and content of, 207-
08; of the Empire, 318–19, 453-55;
of the Nubian period, 545
Logos, 358
London obelisk of Thutmose III at,
300
“ Look behind," 65
Louis XV, 349
Lubim, 559
Luli, 551
Lute, 349
Luther, 250
Luxor, building of Ahmose I in, 262;
temple of Amenhotep III in, 343–
44; building of Ramses II in, 451
Lycians, 338; as allies of Hittites,
424, 467; plunder the Delta, 462;
as allies of Libyans, 467; gain high
official position at Egyptian court,
500
Lydia, 566, 593
Lying, 173
Lyre, 349
M.
Mace, pear-shaped, 28, 40
Magic, 123; influence on medicine,
101-02; mortuary (see also Book
of the Dead), 175, 249-50; Ikhna-
ton suppresses mortuary, 369–70,
390; evil influence on religion of,
249-50, 459; in harem conspiracy,
498
Magician, 123
Magnate of the Southern Ten, 79-80,
165
Mahanaim, 530
Maharbaal, 500
Mai, 369
MAKERE, see Hatshepsut
Malachite, 344, 485
Mamlukes, 214, 229, 648
Old Kingdom, 571
Mathematics, 100-101
Matnefrure, 439
Matoi, 137
Matuga, 186
Maxyes, 460
Mayor, 237
Mazoi, location of, 137; as merce-
naries, 137, 424; prisoners, 178
Mechanics, 101
Medes, 582, 583, 593
Medicine, earliest books on, 45, 76;
knowledge of, 101; transition to
Europe, 101; cultivated by Imhotep,
112
Medicis, 548
Medinet_Habu, temple records in,
486-87; dedication of, 402; treas-
ury of, 403
Mediterranean, 250; culture signifi-
cance of eastern, 3, 4; commerce
on, 447
Medum, ducks, 106, Fig. 55; pyramid
of, 115
Megiddo, 287, 387, 530; map of, 286;
occupation by King of Kadesh,
287; pass of, 288; Thutmose III'S
march to, 287-89; battle of, 289-
90; siege of, 290–91; fall of, 291;
spoil of, 292
Meketaton, 392
Mekhu, 141
Memphis, 5, 37, 44, 132, 141, 196;
supremacy of, 111; origin of name
of, 132-33; fall of, 148; Hyksos in,
216; sacerdotal inferiority to
Thebes, 247; temple of Ahmose I
in, 252; building of Amenhotep I
in, 326; theology of, 356-58; under
Nubians, 542-43, 554-56, 568-69;
temple of Seti I at, 416; temple of
Ramses II at, 443; under the As.
syrians, 655-57, 589, 665; under
Saites, 577-78, 501, 592; buildings
of Amasis in, 591
INDEX
619
Menes, 74; reign of, 36-37; tomb of,
37; regalia of, 37, and Fig. 13;
tablet of, Fig. 27
Mendes, 535, 543, 544
Menet-Khufu, 116, 162, 187
MINKHEPEBRE (High Priest of Amon),
624
Menkheperre-seneb, 205, 317
MENKURE, 127; reign of, 121
Mentemhet, 557-58, 559, 565, 587,
508
MENTUHOTEPS, 150-156
MENTUHOTEP Í, 151
MENTUHOTEP II, 152
MENTUHOTEP III, 152-53
MENTUHOTEP IV, 153-54
Mentuhotep (commander in Nubia),
186, 181
Mentuhotep (vizier), 164
Merasar, 412, 437
Mercenaries, Nubian, 134, 137, 330,
338, 424, 449; Beduin, 386; Sher-
den, 336, 386, 424-25, 448, Fig. 163,
449, 477, 485; sources of, 449-50;
Libyan, 449, 477, 526, 528–29, 532-
33, 534, 568, 588; Kehek, 477, 485;
Mesh wesh, 526; Carian, 566, 568,
569; Greek, 566, 568, 509, 578,
588; Syrian, 560, 588; desertion of,
560, 588; dependence of Saites
upon, 569–70; attempt flight to
Nubia, 588; desert Apries, 688
Merchants, in Old Kingdom, 85; in
Middle Kingdom, 168, 170; in Em-
pire, 246, 448; Phænician, 260-61,
448, 677; Saite, 577, 590; Greek,
677, 590
MERIKERE, 150
Merire, 367
Meritaton, 391
MERMESHU, 212
Mermose, 330
MEBNEPTAH, 458; reign of, 464–72;
Asiatic war of, 447, 466-66; sends
grain to Hittites, 405; resubdues
Palestine, 465-66; punishes Israel,
486; Libyan war of, 468-71; build-
ings of, 471; vandalism of, 471-
72; destroys mortuary temple of
Amenhotep III, 471; body of, 472;
strife after death of, 472-73
MEBNEPTAH-SIPTAĦ, 472–73
MERNERE, parentage of, 134; reign of,
135-39; relief at first cataract, 137;
visit to Nubia, 137; burial of, 139;
body of, 139, Fig. 77
Meroe, 561, 585
Meryey, 487, 468, 478; dethronement
of, 469
Mesed, 644
Mesedoure, 498-500
Meshesher, 481, 482
Mesh wesh, home of, 468; invade
Libyan country, 481; invade Egypt,
481; defeat of, 481-82; comman-
ders absorb the Delta, 526–27; ap-
propriate Heracleopolis, 526-27;
commanders during Twenty Second
and Twenty Third Dynasties, 528–
29, 532-33, 534, 535-36
Messiah, 205
Metella, 413; treaty with Seti I, 413,
423; allies and mercenaries of, 424;
at the battle of Kadesh, 427, 452;
death of, 437
Methen, 88
Middle Class, in Old Kingdom, 85;
in Middle Kingdom, 164, 165, 168
70; in the army, 167, 234-35;
tombs of, 251
Middle Kingdom, rise of, 149-56;
state in, 167-68; Nubian conquest
in, 152, 180-87; relations with
Asia, 187-91; irrigation enterprises
of, 191-94; development of Delta by,
188, 197; development of Sanai by,
163, 164, 182, 190-91; art of, 201-
02; literature of, 203–08; fall of,
208–12; anarchy following, 211-14
MIEBIS, 47; campaign of, in Sinai, 48
Mighty is Khekure," 184
Miletus, 591
Military Commander of Middle
Egypt," 149
Military Commander of the whole
Land," 150
Mind, 357-58
Mining, 190-91
Min, 46, archaic statues of, 28;
power in Hammamat, 153; relation
to Amon, 248
MISPARAGMOUTH0818, 220
Mitanni, 262, 319; origin of people
of, 262-63; hostility to Thutmose
III, 285; Thutmose III in, 303;
revolt against Amenhotep II, 323–
25; alliance of Thutmose IV with,
328; Thutmose IV marries daugh-
ter of king of, 328;' seeks alliance
with Egypt, 332; alliance of Amen-
hotep III with, 333, 353–54; royal
marriages betweeen Egypt and, 333;
invaded by Hittites, 362; seeks
alliance with Ikhnaton, 379; latest
reference to, 530
Mitylene, 590
Moab, 258; plots with Egypt against
Assyria, *650-51, 551; against
Babylon, 686
Moeris, Lake, 193
620
INDEX
Mohammed Ali, 229
Mohammedans, 576
Money, earliest, 97-98
Monkeys, 276
Monuments, vast number surviving,
11
Moon-god, see Thoth
Moslem, 248; viceroys, 214; Egypt,
214
Mother, inheritance through, 86, 149,
161; duty toward, 86
“ Mount of the Horns of the Earth,"
468, 482; fortified by Ramses III,
479
Mummies, royal, concealment at Der
el-Bahri, 525; discovery of, 525-26
Mummy, burial of, 69
Murder, 173
Musen, 526-27
Music, in Old Kingdom, 100; in Em-
pire, 248, 349
Musical instruments, in Old King-
dom, 109-10
Musri, 549, 551
Mut, Karnak temple of, 344; banish-
ment of, by Ikhnaton, 370
Mutemuya, 328
Mutnezmet, 401
Mutnofret, 267
Mycenæ, 338
Mycenæan, Age, 188, 261; civilization
and Egypt, 261; settlements in,
commerce with Egypt, 337–38; art
influenced by Egypt, 338
Myrrh, 276, 277, 305; source of, 127;
terraces, 274; traffic in, 274
Mysians, as allies of Hittites, 424
Myth, 54-60; of Re, 54, 58-59; of
Osiris, 58, 59–60, 171-72, 174, 207,
250; philosophical interpretation
of, 356-58; dramatized, 171–72, 207
N.
Nabopolassar, 583
Nabuna'id, 593
Naharin, Thutmose I in, 263-64; first
revolt against Thutmose III, 283-
84; Thutmose III in, 302–03; sec-
ond revolt against Thutmose III in,
314; third revolt against Thutmose
III, 315–16; remembrance of Thut-
mose III in, 317; revolt against
Amenhotep II, 323–25; Thutmose
IV in, 328; northern frontier in,
330; loyalty to Amenhotep III,
353; Hittite invasion of, 353; as
ally of Hittites, 424; temporarily
recovered by Ramses II, 436, 438-
39; Egyptian trade with, 447; tale
of daughter of king of, 454
Nahr el-Kebir, 315--16
Nahr el-Kelb, see Dog River
Nahum, 559-60, 582
Nakht, 162
Namlot (king of Hermopolis), 540-42
Namlot (son of Meshwesh chief She-
shonk), 527
Napata, 331; southern limit of Nu-
bian viceroy's jurisdiction, 255;
southern frontier established at,
325, 450; first capital of Nubian
kingdom, 538; Taharka's buildings
at, 558; Tanutamon's buildings at,
558; forsaken as capital of Nubian
kingdom, 561
Napoleon, 291, 294, 311, 320
NARMER, war with Delta, 47; Libyan
war of, 49
Nastesen, 561
Naucratis, founding of, 590; Greek
character of, 590
Navy (see also Ships), 243, 480;
Saite, 582, 593
Nebesheh, 188
Nebuchadrezzar, 576; defeats Necho,
583–84; conquers Syria-Palestine,
583-84; captures Jerusalem (first
time), 584, (second time), 586, 587;
attempts punishment of Egypt,
592-03; death of, 593
Necho (dynast of Sais), 550, 557;
death of, 558, 565
Necho, recovers Syria-Palestine, 582-
83; defeated at Carchemish, 583-
84; relinquishes Syria-Palestine,
584; reëxcavates the Nile-Red Sea
canal, 584; sends expedition to cir.
cumnavigate Africa, 585
NEFERIOTEP, 221; reign of, 212; stele
of, 212; vizier of, 221
Neferhotep (priest), 403
NEFERKHEPBURE-INTEF, 212; decree of,
212
NEFERKIERE-SEBEKHOTEP (the Great),
212
Nefernefruaton, 371, 376
Nefretiri (Eighteenth Dynasty queen),
becomes local goddess at Thebes, 459
Nefretiri (Queen of Ramses II), 446
Nefrure, 272
Negadeh, 37
Negeb, 315, 410
Negro, mercenaries, 134, 137, 330, 424,
449; as Pharaoh, 212
Nehi, 317
Nehri, 162
Neusi (Pharaoh), 212
Nehsi (chief treasurer), 272, 277;
Punt expedition dispatched by, 276;
fall of, 283
INDEX
621
180;
Neit, 30, 32, 46, 59
Nekhbet, 34, 38
Nekheb (see also El Kab), 33
Nekhen (see also El Kab), 33, 42, 44,
Judge Attached to," 81;
northern Nubian frontier at, 186,
263-54, 255
Nekure, 70
Nemathap, 111
Nephthys, 66; parentage of, 56
NEBUBENEBDED, 511, 513, 614, 515,
525; sends crocodile to Tiglath-
Pilener I, 518; reign of, 522–23;
gains whole country, 523
Nesuhor, 688
Nesuptah, 568
NETEBIMU, war against Delta, 47
New Towns, 120
New York obelisk of Thutmose III
at, 306
Nile, 3; course and valley of the, 4-8;
White, 4; Blue, 4, 8, 127, 561; cata.
racts of, 4, 6; cañon of, 5; alluvium
of, 5, 8; width and velocity, 5;
delta of, 5; mouths of, 5; cliffs of
cañon, 8; isolation of valley, 6;
gateway to Sudan, 7; influence of
navigation of, 7; inundation, 7–8;
of the nether world, 54; mythical
sources of, 56, 374, 375; nearest
point to Red Sea, 128; in Nubia,
136; kingdom of the Blue, 561
Nilometer, earliest, 191, 211
Nimmuria, 333
Nineveh, 263, 595; fall of, 582, 583
Nitocris, in Sixth Dynasty, 143
Nitocris, 508; adopted by Shepnupet
(II), 567; adopts Enekhnesnefe-
ribre, 585-86
Niy, 270, 353; Thutmose III captures,
304; Amenhotep II captures, 324;
taken by Aziru, 382, 383
No-Amon, 559
Nobles, 84-85; Old Kingdom tombs of,
118; political rise of, 128-29, 131,
143; independence of Sixth Dy.
nasty, 143; of the Empire, 246–47
Nomarch (see also Great Lord), 157;
rise of, 131-32; relations of Phar-
aoh with, 134, 101-63; of Thinis,
134; of Siut, 148-51, 180; character
of rule of, 148–49; 159-61, 202;
curbed by Amenemhet I, 165-56; of
Oryx.nome, 166, 169, 161, 162, 180,
181, 182; in Middle Kingdom, 157-
62; of Coptos, 159; militia of,
187; buildings of, 159, 197; of Hare-
nome, 133, 134, 159, 162, 163, 201;
wars of, 211 ff., 224, 228, 228; south
of El Kab, 225; of El Kab, 225-26;
surviving under the Empire, 228;
royal titles granted to, 228; disap-
pearance of, 228-29; of Alabastron.
polis, 399
Nome, 31, 79; early administration of,
80; militia of, 84; independence of,
in Old Kingdom, 143; in Middle
Kingdom, 157-62; archives of, 240
North, kingdom of the, see Delta
North, canal called, 5
Notre Dame, cathedral of, 450
Nubia, tableland of, 4; earliest Egyp-
tian campaign in, 37; gold of, 94
(see also Gold); control by Zoser,
112; campaign of Snefru in, 115;
Userkaf in, 127; Sahure in, 127-28;
Pepi I in, 134; nobles of Elephan-
tine in, 135-39; character and re-
sources of, 136-39, 537; tribes and
people of, 138–39; imports from,
136; first visit of Pharaoh to, 137;
Mernere in, 138–39; Pepi II begins
conquest of, 139-42; relations of
Elephantine nobles with, 135–42;
Mentuhotep II in, 152; Middle
Kingdom income from, 183, 183,
185; conquest of, 178, 180–87;
Amenemhet l's campaign in, 178;
Sesostris l'a campaigns in, 180-81;
fortresses in, 183, 184, Fig. 83, 211;
Sesostris III's campaigns in, 183–
87; Neferkere-Sebekhotep in, 212;
Ahmose I resumes control of, 227-
28; Amenhotep I's campaign in,
253-54; mayor of Nekhen governs
northern, 253-54, 255; northern
frontier of, 178, 186, 253-54, 255;
southern frontier of, 325–26; first
viceroy of, 255-56; campaign of
Thutmose I in, 256–57; campaign
of Thutmose II in, 270; impost of,
277, 302, 308, 314, 317, 331, 394,
473, 630; Thutmose III in, 302, 313,
317-18; Thutmose III's lists of
towns of, 318; Amenhotep II in,
325-26; Thutmose IV in, 328-29;
Amenhotep III in, 330-31; last
great Pharaonic invasion of, 331;
Egyptianization of, 330-31, 508,
administration of, 253-54,
256-56, 331-32, 394, 446, 507-08;
viceroy of, 317, 330, 331, 394, 421,
422, 456, 473, 620; viceroy of, be.
comes governor of gold country of
Amon, 457; Aton temple in, 364,
393; Harmhab in, 407; Ramses I in,
408; Seti I in, 408–09; Ramses II's
campaign in, 440; Ramses II's
temples in, 446; gold country of
Amon in, 457; Merneptah in, 471;
537;
622
INDEX
source of usurpers, 472–73, 499;
Siptab in, 473; Ramses VI in, 507-
08; Twenty First Dynasty in, 525;
Sheshonk I holds, 530, 537; under
post-Empire principality of Thebes,
528; rise of kingdom of, 537-38;
character of kingdom of, 538–39,
561; Egypt ruled by, 539-60; later
history of kingdom of, 560–61;
writing of, 561; end of kingdom of,
561; Psamtik II attempts recovery
of, 585; mercenaries desert to, 569;
mercenaries attempt desertion to,
588
Nubian, 239; as Pharaoh, 212, 550–60;
in Egyptian army, 134, 137, 330
Nubian Dynasty, see Twenty Fifth
Dynasty; see Nubians
Nubkhas, 213
Nuges, 293, 313, 315; as ally of Hit-
tites, 424
Nukhashshi, 352, 353; Hittite advance
into, 382, 385
“ Numberings," iscal, 44
Nut, 54, Fig. 31, 56, 59
con-
0.
Oases, 6; 192; earliest control of
northern (1), 115; earliest inter-
course with southern, 182;
trolled by Thutmose III, 305; Liby-
an invasion of northern, 487; ban.
ishment to, 524; Twenty Second
Dynasty control of, 530; under
74-92; industry and art, 92-110;
history of the, 111-44; meagre
sources for history of, 111-12; be.
ginning of Nubian conquest by, 112,
115, 127, 127-28, 134, 135-39, 139-
42; wide foreign connections of,
142; fall of, 143; later reverence
for, 144; destruction of monuments
of, 147; Saitic revival of, 570-76
Omar, 570
On (Heliopolis), 59
Opet, feast of, 294, 309, 393, 400, 541;
length of, 492, 493
Orchomenos, 338
Orontes, 219, 258, 259; valley of, 258,
420-27
Orthography, introduction of consis.
tent, 203
Oryx-nome, 156, 159, 161, 162, 180,
181, 182; hereditary succession of
nomarchs of, 161-62
Osiris, 46, 69; reconciler of the Two
Kingdoms, 47; parentage of, 08;
temple of, 196, 265; as King of the
Dead, 58; myth of, 08, 09, 80, 171-
78, 174; ethical elements in myth
of, 87, 172, 250; popularity of, ba-
60. home of, oQ; outward form of,
08; rise as supreme mortuary god,
66-67; mortuary customs from
myth of, OQ; popular triumph of,
171; drama of 'myth of, 171–72,
207; tomb of at Abydos, 172; me-
morial tablets to, 172, 182, 186–89,
187; image of, 185-86; suppressed
by Ikhnaton, 390; Seti I's Abydos
temple of, 415; in Saite period, 576
OSORKON I, 531-32
OSOBKON II, 532-33; jubilee hall of,
532
OSORKON III, 536, 539-40, 663; bub
mits to Piankhi, 543; art under,
548-49
Osorkon (High Priest of Amon), an.
nals of, 633-34
Ostrich, 136
Othu, 411
Ox, wild, 30, 91
Saites, 588, 592
Obelisks, of Re, 124–25; transport of,
286, 280–81; of Thutmose I, 266;
of Hatshepsut, 280-82; of Thutmose
III (Lateran), 306, 329; of Amen-
hotep II, 327; of Thutmose IV,
329; place of, 343; of Amenhotep
III, 352; of Seti I, 418; captured
by Assyrians, 559
Obsidian, 105
Ocean, 58, 261, 319
Edipus, 455
Offering," the, 226
Officials, corruption of, 200, 403-06,
523, 527; taxes due from, 238–39;
demission of same, 405; as judges,
240; Harmhab reorganizes, 403-06;
liberality of Harmhab to, 406
Official class, first records of, 128-29,
133-34; in Middle Kingdom, 169;
in Empire, 245–46
Oil, 237
Okapi, 30
Okeanos, 56
Old Kingdom, government and society,
P.
Painting, in Old Kingdom, 106-08;
in Middle Kingdom, 202; in Em-
pire, 308, 348, 378, 417
Pakhons, 286
Pakht, 280
Pakruru, 557
Palace, 39, 78; its double character,
78; construction of, 88; of Amon.
hotep III, 348-49
INDEX
623
COS
Penno, 507-08
Pentaur, poem of, 434, 453
Pentewere, poem of, 434, 453
Pentewere (son of Ramses III), 498-
500
PEPI I, 35; reign of, 133-35
PEPI II, parentage of, 134, 139; reign
of, 139-43
Pepinakht, 141, 142
Perebu, 276
Periander, 580
Perire, 468
Per-Ramses, 442-43
Perrot, 106
Persepet, see Saft el-Henneb
Persian Empire, rise of, 593
Persian Gulf, 259
Personality, 63-64
PEBIBKHENNO I, 523-24
PEBIBKHENNO II, 525; daughter mar.
ries son of Sheshonk 1, 528
Petition, 240-41
Peyes, 498-500
Phagroriopolis, 544
Pharaoh, origin of title, 74; symbols
of, 38. 39, 40 and n. 2; titles of,
38, 74, 124; regalia of, 38, 39;
public appearances, 38–39;
tume of, 38-39, 340; toilet of, 75;
diversions of, 39, 122, 204; estate
of, 39; as high priest, 62, 456;
mortuary service of, 71, 265; rev-
erence for, 74; court of, 74-75;
women of, 75; relations with nobles,
76–77, 166–67; limitation of power
of, 77; education and character of,
77, 457-58; duties of, 77–78, 235
36; residence of, 78; judicial pre-
rogatives of, 81, 499-500; legal ap-
peal to, 81-82; as owner of all
lands, 84, 574; as son of Re, 122-
23, 272-73, 400-01, 543; decline
of his power in Old Kingdom, 129,
131-32; letters of, 77, 140, 141,
166, 185, 520; benefits of office of,
143-44; first accompanying cam-
paign in foreign country, 181;
hymn to, 206–07; body guard of,
236, 243, Fig. 163; power of, 236;
offices of, 79-80, 236, 243; lease
of property of, 237; subject to law,
242; source of law, 242, 404-06;
tomb of (see also Pyramid), 250-
52; theological aspects of, 358–59,
458; Sacerdotalization of, 457, 506–
49;
Paleolithic man, 25
Palermo Stone, 46 (Fig. 28)
Palestine (see also Syria-Palestine),
26; earliest expedition into, 135;
pre-Israelitish civilization of, 188;
pursuit of Hyksos into, 215; pov-
erty of, 258; first tributary to
Egypt, 264; campaign of Thutmose
II in, 270; involved in revolt against
Thutmose III, 284; Beduin of, 315;
absorbed by Khabiri, 387-89; in-
habitants flee to Egypt before
Khabiri, 388; road from Egypt to,
409; at beginning of Nineteenth
Dynasty, 409; Hebrew settlement
of, 409-10; recovered by Seti 1,
411; revolts against Ramses II,
435–30; recovered by Ramses II,
438; Egyptian garrisons in, 322,
387-88, 447; Egyptian trade with,
447-48; dialects of, in Egypt, 448-
revolts against Merneptah,
405; wasted by Merneptah, 466,
470; finul loss of, 512-19; survival
of fiction of Pharaoh's sovereignty
over, 518-19, 528; Twenty Second
Dynasty (Sheshonk I) attempts re-
covery of, 529-30, 531; tribute of,
530; list of towns of, 531; absorbed
by Assyria, 549; Psamtik I at-
tempts recovery of, 580; Necho's
conquest of, 582-83; Babylonian
conquest of, 583-84; Apries' war
in, 586-87; Amasis' designs on,
692-03
Palettes, slate, 40, 47 (Fig. 19)
Panther, 130, 276, 277; five cubits
long, 280
Paper, see Papyrus
Papyrus, 85; uses of, 97; paper in-
troduced into Syria, 484, 517
Paris, obelisk of Ramses II at, 445
Patonemhab, 403
Paynozem I, 623-24; marries daugh.
ter of Pesibkhenno I, 524
Payonekh, 523
Pazedku, 226
Pe, 34, 42, 44
Pebekkamen, 498-500
Pedes, 424
Pediamenemopet, tomb of, 568
PEDIBAST, 535-36
Pediese, 544
Pedihor, 688
Pefnefdibast, 542
Peleset, 477, 479; settlement in Pal.
estine, 612
Pelusium, 596
PEMOU, 636
Pemou (mercenary commander), 536
07; justice of, 134, 499-500
Phaselis, 590
Philistia, Psamtik I invades, 680;
Necho invades, 582
Philistines, 477, Fig. 172, 479; set-
624
INDEX
tlement in Palestine, 512; suppres.
sion by Israel, 526
Philosophy, 204, 356–61; myths in-
terpreted as, 356; origin of Greek,
358, 580; Greek, 361
Phocæa, 590
Phenicia, 215; commerce with under
Snefru, 115; Thutmose III in, 298,
302; temple of Amon in, 298; har-
bours of, employed and equipped
by Pharaoh, 302, 304, 313, 315,
317, 424; galleys of, in Egypt, 307;
papyrus and Egyptian alphabet in-
troduced into, 484
Phænicians, 217, 219; rise of, 260–
61; disseminators of oriental civi-
lization, 262
Physician, of court, 75, 101
PIANKHI, reign of, 539–46; conquers
Upper Egypt, 539–42; captures
Memphis, 542-43; is recognized as
Pharaoh by Re, 543; conquers the
Delta, 543-45; stela of, 545
Pillar, 107
Pipes, double, 349
Pir'u (Pharaoh), 550
Pithom, 442, Fig. 162; Beduin dwell-
ing by, 447
Poetry, earliest, 109; in Middle King-
dom, 205–07; in Empire, 318–10,
371-76, 434, 463, 455, 458
Police, marine, 338
Polycrates, 591
Population, 9
Porphyry, 28
Pottery, earliest, 28; protodynastic,
39; Old Kingdom, 95-96; Ægean,
189
Prayer, 458-59, 506; mortuary, in
king's name, 71; of Ramses IV,
458, 506
Priests, in first two dynasties, 46;
in State, 62, 63; in Old Kingdom,
62-63; mortuary, 70, 134; in Mid-
dle Kingdom, 171; laymen as, 171;
sale of rolls for gain by, 175, 176,
249–50; as judges, 241; in Em-
pire, 241, 247, 249-50, 272, 362,
401-03, 475, 489–90; rise of polit-
ical power of, 241, 247, 272; uni-
versal organization of, 247, 272,
362; as social class, 247; reorgani-
zation by Harmhab, 401-03; con-
ciliated by Setnakht, 476; by
Ramses III, 489-96; become a po
litical and economic menace, 489–
96, 497, 506-07; triumph of, 520-
23; rule of, 520–28; in Saite period,
574-76; exempt from
from taxation,
674; become an hereditary class,
575; Amasis appropriates wealth
of, 592
Priestesses, 63
Princes, royal, in Old Kingdom, 76,
126; revenues of royal, 75; in gov-
ernment office, 119; in the army,
234, 461; feuds between, 418; as
high priest of Ptah, 461
Prophecy, 547; literature of, 204-06;
messianic, 204-05; origin of mes-
sianic, 205; ecstatic, 513-14
Prostitution, 88
Proverbs, 107-08
Psammetichos, 580
P8AMTIK I, flees to Syria, 558; rein-
stated by Ashurbanipal, 505; rise
of, 565-67; organization of, 587-
70; foreign policy of, 576–77;
Asiatic war of, 580; repels Scyth-
ians, 580-81; death of, 581
PSAMTIK II, 561, 585-86; attempts
recovery of Nubia, 585
PSAMTIK III, 595
Ptah, 46, 60, 196, 439; high priest
of, 63, 126; Karnak temple of, 295;
philosophical interpretation of, 350-
58; splendour of Ramses III's gifts
to, 490; relations of Twenty Second
Dynasty with high priests of, 528-
29, in Saite period, 575
Ptah-hotep, five viziers, 126; Instruc-
tion of, 83, 107, 204
PTOLEMY I, 14
PTOLEMIES, 183, 503, 505
Puemre, 306
Punt, earliest voyage to, 127, 140;
Sahure in, 127; Isesi in, 127, 140;
route to, 128, 142; imports from,
136; Pepi II in, 142; relations of
Elephantine nobles with, 142; de-
velopment of intercourse with, 142;
Mentuhotep III in, 153; traffic, a
royal prerogative, 103; Middle
Kingdom expeditions to, 163, 182-
83; in popular tale, 183, 203; in
Der el-Bahri temple, 274, 277; Hat-
shepsut's expedition to, 274-78;
Thutmose III's expedition to, 306;
Ramses III's expedition to, 486–80
Puntites, 276; affinity with Egypt.
ians, 26; in Egypt, 127, 277
Put, 559
Putukhipa, 437
Pylon, 343, Fig. 126
Pyramid, temple of, 71-73; causeway
leading to, 72, Fig. 35; enclosure,
71-73; location of, 78; origin of,
114, 115, 116; of Snefru, 116–16;
of Khufu, see Pyramid, Great; of
Khafre, 120; of Menkure, 121; of
INDEX
625
Shepseskaf, 121; decline of Fifth
Dynasty, 129; of Mernere, 135; in
Eleventh Dynasty, 155; in Middle
Kingdom, 176, 198–200; of Hawara,
198-200; discontinuance of, 200.
250, 278; of Thirteenth Dynasty,
212, 213; of Seventeenth Dynasty,
224
Pyramid, Great, 101, 117-19; signifi-
cance of, 119
Pyramid texts, 67, 60, 109, 175;
earliest, 130; Saite revival of, 171
Pyramidion, 197
Q.
Qarqar, battle of, 534
Queen, position of, 75; prominence at
close of Eighteenth Dynasty, 329-
30, 387; conspiracy of, 134, 241,
242, 498-500
R
RADEDEF, 120
Rain (see also Climate), 153
Ramesseum, 443, 451; colossus of, 445
Ramose, 362
Ramesbids, 212, 224; of the Twentieth
Dynasty (after Ramses III), 505-
21; tombs of, 507; chronology of
late, 508; disorganization under
late, 510-11; decline of, 518
RAMBES I, reign of, 408-09; body con-
cealed in tomb of Inhapi, 525; final
concealment of body at Der el-
Bahri, 525
RAMSES II, not Sesostris, 189; van.
dalism of, 195, 443-45; displaces
elder brother, 418-19, Fig. 419; ac-
cession of, 418-20; completes Seti
I's Abydos temple, 420-21; exploits
Nubian gold country, 421-22; Hit-
tite war of, 423-41; route of
march against, 425–26; founds city
in Lebanon, 425; at battle of
Kadesh, 427-35, 462; Palestine
war, 435-38; partially recovers
Syria, 436-37; concludes treaty of
peace with the Hittites, 437-39;
marries Hittite princesses, 439-40;
Nubian campaigns, 440; Libyan
campaign, 440-41; buildings of,
442-46; obelisks of, 445; jubilees
of, 414, 461; prodigality in endow.
ing temples, 448; the oppressor of
Hebrew tradition, 448–47; daughter
marries a Syrian, 449; character
and personality of, 460-61; family
of, 481; splendour of, 450, 461–62;
senility of, 462; western Delta lost
by, 462; death of, 462; influence of
memory of, 462-63; robbery of
tomb of, 510); restoration of body
of, 519; body concealed in tomb of
Inhapi, 525; final concealment of
body at Der el-Bahri, 525
RAMSES III, accession of, 476–77;
reign of, 477-501; first Libyan war,
477-78; war with northern sea peo-
ples, 480-81; second Libyan war,
481-83; Syrian war, 483; storms
Hittite cities, 483; Asiatic boundary
of, 483; peace under, 484-86; build-
ings of, 486-88; Medinet Habu an-
nals of, 486-87, 488-89; imitative
character of reign of, 488–89; con-
ciliation of priesthood by, 489–96;
not solely responsible for temple
wealth, 495-96; embarrassment of
treasury of, 496; revolt of vizier,
407-98; jubilee of, 498; conspiracy
against, 498-500; death of, 501
RAMBES IV, reign of, 505–07; prayer
of, 458, 506; builds Khonsu-temple,
507; exploitation of Sinai ceases
after, 507
RAMSES V, 507
RAMSES VI, 507-08
RAMBES VII, 507
RAMBES VIII, 507
RAMSES IX, 508-11, 512
RAMBES X, 510-11
RAMSES XI, 511
RAMBES XII, reign of, 511-521
Ramses, the land of, 443
Ramsesnakht, 508
Ranofer, 103
Re, 46, 59, 76, 133; as king, 56; high
priest of, 63; dead accompanying,
84, 174; king prays to, 76; polit-
ical rise of, 120, 121-26; as king
and father of Pharaoh, 122-24, 126,
272–73, 400-01; in royal name,
123–24; Fifth Dynasty temples of,
124–26; Middle Kingdom temple of,
196-87; Temple barques of, 125;
political triumph of, 170; Hyksos
disregard of, 215; claims to be uni-
versal god, 359; origin of Aton
theology in, 360, 366, 371; of Ernen,
437; splendour of Ramses III's gifts
to, 490
Rebu, 466
Red, as color of Delta kingdom, 32
Redesiyeh, 416
Red House, 32, 42
Red Sea, 3, 6; harbour of, 6, 183,
486; routes to, 6, 128, 142, 163, 164,
182-83, 486; connection with Nile,
142, 276, 277, 411, 485-86, 584
40
626
INDEX
Re-Harakhte, see Re
Rehob, 530
Rehoboam, 529
Rekhmire, 238, 239, 307, 320
Relief, see Sculpture
Religion, earliest, 35; literature of
earliest, 44, 45; of first two dy-
nasties, 45; early, 53-73; symbols
of, 60; local differences in, 61;
spread of local beliefs, resulting in-
consistency, 61; political, accom-
panying religious supremacy, 61;
state, 121-26, 129; literature of,
129-30; of Middle Kingdom, 170-
76; of Empire, 247–52, 355-78, 401-
03, 455–60, 505–06; restoration of
the gods by Harmhab, 401-03; per-
sonal, 458-59; of the masses, 459-
60; Asiatic influences in, 460; of
Saite period, 570-72, 574-76; of
Egypt influences Europe, 580
Repulse of the Troglodytes," 186
Reshep, 460
Restoration, history of, 565-95; or-
ganization of the State in, 567-70,
573–74; society in, 574; religion
in, 570-72, 574–76; art in, 571,
572–73, 579-80; industries in, 573;
retrospective character of, 570-76;
writing in, 570; exclusiveness of,
570, 579; intimate intercourse with
Greece in, 578; artificial character
of, 595
Retenu, Middle Kingdom campaign
in, 187; in Empire, 289, 294, 319
Reviling, 173
Rhodes, 260, 590; Egyptian com-
merce with, 337
Rib-Addi, 352, 353, 383, 385, 386, 387,
393
Ribleh, 427; Necho at, 583; Nebu-
chadrezzar's base at, 587
Ritual (see also Cultus), 248
Rome, obelisk of Thutmose III at,
306; obelisks of Ramses II at, 445
Rosetta, mouth, 5
Royenet, 225
Rudder, introduction of, 142
“ Ruler of Countries " (or “Hill
Countries "), 217, 218
“Ruler of the Hill Country," 188
Sais, 30, 31-32, 44, 59; political rise
of, 540–46, 656, 565, splendour of
in Twenty Sixth Dynasty, 573–74;
religious importance in restoration,
576; buildings of Amasis in, 591
Saite Nome, 216
Saite Period, see Restoration
SAKERE, as coregent, 391; as king, 392
Sakkara, pyramids of, 129
Saladin, 309
SALATIS, 216
Samal, 566
Samaria, Assyrians take, 549
Samos, 591
Sandals, 27, 87, 188, 340
Sandstone, 4; quarries, 93, 361
“ Sand-dwellers," 178, 319
Sarbut el-Khadem, equipped by Ame-
nemhet III, 190-91, 208
Sarcophagus, 135
Sardinians, see Sherden
Sargon II takes Samaria, 549; de-
feats western coalition at Raphia,
550
“ Satisfaction of Re," 124
Scarabeus (or scarab), mortuary
heart, 240; of marriage with Tiy,
329-30; of marriage with Gilu.
khipa, 333; of opening of sacred
lake, 340-50; of wild cattle hunt,
350; of lion hunting, 350-51
Schoinoi, 491
Schools, in Old Kingdom, 98-100
Scorpion, 36
Scribe, 98-100, 169
Sculpture, earliest, 28; early dynas.
tic, 40; in tomb, 60-70; in the Old
Kingdom, 102-05, 129; methods of,
103; character of Old Kingdom,
106; in Middle Kingdom, 201-02;
tradition in, 201-02; gods deter-
mine canons of, 201-02; in Empire,
346-48, 378, 417, 450-63, 488; de-
cline in, 488; in Libyan-Nubian
period, 548–49; in Saite period,
571, 572-73; relief sculpture, in Old
Kingdom, 105, 125; in Middle King
dom, 202; in Empire, 273, 343,
346–47, 414-15, 417, 433-34, 451-
53, 488; of temple, 343, 414-15,
417, 451-53, 488; battle of Kadesh
series, 433-34, 451-53; decline in,
488; in Saite period, 571, 572
Scythians, 580, 582
Sea, of the sky, 54; peop. 8 of the,
477, 526; earliest known battle on,
480-81
SEBEKEMSAF, robbery of tomb of,
213, 510
SEBEKUOTEP, 212, 221
S.
Sacrifice, human, 325, 411, 478
Saft el-Henneh, 543, 547
Sag, 91
Sahara, 4, 5, 6
SAHURE, birth of, 123; reign of, 127;
expedition to Punt, 127, 128
INDEX
627
Sebek-khu, 187
Sebennytos, 543
SEBK-NEFRU-RE, 105, 208
Sebni, Nubian expedition of, 140-41
Sed, feast of, see Jubilee Royal
Sedeinga, 351
Sehel, 257
Sehetepibre, 167
Seir, 387, 484
Seka, 36
SEKENENRE, ruler of Thebes, 215, 221,
223-24; three kings named, 224,
225; mummy of, 224, Fig. 100; tale
of, 215-10, 223–24, 453-54
SEKENENRE III, 225
Sekmem, 187
SEKIEMRE-KHUTOWE, reign of, 211
SEMEBKHET, Sinai tablet of, 43 (Fig.
20); Sinai campaign of, 48
Semites, 188; immigration into Egypt,
?, 25-28 ; trading in Egypt, 187;
invading Egypt, 7, 25-28, 214-19;
immigration into Syria, 219, 259,
260; captive in Egypt, 339, 448; flee
to Egypt before Khabiri, 388; gain
official power in Egypt, 449, 474
Semneh, 317; stelæ, 184, 186; fortress
of, 184, Fig. 83; records of Nile-
levels at, 191
Senmen, 272, fall of, 283
Senmut, 272, 277, 282, as architect
at Der el-Bahri, 274; in reliefs at
Der el-Bahri, 277, 278; fall of, 283
Sennacherib, 551-55; destruction of
army of, 552
Senzar, 302, 353
Beplel, 412, 437; congratulates Ikh-
naton at accession, 381
Serapeum, 557, 575
Serdab, 70
Serfs, in Old Kingdom, 84, 85; life
of, 88; in Middle Kingdom, 160,
170; in Empire, 246, 247, 491; held
by the temples, 491, 403-94; slow
payment of royal, 498; in Saite
period, 574
Serpent, as goddess, see Uræus; as
foe of the dead, 176
SESO8TRIS I, 17, 166, as coregent,
178; dispatched against Nubia,
178; dispatched against Libyang,
179; reign of, 179-82; Nubian
wars of, 181; obelisk of, 194;
buildings of, 196, 508; pyramid of,
198
SEBOSTRIS II, reign of, 182–83; town
of, 87, 194, 198; pyramid of, 198,
200-01, 448; Ramses II plunders
pyramid of, 446
SEBOSTRIS III, reign of, 183–90; cam.
paigns in Nubia, 183-87; as god of
Nubia, 188, 269, 317; invasion of
Syria by, 187; buildings of, 196–
97; pyramid of, 198; portrait-
statues of, 201, 202; hymn to,
206-07
“ Sesostris is Contented," 194
Sesostris of Greek tradition, 189
Set, 38, 46; parentage of, 56; in
Pharaonic title, 38, 124; Sutekh
original form of name of, 222, 460;
banished in Saite tinies, 571
Sethroite, Nome, 216
Sethu, 137; location of, 137; expedi-
tion to, 139
SETI I, reign of, 408-18; Asiatic wars
of, 409–14; received at Tharu, 411;
Libyan war of, 412; treaty with
Hittites, 412, 423; Hittite war of,
412–13; Asiatic policy of, 413;
peaceful enterprises of, 414–18;
restores monuments of Amon, 414;
buildings of, 414-15; exploitation
of gold mines, 418; tomb of, 417–
18, Fig. 109; obelisks of, 418;
jubilee of, 418; succession after,
418; body of, 418, Fig. 158, 619;
robbery of tomb of, 510; body con-
cealed in tomb of Inhapi, 525;
final concealment of body at Dor
el-Bahri, 525
SETT II, 473
SETNAKHT, 474-75
Sewa, 549
Sexual impurity, 173
SHABABA, reign of, 550-53, 564;
forms coalition against Assyria,
650-51; possible treaty between
Assyria and, 553; building at
Thebes, 553
SHABATAKA, 553-54
Shabtuna, 427
Shadaf, 8
Shalmaneser II, 534
Shalmaneser IV, 549
Sharon, 286
Sharuhen, 530; siege of, 227; faith-
fulness of, 284
Sharuludari, 557
Shasu, 410
Shekelesh, 467, 479; as allies of
Libyans, 467, 477
Shekh-Sa'id, 132
Shemesh-Edom, 324
Shemre, 47
Sheol, 173
Shephelah, 286
Shepherd Kings, 217
Shepaupet (I, daughter of Osorkon
IlI), 546
628
INDEX
Shepnupet (II, sister of Taharka),
adopted by Amenardis, 558; adopts
Nitocris, 567
SHEPSESKAF, 121, 123
Sherden, 440, 462, 480; as merce-
naries, 336, 386, 448, Fig. 163,
477, 480, 485; as allies of Libyans,
467, 477
SHESHONK I, usurpation of, 527-28;
organization by, 528; campaign in
Palestine, 529-30; records tribute
of Palestine and Nubia, 530; build-
ings of, 530; jubilee of, 531
SHESHONK II, 533
SHESHONK III, 535
SHESHONK IV, 535
Sheshonk (“Great Chief of the Mesh-
wesh”), 527
Sheshonk (High Priest of Amon, son
of Osorkon I), 532
Shet, 181
Shining in Memphis," 226
Ships (see also Boats), 421, 490,
517; earliest sea-going, 115, 127;
war, 135, 150, 151, 226, 298, 308,
479, 480, 540, 582; building of, 136,
142, 153, 160; improvement of,
142; Keftyew, 261; of Hatshepsut,
276-77; to Syria, 448; enlargement
of, 486, 490
Shiri, 387
Shos, see Shasu
Shmun, 59 (see Eshmunen)
Shrine, portable, 62
Shu, 55; birth of, 56
Shunem, 530
Shuttarna, 333
SIAMON, 525
Sib'i, 550
Sibylline literature, 204-05
Sicily, 467, 477
Sidon, 200; stela of Necho at, 583;
in Saite period, 583, 586; monu-
ments of Necho at, 587
Siege, of Sharuhen, 227; of Avaris,
226–27; of Megiddo, 290–91; meth-
ods of, 290_91, 541
SIHATHOR (Pharaoh ), 212
Sihathor, 201
Sikeli, 407, 477
Silsileh, quarries at, 93, 361, 531
Silver, 292, 293, 302, 304, 490, 491,
494, 515, 559; earliest use of, 28;
source of, 94; relative value of gold
and, 98, 185, 338; due from officials,
238; in commercial rings, 304, 307;
Osorkon I gives vast weight of,
531-32
Silver-house, double, 164
Simyra, 260, 302, 411; during Hittite
invasion, 382, 383, 385, 386
Sin, sense of, 65, 67, 173-74, 175, 458
Sinai, 6; first Egyptian expedition in,
48; copper mines in, 93; Zoser's
expedition to, 112; Snefru in, 114-
15; Khufu in, 119; Sahure in,
127; Pepi I in, 133–34, 135-30;
protection of, 136; gap in records
during Seventh and Eighth Dynas-
ties at, 147; Middle Kingdom reve.
nue from, 163, 164, 182, 190–91;
Amenemhet III in, 190-01, 208;
hardships of mining in, 190-91;
water-route to, 190; Egyptians
buried in, 191; desert of, 258;
Ramses III, 485; close of Pharaonic
exploitation of, 507
Sindebad, the Sailor, 203
Sinuhe, flight of, 179–80, 188; story
of, 203
Sirius, 33, 244
Siut, 5, 108, 237; nomarchs of, 148–
51, 180; tomb-inscriptions of, 161;
boundary between jurisdiction of
two viziers, 236
SREMIOPIIRIS, 208
Sky, as & cow, 54; as a sea, 64; as
a woman, 64; goddess of, 50
Slander, 173
Slaves (see also Serfs), foreign, 308-
09, 339, 496-97; rise to official
power of royal, 496–97
SMENDES, 511
SNEFRU, reign of, 114-18
So, 549
Sobk, 170; temple of, 194; rise of
in Twelfth Dynasty, 196
Sobk-Re, 170
Society, in first two dynasties, 44;
in Old Kingdom, 84-87; in Middle
Kingdom, 188–70; in the Empire,
245
Socoh, 530
Sokar, 48
Soldier, professional, 233-34; earliest,
167; as a class, 240-47; rise of the,
246-47; lawlessness of, 404; tri-
umph of the, 527-28; exempt from
taxation in Saite time, 574
Soleb, 316, 347, 393
Solomon, 529
Solon, 591
Somali, 25, 26
Son, eldest, builds father's tomb, 78
Song, folk., 92 (legend of Fig. 39),
109, 205–06, 455; of the harper,
205-06; love., 455
Soped, 115
Sophocles, 465
INDEX
629
Suan (Egyptian for Assuan, q. v.),
7, 188; on east of Delta, 188
Sudan, 7; route to, 185; trade with,
185
Suez, Isthmus of, 115, fortifications
on, 447
Suez, Gulf of, 190
Sun-god, daily birth of, 54; celestial
barque of, 54, 55, Fig. 32, 59, 125;
origin of, 56; supremacy of, 58-
59; voyage of, 59, 84, 250; dead
transported by, 65; dominance in
empire, 248; recognition of newly-
crowned Pharaoh by, 268, 543; be-
comes god of the Empire, 360–61
Survey, preliminary, 13-21
Sutekh, 437, 460; god of Hyksos, 216,
222; temple of, 216; lord of Avaris,
217; Ramses III's temple of, 487
Syria (see also Syria-Palestine), first
invasion of, 187; Sesostris III's
campaign in, 187; Middle Kingdom
intercourse with, 187-88; pursuit
of Hyk8og into, 215; campaign of
Amenhotep I in, 254, 257; cam-
paign of Thutmose I in, 257-65;
campaigns of Thutmose III in, 800
Thutmose III; campaign of Amen-
hotep II in, 323–25; campaign of
Thutmose IV in, 327-28; first in-
vaded by Hittites, 352-53; Aton
temple in, 364; Hittite absorption
of, 379-87; loss of, by Ikhnaton,
388; water-route to, 302, 304, 313,
315, 317, 411; campaign of Seti
I in, 409-14; temporarily recov-
ered by Ramses II, 436; campaign
of Merneptah in, 465–66;
paigns of Ramses III in, 480-81,
483; Egyptian trade with 447-48,
gods of, in Egypt, 460; invaded
by peoples of the
and
northernera, 477–78, 479, 481;
temple of Amon in, 298, 484; papy-
rus and Egyptian alphabet intro-
duced into, 484; final loss of south-
ern, 512-19; absorbed by Assyria,
549; absorbed by Babylonia, 583–
cam-
sea
" SOB," 217
Soul, 64, 204
Sources, character and extent of docu-
mentary, 23-24
South, Kingdom of the, see Upper
Egypt
Southern city, 215, 216, 223, 224
Southern Ten, 79-80; Southern Tens,
165, 239-40
Spanish, colonies of Phænicia, 261
Spartans, 591, 503
Sphinx, origin of great, 120; stela,
120, 327; Thutmose IV cloars
great, 327
Spinner, 96
Spirits, local, 53
Stars, as dead, 64
Stat, 228
State, earliest, 30, 31; fusion of
carliest states, 31; in First and
Second Dynasties, 42-45; in the
Old Kingdom, 74-84, 126–27; two-
fold character of, 78-79, 82; weak-
ness of in Old Kingdom, 83–84;
in Middle Kingdom, 157-88; in
Empire, 233–45; centralization of,
in Empire, 243; sacerdotallizing of,
450-57, 506-07; in Saite period,
507-70, 573–74
“ Station of the King," 208, 345, 348
Statue (see also Sculpture, mortu-
ary), 70, 102, 176; of Khafre, 103;
of Hemset, 103; of Ranofer, 103; of
Shekh el-Beled, 104; of Louvre
scribe, 104; life-size, in copper,
104; of Pepii, in copper, 104;
seven of Khafre, 120; of Mentu-
hotep III, 153; colossal, 150, 194,
201-02, 343, 344, 345, 346, 348,
Fig. 131, 442, 445, 450; of honour
to noblemen, 176; of Sesostris III
on southern frontier, 186; of Ame-
nemhet III in Fayum, 194, 201; in
Middle Kingdom, 201-02; Syrian,
202; in temple of Karnak, 287; in
Empire, 346, 450; of Ramses II in
Turin, 450, Fig. 168; of gold, 490;
endowment of royal, 508
Stealing, 173
Stone, working of hard, 03; vessels
of, 95; beginning of building in,
113; transportation of, 117, 159,
286, 281, 282; heavy blocks of,
118, 199-200, 281-82, 343, 450, 451,
591
Strabo, 193
Strategy, military, 297-98, 410-11,
at battle of Kadesh, 426–34
Strophe, earliest example of, 206
84
Syrians, in Egypt, 440; throne seized
by one of the, 474; gain high offi-
cial position at court, 497, 500;
as mercenaries, 569, 588
Syria-Palestine (see also Syria; see
also Palestine), Middle Kingdom
raids in, 163-64; Middle Kingdom
intercourse with, 187-88; earliest
Egyptians dwelling in, 187, 188;
civilization of, 188, 259-63; con-
ditions in, at beginning of Em-
423;
630
INDEX
pire, 257–58; geography and topog.
raphy of, 258-59; influence of
Egypt in, 261-02; influence of early
Babylonia in, 262; leadership of
Kadesh in, 219-20, 259, 284-85;
Egyptian conquest of, 284-354;
Amenhotep I's possible campaign
in, 254, 257, 263, 298; Thutmose
I's campaign in, 257-64, 298;
Thutmose Il's campaign in, 270-
.71; campaigns of Thutmose III in,
(see also Thutmose III), 284-316;
campaign of Amenhotep II in, 323–
25; campaign of Thutmose IV in,
327-28; Ikhnaton loses, 388; Seti
I's wars in, 409-14; Ramses II's
campaigns in, 423–41; Merneptah's
war in, 465–66; Ramses III's wars
in, 480–81, 483; Egyptian admin-
istration of, 293, 322–23, 335-36,
483-84; fidelity of princes of, 335–
37; Nineteenth Dynasty intercourse
with, 447; final loss of, 512-19;
Sheshonk I's campaign in, 529-30;
absorbed by Assyria, 549; Psam-
tik I attempts recovery of, 580;
Necho's conquest of, 582-83; Baby-
lonian conquest of, 583-84; Apries'
campaigns in, 586-87; Amasis de
signs on, 592-93
erals, 311-12; of the princess of
Bekhten, 440; of Thutiy, 311-12,
454; of the doomed prince, 454-55;
of the two brothers, 455; in Greek
traditions of Egypt, 455, 560; of
Pedibast, 535-36
Tangur, 256, 257
Tanis, Twelfth Dynasty in, 188, 197,
201; developed by Nineteenth Dy-
nasty, 442; Dynasty of, see Twenty
First Dynasty; Twenty First Dy.
nasty wall of, 524; probable Egyp-
tian residence of Nubian Dynasty,
554; under Assyria, 557
Tanner, 96
TANUTAMON, 558-60; conquers Upper
Egypt, 558; captures Memphis, 558;
buildings at Napata, 558; compro-
mises with the Delta, 559; expelled
by Assyrians from Egypt, 559
Tapedet, 178
Tapestry, 349
Taxes, 161, 165, 237–38; lists for, 211;
called labour, 238; amount of, 238;
collection of, 238, 403-05; due from
officials, 238-39; corruption in col-
lection of, 403-05; temples pay no,
492; Amon gains partial control of
collection of, 500; priests and sol-
diers in Saitic age pay no, 574
Tefibi, 150-51
TEFNAKITE, 530-48, 563; submits to
Piankhi, 544-45
Tefnut, 50; parentage of, 50
Tehenu, 280, 460, 487, 470, 520
Tell el-Amarna, 365, 303; destruction
of tombs of, 402
Tell el-Amarna letters, 332-37, 382-
89; discovery of, 393
Tell el. Yehudiyeh, 442
Temeh (or Temehu), in the south,
138
Temple, earliest, 35; first two dy.
nasties, Fig. 27, 45-40; earliest
stone, 48; early development of, 81;
endowment of, 62, 63, 129, 416, 421,
445-48; of pyramid, 71, 120; of
sphinx, 120; of Re, in Fifth Dy-
nasty, 124–26; built by nomarch,
159, 107; in Middle Kingdom, 171,
200; overseer of the, 171; founda-
tion ceremonies of, 198; dedicatory
inscription of, 196-97; lake of, 197,
486–87; mortuary, 71, 120, 197, 198,
202, 251, 278-79; property con-
trolled by vizier, 239; vizier's con-
trol of, 243; wealth of, in Empire,
247-48, 416, 489-96; wealth of, un.
der Bubastites, 531-32; of Der el.
Bahri, 273, 277-78; in Empire, 248,
T.
T&, 498
Taanach, 288, 530
Tabor, 436
Tactics, military, 234; in battle of
Megiddo, 288-90
Tadukhipa, 333
TAHARKA, in command at Altaqu
before accession, 552; rise of, 554;
buildings of, 554-55, 558; repulses
Esarhaddon, 555; defeated by Esar-
haddon, 555; plots with Delta dy-
nasts against Esarhaddon, 558; de-
feated by Ashurbanipal, 556-57;
controls fortune of Amon, 558;
makes Tanutamon coregent, 558;
retires to Napata, 558; death of,
558
TAKELOT I, 532
TAKELOT II, 533-36; sends a thou-
sand men against Shalmaneser II,
534
TAKELOT III, 546
Takompso, 112, 491
Tale, folk, of Khufu, 122-23; of Punt,
183; in Middle Kingdom, 203–04;
of expulsion of Hyksos, 215-16, 223-
24, 453-54; of Thutmose III's gen-
INDEX
631
281, 273, 277-78, 341-48, 416, 489- Empire principality of, 511, 522,
06; peripteral, 341-42; Pylon tem- 528-29, 532, 533-34, 557, 559, 567;
ple, 342-43; violation of endowment return of Ramses XII to, 511, 520;
of, 420, 523; fleet, 421, 485, 492, under the priests of Amon, 522–28,
494; cliff, 451; name of, 456; eco- 529, 531, 532, 533-34, 553; exempt
nomic danger of disproportionate from taxation, 529; under the
wealth of, 489-90; lands, 491-92, Twenty Second Dynasty, 528-29,
403; slaves, 491, 494; cattle, 491, 532, 533-34; buildings of Twenty
494; workshops and shipyards, 492, Second Dynasty at, 530; under
494; towns, 492, 494; income in Twenty Third Dynasty, 535; build-
gold and silver, 457, 404; income ex- ings of the Nubians in, 553, 555;
empt from taxation, 492; troops, under the Assyrians, 550, 557, 559;
03, 509; theocratic rule of, 522–23; possibly taken by Ashurbanipal,
Amasis appropriates wealth of, 592 557; captured and plundered by Ag-
Tentamon, 515
syrians, 559-60; destruction of,
Tentremu, 543
559-60; under Saites, 567, 573
Teos, 500
Thekel, 477, 479, 517; immigration
Teresh, 467
into Palestine, 512
TETI II, 134
Themer, 478
Teti-en, 228
Theodosius, 390
Tewodret, 473
Thesh, 36
Textiles, 96, 237
Thibet, 351
Thaneni, 312-13
Thinis, 37, 44; nomarch of, 134, 139;
Tharu, 285, 425; banishment to, 404; nomarch of, made vizier, 139; no-
road to Palestine from, 409, 447; march of, surviving under Empire,
reception of Seti I at, 411
228, 305
Thebes, 170, 240; first rise of, 149– Thinites, overthrow of, 111
52; second rise of, 212, 223-29; de- Thoth, 46, 57, 320; as vizier, 57; de.
feat of, by Tefbi, 150-51; war with fender of Horus, 58; personal pray-
Heracleopolis, 149-51; oldest (Elev- er to, 459
enth Dynasty) building in, 152; Throw-sticks, 277
nome of, 160; buildings of Twelfth Thure, 256, 257
Dynasty at, 196; under the Hykso8, Thuthotep, 163, 201
215-16, 221, 223-24; under Seke- Thutiy (architect of Hatshepsut),
nenre, 215–16, 223-24; residence of 272, 274, 281; fall of, 283, 295
southern vizier, 236, 240, 405; ju- Thutiy (general of Thutmose III),
dicial court of, 241; quarter for 305, 312, 322, 323; tale of, 312
mortuary industries at, 251; build- THUTMOSE I, parentage of, 255; coro-
ing of Ahmose I in, 252; building nation proclamation of, 255; Nu-
of Amenhotep I at, 254; building of bian campaign of, 256–57; Asiatic
Thutmose I at, 263-06; buildings of campaign, 257-64; in Phænicia
Thutmose III at, 204-05, 296-97; (?), 208; buildings of, 264–65;
foreign life and products in Thebes, obelisks of, 266; jubilee of, 266;
307-08; buildings of Amenhotep II successors of, 266–68; children of,
in, 320; buildings of Amenhotep III 286-87; deposition of, 287–88; re-
at, 340-40, 347-48; given architec- turn to power, 270; death of, 271;
tural unity by Amenhotep III, 344- acknowledgment of Hatshepsut's
46; Amenhotep IIl's quarter_in, succession by, 273; tomb of, 278–79
349–50; splendour of, in the Em. THUTMOSE II, parentage of, 267;
pire, 339-50; Aton temple in, 361; reign of, 267, 269-71; Nubian war
abandoned by Ikhnaton, 382-04; of, 270; Asiatic war of, 270–71; co-
becomes royal residence again, 392; regency with Thutmose I, 270, 271;
Thebes in anarchy, 394; forsaken coregency with Thutmose III, 271;
as royal residence by Nineteenth death of, 271
Dynasty, 442; Ramses II's build. THUTMOSE III, 219-20, 254, 267, 405;
ings at, 443; Ramses III's buildings parentage of, 207; early career of,
at, 486-487; decline of, 610, 511, 267-68; overthrower of Hyksos,
525; Necropolis of, 250-52, Fig. 219-20; accession, 267-69; reign of,
131, Fig. 186, Fig. 108, Fig. 10), 287-70, 271-321; Nubian buildings
Fig. 110, 278–79, 610-11; post- of, 269; deposition of, 270; return
632
INDEX
cam-
to power, 271; Asiatic wars of, 284- nasty, 132; in Middle Kingdom,
317; first campaign, 284-94; sec- 197-200; cliff., 198, 250-52, Fig.
ond campaign, 295-96; third cam- 131, Fig. 106, Fig. 108, Fig. 100,
paign, 297; fourth campaign, 297; Fig. 110, 278–79; robbery, 212-13,
fifth campaign, 298-99; sixth cam- 327, 510–11, 525-28; in Empire,
paign, 299-301; seventh campaign, 250-52, 278–79; of middle class,
301-02; eighth campaign, 302–05; 251; of poor, 251-52; origin of
ninth campaign, 313; tenth cam- royal cliff-, 278–79, Fig. 100, Fig.
paign, 314; eleventh campaign, 315; 110; of Tell el-Amarna, 369–71; of
twelfth campaign, 315; thirteenth Pediamenemopet, 568
campaign, 315; fourteenth
Tombos, fortress of Thutmose I on,
paign, 315; fifteenth campaign, 315; 257; stela, 257
sixteenth campaign, 315;
seven-
Tomeri, 470
teenth campaign, 315-16; remem- TOSOBTHRO8, 113
brance of, in Syria, 383; strategy Towns, earliest, 31; in first two dy.
of, 297-98; fleet of, 298; hunts nasties, 44; in Old Kingdom, 88,
Syrian elephant, 304; in possession 87; in Middle Kingdom, 87; held by
of the oases, 305; obelisks of, 306, royal princes, 75; rulers of, 237;
329; jubilees of, 306; monuments in held by temples, 492, 494
Thebes, 294-95, 296–97, 306; vic- Treasurer, chief, in Old Kingdom, 80;
torious records in Thebes, 306–07; of the God, 80, 119, 128, 133, 164,
lists of, 308-07; annals of, 306–07; 191; chief, in Middle Kingdom, 153,
triumphs in Thebes, 307-08; OC- 164, 185, 188; in nome, 158, 100,
cupations at home, 309-10; build- 169; assistant, 201; chief, in Em-
ings of, 294–95, 296–97, 306, 309, pire, 235-38; 238, 243, 272, 276,
310; designs temple vessels, 310; or. 277, 325, 328, 362
ganization of campaigns of, 310-11; Treasury, 100; in first and second
generals of, 311-12, 454; annals of, dynasties, 42; in Old Kingdom, 80,
312-13; Nubian campaigns and 132; centralization of local admin.
buildings, 317-18; death of, 318; istration in, 80; in Middle King-
hymn of victory, 318-19; character. dom, 162–64; boats, 104; in Eni.
ization of, 319-20
pire, 236, 237-39, 272, 352, 403-04;
THUTMOBE IV, and Sphinx Stela, 120, gold and silver, 272, 317; corrup-
327; tale of accession, 327; Asiatic tion in the, 403-04
war of, 327-28; obelisk of Thut- Treaty, between Egypt and Hittites,
mose III erected by, 329
437-39
Thutmosids, feud of, 266-82
Trees, of Egypt, 05; planted by Ram-
Tiglath-pileser I, 518
ses III, 486
Tiglath-pileser III, 536, 549
Triads, divine, 58
Tigro-Euphrates valley, 3
Tribute, 277, 307-08, 315, 328, 331,
Tikhsi, 314, 324, 325
389, 530; under charge of vizier,
Timaios, 216
239, 307–08; Syrian, 264, 484;
Timsah, Lake, 447
Thutmose Il's record of, 271; of
Tishub, 334
Libya, 280; state reception of, 307-
Titles, loss of significance of, 134 08, 450; amount of, 308, Asiatic,
Tiy (Queen), 320-30, 355, 366, 379; 323, 338, 389, 530
worship of, in Nubia, 351
Tripolis, in Lebanon, taken by Thut-
Tiy (nurse of Ikhnaton), 394
mose III, 293; presented to Amon,
Tiy (queen of Ramses III), 498-500 294
Tomb (see also Pyramid, Burial), “ Triumphant,". 174
earliest, 34-35; early dynastic, 40- Troglodytes, of Sinai, 48; northern,
42; endowment of, 41, 70, 71, 527; 178; of Nubia, 283
in Old Kingdom, 57, Fig. 33, 116, Troia, 262; quarries at, 93
117-19; equipment of, 63, 67, 69, Troops, of temple, 63
176, Fig. 81, 251-52; immense size “True of Speech," 174
of, 68, 568; chapel of, 69 (see also Truth, 173; symbol of, 173; recognized
Temple), 571; royal assistance in by Ikhnaton, 377–78
building and endowment of, 71, 369- Tunip, 298, 302, 315, 317, 427; Mitan.
70; of common people, 73; develop- nian influence in, 263; during Hit.
ment of, 113; location in Sixth Dy. tite invasion, 382, 385; begs Ikhna-
INDEX
633
ton for assistance, 382-83; tem-
porarily held by Ramses II, 436
Tuphium, 100
Turin, royal papyrus of, 211, 213, 221
“ Turn-face," 65
TUTENKHAMON, 392, 393; changes his
name, 393-94; relations with Asia,
394
TUTENKHATON,
or
TUTENKHAMON,
q. V.
Tutu, 385
Tuya, 418
Tyre, 200, 411; special privileges of,
298; during Hittite invasion, 383;
in Assyrian period, 551, 555; in
Saite period, 586, 587, 588; monu-
ments of Necho in, 587; sustains
thirteen years' siege against Nebu-
chadrezzar, 587-88
Tyrsenians, 467
coming chief treasurer, 186; bring.
ing back gold, 182; appointment of
two, 236; chief treasurer under
authority of, 238; functions of, in
Empire, 238-45; as finance minis.
ter, 239; universal power of, 243-
44; appointment of, 244; royal in-
structions to, 244-45; 28 High
Priest of Amon, 272, 362; in charge
of foreign tribute, 239, 307-08, 328;
Harmhab's selection of, 405; revolt
of Ramses III's, 497-98
Votress, Divine, see Consort Divine
Vulcan, 566
Vulture (as goddess), 38
442;
U.
Ubi, 352, 353
Ugarit, 382; as ally of Hittites, 424
Ullaza, 302, 411
Uneshek, 331
Uni, career of, 134, 135, 138
Unis, 131; in Nubia, 128; Pyramid
of, 130
Uræus, 38
Uronarti, 186
USEPHAIS, tomb of, 42, 47; Sinai ex.
pedition of, 48; ivory tablet of, 48
(Fig. 20); expedition to northern
Nubia, 49
Userhet, 490
USERKAT, 126; birth of, 123; reign
of, 127
USERMARE-MEBIANON, 478; town of,
482
UBERMABE-SKTEPNEBE, same as Ram
ses II, q. v.
Ushebti, 249, Fig. 106
Utentyew, 319
W.
Wadi Alaki, 181; Seti I in, 416;
Ramses II in, 421-22
Wadi Foakhir, 94
Wadi Gasas, 183
Wadi Halfa, 181, 265, 317, 408; ear-
liest record at, 181; fortress at, 186
Wadi Hammamat, earliest expedition
to, 128
Wadi Maghara, 48, Pepi I in, 133
34; Hatshepsut in, 282
Wadí Tumilat, 178,
canal
through, 276, 442, 485-86; fortress
in, 447
Wahibrenofer, 588
Wan, height of, 302
War, in Old Kingdom, 135; in Middle
Kingdom, 168; minister of, 243;
in Empire, see Tactics, Strategy
Water of Re, the, 481
Wawat, 256; location of, 138; expe-
dition to, 139, 141, 152, 178; for-
tresses in, 183; government of, 256;
gold of, 317
Wealth, agriculture chief source of,
9; general sources of, 92-98
Weapons, Syrian manufacture of, 260,
303
Weaver, 96
Wenamon, report of, 513-18
Wermer, 478
Weshesh, 477, 479
Westcar, Papyrus, 122–23, 203
Wheat, 92
White, as colour of southern king.
dom, 33, 37
White House, 33, 42, 44, 164; regis.
ters in, 237; sub-departments in
237-38
White Wall, 37, 44, 111, 132
Wife, 226; position of, 85
Wills, in Old Kingdom, 82; in Em-
pire, 237, 240; under priests of
Amon, 623
V.
Valley of the Kings' Tombs, 250-51,
278-79
Vegetable culture, 92
Vessels, of stone, 28, 39
Vienna, Demotic papyrus of, 636
Vineyards, 92
Vizier, 67, 164, 162, 164, 106, 182,
191, 221, 248, 429, 468, 498; tomb
of, 68; functions of, in Old King-
dom, 82-83; power and popularity
of, 83, 244; son of Khufu, 119; no
longer son of king, 126; hereditary
succession as, 126; becomes gov.
ernor of royal residence, 133; be-
634
INDEX
Wine, 237
Wisdom, see Literature of Instruction
Witness, false, 173
Woman, position of, 85
Wood, industries in, 95
Wool, Syrian industry in, 260
Word, see Logos
World, of Egyptian people, il, 50;
of the dead, 64-65; conquest modi.
fying idea of, 358-59
Writing, earliest, 35, 43 (Fig. 27);
in first two dynasties, 45; spread
to Phænicia and Europe, 97, 484;
methods of, taught in school, 99--
100; influence of introduction of,
99; orthography of, 203; Nubian,
501; archaic character of Saitic,
570; Demotic, 574
Yaru, field of, 64, 174, 249
Year, see Calendar
Yehem, 286, 287, 288
Yenoam, 293, 410; revolts against
Merneptah, 465; captured by Mer.
neptah, 470
Yeraza, 284, 530
YEWEPET (rival of Pedibast), 535, 543
Yewepet (son of Sheshonk I), 531
YUFNI, 211
z.
Zahi, 290, 313, 318; Ahmose I in, 227;
in revolt against Thutmose III, 285
Zakar-Baal, 513-17
Zau, 139
Zawiyet el-Metin, 132
Zedekiah, 586, 587
Zefti, 286 (map), 287
ZEB, tomb of, 49, 172; jewelry of queen
of, 50
Zimrida, 383
ZOSER, parentage of, 111, reign of,
112-14; tomb of, 113-14
X.
Xois, 214
Y.
Yam, 137; location of, 137; expedi-
tions to, 138–39, 139
INDEX TO OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES.
Gen. 47: 19-20, 229; 47: 23-27, 238; Psalm, 104, 371-74
47: 21, 246
Isaiah 19, 548; Isaiah 20, 551
Josh. 19: 6, 227
Jer. 43: 8-13, 593; Jer. 46: 1-12, 684;
II Sam, 10: 10, 188
Jer. 47: 4, 512; Jer. 47: 1 and 5,
I Kings 9: 15-17,529; I Kings 9: 16, 582
529; I Kings 14: 25, 530; I Kings Ezek. 30: 13, 595; Ezek. 40: 10-18
15: 23, 291; I Kings 17: 4, 549
593
II Kings 18: 21, 553; II Kings 19: 9, Amos 9 : 7, 512
552; II Kings 24: 7, 584; II Kings Nahum 3: 8-10, 559-60; Nahum 2-4
24: 15, 586
882
MAY 19 1920

310
31
Longitude East 32° of Greenwich.
33
34
32
32
T
E 표
​R
KO
R R
M
Damietta
Mouth
Rosetta
Mouth
St Juliennes
FEr Rashid
(Rossettd
CANOPUS
Departementen
S
Z
ALEXANDRIA
Said
BUTO
MI CASIUS
Lake Menzalch
SERBONI
31
PELUSIUNT
31
HERMOPOLIS PARVA
Damanhur
NAUCRATIS
SAÏS
RHINECOLURA
El Arish
TEHENU
MENDES
SSEBENNETUS
BUSIR15
'TANIS(Zdan?
Nebeshen DAPHNASI
suez-Cazac
HERODPOLIS(PIT) KOM)
BUBASTITA
Tell Maskhüteh
THARU(?)
PHACUSA (GOSHEN)" Lake ?imsah
PERSEPET
Darius-stela
Belbés
ATHRIBIS
Sam el-Hennen
Darius-steig
DES E
RI
LETONBLIS
D E S E RT
Abu Roåstea
30
.HELIOPOLIS (ON)
Cairo
>BABYLON
Fostat
Turra Quarries
Ma'sara Quarries
MEMPHIS (NOPH)
WHITE WALL
Darius-stela
Suezo
30
Gizeh
Pyramids
Abusir A
Saklara
Pyramids
A
Dashur
Pyramids
ITHTOWE
Lisht A
LAKE MOERIS
Kurit Pyramids
Medum
Együm
ARSINOE CROCODILOPOLIS
DESERT
PENINSULA
APHRODITOPOLIS
Atfih
OF
Medinet el Fäyûm Hawatan
Illahun!!
HERACLEOPOLIS MAGNAT.
Annas
29
SINAL
Sarbut
el-Khadem
Mines
Wadi
Maghara
Mines
2.9
Deshasher
Oasis el-Bahrich
OXYRHYNCÚS
Bennesen
Zesseri Oasis
DESERT
Bahr. Yusuf
Tombs of
Zawiyet el-Metin
28
28
Benifasan Tombs
HERMOPOLIS MAGNA
SHMÛN Eshmunên
El Bersheh Tombs
WALLHATNUB (Quarry)
Jel-Amarna Shekh Sa'id Tombs
FAKHETATON
Fa Mines Single
Assiut
live
27
27
ANTAEOPOLIS
Kau el Kebîr
PANOPOLIS
Ekhmim
Wadi
Gasûs
D ES E RT
zund et
26
Great Oasis
LEUCOS
JIMEN Xoser
26
CHENOBÓSKION
Kasr Sayyad
THINIS
ABY DOS
Tombs of the
Denderer
First Dynasty
COPTO$100 Wadi Foakhir
Kuft
Hammamat
Dér el-Bahri
Medinet Habu, Karnak
HERMONTHIS
Luxor lille
Sized TUPHIUM
Road to the
THEB
Kurna
Jousi
Gebelert
Oasis
of
ed-Diz.
Wer
uel - Kharged
Or
LATOPOLTS
Esieh
Oasis
Qasis
Great D E $ E RT
Station and
Temple of Seči I
EILEITHYIAPOLIS
El Kab(NEKHEB)
25
HIERACONPOELS
(NEKHEN
Edfllo
25
SCALE OF ENGLISH MILES
50
Redesiyen
co
100
1
Road
Geber @ebara
Gebel
Silsiler
Kom Ombo
REFERENCE
• Mounds of ruins
A Pyramids
+ Rock cut torbs
o Modern hamlet, Village or City
Railroad
Ancient names as ARSINOE
Modern names as Fayûm
24
Island of ELEPHANTINE
Island of Sehed
13 Cataract
SYENE
Asskan
Great Dam
PHILAE (Island)
24
Kalabsheh
CONTRA PSELCHIS
Kubbân
EACOMPSO
23
23
Road
Amadeh
D E S E RT
Dorim torusko
to
P10
Abu Simbel
HE T
car
Wed il
22
W
22
a d
¿
Wady Halfer
araca
ü D A D
Alaki
Sera
Alaki
tul.pt
Kumrer
Tangur
route
SERT
ат
21
M.
th
21
the
Ila
the
Soled
sud a n
Sesebi
GEM-ATON
O
sud a n
20
20
rat
U
tombos isd
D E S E RT
Arkols?
Abu Hammed
"
We college
Н
K.
19
19
Siluilmelding
K
S
th
Gebel Barkal
NAPATA :
Smile
WYMISJON
건
​K K
N
18
illings
18
1117,
17
17
MEROE
Begerawiyeh
D E S ERT
11111111
6th Cataract
16
16
Omdurman Khartiim
L
Soba
3.1
312
33
314
310
MAP 13.-GENERAL MAP OF EGYPT AND NUBIA.
Ref. Grad. #4
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE
APR
APR 1 1991
FEB20 992
:
MAR 12 19
5
MA
2
1997
Grad 4
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAK
3 9015 01136 0289