The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)
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Title: The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)
Author: Max Duncker
Translator: Evelyn Abbott
Release date: January 26, 2012 [eBook #38677]
Language: English
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THE HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.
THE
HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.
FROM THE GERMAN
OF
PROFESSOR MAX DUNCKER,
BY
EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
_FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD._
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1877.
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
Fifty years ago, the opinion was held by some that we could watch, in
the tradition of the most ancient realms of the East, the first awkward
steps in the childhood of the human race, while others believed that it
was possible to discover there the remnants of an original wisdom,
received by mankind at the beginning of their course immediately from
the hand of heaven. The monuments of the East, subsequently discovered
and investigated by the combined labour of English, German, and French
scholars, have added an unexpected abundance of fresh information to the
Hebrew Scriptures and the narratives of the Greeks, which, till then,
were almost our only resource. No one can any longer be ignorant that
Hither Asia at a very remote period was in possession of a rich and
many-sided civilisation. The earliest stages of that civilisation in the
valley of the Nile, of the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the coasts and
in the interior of Syria are, it is true, entirely hidden from our
knowledge; even the far more recent culture of the Aryan tribes we can
only trace with the help of the Veda and the Avesta back to the point at
which they were already acquainted with agriculture, and possessed
considerable artistic skill.
Our object in regard to the ancient East is not to retrace the beginning
of human civilization, but rather to understand and establish the value
and extent of those early phases of civilisation to which the entire
development of the human race goes back. The way to this aim is clearly
sketched out for us. A minute comparison of tradition with the results
of the successful advance of Oriental studies, a conscientious
examination of the one by the other, opens out to us the prospect of
discerning more precisely the nature of those ancient constitutions and
modes of life.
To this purpose I have undertaken to contribute by a descriptive
treatment of the subject. Such an attempt appeared to me indicated by
the consideration that the fragments of our knowledge--and more than
fragments we do not at present possess, and never shall possess, even
though we assume that the number of monuments be considerably
increased--if conscientiously brought together, would produce the most
effective impression by exhibiting the connection of all the various
sides of those ancient civilisations--and if to this collection were
added the conclusions that can be drawn from it and from the monuments
about the political life, the religion, the manners and laws, the art
and trade of those nations.
How to offer in a general survey the sum total of these fragments of the
ancient East is a problem attended with difficulties which I have felt
at every step in my work. There are not many corner-stones immovably
fixed; the outlines are often to be drawn with a wavering pen; the
unavoidable explanations of the gaps to be filled up admit of a variety
of opinions. Hence it is often--only too often--necessary to interrupt
the narrative by comments, in order to support the view taken by the
author, or refute other views, or arrive at the conclusion that there is
no sufficient evidence for a final decision. The best mode of remedying
these disagreeable interruptions was first to state the tradition, which
is generally closely connected with the peculiar nature of the people
whose fortunes it narrates, and if not actually true, is nevertheless
characteristic of the manners and views of the nation, and then to
examine this tradition in and by itself, and in conjunction with the
monuments; to state the opposite interpretations; and, finally, to give
the results thus obtained. In this way narrative and investigation are
combined in such a manner that the reader is enabled to pursue the
inquiry. The data and the critical examination of them, and lastly the
results obtained, are put before him for his own decision.
The objections, made of late to the results of Assyrian researches,
touch certain points only, in which over-hasty conclusions have
prematurely declared the enigma to be solved. Whatever doubts may still
remain, I have felt the more confidence in following the main results,
because wherever Asshur and Israel come into contact the Hebrew
Scriptures agree with the records of the kings of Asshur. Who could
understand the meaning of the verses of Nahum (iii. 8-10), of the fate
of "No-Ammon, to whose aid came Ethiopians, Arabians, and Libyans," till
G. Smith discovered the document of Assurbanipal relating to the capture
of Thebes? Who could explain the words of Ezekiel about the grave of
Elam (xxxii. 27) till the tiles of Babylonia and Assyria told us of the
ancient supremacy and power of this kingdom, and of its battles with the
Assyrians, and subjugation by their arms? If, in chronology, I have
given the preference to the tablets of the Assyrian Archons over the
Books of Kings, I have done so, not because I hold the former to be
infallible, but because the chronological dates in the Books of Kings
prove, by more than one contradiction, that they have not come down to
us intact.
My narrative embraces those independent civilisations of the ancient
East which came to exercise a mutual influence on each other. First we
follow the realm on the Nile and the kingdoms of Hither Asia as far as
the point where the nations of Iran began to influence their destinies.
Then I attempt to set forth the peculiar development of the Aryan tribes
in the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges, down to the times of
Tshandragupta and Asoka. Then follows the history of the Bactrians, the
Medes, and the Persians, until the period when the nations of the
table-land of Iran were united by Cyrus and Darius with the countries
of Western Asia, when Aryan life and Aryan civilisation gained the
supremacy over the whole region from Ceylon to the Nile and the
Hellespont. The forms of life at which the great empires of Asia had
arrived are finally brought face to face with the more youthful
civilisation attained by the Hellenes in their mountain cantons. This
new development we follow down to the first great shock when East and
West met in conflict, and the Achaemenids sought to crush the Hellenes
under the weight of Asia. With the failure of this attempt my history of
the ancient world concludes.
MAX DUNCKER.
BERLIN, _March_, 1877.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
_EGYPT._
CHAPTER I. PAGE
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 1
CHAPTER II.
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE 15
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS 42
CHAPTER IV.
THE KINGDOM OF MEMPHIS 84
CHAPTER V.
THE HYKSOS AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EGYPTIAN KINGDOM 122
CHAPTER VI.
THE HOUSE OF RAMSES 142
CHAPTER VII.
THE MONUMENTS OF THE HOUSE OF RAMSES 167
CHAPTER VIII.
LIFE AND MANNERS OF THE EGYPTIANS 183
BOOK II.
_THE SEMITIC NATIONS._
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF BABYLON 233
CHAPTER II.
THE RELIGION AND SCIENCE OF THE CHALDAEANS 264
CHAPTER III.
THE ART AND TRADE OF BABYLONIA 287
CHAPTER IV.
THE ARABS 307
CHAPTER V.
THE CANAANITES 337
CHAPTER VI.
THE RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE CANAANITES 351
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORIGIN AND DESCENT OF THE HEBREWS 383
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HEBREWS IN EGYPT 420
CHAPTER IX.
THE LIBERATION OF THE HEBREWS 441
CHAPTER X.
THE HEBREWS IN THE DESERT 467
CHAPTER XI.
THE HEBREW INVASION OF CANAAN 490
CHAPTER XII.
THE NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR 510
ERRATA.
Page 14, line 3 from bottom, _for_ "chalk rock" _read_ "lime-stone."
" 51, " 3 " _for_ "sun-globe" _read_ "sun-mountain."
" 81, " 2 " _for_ "horologe" _read_ "sun-mountain."
" 140, " 10 " _for_ "_savans_" _read_ "_savants_."
BOOK I.
EGYPT.
EGYPT.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.
History knows nothing of her infancy. The beginning of the development
of the human race lies beyond the sphere of memory, and so also do the
first steps in that development. The early stages of culture--whether in
nations or individuals--are unconscious, and unobservant of self; they
are therefore without the conditions which make remembrance possible.
The original forms of social life in the family and in the tribe, the
movement of wandering hunters and shepherds, the earliest steps in
agriculture, could leave behind them neither monuments nor records. It
is true no gifted or favoured nation, which has raised itself above
these beginnings to civic life and independent culture, has neglected to
cast a backward glance upon the history of its past. Everywhere the
attempt has been made to present the past from the later point of
culture. Whether the memory reaches but a little way, or goes back far
into the past, it is always enriched by ideas taken from religious
conceptions, or national pride, from reflection or theory. Such
reconstructions are significant of the nature and character of the
people for whom they replace the history of their youth, but they have
no claim to represent the actual course of their development. The case
is different when the growing culture of a people is observed by nations
already at a higher grade of civilisation. The Romans were in a position
to leave behind a picture of the youthful German tribes; the Byzantines
could inform us of the movements of the Slaves; modern Europe could
observe the tribes of America, the nomadic shepherds of Asia, and the
islanders of the South Sea from a higher and riper point of development.
The oldest kingdoms of which tradition and monuments preserve any
information passed unobserved through the earliest stages of their
culture. Tradition and the earliest monuments present them already in
the possession of a many-sided and highly-developed civilisation. In
what way these nations, the oldest representatives of the culture of
mankind, arrived at their possession, we can only deduce from such
evidence as is before us anterior to tradition and independent of
it--from the nature of the regions where these civilisations sprung up,
from the physical character and constitution of the nations which
developed them, from their languages and their religious ideas.
The history of antiquity is the description of the forms of culture
first attained by the human race. If it is impossible to discover the
origin of these forms historically, and the attempt is made to indicate
their preliminary stages, so far as the recorded elements allow
connected conclusions, it becomes the chief object of such a history to
recover from the fragments of monuments and tradition the culture of the
ancient East, and of the Hellenes so closely connected with the East:
to reconstruct from isolated relics and myths the image of that rich and
ample life which filled the East in religion and state, in art and
industry, in research and commerce, in political struggles and intense
religious devotion, long before the time when Solon gave laws to the
Athenians, and the army of Cyrus trod the shore of the AEgean Sea.
The oldest civilisation, the oldest state grew up on that quarter of the
globe which seems least favourable to the development of mankind. On
either side of the equator, Africa stretches out in huge land-locked
masses. A vast table-land occupies the whole south of the continent, and
in the north sinks down to a plain more impassable even than the broad
seas which wash the coasts of Africa on the west, south, and east. This
plain--the bed of a dry sea--lies in the burning sun without vegetation.
Only where springs water the thirsty soil do fruitful islands rise out
of the moving sand, the lonely waste of ravines, the craggy ridges, and
bald platforms of rock.
As the sea nowhere indents the coasts of Africa with deep bays, the
rivers cannot excavate broad and fruitful valleys, and provide means of
access to the interior. The high table-land is surrounded by a steep
rampart of mountains, which descend in terraces to the coast, and here,
almost without exception, leave narrow strips of low and marshy land.
Through the barrier drawn around them by this rampart the rivers must
force their path in a violent course, in waterfalls and rapids, in order
to fall into the sea after a short, and proportionately more sluggish
course through the narrow strip on the shore.
The table-land, its rampart of mountains, and the long lines of coast,
are, with the exception of the southern apex and the Alpine territory
of Abyssinia in the east, the dwelling-places of the black race--the
negro. However great the number of negro nations and tribes, however
much they differ in physical form and in dialect--living as they do
beneath a vertical sun, in regions difficult of access--they have never
risen beyond the infancy of human civilisation--a rude worship of gods.
Wherever they have not been powerfully affected by the introduction of
foreign elements, generation has followed generation without remembrance
or essential alteration.
The north coast of Africa is of a different character to the rest of the
continent. While the western coast looks to the broad Atlantic Ocean,
and the waves which break on the southern apex lead to the ice of the
pole, the north coast is separated from the neighbouring shores by a
basin of moderate extent. It is a mountainous district which fills up
the space between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Towards the west the
peaks of Atlas reach, even in this climate, to the region of eternal
snow; on the east, towards the mouths of the Nile, the hills gradually
sink down, and the plain of Barca rises little more than 1,000 feet
above the sea level. Numerous chains of hills, at one time pressing
close upon the sea, at another leaving more extensive plains upon the
coast, cover the northern edge, which along the deep valleys of the
mountain streams exhibits that vigorous and luxuriant vegetation so
characteristic of Africa when not checked by want of water, although
even these fruitful valleys are again in their turn broken by droughty,
and therefore bare, table-lands and depressions.
On this northern coast, toward the Mediterranean, opens the valley
which, in extent of fruitful territory, is the largest in the whole
continent. It occupies the north-east corner of Africa, which is only
separated from Arabia by a narrow strip of sea, and carries its gleaming
waters through the wide space from the subsidence of the table-land down
to the coast, where for almost its whole remaining breadth the continent
is filled up with the desert of Sahara.
From the north-east spur of the table-land, out of vast lakes (Ukerewe),
fed from the glaciers and snows of huge mountains lying under the
equator, and passing through the lower lake Mwutan, flows the western
arm of the Nile, the White Nile, Bahr-el-Abiad. After bursting through
the terraces of the mountain, it reaches, at the foot, a woody morass,
filled with thickets of tamarisks and sycamores, of bamboo and reeds and
tall creepers, inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros, the
hippopotamus and the crocodile, the zebra and hyena, by antelopes and
snakes. Then the stream passes into broad savannas, covered here and
there with tropic forests, and while flowing through a mountainous
district of moderate elevation, it unites with the eastern arm, the Blue
Nile, Bahr-el-Azrak, which, rising further to the east out of the
Abyssinian plateau, brings down a far smaller bulk of water from the
Alpine glades of the snowy mountain Samen. Combined into one stream,
these waters flow through a broad expanse of rock and desert, covered
with conical stones of volcanic origin. The lines of hills running
parallel to the terraces of the mountain rampart lie athwart the river;
and through this barrier it breaks in numerous cataracts. Only in the
depressions between them can the soil, refreshed with water, support
vegetation. Finally, at Syene the Nile passes through the last cataract.
Henceforward the structure of the mountains is changed. A fissure in
the rock about 750 miles long opens on the Mediterranean; and through
this the mighty river--at the last cataract it is 3,000 feet in
breadth--can flow onward in undisturbed peace to the ocean.
Out of this fissure the Nile has created a narrow strip of fruitful
soil--the valley is not more than three or four hours in breadth on an
average--which is secured by the heights on the west from the moving
sand and the storms of the great desert, and is separated by the
mountain on the east from the rocky crags, the desolate flats, and sandy
dunes which fill up the space between the valley of the river and the
Red Sea. To this valley the mighty river not only gives a refreshing
coolness and moisture by the mass of its waters, it fertilises and
manures it from year to year by its overflow. At the summer solstice,
when the snow on the peaks of the lofty mountains, in which the two arms
of the Nile take their rise, is melting, and the tropical rains fall
upon its upper course, the waters of the river slowly and gradually
rise. Towards the end of July it passes over the banks and overflows the
whole valley as far as the enclosing lines of hills, so that towards the
end of September it stands more than twenty feet above the lowest water
level. Falling as gradually as it rose after more than four months it
sinks back to the ordinary level. Wherever the overflowing waters have
covered the land, there is left behind a fertilising mud or slime. This
is the soil which the two rivers before uniting have washed from the
upper hills. Carried down by the stream, it is deposited by the gentle
flow of the waters on the surface of the valley. The refreshment of the
earth by the inundation, the fertilisation by this slime, and the
cooling of the air by the immense body of water, are the essential
advantages which Egypt owes to her river, and hence, even as early as
Herodotus, Egypt seemed to be the gift of the Nile. The watering of the
soil and the cooling of the air just in the very hottest months of the
year, are the more invaluable because the blue and gleaming sky of the
upper valley is never darkened by rain clouds, while the heat is severe,
and the storms from the south-west occasionally carry the sand and the
dust over the Libyan hills into the Nile. In the Delta, the region along
the lowest course of the Nile, showers occasionally rise from the
neighbouring sea; and through eight months of the year the whole valley
opening on the Mediterranean is fanned by refreshing winds from the
north, which also facilitate navigation against the stream.
This river-valley, the like of which in nature and formation is not to
be found in the whole globe, offered in its seclusion a peculiarly
favoured spot. It was a small green oasis of luxuriant fertility and
grateful coolness in the midst of boundless deserts. The dwellers in a
land whose soil was every year newly manured by nature, which brought
forth abundantly almost without labour, must very soon have abandoned a
pastoral life for agriculture, and in consequence have acquired fixed
abodes and settled possessions. But the yearly inundation compelled them
also at an early period to protect their flocks from the water, to
secure their habitations, to observe the periods of the rising and
falling of the stream. The long duration of the overflow made it
necessary to provide for the support of man and beast. They had to learn
how to carry on their dealings with each other upon the water, when the
whole valley was still filled with the river, and to mark out firmly the
limits of their plots, so that they might again take possession of them
after the inundation. In Nubia the cataracts stopped the navigation of
the river, and the lines of rock and strips of desert made intercourse
difficult, and confined the life of the tribes within the limits of the
native valley to their separate possessions. In Egypt, within the two
lines of hills, land and river created no hindrance. A region so
concentrated could not but carry the tribes beyond the limits of
separate existence; the very land forced them to live a life more in
common. There was only a slight natural distinction between the more
secluded upper valley and the lower opening in the Delta about the
mouths of the Nile; and this could merely have a stimulating effect upon
the development of culture, without interfering in any way with its
unity. Nevertheless the community of life in the valley of the Nile was
not caused solely by the nature of the land. The tribes of the deserts
around this long and narrow oasis must have had all the more lively a
sense of the charm of the favoured valley owing to the difficulty with
which they procured their own subsistence. Against these plundering
neighbours, and their attempts to force themselves into the valley of
blessing and abundance, the inhabitants of Egypt had to combine their
forces. They needed a strong centralized command, a warlike monarchy, to
which here, earlier than elsewhere, the patriarchal government of the
tribes would therefore give way.
Egypt kept her inhabitants secluded within hard and fast limits; beyond
the hills began the desert. With the increasing number of inhabitants
the attempt must have been made to set low-lying marshy districts free
from the excess of water, and to make fruitful the higher parts of the
valley beyond the reach of the inundations by bringing the water upon
them. Experience quickly taught that the plot produced the most abundant
fruits on which the inundation had continued longest, and consequently
had time to deposit the thickest layer of mud. Hence the attempt was
made to keep the water longer on the soil by means of dykes. These
objects, in regard to which the interests of the several districts
differed, and which required the combination of large masses of
operatives to carry them out, must have made the need of a supreme
decisive and executive power felt earlier in Egypt than in other lands.
The inhabitants of Egypt found themselves surrounded by a solemn
landscape, before fixed and unchanging forms and outlines, in the midst
of natural phenomena, recurring with invariable regularity and always in
the same succession. Such surroundings and impressions must have stamped
on the young life of a ripening nation a settled, stern, and unvarying
character. When the original unity and society of life, which comprises
all members of the family and in the tribe, has been broken
through--when at the beginning of their settled life some have turned
their attention to agriculture and cattle, others to hunting and war,
others again to the fulfilment of religious duties--the sons are wont to
carry on the vocation of the fathers. This is the rule often in far more
advanced periods; and simpler conditions of life compel the son to carry
on the life of the father, in whose occupation he has grown up. In such
times there is no mode of teaching and instruction but through the
family. In this way the tribes and the nation part into separate
circles, which carry on as an inheritance the mode of life derived from
their forefathers. These divisions of occupation, of vocation, and mode
of life could be carried out earlier and with greater sharpness in
Egypt than in other lands.
As life becomes more settled and developed, there are always found
families with an especial liking for war. They are enriched by the spoil
which is the fruit of their bravery, and protect the agricultural and
pastoral part of their tribe from the attacks of plunderers. Every
nation gives willing honour to the brave warriors among them, and gladly
recognises the superiority of a mode of life which puts life to the risk
over other occupations. And when, from the early simple stage, in which
every head of a family approaches the gods with his offerings in trust
and confidence, religion has developed into a body of usages and customs
which must be performed and followed out if any share is to be obtained
in the grace of the gods, the exact knowledge of these can only be
handed down from father to son. And if the mass of the population gives
honour to the warriors, how much more readily will it bow down before
those who, by their prayers, libations, and offerings, can bring them
the fruits of the field and the blessing of the gods--protection in this
world and salvation in the next! Moreover, if the families of warriors
and priests, filled with the conviction of their own higher worth,
disdain the occupations of the rest of the people; if they are convinced
that they are of a better kind than the rest, that only from the noble
and good can the noble and good arise--that better blood gives better
feelings, and better birth better men--then in this feeling, so natural
to a primitive era, they allow their occupation to be shared only by
those who belong to their race; they take wives from their own class
only, not from others; they give their daughters in marriage to their
own people only. Thus the various modes of life and orders which
naturally come into existence end in castes.
The more fruitful the land of Egypt, the richer the products of the
soil, and the more frequent the necessity of repelling the plundering
inroads of the desert tribes, the more rapidly did the distinction
between the agricultural and military orders spring up. And the greater
the pride with which the inhabitants of this favoured land might and did
look down upon the miserable tribes of the desert, the more grateful
were the looks turned towards the gods, who had given them so beautiful
and productive a land in the midst of the desert, who supplied them with
water, fertilised their soil, cooled the heat of the atmosphere and gave
them life and plenty, while all around them reigned desolation and
death. To these beneficent powers the inhabitants of the valley of the
Nile could not refuse an earnest service of thanksgiving for blessings
so rich and so ceaselessly renewed; by their piety they had also to
provide that the gods would graciously preserve these blessings to them.
It is obvious that a tone and feeling like this, arising in the
population from the very nature of the land, must have been in a high
degree conducive to the rise of a priestly order in Egypt.
Egypt had excellent natural boundaries. If the forces of the land were
once united in a single hand, there could be no difficulty in repelling
the tribes of the desert. Thenceforward there would be little reason to
fear an enemy on this side of the boundary hills. No rival power could
arise in the neighbouring deserts, and should any victorious state arise
at a distance, the deserts checked the advance of their armies. It was
much more probable that the united forces of the river-valley should
subjugate the tribes of the surrounding desert. Hence the position of
their land allowed the inhabitants of the valley to develop undisturbed.
The culture once obtained could be quietly transmitted to others, and
constantly extended. This circumstance, in connection with the domestic
peace of the country under a monarchy, allowed the priesthood to extend
their lore in unbroken tradition from generation to generation, while
quietly amassing stores of knowledge; and with the increase of the
population all the hands not required for agriculture--and in Egypt this
claims but a small amount of labour--had to devote themselves to trade
and manufacture. And even these arts were likely to attain the greater
excellence in so far as the artisans and tillers of the ground were less
disturbed by war and military service. The more distinct the boundaries
of the land, the less to conquer and occupy outside them, the more
industrious, amid the growing population, must have been the culture of
the ground and the irrigation of it, the more actively must the artisans
have pursued their trade, and industry must have developed with a
greater vigour as the number of mouths requiring food increased.
So far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of Africa, like the
valley of the Nile as far as the marshes at the foot of the Abyssinian
hills, was inhabited by nations who in colour, language, and customs
were sharply distinguished from the negro. These nations belong to the
whites: their languages were most closely allied to the Semitic.[1] From
this, and from their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been
drawn that these nations at some time migrated from Asia to the soil of
Africa. They formed a vast family, whose dialects still continue in the
language of the Berbers. Assisted by the favourable conditions of their
land, the tribe which settled on the Lower Nile quickly left their
kinsmen far behind. Indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life.
The descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, in
spite of the numerous layers which the course of centuries has
subsequently laid upon the soil of the land, still form the larger part
of the population of Egypt, and the ancient language is preserved in the
dialect of the Copts.[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bunsen, "AEgypten," 5, 1, 75 ff.; Ebers, "AEgypten and die Buecher
Moses," p. 43; Renan ("Histoire generale et systeme compare des langues
Semitiques") will not admit this close connection.
[2] Brugsch ("Histoire d'Egypte," pp. 5, 6) explains the name Egypt by
_ha-ka-ptah_, _i.e._ "the precinct of Ptah." As Ptah was more especially
the god of Memphis, this name would have come from Memphis. The attempt
has been repeatedly made to derive the civilisation of Egypt from
Ethiopia and Meroe. But the problem of the origin of a given
civilisation is not solved by removing it from the locality where it
exists in full bloom to another, and as a rule more unknown, district.
In the case before us this assumption is met by the peculiar difficulty,
that the culture of Egypt is influenced essentially by the nature of the
land, and therefore can hardly have had an external origin. It cannot be
removed from a highly favoured locality into a district extremely hot,
and fruitful only in detached oases, without making the explanation of
its origin much more difficult. Moreover, the lower valley of the Nile
has always ruled over the upper: even in mediaeval and modern times. The
inscriptions of Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), mention the king
of Meroe (Miluhhi); those of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) tell us, "The
kings of Egypt have summoned the archers, the chariots, the horses of
the king of Miluhhi." The inscriptions of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.)
speak of the "King of Egypt and Miluhhi," whom they also name "King of
Egypt and Cush;" and the successor of Esarhaddon directed his first
campaign against "Tarku" (Thirhaka) "of Egypt and Miluhhi." The word
Meroe, therefore, as the name of a kingdom lying above Egypt on the
Nile, must have been in use in Syria, even in the eighth century B.C.
Hence the Greeks denote by this name an island, and also a city of the
Upper Nile. According to Herodotus (2, 29) the great city Meroe, "which
ought to be the chief city of the rest of the Ethiopians" (_i.e._ of
those of whom the Egyptians were not the immediate neighbours), was
forty days' journey and twelve days' sail (_i.e._ over 15,000 stadia)
above Syene. Later authorities, Eratosthenes, Artemidorus, Strabo,
Pliny, Ptolemy reduce the distance by nearly one-half; they regard the
distance between Meroe and Syene as nearly equal to the distance from
Syene to Alexandria, and fix the whole distance from Alexandria to Meroe
at 10,000 to 12,000 stadia. As the town and island of Meroe must be
south of the junction of the Astaboras (Atbara), (Strabo, p. 786), we
must look for the island between the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and for
the city in the ruins at the modern Begerauieh. Yet the chief town of
the kingdom of Meroe, when it takes an active part in history, is not
Begerauieh. King Thirhaka's residence lay near the modern Meraui under
Mount Barkal. The name in inscriptions is Neb, and, consequently, in
Greek and Latin Napata. Even under the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, Egypt
ruled over Nubia as far as Semne and Kumna, under Amenophis III. as far
as Soleb, and under Ramses II. as far as Mt. Barkal. The oldest ruins at
this spot belong to a temple dedicated by this king to Ammon (Lepsius,
"Reisebriefe," s. 238); next come the ruins of the buildings of
Thirhaka, which differ as little from Egyptian buildings as those which
he and his two Ethiopian predecessors erected in Egypt. Moreover, the
later ruins found at Napata, especially some twenty small pyramids, are
feeble imitations of Egyptian art. The same character of imitation is
stamped upon the monuments of Begerauieh, though here it is mingled with
foreign elements. This place, further removed from Egypt, and therefore
more secure, was beyond doubt the residence of the kings of Meroe, at
least from the time of Cambyses, and it was named after the country.
Herodotus points out that Zeus and Dionysus, _i.e._ Osiris, were
worshipped here, and that the oracle of Zeus, _i.e._ of Ammon, extended
its authority over the Ethiopians: the further accounts which Diodorus
preserves of this priesthood give a poor idea of their cultivation (3, 3
ff. Strabo, pp. 827, 828). At the time of the second Ptolemy, this
priesthood was destroyed by the King, Ergamenes, whose name (Arkamen)
Lepsius has discovered on ruins at Mt. Barkal, as well as Begerauieh,
and an independent monarchy was established. Hence we must entirely give
up the idea of deriving the supposed supremacy of the priesthood in
Egypt, a supremacy which never existed here, from the priesthood formed
at Begerauieh after the time of Thirhaka and Psammetichus (in the days
of Psammetichus, Herodotus tells us that a king of the Ethiopians
received strangers without an oracle, and gave them land, 2, 30); that
is, in the sixth century B.C., which continued to exist till 250 B.C.
Still less reason is there to suppose that the so-called Indian
supremacy of the priesthood came through Meroe into Egypt. Rather we may
feel ourselves justified in assuming that the elements of civilisation
which took root on the middle Nile passed from Egypt to that district.
In the inscriptions of Begerauieh the name Meroe occurs as Meru, and
Merua, _i.e._ "White rock"; Lepsius, _l. c._ 205-232. As the banks of
the Nile, here and also at Mt. Barkal, consist of whitish-yellow chalk
rocks, the name of the land and its southern metropolis, of which the
existence since the sixth century B.C. is demonstrated, may have been
named from this peculiarity of the land.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.
In the eighteenth century B.C., according to their reckoning, the
tradition of the Hebrews presents us with a complete picture of court
and civic life in the valley of the Nile, and it tells us of the
building of cities in the east of the Delta, which, according to the
same computation, must have been founded about the year 1550 B.C. The
Homeric poems contain accounts of the land of AEgyptus, of the
fair-flowing Zeus-born river of the same name, of the very beautiful
fields and cities of Egypt, of princes who fought from their chariots,
and finally of "Egyptian Thebes, where in the palaces lie the greatest
treasures; a city with a hundred gates, from each of which go forth two
hundred men with horses and chariots." They also add "that the fruitful
earth bears abundance of drugs in Egypt, some mingled for good, others
for evil, and there every one is a physician and has acquaintance with
men; they are all sprung from the god of healing."[3]
According to the account given by the Greeks the Egyptians boasted to be
the oldest of mankind, and to possess the most ancient traditions.[4]
Their priests believed that they could compute the history of Egypt by
thousands of years. When Herodotus was in Egypt about the middle of the
fifth century B.C., the priests at Thebes read to him from a book the
names of 331 kings who had reigned from Menes, the first ruler of Egypt,
and the founder of Memphis, down to Moeris inclusive; among these were
eighteen Ethiopians, and one queen; the rest were Egyptians. After
Moeris came Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, Rhampsinitus, Cheops and
Chephren, Mycerinus, Asychis, Anysis, Sabakon, and Sethos, so that from
Menes to Sethos 341 kings had reigned over Egypt in as many generations.
Herodotus remarks that the priests assured him that they had an accurate
knowledge of what they said, for the years were always enumerated and
put down. To convince him they carried him into the great temple at
Thebes and showed him there 345 wooden colossi of the chief priests who
had presided over the temple through as many generations, in regular
succession from father to son; for every chief priest placed his statue
here during his own life-time. Before these kings and chief priests the
gods had ruled over Egypt; first the Eight Gods, then the Twelve, then
Osiris the Greek Dionysus, after him Typhon, and, last of all, Horus.
From the time of King Amasis (570-526 B.C.) to the time of Osiris 15,000
years had passed, but from the time of the Twelve Gods to Amasis 17,000
years.[5]
Herodotus does not conceal the doubts raised in his mind by the high
antiquity claimed in these accounts by the priests. He found an especial
difficulty in the fact that Dionysus Osiris, who, according to his
computation, was born 1,600 years at the most before his own time
(_i.e._ about 2050 B.C.), must have lived more than 15,000 years
earlier, according to the assertion of the Egyptians. By their account
341 kings reigned from Menes to Sethos; and on this basis Herodotus
reckoned the duration and commencement of the Egyptian kingdom. He took
33-1/3 years as the length of a generation, and thus Menes must have
begun to reign 340 generations, or 11,340 years before the accession of
Sethos. Further, Herodotus placed over 150 years between the accession
of Sethos and the death of Amasis, and thus according to his data we get
the enormous total of 11,500 years for the duration of the Egyptian
kingdom from Menes till its overthrow by the Persians. Menes therefore
must have ascended the throne before the year 12000 B.C.; the rule of
Osiris commenced 15500 B.C.; and that of the Twelve Gods 17500 B.C.
If we leave the gods out of the question, and reduce the length of a
generation, which Herodotus has put too high, to its real average of
twenty-five years, the 340 generations with those of Sethos,
Psammetichus, Necho, Psammetichus II., Apries, and Amasis, make up 8,650
years, and since the Persians took Egypt in 525 B.C., the beginning of
the reign of Menes still falls in the year 9175 B.C. This incredible
fact is not made more credible because Plato represents an Egyptian
priest asserting to Solon that the annals of Sais reached back 8,000
years; or speaks in the "Laws" of works of Egyptian art, ten thousand
years old.[6]
Four hundred years after Herodotus, Diodorus travelled to Egypt.[7] He
tells that, according to some fabulous accounts, gods and heroes first
ruled over Egypt for something less than 18,000 years. The last of
these was Horus, the son of Isis. After these came 470 native kings, of
whom the first was Menes, before the time of the Macedonian and Persian
rule, and also four Ethiopian kings and five queens. The Ethiopians did
not immediately succeed each other, but at intervals, and their united
reigns amounted to a little less than thirty-six years. "Of all these
kings the priests have sketches in their holy books, handed down through
successive generations from extreme antiquity, showing how tall each
king was, what he was like, and what he accomplished in his reign." If
we place the reign of Menes 479 generations before Cambyses, this
computation, on the reckoning of Herodotus, would place the accession of
Menes in the year 16492 B.C.; taking a shorter average length for the
generations, we may bring it to the year 12500 B.C. But Diodorus shows
from other accounts that this mode of computation is inadmissible. He
tells us that the priests of Egypt numbered about 23,000[8] years from
the reign of Helius or Hephaestus, who, according to other priests, was
the first of the gods to reign,[9] till the entrance of Alexander into
Asia (334 B.C.). If of this total we allow about 18,000 years to the
gods, the accession of Menes would have to be placed about the year 5300
B.C.[10] But as Diodorus also says that something less than 5,000 years
had elapsed since the first human king to his arrival in Egypt, Menes'
reign would fall about the year 5000 B.C. Diodorus fixes the accession
of this king even more closely when he remarks, in a third passage, that
the Egyptians assured him that, "for more than 4,700 years, kings,
mostly natives, had ruled, and the land had prospered greatly under
them."[11] With this agrees the further account given by Diodorus, that
according to some the largest pyramid was built 3,400 years before his
time. According to this Menes cannot be carried back further than 4,800
years B.C.
If Menes founded the kingdom of Egypt 4,800 years B.C., it continued for
4,275 years under native kings; and if in this period 346 kings ascended
the throne, as Herodotus says, or 479, as Diodorus, the average duration
of each reign would be in the first case more than twelve years, in the
second less than nine, which contradicts all credible history. The
lowest average of oriental reigns is fifteen years.
Still, from these accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus it is clear that
the priests of Egypt possessed lists of the kings in long series, and
that, according to their view, gods and demigods had ruled over Egypt
for thousands of years before the earliest of these kings. After Greek
princes had ascended the throne of the Pharaohs, and Egypt with its
monuments and writings was opened to the research of the Greeks,
Eratosthenes, who was the head of the library at Alexandria in the
second half of the third century B.C., studied the history of these old
kings--at "the royal request," as Georgius Syncellus tells us--in the
old annals and lists of the Egyptians, and transcribed these lists in
the Hellenic language.[12] This compilation of Eratosthenes contained
the names and reigns of thirty-eight kings of Thebes. Syncellus repeats
the list, and adds: "Here ended the rule of the thirty-eight kings who
were called Theban in Egypt, whose names Eratosthenes collected out of
the sacred books of Thebes and translated into the Hellenic language.
The names of the fifty-three Theban kings who followed these have been
also preserved by Apollodorus; but we consider it superfluous to add
them, for even the list of the first is of no use."[13] Thus the
researches of the Alexandrine Greeks had brought together a list of
ninety-one kings, ninety successors of Menes, out of the writings of the
priests of Thebes. As early as the time of Eratosthenes the Egyptians
assisted the researches of the Greeks. About the middle of the third
century B.C., that is, in the time of the second and third Ptolemy, an
Egyptian named Manetho (_Ma-n-thoth_ = "loved by Thoth"), of Sebennytus,
and apparently scribe to the temple at Thebes,[14] composed in Greek a
work on the history of Egypt in three books. "Obviously possessed of
Hellenic culture"--so we find it in Josephus--"Manetho wrote the history
of his country in Greek, translating it, as he tells us, from the sacred
writings; he undertook to interpret Egyptian history from the sacred
writings."[15] This work of Manetho was lost at an early period; all
that remains is the list of the dynasties, a third part of the names of
the kings, and a few fragments; and even these remnants we possess only
in excerpts by a second or third hand. Manetho begins his history of
Egypt with the rule of the gods. First came Ptah, the creative god of
light, and the great gods, then the demigods, and Manes. After these had
ruled over Egypt for 24,857 Egyptian years, according to the excerpt of
Africanus, that is for 24,820 Julian years, the rule of human kings
begins with Menes, and these continued through thirty dynasties for
5,366 years. As Manetho closes his list of the kings of Egypt with the
last year of Nectanebos, who rebelled against Artaxerxes Ochus--_i.e._
with the year 340 B.C.--Menes must have founded the kingdom in the year
5706 B.C., or rather, if we reduce the Egyptian years of Manetho's
reckoning to Julian years, in the year 5702 B.C.[16] This statement
carries us back to a far less remote antiquity than the computation of
the date of Menes by 346 generations previous to Cambyses; on the other
hand, it goes 900 years higher than the date which we deduced from
Diodorus.
What amount of authority should be ascribed to the lists of Manetho? Did
the priests really possess sketches of kings and accounts of their
reigns reaching back more than 5,000 years? In order to believe this,
must we not allow that at such a remote time as the reign of Menes, or
soon after it, writing was known and in use in Egypt? And granting this,
must not the first beginning of culture in Egypt be carried back at
least 500 years before Menes? Moreover, the lists do not correspond with
the number of the kings given by Herodotus, or by Diodorus. Herodotus,
as we said, put 346 generations before the time of Cambyses, Diodorus
gave 479 kings before the same date. The excerpt of Africanus from
Manetho, even if we substitute the smaller numbers given in the excerpt
of Eusebius in all the dynasties, of which only the total sum of the
rulers is stated, still gives us 388 kings from Menes to Cambyses.[17]
If these discrepancies awaken the suspicion that the number and the
succession of the kings was not agreed upon even by the priests
themselves, the suspicion is increased by the fact that the lists do
not tally in the various excerpts in which they have come down to us.
What weight can be given to a list which, in the excerpt from Africanus,
allows 953 years (or 802 at the least) to the rule of the Hyksos, and in
the excerpt of Eusebius allows 103 years, and again 511 years in the
excerpt of Josephus? Still greater discrepancies appear if we compare
the list of Eratosthenes with the names and numbers handed down to us
from Manetho's work. Both lists begin with Menes; both allow him a reign
of sixty-two years; but Eratosthenes describes his thirty-eight kings as
of Theban origin or race, while in Manetho the first Theban dynasty
began to reign 2,240 years after Menes.[18] Nevertheless the names of
the first three or four rulers in Eratosthenes agree with those in
Manetho. Then the coincidence breaks off till the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth names in Eratosthenes, to which corresponding names are
found in Manetho's list, but in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and
thirtieth places; and from this point to the end of the list of
Eratosthenes there are only two or three names to which corresponding
names are found in Manetho, and these occur at far greater intervals in
the series. The last name in Eratosthenes nearly corresponds to the name
of the king, in Manetho, under whom the invasion of the Hyksos took
place. If, therefore, we assume that the list of Eratosthenes was
intended to enumerate the kings who ruled over Egypt to this date, we
find thirty-eight kings who must have reigned through 1076 years; and,
as parallel to these, we find in Manetho fourteen dynasties with at
least 241 kings, occupying a period of 3,084 years.
Scarcely less striking are the contradictions in the monuments
themselves. In the temple of Ammon at Karnak, which was extended on a
magnificent scale by Tuthmosis III. (1591-1565 B.C.),[19] the king is
delineated twice in a colossal form on the back wall of a chamber.
Between the two pictures sit sixty-four kings in four rows one over the
other. The inscription, "A royal offering for the kings of both Egypts,"
as well as the position of Tuthmosis, shows that he is offering prayer
and sacrifice to his predecessors in the kingdom. Of these sixty-four
kings, three are the immediate predecessors of Tuthmosis, Tuthmosis I.,
II., and Amosis. Before Amosis this table puts fifty-seven kings; the
name of Menes is wanting; but in Manetho's list there are nevertheless
no fewer than 284 kings,[20] from Menes to Amosis, with whom, in the
excerpt of Africanus, the eighteenth dynasty begins. In the great temple
built by Sethos I. (1439-1388, B.C.) at Abydus in honour of Osiris, this
prince, with his son Ramses, may be seen on the wall of a passage
offering prayer and incense to his predecessors in the kingdom. There
are seventy-six shields with names, beginning with the shield of Menes.
The last is the shield of Sethos, who in this way is represented as
offering prayer to himself, among the rest. Down to Amenemha IV., the
close of the twelfth dynasty (2179-2171 B.C.), there reigned, according
to Manetho's list 104 kings, but the table of Sethos gives sixty-five
shields for the interval from Menes to Amenemha IV. From this king to
Sethos, the first prince of the nineteenth dynasty, Manetho's list gives
193 kings, excluding the shepherd kings, whereas the table of Sethos
shows only ten shields for this interval.[21] Nothing in the way of
explanation is to be obtained from the monuments of this kind belonging
to the time of Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.) On the wall of the portico
between the first and second court of the Ramesseum, the great temple
built by Ramses II. at Thebes, on the left bank of the Nile, there is a
picture in which the statues of thirteen predecessors in the kingdom are
carried in procession before the king. There are eleven kings up to
Amosis; before him is the figure of Mentuophis; then Menes. In the
little temple built by Ramses II. at Abydus in honour of Osiris, there
is a tablet, on which Ramses is represented offering adoration to the
manes of his predecessors. On this we can make out fifty shields, but
only about thirty are sufficiently uninjured to be legible; so far as we
can tell this table is only a repetition of the table of Sethos in the
great temple of Abydus. A third series of the kings of this period has
been discovered in the tombs at Sakkarah. In the tomb of Tunari, the
kings' scribe and architect, there is a representation of the sacrifice
of Ramses II. for the deceased kings of Upper and Lower Egypt. Here we
find fifty-seven shields; immediately before Ramses II. is Sethos,
Ramses I., and Horus, then six illegible names; and before these Amosis.
Before Amosis are forty-six shields, of which the first can perhaps be
compared with the king mentioned in the sixth place after Menes in
Manetho's list.[22]
The variations of these tables from the lists may be explained by
assuming that it depended on the particular view and peculiar object of
the kings who erected these monuments, which of their predecessors they
wished to honour, and which they wished to exclude. But even a
manuscript list of kings, which has come down to us, exhibits numerous
and very considerable variations from Manetho's lists. This list is a
papyrus, now in Turin, supposed to belong to the period 1500-1000 B.C.
It begins with the rule of the gods; then follow the names of the kings,
with the length of their reigns in years, months, and days, down to the
time of the Tuthmosis; and thus it includes the first seventeen
dynasties of Manetho's list. It has been much damaged, and therefore we
can only discover that about 240 names were given, of which, however,
about 100 are entirely gone; and of the others the lesser half at least
is hardly legible. As has been remarked, Manetho numbers at least 284
kings to the eighteenth dynasty. Moreover, the papyrus does not agree
with Manetho in the division of the dynasties; at certain places, which
do not coincide with the sections of Manetho, totals are given of the
preceding reigns. The first king after the gods is Mena (Menes), but of
the names which follow only a few agree with those in Manetho, and a few
more with those of the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah.[23] But
here also the same names occupy different places in the series.
If in addition to all these variations and discrepancies we add the fact
that even in the contemporary monuments and inscriptions which have come
down to us there is no lack of contradictions to Manetho's
statements--if too these monuments have not been erected or preserved in
sufficient continuity, nor are of a sufficiently ample kind, to form an
adequate check upon the papyrus of Turin, or the tables of kings or the
list of Manetho--we must give up the hope of ascertaining the antiquity
and course of Egyptian history on such data. One thing only comes out
clear and irrefragable from the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah,
no less than the Turin papyrus. Long before Herodotus was in Egypt, long
before Manetho wrote his Egyptian history, in the fifteenth century B.C.
Menes was considered the first king of Egypt. Even then lists of the
kings were in existence, and the priests had made a sketch of the
history of their land, in which the rule of the gods preceded the rule
of human kings.
Modern research has attempted in various ways to find the key to the
puzzle of these long and confused series of kings made by the Egyptian
priests. Assuming that the names of the kings and the length of their
reigns, and the number of reigns belonging to each dynasty, has been
handed down correctly by Manetho, but that some of these dynasties were
contemporaneous, the attempt has been made to give such a selection from
the dynasties of Manetho as would supply a continuous thread for
Egyptian history. Thus from the dynasties expressly marked as Memphitic,
or Theban, a series may be formed which shortens the calculation of
Manetho by at least 1,000 years. We might proceed further in this
direction, and reduce Manetho's list by 2,000 or 3,000 years. According
to the separate items in the excerpts preserved, Manetho's thirty
dynasties include a series of 5,366 Egyptian years (from the year 5702
to the year 340 B.C.); nevertheless, Syncellus, in a passage of his
Chronology, has observed that the whole period of history treated by
Manetho in his three books covered 3,555 years.[24] This observation
has been used to prove that Manetho himself arranged several dynasties
contemporaneously; and thus, by taking the whole total of years given by
Syncellus as a basis, the year 3892 B.C. has been fixed as the first
year of the reign of Menes. No doubt a selection may be made from the
dynasties of Manetho in such a way that the sum total of the reigns
included in it will carry us no farther back than this year.[25] But it
is clear from the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus that the series of
kings made by the Egyptian priests were strictly successive; and this
fact is abundantly confirmed by the Turin papyrus and the excerpts
preserved from Manetho himself. The 3,555 years which Syncellus brings
forward cannot, in the face of his own excerpt, be taken as a number
really derived from Manetho, and with this number all the calculations
founded upon it fall to the ground.[26]
A second path, which has lately been struck out for the reduction of
Manetho's dynasties, is based upon the list of Eratosthenes. The
thirty-eight kings enumerated in this list are placed beside the first
fourteen dynasties of Manetho. It is assumed that only the names quoted
in Eratosthenes are the names of real monarchs, and that we must look
for similar names in the list of Manetho. By this assumption, it is
true, we are compelled to set aside several of Manetho's dynasties, and
even to throw away the greater part of the kings of the dynasties which
are allowed to count in the series.[27] But even when we have overcome
all the difficulties in the way of this system, we are still without the
means to define accurately the duration of the rule of the alien kings,
which, as has been already remarked, according to the various excerpts
from the list of Manetho, continued 953, or 511, or 103 years; nor is
there any fixed point immediately before the alien monarchy to enable us
to succeed in establishing the antiquity and commencement of the
Egyptian series of kings.
All attempts to arrive at the antiquity of the civilisation and history
of Egypt by these means are the more doubtful, because in Egypt there is
no fixed era to form a basis for calculation. The time is reckoned by
the reigns of the kings. In such a case even the most cautious inquiry
of the priests could hardly have arrived at a satisfactory chronology
for the oldest period. Though they had before them far more numerous
monuments than we have, and though the lists of the various dominant
families began to be kept at a very early period, it was no longer
possible at the time when the lists of the Turin papyrus were made out,
to discover in what order the families came, or which ruled
contemporaneously before the time of the alien kings. The mere
arrangement of our materials in the order of succession cannot fail to
give an entirely false picture of the history of Egypt, while on the
other hand the national pride of the Egyptians, and the vanity of the
priests, found a great satisfaction in exaggerating the antiquity of
their history by such enumerations, even where it was known that any
families of kings were contemporaneous. With what pride and complacency
would they exhibit this endless list of kings to the travelling
strangers from Greece!
Besides the want of a fixed era, and the insufficient knowledge of the
ancient period, and of the alien monarchy--besides the motives of
national vanity, there was another remarkable circumstance connected
with the priests of Egypt which was calculated to lead them far away
from historical truth. The Egyptians measured time by a solar year of
360 days, divided into twelve months of thirty days. It was early
observed that this year did not correspond to the sun's orbit; and
therefore five additional days were added. The decisive event of the
Egyptian year was the inundation. The Nile began to rise at the time of
the summer solstice, and was coincident with the rising of the Dog-star
(Sothis), the brightest star in the Egyptian sky. The Dog-star
proclaimed the approach of the inundation and the new fertilization of
the soil, and by proclaiming caused it. Thus to the Egyptians this star
Sothis was "the Lady of the Beginning." The rising of the star denoted
the new year; which therefore must have begun on the 20th July, the
first of Thoth in the Egyptian calendar. But since, in the Egyptian
year, a quarter of a day was wanting, in spite of the additional five
years, to make up the true astronomical year, the beginning of every
fourth year must have been a day in advance of the true year, and the
seasons, of which the Egyptians made three of four months each, the
months, and the festivals anticipated more and more the true time of the
year. This advance could not have escaped the priests; they must soon
have observed that a period of 1,461 Egyptian years must elapse in order
to allow the Egyptian year to coincide with astronomical time. For in
1,460 Egyptian years the additional quarter of a day in the astronomical
year would amount to 365 whole days--_i.e._ to an Egyptian year; and at
the end of this year the beginning of the next was again coincident with
the rising of the Dog-star, as seen from Lower Egypt, and the
commencement of the inundation. Thus in a period of 1,461 years the year
was again brought to its true beginning.[28] Since the fruitfulness and
life of the Egyptian land depended on the inundation, and the inundation
began with the rising of the Dog-star, the history of Egypt must also
have begun with a similar rising. If after 1,461 Egyptian years the
rising of the Dog-star again coincided with the beginning of the civic
year, the priests would regard this restoration of the natural order as
the completion of a great cycle of events. The Dog-star brought the
inundation, and with it the fruits and life of Egypt. It was the
awakener of life. It must therefore have brought life to the world also;
time must have begun with the rising of Sirius. Porphyrius tells us that
to the Egyptians the rising of the Dog-star was the beginning of the
world.[29] Hence the periods of the world must proceed according to a
number of periods fixed by the Dog-star. It seems that the priests
comprised the whole duration of the world in twenty-five Sothis periods,
_i.e._ in 36,525 Egyptian years. Regarded in this light, the Sothis
periods of the priests of Egypt must lead to a cyclic treatment of their
history, to which also the want of any definite era was forcing them,
while the antiquity and number of the lists of kings offered abundant
material for it. The history of Egypt must comprise a definite number of
Sothis periods. It was known that in the fourteenth century B.C. such a
period ended, and a new one commenced; the difficulty was to fill up two
or three periods anterior to this. Before the Sothis period of the
kings, the gods had ruled over Egypt, to whom, therefore, a number of
Sothis cycles, naturally more extensive than those given to the rule of
men, was allotted. Thus the priests of Thebes were able to tell
Herodotus that, from the time when the Twelve Gods ruled over Egypt,
down to the days of King Amosis, 17,000 years had passed; that from
Menes, down to Sethos, 341 kings ruled in succession over Egypt, and
that in this space of time the sun had four times risen in an unusual
way--it had twice risen where it then set, and had twice set where it
then rose; and nothing in Egypt had been changed by this, either in the
gifts of the earth or the river, in sickness or in mortality.[30] This
change of the rising and setting of the sun is nothing more than the
symbolical astrology of the priests, who must have expressed the
completion of the movable solar year by the opposite quarters of the
sky; and it means no more than that two Sothis periods had elapsed
between Menes and Sethos; but to Herodotus the statement as given
naturally appeared quite incredible.[31] What the priests told
Herodotus, Manetho, following far older authorities, had already fixed
in a systematic form before Diodorus found that the gods ruled 18,000
years, and the human kings had begun to reign 4,700 years before his
arrival in Egypt. To the gods and demigods Manetho allows twelve Sothis
periods, _i.e._ 17,520 Julian years. Then follows the history of the
men, the beginning of which Manetho places in the commencement of that
period of the Dog-star which begins with the year 5702 B.C. From this
point the series of kings runs through three complete Sothis periods
down to Menephta; in the fourth period Manetho closed the lists of his
thirty dynasties with the last native ruler in 340 B.C., the 984th year
of the fourth Sothis period of the human kings. Thus it would be
possible to make the scheme clear on which the priests of Egypt dealt
with the history of their land, and the lists of Manetho would then lay
claim to complete historical credibility for the ancient periods in
isolated items, though certainly not in their combination as a whole.
With this result before us the only course open is to seek for external
evidence, and attempt to ascertain the antiquity of the civilisation of
Egypt independently of the priests and their traditions. The first fixed
point in Egyptian chronology is given by the campaign of Pharaoh Sisak
against Judah and Jerusalem. Sisak caused a sketch of his enterprise to
be delineated on the wall of a structure erected by him in the temple at
Karnak. According to Manetho's list, Sisak (Sesonchis), the first ruler
of his twenty-second dynasty, begins his reign in the year 934 B.C.[32]
But the chronology of the Hebrews, which from the establishment of the
monarchy downwards coincides within a few insignificant variations with
the Assyrian records, proves that Sisak must have been king in the first
half of the tenth century B.C. The campaign against Judah falls in the
middle of this century. From Sisak to the expulsion of the Hyksos there
was an interval of at least 500 years, as we may maintain approximately
from the names of kings and their reigns recorded on monuments. If
therefore we accept the excerpt from Manetho's history given in Josephus
(and that excerpt was made precisely for this period, and has come down
to us in the best shape), and allow 511 years for the reign of the
Hyksos, we arrive at the year 2000 B.C. as the end of the old monarchy.
From this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to
the Amenemha, and Sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of Manetho; and again
to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in
Egypt, the pyramids of Memphis, which, according to Manetho's list, are
the work of the fourth dynasty. These pyramids therefore may have been
built about the year 2500 B.C. The plan and execution of these monuments
presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of
materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were
impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their
massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of
architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. And
independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these
monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition
of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities.
So long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed
the valley of the Nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such
structures were impossible. They presuppose a settled population,
accustomed to work, and skilled in it. And more than this. The whole
population could not any longer be occupied in agricultural work; there
must have been a considerable amount of superfluous labour, living upon
the productions obtained from the earth by others. Such structures
required the united force of many thousands, the continued efforts of
long years. And as the use of complex machinery for moving and raising
the heavy materials was unknown to the Egyptians, and remained unknown,
as we see from the monuments, a still greater force of men and beasts of
draught were necessary to move such huge squares and blocks by means of
a simple lever and rollers. Finally, the combination and continued
employment of such forces presupposes that society has been subordinated
to a superior direction and power, which could apply those forces as it
chose; in a word, it presupposes an economical, political, and technical
civilisation, removed by at least 500 years from pastoral life and
patriarchal rule. If therefore we may assume that the great pyramids
were erected about the year 2500 B.C., the beginning of higher
civilisation in the valley of the Nile must not be placed later than the
year 3000 B.C.
This assumption is confirmed by the fact that the oldest monuments of
Egypt--and they are also the oldest in the world--exhibit the Egyptians
in possession of the art of writing. All writing proceeds from pictures.
The writing of the Egyptians and Babylonians, like that of the Chinese,
Mexicans, and the tribes of North America, was in the first instance no
more than speaking pictures. The Egyptians engraved on the stone of
their rocks pictures of the objects and events of which they wished to
preserve the remembrance. As this use of pictures to assist the memory
became more common and more regular, from external no less than internal
reasons, it quickly acquired certain abbreviations and combinations. The
frequent repetition of a picture led to its abbreviation. The picture of
a house dwindled into a square; water is not so much sketched as
indicated by waved lines; instead of a forest we have the outline of a
tree--in Egypt we find the sycamore, the most common tree in the
country. Thus from actual imitative pictures we arrive at indicatory
pictures. But how could the various kinds of fluid, for instance, be
represented in these indicatory pictures? The three waved lines
indicating water were retained, but beside them was sketched a wine-jar
or water-pot, and thus the desired end was attained. By adding the
picture of a god to the square, a temple was distinguished from a house.
By such means the objects of the visible world could be reproduced in
pictures more or less abbreviated. Even the actions and conditions of
men which do not come immediately under the eye could be represented in
this abbreviated metaphorical manner. Giving could be represented by an
outstretched arm with a loaf; opening, by a door; going, by a road
planted with trees; travelling, by a walking bird; battle, by an arm
equipped with shield and lance; binding and fastening, by a coiled rope;
destruction, by a prostrate man. It was more difficult to represent
conditions which do not show themselves to the eye, as, for instance,
hunger and thirst. To express thirst the Egyptians chose the symbol of
water and a calf running to it; hunger they represented by a hand
conveyed to the mouth, and this was also the symbol of eating. But the
most difficult task for this picture-writing was the description of
objects transcending sense, and abstract ideas. For the gods, it is
true, popular notions and the fancy of the priests had supplied fixed
forms which only required to be abbreviated for the picture-writing. The
picture of the sky-goddess served as a symbol for the sky. The Egyptians
regarded the sky as arched over the earth; the feet of the goddess
rested on one extremity, and her hands on the other. Instead of the
complete figure of the goddess in this arched attitude, they drew a line
of a similar kind, and this was the abbreviated picture of the sky. If
the sun or a star was combined with this line, the picture represented
the day and the night. But the abstract ideas of law and justice, truth,
protection, good, evil, life, &c., could only be represented in this
picture-writing by sensuous images. In Egypt power was represented by a
brandished whip, or poleaxe; justice, by the cubit, or symbol of equal
measurement; good, by the symbol of sound, in order perhaps to indicate
harmony; evil, by the picture of an unclean fish; truth, by an ostrich
feather--the feathers of this bird are said to remain unchanged;
protection, by a soaring vulture, &c., &c.
Though the possession of such indicatory or symbolic pictures enabled
men to describe a series of objects and conditions, and even certain
classes of conceptions--this picture-writing was nevertheless far
removed from the expression of a definite and intelligible speech. It
was a great step in the Egyptian writing when to their simple
metaphorical and symbolical pictures phonetic pictures were added. From
the actual picture by means of abbreviation, by indicatory signs and
symbols, they had arrived at picture-signs, and had succeeded in
expressing a certain feeling by means of figures; but now the indication
of the sound was added to the representation of the sense. The
picture-writing could only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow
the symbols for sound. Hence the sound A was denoted by a symbol which
signified an object of which the name began with A; for this in Egypt
the symbol of an eagle (_achem_), or of a reed (_ak_), might be, and was
selected. Thus in order to express words which could not be made plain
by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to
the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic
symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. Hence arose a
class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the
addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to
express the meaning. To make the meaning yet more clear, it was found
necessary to add key-signs, indicating the class and nature of the word
in question. Thus with the pictorial and phonetic signs for day and hour
was combined the sign of the sun, and to the names of countries and
rivers the sign for land and water. Moreover these key-signs showed
whether the word symbolised by a sound or a picture denoted an animal, a
plant, a kind of stone, or belonged to a particular class of conditions
and actions. Yet in this combination of real and phonetic pictures, it
always remained uncertain whether a picture or symbol was to be taken
for its real meaning, or was to be regarded as a phonetic symbol.
This, then, is the difficult writing of the Egyptians; these are the
hieroglyphics as presented even on those great monuments. Even here we
find this method of writing applied in the same forms, and with the same
mixture of pictorial and phonetic signs, which it retained in Egypt,
with slight modifications (see below). Without doubt, the development of
this complicated system was the work of centuries. In the infancy of
history, special insight and capability is obtained and handed down only
within the limits of certain circles. There could be no regular
application and development of this system of writing before the
formation of a priestly order. And again, the separation of such an
order from the rest of the people could only take place gradually; it
must go through a number of stages to raise it above the primitive
conditions of life. When this point of culture was reached, a
considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the
picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we
see it on the pyramids. In those nations whose progress we can follow
with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and
floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. Yet
in Egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the
oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for
the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. In the
picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation
of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite
feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of
definite speech, is attained. An advanced stage of reflection and
abstraction is required in order to step from the picture of an
occurrence to picture-signs and images of sense, and again from these to
phonetic symbols. The symbols for an incident, and for an idea and a
sound, are separated by a wide gulf. Independently of these internal
requirements for the advance of picture-writing, the external form in
which the oldest hieroglyphics are represented, their even, harmonious,
clearly-cut and unalterable forms, are evidence not only of an
industrious and careful application of these signs, but also of a
tolerably long use. The oldest hieroglyphics of the date of the great
pyramids are for the most part embossed; but even the engraved work of a
date very little more recent is not surpassed by later times in artistic
excellence, in sharpness and neatness of execution.
The study of the calendar of Egypt, no less than the use of writing upon
the great monuments, carries us back to an early date for the beginning
of Egyptian civilization. We saw that the priests, by adding five days
to the old year of 360 days, had come tolerably near to the natural
year, and had fixed the beginning of their year by the rising of Sirius.
Monuments of the age of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen show that even then
the rising of Sirius had been observed and noted. Nevertheless, the
beginning of their short civic year tended to anticipate the natural
year; and thus the Egyptian year was always in advance of the solar. But
if it was observed and noted down by the Egyptians, that in the year of
their reckoning, corresponding to the Julian year 1322 B.C., the
beginning of the year had again fallen on the right day, that is, on
the rising of Sirius, so that the first day of Thoth in the movable year
coincided with the first day of Thoth in the solar year, which was the
20th of July, it follows that the fixing of the beginning of the year on
July 20, and of the length of the year at 365 days, had taken place
1,460 years (p. 30) before the date 1322 B.C., _i.e._ in the year 2782
B.C. This conclusion is supported by another consideration. Our
astronomers have calculated that it was only in the two or three
centuries preceding and following the year 3285 B.C. that the rising of
Sirius so exactly coincided with the summer solstice and the rise of the
Nile; and therefore in this epoch only could the observation have been
made that Sirius brought the inundation. Hence in this period only could
the beginning of the year have been fixed at the rising of Sirius. But
if the Egyptians could set aside an old calendar and introduce a new
arrangement requiring attention and long-continued observations,
somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., it is clear that the beginnings of
higher culture in Egypt cannot be later than 3000 B.C.[33]
Valuable as this result is, we are nevertheless carried back to
hypotheses and combinations in order to fix the various epochs, and more
especially before the reign of the Hyksos. And as an arrangement of
history is impossible without chronology, divisions must be assumed here
and there where it is impossible to establish them satisfactorily. The
arrangement of Egyptian chronology proposed by Lepsius has for the first
time introduced a well-considered system into the whole. Hence, in spite
of the objections already brought forward against the basis of this
arrangement, and the proved uncertainties and contradictions of
tradition and the monuments, which the progress of inquiry into the
older periods may indeed lessen but cannot remove, I follow the data
given by Lepsius for the epochs of Egyptian history, and the duration of
the reigns which come under our notice.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "Il." 9, 381; "Od." 4, 230 ff. 477, 581. 14, 257, 264 ff. 17, 426.
[4] Herod. 2, 2; Diod. 1, 10, 50; Plat. Tim. p. 23.
[5] Herod. 2, 100, 142, 143.
[6] Plato, "Tim." p. 23; "De Leg." p. 657.
[7] Diodorus, 1, 44, 45, Olympiad 180, _i.e._ between 60 and 56 B.C.
[8] Or, according to another version, more than 10,000 years from Osiris
to Alexander. More than 10,000 years had passed, according to the
Egyptians, since the creation of the first man.--Diod. 1, 23, 24.
[9] Diod. 1, 13, 14.
[10] Ibid. 1, 69.
[11] Diod. 1, 63.
[12] Syncell. p. 91, ed. Goar.
[13] Syncell. p. 12.
[14] Boeckh, "Manetho," p. 395.
[15] "C. Apion." c. 14, 26.
[16] Boeckh, "Manetho," p. 769 ff.
[17] Reinisch reckons 389 kings from Menes to Cambyses, "Zeitschrift d.
d. M. Ges." 15,251; Brugsch's table gives 334 royal shields from Menes
to Cambyses.
[18] According to Boeckh's "Kanon des Africanus."
[19] This, like the following dates, is from Lepsius, see below.
[20] Not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added
the number reaches 322.
[21] Duemichen and Lepsius, "Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache," 1864,
p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "Revue Archeolog." 1865, p. 50 ff; 1866
(13), p. 73 ff.
[22] Mariette in "Revue Archeolog.," 1864 (10), p. 170.
[23] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; Deveria, _loc. cit._ p.
58 ff.
[24] P. 98.
[25] Gutschmid in the "Philologus," 10, 672.
[26] The number of 113 generations, which Syncellus gives as
contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of
Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items the number 3,555
in Syncellus has arisen in "Beitraege zur Geschichte des alten Orients,"
s. 9.
[27] On this rests the difference of the systems of Lepsius and Bunsen.
Taking the total given by Syncellus from Manetho of 3,555 years before
Nektaneboes, Lepsius arrives at the years 3,892 B.C. Bunsen also
considers the number 3,555 to be from Manetho, but without historical
value. He insists on this number because he allows Manetho to reckon
1,286 years for the new monarchy, 922 years for the Hyksos, and 1,347
years for the old monarchy; but for these 1,347 years he substitutes the
1,076 years of Eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of
Menes. According to this, Menes began to reign in the year 3284 B.C.
From this, Reinisch ("Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenl. Gesell." 15,
251 ff.) has attempted to reconcile the systems of Bunsen and Lepsius.
He retains the total of 3,555 years, and the year 3,892 B.C. for Menes;
to the 1,076 years given by Eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds
four years for Skemiophris, thus making 1,080 years, fixes the middle
monarchy--the Hyksos--at 1,088 years, or down to the era [Greek: apo
Menophreos] at 1,490, and the new monarchy down to Nektanebos at 985
years.
[28] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 411; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th.
Martin "Mem de l'Acad. d'Inscr," 1869 (8), 265 ff.
[29] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 404. In the decree of Kanopus, belonging to
the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, _i.e._ to the year 238
B.C., we find as follows (Lepsius, "Das Bilingue Decret von Kanopus"):
"In order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their
time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts
which ought to be celebrated in winter may not be celebrated in summer,
because the star advances one day in every four years, while others
which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in
winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is
to be composed of 360 days, and the five days usually added, from
henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the Divi Euergetes,
every fourth year after the intercalary days, before the new year." That
the discovery of the want of a quarter of a day was made before the time
of Ptolemaeus Euergetes I., and that for a long time computations were
made by the fixed year with an intercalary cycle every fourth year, as
well as by the movable year, is beyond doubt. The decree did not become
of universal application till 26 B.C.
[30] Herod. 2, 142.
[31] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 36; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 193.
[32] According to Boeckh's "Kanon des Africanus."
[33] Lepsius, "Koenigsbuch," s. 118. Biot, "L'Annee vague," p. 57; cf.
however H. Martin, "Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript." 1869, pp. 1, 8, 265.
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Next to its language the oldest possession of a nation is its religion.
Living in a country of very distinct outlines and characteristic forms,
where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before
the view than in other countries, the Egyptians at an early period
arrived at a fixed expression of their religious feelings and of the
forms of their gods. Their original conceptions are unknown to us. The
oldest monuments, our earliest sources of information, present us with a
numerous assemblage of gods, and the conclusions drawn from these carry
us back to views far removed from primitive forms of worship. They
indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. We can
only attempt from the fragments of that system preserved in inscriptions
and manuscripts, and the very late accounts of the Greeks, to deduce
conclusions concerning the religious notions which originally
predominated.
The distinction in the nature of the upper and lower valley, already
referred to, cannot have been without influence upon the direction of
civic life among the Egyptians, and the formation of their religious
ideas. So far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same
time in the upper and lower country. In both districts peculiar forms
were retained at the most prominent centres of religious worship, until
after the union of the country they became amalgamated in all essential
points.
Memphis worshipped the god Ptah. The great sanctuary of the god at that
city was held to be as ancient as the city itself. So far back as our
knowledge extends, the Pharaohs were occupied with the extension and
adornment of this temple. Among the Greeks the god of Memphis was known
as Hephaestus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a
dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of Ptah stood
in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.[34] The name
Hephaestus, and the further statement of the Greeks, that this god was
the father of the Sun-god, prove that in Ptah the Egyptians worshipped
not only fire, but the spirit of warmth and light generally; and that
they must have regarded him as the origin and source of light.
Manetho puts Ptah at the head of the dynasties of the gods. He ruled for
9,000 years before the other gods. Inscriptions name Ptah "the lord of
truth," the "father of truth," the "ruler of the sky," "the king of both
worlds." As the god of the light which shows everything in its true
form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky,
he is the lord of heaven. The inscriptions also say that Ptah "moves the
egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the
beginnings," the "god who rolls his egg in the sky." Consequently, to
the Egyptians Ptah was the mover of the luminaries, a formative,
creative spirit, and as he is called in the inscriptions "the father of
the father of the gods," he must have been to them the first and oldest
god, the beginning of the gods and of all things.
The Egyptians believed that a kind of beetle peculiar to their country
(_scarabaeus sacer_) was propagated without the female sex; they saw the
mode of its reproduction in the balls of dung which the beetles
occasionally pushed before them. Hence they consecrated this insect to
their god of beginning and creation, and on monuments and records we
find the god Ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a
human head. As the god of the beginning he appears on monuments in the
shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable god, he is
wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the
whip and sceptre, or the so-called Nile-gauge, a ring with parallel
cross bars, in his hand, in order to denote him as the god who gives to
all things measure, order, and law. He is also coloured green, to
signify, as it would seem, that lie is a god favourable to vegetation,
and possessed of a fertilising power.
Thus Ptah was one of the forms under which the Egyptians invoked the
creator, the highest god. On a pillar of Memphis, now in the Berlin
Museum, belonging to the time of the nineteenth dynasty, he is called
"the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the god
who made himself to be god, who exists by himself, the double being, the
begetter of the first beginning." Other inscriptions and records denote
him as "the creator in heaven and on earth, who has made all things, the
lord of all that is, and is not."[35]
Below Memphis lay On, the city of the sun (Heliopolis). Here the spirit
of the sun, Ra, was the pre-eminent god. In Manetho's list Ra succeeds
Ptah in the kingdom. "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "regard the sun as
the body of the beneficent power, the visible form of a being only
comprehensible to thought. The morning sun they represented as a
new-born child seated on a lotus leaf, and thrice each day--at sunrise,
noon, and sunset--they offered incense to Helius."[36] We also find that
the Egyptians represented the sun of the winter months as a little
child, the sun of the vernal equinox as a youth, that of the summer
solstice as a bearded man, and again, the sun of the autumnal equinox as
an old man.[37] Hence they looked at the yearly course of the sun under
the allegory of human life. Plutarch's remark about the morning sun
shows that they regarded the daily course of the sun from the same point
of view, and when he tells us that according to Egyptian story, Apopis
made war against the god of the sky,[38] his statements are confirmed by
the monuments. According to the inscriptions Ra is "revealed in the
abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his
egg." "A Supplication to Ra"--such are the words of a prayer--"who each
day by himself brings himself to a new birth. Ra has created all that is
in the abysses of the sky."[39] In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes,
the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night.
On the form of the blue outstretched goddess of the sky appears the boat
of the sun, for the Egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in
a skiff, as they navigated the Nile; and in the boat is Ra, a child with
finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. As the day goes on the
child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the boat
are changed. In the hours of the afternoon the evil serpent, Apep, the
darkness, the Apopis of Plutarch, attempts to swallow the sun, but
twelve spirits draw the serpent by ropes to the side. In the hours of
the night the sun-god is inclosed in his shrine on the boat, which is
carried along by spirits changing every hour over the waters of the
under world to the east--just as the boats on the Nile are drawn against
the stream--so that he may again shine out in the east on the next
morning. The hieroglyphics accompanying the navigation of the night
hours contain seventy-four invocations of Ra in Amenti, _i.e._ in his
concealment. In a similar way the monuments of Edfu exhibit the growth
of the sun-god through the twelve hours of the day from a child to a
youth and a man, and an old man bowed with age, leaning upon a staff.
This last is called in the inscriptions, "The old man who becomes again
a child."[40]
The monuments exhibit Ra in red, with the sun's orb on his head, a
sceptre in one hand, and the symbol of life in the other. The cat, the
tawny bull, and the hawk are the chosen creatures of Ra; often he is
found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human
head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's orb. All the entrances of the
temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity, the
sun's orb, supported by two wings. From the sun-god the kings of Egypt
derived their might and power. They generally call themselves "the sons
of Ra," and they rule over Egypt as Ra rules over the world.
Hence we can assume that to the minds of the priests Ptah was
essentially the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. Ra
again was the propagating and sustaining power of the divinity embodied
in the sun.
At Hermopolis (Ashmunein), besides Thoth, whom the Greeks compared to
their Hermes, and the inscriptions name the "Lord of divine truth," the
"scribe of truth," to whom the white Ibis with black neck and beak is
sacred, the "children of Ptah" were worshipped. These were eight gods in
four pairs. Owing to this worship Hermopolis was known to the Egyptians
as Pe-sesennu, _i.e._ "the city of reverence." These children of Ptah
seem to have been spirits of the elements. In an inscription at Edfu we
find, "The eight gods, the very great, who are from the beginning,
created before the gods, the children of Ptah, arising through him,
begotten of him, to take possession of the south and the north, to
create in the Thebaid, and fashion in the land of Memphis. When they
arose the stream flowed out from the young waters, the child of the
lotus flower rose up in the boat, the beautiful one, making this earth
bright by his beams."[41]
At Sais, at Buto, on the Sebennytic mouth, and at Bubastis (Tel Basta),
on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, female goddesses were worshipped. To
the feast of the goddess of Sais, whom the Greeks called Athene, the
Egyptians came from the whole country, as Herodotus tells us, to Sais,
and lighted lamps on the appointed night, and even those who did not
come to Sais lit lamps, so that lamps were burning throughout all
Egypt.[42] Jamblichus and Proclus tell us that the goddess of Sais, the
Neith of the Egyptians, was the mother of the sun-god; the inscriptions
call Neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun,"
"mother of the gods." Hence we may assume that Neith was associated with
Ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the
creative power of nature was personified in her under a female form. The
feast of lamps may have symbolised the birth of light, and its rise from
the darkness.[43] The goddess of Buto, who was also worshipped at
Letopolis, near Memphis, was compared by the Greeks with their goddess
Leto, whose child was Apollo, the spirit of light, because at Buto the
victorious god of light of the Egyptians, of whom we shall speak below,
was said to have grown up.[44]
The sanctuary of the goddess at Bubastis was, according to Herodotus'
account, the most delightful, though not the largest or most costly, in
the whole of Egypt. It was situated in the middle of the city, and could
be seen from every side. "Beyond the market-place a paved road, about
forty feet in width, leads to the shrine, which is overshadowed by trees
on both sides. The precincts, a place of about a stadium square, is
surrounded with a trench one hundred feet broad; this is connected with
the Nile, and also planted with trees. The portico is ten fathoms high,
and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth
description. On the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and
the temple in which the statue of the goddess stands is also surrounded
by very lofty trees. At the festival of the goddess the Egyptians from
all the land go down in boats to Bubastis: in every boat is a number of
men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have
castanets, and strike them; the rest sing and clap their hands. The boat
touches at every city on the river bank; and here also the women sing
and strike their castanets, while others follow the women of the city
with shouts and raillery; others, again, dance; others expose
themselves. On arriving at Bubastis, they bring large offerings to the
goddess, and drink more wine at this festival than in all the rest of
the year. According to the accounts of the Egyptians, about 700,000 men
and women are collected at this festival, without counting children.[45]
Herodotus calls the goddess of Bubastis Artemis: her Egyptian name was
Bast and Pacht; and the city was called after her Pa-Bast, _i.e._ "abode
of Bast." On monuments this goddess has the sun's disk upon her head,
or, in the place of a human head, the head of a cat, which animal was
sacred to her. At Heliopolis there was a picture of Ra in the form of a
he-cat;[46] and in the inscription Pacht is called the daughter of Ra.
Ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat,
who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to
tread upon the path of the sun-god, and to defile the limbs of the holy
she-cat.[47] In the sketches in the "Book of the Dead" we find a
she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the
left a broad knife, with which she is cutting off the head of the
serpent.[48] The account given by Herodotus of the customs observed at
the festival are confirmed from other sources. The monuments exhibit
musicians, whose music is accompanied by the audience with clapping of
the hands; and Plutarch describes the castanets of the Egyptians adorned
with the figure of a human-headed she-cat, the sound of which was
intended to scare away the evil spirit.[49]
In the upper country other deities were worshipped. At Thebes, Amun,
known to the Greeks as Ammon, took the place occupied by Ptah at
Memphis. Hecataeus of Abdera relates that the Egyptians identified their
supreme god with the universe, but the god was invisible and
concealed.[50] Amun, as a fact, signifies "the concealed" or "veiled."
The monuments of Thebes exhibit him as a creative god with the Phallus,
as a ruling deity either standing or sitting on a throne; on his royal
head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the Egyptians were the
symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are
the sceptre and the symbol of life. His colour is blue. By his side
stands the goddess Mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the
inscriptions[51] style her. She wears on her head the vulture, or the
crown of Upper Egypt. She is also found on inscriptions with the head of
a vulture, the bird sacred to her, instead of a human head; and in
pictures of battles the vulture of Mut hovers over the Pharaoh as the
symbol of protection. The son of Ammon and Mut is Shu (Sosis, Sos), the
spirit of the atmosphere, "the bearer of heaven," as the inscriptions
name him.[52] This (Thinis) and Abydus were the chief seats of his
worship. In Manetho's list the reign of Shu follows on those of Ptah and
Ra.
In the place of Ammon we often find another divinity, Tum (Atmu.) This
was the sun-god in a special form. In Upper Egypt the spirit of the sun
was invoked under the names Tum and Mentu. Of these names the first
signified the declining sun, the sun of the west, the sun of
concealment, the sun in the under world; the second the rising sun, the
sun of the east, the sun of the day, the bright sun-god. Tum also wears
the double crown, and the two feathers of Ammon, or in the place of them
the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both
kingdoms. Like Ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot
himself," "the father of the gods;" like him also he is formed with the
beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative god he is the
creator of his name, _i.e._ of his properties; he is the primaeval night,
the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. To him also
belonged the primaeval water. According to Plutarch, the Egyptians
believed that the sun arose out of moisture, that it sprang up out of
water, and was nourished by it, and therefore water was the beginning
and origin of things. This account is confirmed by the monuments. As
light in the process of production, Tum is called "Ra in his egg;" and
as the spirit of light arising out of darkness and water, the horologe
and the sun-dial are his insignia.[53]
At Coptus, in Upper Egypt, a phallic god was worshipped under the name
Chem, whom the Greeks compared to their god Pan, and at the falls of
Syene a ram-headed god, Chnum (Chnemu, Chnuphis, Kneph), who in
inscriptions is named the lord of the "inundations," of the "outpouring
of the waters."[54] As a giver of fruits, the colour of his pictures on
the monuments is generally green. In the eyes of the inhabitants of
Upper Egypt Chnum was, according to the account of Plutarch, an
uncreated eternal spirit.[55] We must therefore regard him as a peculiar
form of the life-giving god. Chnum was often united with Ammon, inasmuch
as the latter assumes the attributes of Chnum, the ram's horns or even
head.[56] As the worship of Ammon passed beyond Egypt up the Nile as far
as Meroe, so the worship of Ammon-Chnum spread westward in the Libyan
desert as far as the oasis of Siwa, where the inhabitants were called by
the Greeks Ammonians. Here, even now, in the vicinity of a clear pool
surrounded by lofty palms, the remains of a considerable temple are to
be seen, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the picture of the
ram-headed deity.[57]
The worship of the goddess Hathor was widely diffused both in Upper and
Lower Egypt. The most renowned seats of the cultus were Aphroditopolis,
near Memphis; Edfu and Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She is called in the
inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on
the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. From this and
from her Grecian name we may conclude that she was the Egyptian goddess
of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form
hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of
maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is
represented with the horns of a cow--her sacred animal--on her head, and
between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In the rock-temple
at Abusimbel, which the wife of Ramses II. dedicated to Hathor, she is
represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches.
To this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.[58] In the
temple at Edfu, a structure of the Ptolemies, 360 local forms of Hathor
are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially
prominent.
It was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which
the Egyptians worshipped in these divinities--water, light, the clear
heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. But the phenomena
and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent.
Night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. Beside the waters
and the black fruitful soil of Egypt lay the boundless yellow desert,
from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. In the hot
months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers
withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the
life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent
powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always
gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of
nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life.
Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and
destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a
circular course from life to death, and death to life, the Egyptians
succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. They
personified this strife in certain divine forms. The beneficent power,
the divinity of life was allowed to succumb, and then to rise from
apparent death into a new life. Only for a moment could the evil powers
vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the gods of
beneficence.
After Helius, Hephaestus, Ammon, and Hermes, says Diodorus,[59] Cronos
and his sister Rhea ruled. These became the parents of Isis and Osiris,
of Typhon, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Plutarch tells us that, according to
the legend of the Egyptians, Rhea and Cronos were the parents of Osiris
and Isis, of Typhon and Nephthys. Osiris ruled happily over Egypt; but
Typhon conspired against him with seventy-two associates; they inclosed
Osiris in a chest and threw it into the Nile, and the stream carried it
down to the sea. When Isis heard of it, she put on mourning, and sought
with lamentation the body of Osiris. At last she found the chest in the
neighbourhood of Byblus, where the sea had cast it up; she mourned over
the corpse and carried it back to Egypt. And when Horus, the son of Isis
and Osiris, who grew up in Buto, came to his full strength, he prepared
to avenge the wrong which Typhon had done to his father and mother.
Thrice he fought with Typhon; the battle raged for many days, and Horus
conquered.[60]
According to the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus, Osiris (Dionysus)
and Horus (the Apollo of the Greeks) were the last rulers of the divine
race.[61] In the list of Manetho, Ptah was followed in the kingdom by
Ra and Shu (or, according to the Theban account, by Ammon, Tum, and
Shu), Cronos, Osiris, Typhon, and Horus. These then are the younger
gods; the evidence of the monuments shows that they were connected by
race with each other, but not akin to the three gods who ruled before
them. And as we also find that the five supplementary days added in the
Egyptian year to the original number of 360 (p. 29) were dedicated to
these gods, the first to Osiris, the second to Horus, the third to
Typhon, the fourth to Isis, the fifth to Nephthys--the natural
conclusion is that these gods were of later origin.[62] On the other
hand it is clear that the belief in Osiris and his power had already
arisen at the time when the great pyramids were erected.
The two gods at the head of this circle, whom Diodorus and Plutarch call
Cronos and Rhea, were known to the Egyptians under the names Seb and
Nut.[63] They are the spirits of the earth and sky. Osiris himself in
the inscriptions and records is called "the king of the gods," "the lord
of unnumbered days," "the king of life," "the regulator of eternity."
The inscription on the lid of a coffin runs thus--"Ra gave thee the
richly streaming light which gleams in thy eyes. Shu gave thee the
pleasant air which in thy lifetime was inhaled in thy nostrils. Seb gave
thee all fruits whereon thou livest. Osiris gave thee the Nile-water
whereon thou livest."[64] As a life-giving god, the colour of Osiris is
green; his sacred tree is the evergreen tamarisk; and his sacred bird a
kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers at the back of the
head. Osiris is always represented in a human form, and with a human
head.
The chief seats of the worship of Osiris were Philae and Abydus, in Upper
Egypt. In the temple on the island of Philae, formed by the Nile above
Syene, the history of the god was represented.[65] On a little island
close by, where only the priests might tread, lay the grave of Osiris,
overshadowed by tamarisks;[66] here were libations offered to him, and
Diodorus tells us that in Upper Egypt no more sacred form of oath was
known than the oath by Osiris who rests at Philae.[67] In the temple of
Osiris at Abydus (Arabat-el-Medfuneh) the wealthy Egyptians sought to be
buried, that they might rest in the vicinity of the god's grave. In
Lower Egypt Osiris[68] was worshipped in the cities of Memphis,
Sais,[69] and Busiris. At Busiris (the name Pe-osiri meant "abode of
Osiris"), on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, in the middle of the
Delta--it was the chief city of the district of Busiris--was situated
the largest temple of Isis, as we learn from Herodotus, and here also,
according to other evidence, the grave of Osiris was to be found.[70]
Here the whole land worshipped this god and goddess.[71] Thousands of
men and women assembled, according to Herodotus, made lamentation for
Osiris, and brought an offering to the greatest goddess (Isis). Amid
prayers the bull was flayed, the thighs and other parts cut out, and a
part of the belly filled with bread, honey, and incense; these were
drenched plentifully with oil, and set on fire, and so long as the
sacrifice burned the people lamented. When the lamentation ended, the
remainder of the sacrifice was eaten.[72] Plutarch says that with Osiris
the Egyptians lamented the receding of the Nile, the ceasing of the cool
north wind, the death of vegetation, and decrease in the length of the
day. On the 17th Athyr, the day on which Typhon slew Osiris (on this day
the sun passes through the Scorpion), the priests instituted rites of
lamentation, and, among other things, as a sign of the sorrow of Isis,
they exhibited for four days a gilded cow, covered with a black veil of
byssus--for the cow was the Egyptian symbol of this goddess. On the
19th Athyr, in the night, they went down to the sea, and the priests
brought out the chest, and the congregation cried, "Osiris is
found!"[73] Moreover, according to Plutarch, the holy rites represented
the burial of Osiris: in these the wood was cut for the chest, the linen
torn for cerements, and libations poured. A serpent was also slain in
effigy.[74] About the time of the winter solstice, as Plutarch tells us
in another place, the Egyptians carried "the cow," _i.e._ Isis, seven
times round the temple, and this procession was called the search for
Osiris.[75] On the monuments the Isis worshipped with Osiris appears
generally in a youthful shape, with the horns of a cow on her head, the
moon's disk between the horns, with the flower-sceptre and symbol of
life in her hands. The inscriptions denote her as the "royal consort,"
the "great goddess." An image in which she was represented in the form
of a cow was seen by Herodotus in the royal palace of the last Pharaohs
at Sais. "In a beautifully-adorned chamber lay the wooden image of a
cow, resting on her knees, not larger than a full-grown cow. The body
was covered with a purple robe; on the neck and head could be seen the
thick gilding, and between the horns a golden disk. Every day incense
was burned before the image; and at night a lamp was kindled before it.
Once a year," continues Herodotus, "this cow was carried out into the
open, when the Egyptians lamented the god, whose name I do not think
proper to mention now."[76]
Osiris and Isis, the spirits of blessing and life, were attacked by
Typhon. Plutarch observes that the Egyptians called Typhon Set,[77] and
this statement is confirmed by the inscriptions. The colour of Set was
burning red,[78] like the glowing sun in the dust of the desert; the ass
was the sacred animal of this god, and a peculiarly-formed animal his
symbol on the monuments. In poisonous serpents also the Egyptians saw
this destructive deity, and they brought the crocodile and hippopotamus
into association with him. The third of the five additional days of the
year (p. 29), which belonged to Set, was to the Egyptians an unlucky
day.[79] On a papyrus he is called "the almighty destroyer and
blighter,"[80] and with this agrees the statement of Plutarch, that
Typhon, according to the Egyptians, had filled the whole earth and
sea--which they call "the foam of Typhon"--with evils; and they
considered all animals, trees, and vegetables, all incidents of a
harmful and destructive nature to be works, parts and actions of
Typhon.[81]
The evil god can limit and overcome the beneficent power of nature, but
not for ever. Osiris had left behind a young son, who could hold Typhon
in check, though unable to suppress him entirely. Horus, as Plutarch
tells us, was born about the time of the winter solstice, and the
festival of the delivery of Isis was celebrated at the time of the
vernal equinox.[82] On the monuments we find Horus (Har), "the avenger
of his father Osiris," as the inscriptions call him, represented as a
naked child, with finger on lip, sitting on a lotus-leaf, or on a crook,
the symbol of dominion. Hence he is the young Horus, the Harpocrates of
the Greeks, the Harpechruti--_i.e._, "Har, the child"--of the Egyptians.
Then, according to the legend, he grows up at Buto; he becomes a
handsome youth, the strong Horus (Har-ver, Arveris of the Greeks), the
"great helper," the "pillar of the world." In the temple at Philae we see
him pouring libations before the bier of Osiris; on other monuments he
guides the sun's bark through the hours of the day.[83] At Hermopolis,
as Plutarch tells us, a hippopotamus was to be seen, on which a
hawk--the sacred bird of Horus, in which form the god is often
represented--fought with a serpent; and, according to the belief of the
Egyptians, Typhon escaped from Horus in the shape of a crocodile.[84]
The monuments represent Horus on the sun-boat in the act of stabbing a
serpent with a human head,[85] _i.e._, Apopis, the serpent Apep; or
standing on crocodiles with serpents in his hands; or as a winged sun's
disk contending with a hippopotamus. In an invocation of Horus,
belonging to the fourth century B.C., we find the following: "Come to me
quickly on this day to guide the holy bark (the sun's-boat), to force
back all lions to the land of Egypt, and all crocodiles into the Nile.
Shamelessness and sin (?) come and appear upon earth; but when Horus is
invoked he destroys them. All mankind rejoice when they see the sun.
They praise the son of Osiris, and the serpent turns back."[86] Hence to
the Egyptians Horus was the triumphant god of light (Har-phre,
Horus-sun), who subdues gloom, and winter, and drought. As a victorious
god arousing fresh life, he gives to the kings of Egypt life and
victory. The Greeks called the Egyptian Ra Helius, and Horus Apollo; and
these names correspond to the Egyptian conception of these deities. The
chief seats of the worship of Horus were the two cities which the Greeks
called the great and little cities of Apollo (Edfu and Kus) and Ombus.
At Edfu Hathor was worshipped beside Horus (p. 52).
Plutarch tells us that Isis, in the minds of the Egyptians, was the
female receptive part of nature. Osiris was the light, Typhon the
darkness, the obscuration of the sun and the moon; Osiris was the
fruit-giving Nile-water, Typhon the salt and barren sea; Osiris was
moisture, Typhon drought, the parching wind, which overcomes and
consumes moisture; Osiris was health, Typhon disease; Osiris was the
orderly, unchanging; Typhon the passionate, irrational, and giant-like;
disturbances, blight, and tempest.[87] It is incorrect, Plutarch
observes, in conclusion, to call water, the sun, or the earth and sky
Osiris and Isis; and not less so to call the glowing sun and hot wind
Typhon. If we merely ascribe to Typhon all that is immoderate or
irregular in these, whether in the way of excess or defect, and hold in
reverence and honour all that is orderly and good and useful as the work
of Isis, as the image, likeness, and essence of Osiris, we shall hardly
go wrong.[88]
Thus there can be little doubt about the meaning of the myth. When the
Nile receded and the sirocco from the south drove back the refreshing
north wind, when the hot days--for these are the seventy-two
fellow-conspirators of Typhon--parched up the soil; then had Typhon
struck down Osiris. Then, as Plutarch says, "the Egyptians bewailed the
decay of the fruits, and prayed the gods to send new in the place of
those that were gone, and allow them to spring forth again." When the
seed was cast into the ground, the Egyptians buried Osiris: but the
sacred rites were an imitation of the sufferings of Isis, and the
incidents which occurred when the body was deposited in the tomb. The
progressive decay of productive power towards the north during the hot
days, and the winter, which was indicated in the myth by the carrying of
the corpse of Osiris to the sea, and the custom of carrying the chest to
the coast (p. 57), is part of the Egyptian conception; that Isis
discovers the body at Byblus on the Phenician coast is probably an
invention of the Greeks, who confounded the Phenician horned goddess
Astarte, Ashtaroth Karnaim, with Isis. When Egypt was again fertilised
by the inundation, when the days began to lengthen after the winter
solstice, when the sun shone with fresh brightness, and the new fruit
budded forth, then Horus, the child born about the winter solstice,
waxed strong at Buto in the north of Egypt--then he overcame Typhon. The
renewed power of the sun, the returning life of nature, the fresh
blessings of the new year--these are the avenging son of Osiris.
When the creative and receptive powers of nature had thus been
comprehended in the forms of Osiris and Isis, the divinities in whom
creative power and receptivity had hitherto been perceived naturally
coalesced with these forms to a greater or less degree. Thus Ptah of
Memphis, Tum of Thebes, the sun-god of Heliopolis, are combined with
Osiris (the title Ptah-Osiris is not uncommon in the inscriptions,)
though they are also retained as separate deities. Thus also Isis is
identified with Neith of Sais, with Mut of Thebes, with Hathor, with
Bast,[89] the goddess of Bubastis. Horus, again, is identified with Chem
and Ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful,
vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. Plutarch is certainly right
in his remark that the Egyptians regard Osiris as the personification of
everything in heaven and the under world.[90] All the other deities were
transfigurations and manifestations of Osiris, mere modifications of his
nature. When Osiris is called the soul of Ra,[91] this can hardly have
any other meaning but this, that the appearance of the sun-god in the
visible world is an incarnation of the invisible nature of Osiris.
The Egyptians often represented their deities with the heads, or in the
shape of, the animals sacred to them; that is, they recognised the
nature of the deities who were primarily conceived under the form of
men, in the races of the beasts which they allotted to them. To the
Egyptians these animals must have appeared so closely and intimately
connected with the deity to which they belonged, that the nature of the
deity was better expressed and made more visible in the shape of the
beast than in the shape of man. We must assume that the predominance of
a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that
their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the
mind of the Egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action,
an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. The force of nature,
the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesced in the Egyptian
mind with the blind, unchanging action of animals. Yet animals were also
seen to possess freedom and movement, and an individual existence. This
combination of the type and the individual must have seemed to the
Egyptians to correspond to the nature of their deities. The mystery of
life, the natural law, which lay at the base of their worship, must for
them have reached its most distinct and lively realisation in these
animals.
The bull is the sacred animal of the creative gods: the cow of the
goddesses of birth and receptivity; the ram is sacred to Chnum; the hawk
and the cat to the deities of light and the sun; the beetle to Ptah; a
kind of heron to Osiris; the vulture to Ptah and Isis; a kind of ibis to
Thoth; the dog-ape to Anubis, the "ruler in the west;[92]" the crocodile
to the god Sebek, who was worshipped at Arsinoe, &c., &c. Herodotus
tells us that when a cat died in a house, all the inhabitants shaved
their eyebrows; and that at conflagrations the Egyptians directed all
their attention to saving the cats, not to quenching the flames, and if,
in spite of their efforts, a cat leapt into the flames and was burnt,
the Egyptians made a great lamentation.[93] "To each of the races of the
sacred animals," says Diodorus, "a certain piece of land is consecrated,
the products of which suffice for the food and tending of the race.
Those entrusted with the care of each race have to feed them. To feed
the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till
they come and take their food. The cats they coax by giving them bread
and milk, or chopped fish from the Nile, and thus provide them with
suitable food. These duties they do not scruple to perform before the
whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest
offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. With
special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and
country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose
servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage.
If one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and,
amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to
embalment. Steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its
scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy
sepulchres. Anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punished
with death; and everyone who has caused the death of an ibis or a cat,
intentionally or unintentionally, must die, and is often killed in the
most cruel manner, without any sentence passed upon him, by the
collected mob. So deeply rooted is the reverence for sacred animals in
the feeling of the people, so persistently does everyone cling to the
worship of them, that even at the time when Ptolemy was not yet declared
an ally by the Romans, and the nation was most anxious to pay respect to
visitors from Italy, and to give no cause for war, when a Roman had
unintentionally killed a cat, the mob gathered at his house, and neither
the officers sent by the king to quiet them, nor the prevailing awe of
the Romans, could protect him from their vengeance. This fact I have not
received from hearsay: I was in Egypt and saw the occurrence. But what
is done for the animals which are kept in the temples is easy to
narrate, but difficult for anyone to believe who has not seen it."[94]
Among the races of animals which, according to Egyptian belief, shared
in the nature of the deities to which they were sacred, were certain
pre-eminent specimens. These were recognised by certain signs by the
priests, and passed for a special incarnation of the deity. They were
brought into his temple, and there worshipped and prayed to as his
manifestation. The most sacred among these selected animals was Apis,
the bull, in the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. According to the account of
Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that a ray of light from heaven had
impregnated the cow, which brought forth an Apis: by Plutarch, the
impregnation is said to take place by a ray of the moon.[95] The priests
recognized Apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on
the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred
beetle of Ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and
bi-coloured hairs in the tail.[96] When an Apis was found, he was, says
Diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the
meadow of the "city of the Nile" (Nilopolis), where women were shown to
him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the Apis. Then he
was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of
Ptah, at Memphis. There he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed,
and the most precious frankincense was constantly burned before him. He
received the most beautiful garments, the richest bedding-places, and
the most handsome cows as his "bed-fellows"; the most distinguished men
provided him with the best food at a very great expense. When the Apis
died of old age he was honoured with a splendid funeral. "When, on the
death of Alexander, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, made himself master of
Egypt, it happened that the Apis died, and the person entrusted with his
care not only spent his own large fortune upon his burial, but borrowed,
in addition, fifty talents from Ptolemy. Even in my own times certain
feeders of the sacred animals have spent not less than one hundred
talents on a single funeral."[97]
"The Egyptians," Diodorus remarks, "are of opinion that the soul of the
dead Osiris passed into this bull, and thus continues among them, and
will so continue among their descendants." Plutarch says that the Apis
at Memphis was an image of the soul of Osiris. According to the usual
account of the priests, Osiris and Apis were one; for they taught that
the Apis was to be regarded as a fair image of the soul of Osiris.
Strabo tells us, "The bull Apis, which is revered as a god, is the same
as Osiris. The temple in which the Apis was kept stands beside the
temple of Hephaestus (Ptah). There is also a temple of Serapis in that
city, before which we saw sphinxes, buried in the sand, some to the
middle, some to the neck."[98] Evidence from other sources, no less than
the monuments, confirms these accounts of Diodorus and Plutarch. The
monuments exhibit the Apis with the sun's disk and the royal serpent
between his horns, and Greek papyri tell us that the keeper with whom
the Apis was placed was known as the "Herdman of Osorapi," _i.e._ of
Osiris-Apis (Osarhapi).[99] We may assume that this Osorapi was the
Serapis or Sarapis of the Greeks, and the temple of Serapis a temple of
Osorapi. The sphinxes buried in sand at Memphis have been discovered on
the plateau on which the inhabitants buried their dead to the west of
the ruins of this city. They are found here in two rows as often before
the entrance of temples between Abusir and Sakkarah. It is by following
this path of sphinxes that the discoverers were recently enabled to find
the ruins of the temple of Serapis, _i.e._ the temple of the grave of
Osiris-Apis, and the sepulchral chambers of the Apis-bulls hewn in the
rocks around it. The oldest of the tombs hitherto opened belongs,
according to the inscriptions, to an Apis buried in the time of
Amenophis III. (1524-1488 B.C.). Above ground rises a massive structure,
truncated at the top, and decorated with reliefs. This is the mortuary
chapel. A sloping passage, the entrance to which lies before this
structure, leads beneath the earth to a sepulchral chamber, where stands
a sarcophagus with the mummy of the Apis. The relief on the structure
above exhibits the king bringing a drink-offering to the Apis. Beside
the picture of the bull we read, "The living Osiris, the lord of the
sky: he is Tum (p. 51): his feathers are upon him: he gives life for
evermore." On the sarcophagus of an Apis buried in a similar tomb in the
reign of Horus (1455-1443 B.C.), we read:--"Apis-Osiris, the great deity
who dwells in Amenti, the ever-living lord." King Ramses II. (1388-1322
B.C.), in the second half of his reign, caused a broad gallery to be
excavated under the rock, on both sides of which chambers of about
twenty feet high were subsequently cut out as occasion required; in
these were placed the remains of the dead Apis-bulls in sarcophagi of
basalt or granite. When the gallery of Ramses was no longer sufficient,
Psammetichus I. caused a gallery still larger and more beautiful to be
excavated, and provided with handsome cells. After Darius had extended
this second gallery, the bodies of the bulls were buried in the chambers
of it down to the times of the latest Ptolemies. As yet sixty-four tombs
in all have been discovered; but of these only four were uninjured. All
the rest had been already opened by the Arabs, plundered, and in part
destroyed. The inscriptions on the tombs in the galleries give the same
representation of the Apis as the older sepulchres. He is "the Osiris
again restored to life," the "revived Apis of Ptah," "the living Apis,
which is Osiris abiding in Amenti," the "second Ptah." On a sarcophagus
we read:--"Here is Osiris Apis, who dwells in Amenti, the great God, the
eternal Lord, the ruler for all time." Another inscription remarks "that
he had been sought for three months in the valleys of Upper Egypt, and
on the islands of Lower Egypt. When found he had been brought to his
throne in the temple, to his father Ptah, in such and such a year, on
such and such a day. The happy duration of his life had been
six-and-twenty years; then the deity had been carried to burial, as he
had established himself in the good Amenti in order to unite himself on
his eternal throne with the house of centuries." Or, as it is said in
another inscription, "the holiness of Apis has been brought to unite
himself with the good Amenti."[100]
By this constantly renewed incarnation in the form of a bull, the emblem
of generation, the god of life gave the Egyptians a guarantee for the
continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this
world and the next. Whether other forms of incarnation beside this were
ascribed to the god cannot be determined.
At the time when the Nile began to rise, or shortly before it, there
appeared in Egypt from year to year a peculiar kind of heron,
distinguished by two long feathers on the back of the head.[101] This
was known to the Egyptians as Bennu. This bird, which announced or
caused the fertilisation or new life of the land, could not but belong
to the god of life. The whole race, or a select specimen, appears in
special connection with Osiris, and the temple at Heliopolis. In the
oldest portions of the Book of the Dead, which belong to the time of the
Amenemha and Sesurtesen, we find, "I am that great Bennu of On"
(Heliopolis); and the commentary adds, "Bennu is Osiris, viz., the
Osiris in On."[102] The inscriptions say of the great Bennu that "it was
self-begotten," that "it caused the divisions of time to arise."[103]
This production of himself signifies the creative power of Osiris, and
the origin of the seasons might well be attributed to the bird which
regularly appeared announcing the return of the period of fertilization.
With the cultus of the Bennu at Heliopolis is connected the story of the
phoenix. Herodotus tells us that he was informed by the inhabitants of
Heliopolis that a bird, which, if it resembled the pictures, was
gold-coloured and red, and like an eagle in shape and size, came from
Arabia to their city once in every 500 years, and buried the corpse of
his father in myrrh in the sanctuary of the sun-god.[104] From later
accounts we learn that the phoenix, on reaching the age of 500 years,
prepared a funeral pile of spices, and burned himself upon it; then he
recreated himself, and carried the remains of his old body to
Heliopolis.[105] Tacitus says: "In the consulship of Paulus Fabius and
Lucius Vitellius (_i.e._ in the year 34 A.D.) after a lapse of
centuries, the phoenix appeared in Egypt. This bird, which was sacred
to the sun, returned after an interval of 500 years, according to the
most common accounts; according to others after an interval of 1461
years. The first phoenix appeared in the reign of Sesostris; the
second under Amasis; the third in the time of the third Ptolemy; and as
there was only a lapse of 250 years between this Ptolemy and the reign
of Tiberius, some regarded the last phoenix as a spurious one."[106]
AElian remarks: "The Egyptians are not agreed when the 500 years are
completed; and the priests were at variance whether the bird would
appear then or later, and when he ought to come; but amid their
dissensions the bird suddenly appeared at the right time."[107] Pliny
informs us that the cycle of the great year was connected with the life
of this bird, and with his return the stars came again into their old
position.[108] Horapollo maintains that the phoenix was a symbol of
the sun, and signified one who returned after a long time from a far
country.[109] There is no doubt, therefore, that the alleged appearance
of the phoenix signified to the Egyptians the close of an astronomical
period. On the monuments the planet Venus is described as the "star of
Bennu-Osiris." As the morning star announced the day, the light
returning out of darkness, it could easily be appropriated to Osiris,
and that period might be connected with the cycles of the planet
Venus.[110]
The selected cats of the sun-god and his daughter, the goddess of
Bubastis, the hawk of Horus, the ibis of Thoth, the vulture of Mut, were
regarded by the Egyptians with no less veneration than the bulls of
Osiris. In a hymn to a male cat, which was kept for Ra at
Heliopolis--the hymn is to be found on a memorial pillar of the fourth
century B.C.--we read: "Thy head is the head of the sun-god; thy nose is
the nose of Thoth, the twice mighty lord of Hermopolis. Thy ears are the
ears of Osiris, who hears the voice of all who call upon him; thy mouth
is the mouth of the god Tum, the lord of life, he has preserved thee
from every stain. Thy heart is the heart of Ptah; he has purified thee
from every stain of evil in thy members: thy teeth are the teeth of the
god Chunsu (the moon-god). Thy thighs are the thighs of the god Horus,
the avenger of his father Osiris, who has retaliated upon Set the
mischief he purposed against Osiris."[111] Selected crocodiles--and even
the crocodile was worshipped, at least in some regions, as in the
Thebais and around the lake of Moeris--were to be found at Thebes and
Arsinoe. "For both these animals," says Herodotus "(and they are so tame
that they allow themselves to be touched), the priests put ornaments of
glass and gold in their ears, and bracelets on their fore-feet, and give
them the best of food both of meal and from the sacrifices, and attend
to them with the utmost care. When they die they are embalmed, and
buried in the sacred tombs."[112] Strabo, who travelled through Egypt
more than four hundred years later than Herodotus, narrates that a
sacred crocodile was kept in the lake of Moeris, which was tame to the
priests. He was fed with the bread, wine, and flesh brought to him by
visitors. "Our host," Strabo continues, "a man of distinction at
Arsinoe, who showed us the sacred things of the city, took cakes, roast
meat, and a drink mixed with honey, and went with us to the lake. On the
shore lay the crocodile; the priests went up to him, two of them opened
his jaws; and the third put in first the cakes, then the meat, and last
of all he gave him the drink. Then the crocodile ran into the water and
swam to the opposite bank. Another stranger came with similar presents:
the priests took them, ran round the lake and offered them to the
crocodile, when they had found him, in the same manner as before."[113]
Clement of Alexandria describes the glory of the Egyptian temples, and
then continues thus: "The innermost shrine is veiled with a curtain of
cloth of gold; when the priest removes the veil you see a cat, a
crocodile, or a serpent of the land rolling on a purple coverlet."
According to the account of Herodotus, the dead cats were embalmed in
sacred tombs at Bubastis, the hawks at Buto, the ibis at
Hermopolis.[114] Mummies of cats have been discovered at Thebes and
Sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vultures at
Thebes and Sioot; of hawks and ibises at Thebes, Hermopolis, Abydus, and
Memphis; of crocodiles at Thebes and Manfalut.[115]
This reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of
the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of
prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living
gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried,
would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded
fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and
culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling
with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of
beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only
creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself.
The consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to
whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken
series of incarnations of the deity.
In a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes
of the Egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. If we
set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication
that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their
attributes. Yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he
who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to
arrive at a complete divine existence. The primary result of this
feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of
personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected
from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man.
Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the
destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool,
secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has
devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses,
whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the
first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with his body must
be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life:
his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse.
Pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give
an account of it. "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "speak of the
dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as
eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in Hades.
Hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they
furnish in a most extraordinary manner."[116]
The tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed
out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the Libyan mountains. Those of the
wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower,
or a front and a back one. The upper or front chamber is furnished with
a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his
office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life
exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the
offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the
corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place
in the common sepulchres. The preservation of the corpse was
accomplished in various ways. Either the entrails were taken out through
an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected
against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it
was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre.
Like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more
or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The
dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the
corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with
inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the
beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle
was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which
were made of more or less costly wood. Rich persons added to their
coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid
of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be
opened without destroying the whole.
The sarcophagus was carried to the sepulchre in solemn procession, led
by the temple-servants, with the necessary implements, and the bull
destined for sacrifice to the dead. Next were seen the implements used
by the deceased in his lifetime; the insignia of his order, if he had
been a priest, or in any office; or, if he had held any military
command, his chariot followed. After this came the waiting-women, hired
for this purpose according to the custom of the East; and men with
palm-branches, the servants of the dead, and the priests; last of all
followed the sarcophagus on a boat--for the soul of the dead passed
like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. This boat was on rollers,
and drawn by oxen. The procession was closed by the mourners of the
family and the friends. When the bull had been sacrificed and
frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the
dead. He was praised, as Diodorus assures us, not because he was born of
a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well
instructed, because he had been pious towards the gods, and had lived a
just and sober life. Then the kinsfolk implored the gods to receive the
dead into the society of the good. The accompanying multitude joined in
the prayer, and extolled the faith of the deceased, who now would for
ever pass his life in the company of the good.[117] The coffin was then
brought into the upper chamber, and from thence, when the ceremonies
were completed, it was carried to its proper resting-place, and placed
on the west side of it; the place was then closed and sealed.
According to the Egyptian story, Osiris was not slain by Typhon. He did
not die; he was only taken away from men, as Diodorus says;[118] he
descended into the under world; he passed away into the invisible
region, while in the visible world he continued to live and work in the
vigorous strength of his son Horus. In the shape of Horus, or Ra, Osiris
wandered through the visible world. He changed only his name and shape
when, every evening, he went back to his distant home in order to be
alone. Thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the
sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful Ra, his son
Horus, the empire of this world. As the sun goes down every evening,
and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in
the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new
life, so to the minds of the Egyptians death, in all its shapes, was
only death in appearance, in reality it was a transition to a new life.
And as Osiris remained alive in death, and was the source of new life,
so through him and in him the soul of man was aroused out of death to a
new life. The sacred animals and men were of divine nature and origin;
they could not, therefore, end with death; death could only carry them
back to their divine origin, to that other world, from which they had
come; and in that other world they must awake to a new life.
Owing to this power of awakening life out of death, Osiris became to the
Egyptians the special god of the human soul. As lord of the under world,
Osiris is often found on the monuments in the shape of a mummy. His
colour was in this case black, like his bull in Memphis; his clothing
was white;[119] his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second
beholding of light. In this form of Osiris the Greeks recognised the
Dionysus of their Mysteries, whom they could also compare with Osiris as
the giver of fruits.[120]
The Egyptians, says Herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul
of man was immortal.[121] Plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us
that to the Egyptian Osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is
in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "His soul," he
continues, "was regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible,
and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the
dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and
untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are
delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and
invisible world, where pain is unknown, then Osiris becomes their king
and leader. They are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators
of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. This is the
explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."[122]
The inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but
above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the
so-called "Book of the Dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable
accuracy the views of the Egyptians on the fate of the soul after death.
The greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the
seventh or sixth century B.C. The contents show that rubrics and prayers
of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different
times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order
to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next
world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in
order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of
these manuscripts all the names under which Osiris can be invoked--and
they are more than a hundred--are gathered together. But fragments of
this Book of the Dead, or, more strictly, this Book of the Resurrection,
which forms the core of the Egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are
found hewn in sarcophagi--already with a triple commentary--which belong
to a date previous to the year 2000 B.C.
After death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the
earth into the nether world. Here, on the day of the "valuation of
words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its
actions weighed in the hall of double justice, _i.e._ the justice which
rewards and the justice which punishes. Osiris, with a crown upon his
head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne
surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers.
Beside him sit forty-two spirits; Anubis, the god with a jackal's head,
the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are
busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the
other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with
the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the
weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by
Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The
deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates
forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. He has done no
wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has
not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of
hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the
sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into
drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words
of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or
his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their
linen wraps.
The departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in
ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to
tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various
regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters
might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know
the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must
know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he
has sprung, and which he now again assumes. As in him divinity has been
made human, so is he now in turn deified. To secure this knowledge for
the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were
written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin.
If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was
pure,[123] he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from
the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of
life and the sky--Hathor and Nut--poured out upon him the water of life.
His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to
come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and
monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the
serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach
the fields of the sun-god.[124] Here the blessed planted the heavenly
wheat--of which the ears were two cubits in length--wandered at will in
shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.
Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various
existences--that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and
beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it
sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the
"entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."[125]
The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the
deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the
western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance
there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it
in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will
emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be
thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the
table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro
(Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live
happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead
has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the
names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold
justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."[126] On a
sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased
utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length
and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead.
"I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first
sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name,
the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday;
I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the
gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his
name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his
manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I
have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."[127] "The
sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant,"--so run the
commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that
the great god, existing by his own power, is Osiris; and the great Bennu
also is Osiris (p. 69). By Chem is meant Chemhor, _i.e._, the Horus, who
by his own power renews his own youth every day. On the cover of the
sarcophagus we find the formula, "When this chapter has been pronounced,
he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his
resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for
him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."[128]
Thus we must assume that the Egyptians believed in man's return to his
divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in
weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received,
after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead,
and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified
that it could adopt divine attributes and power, and even assume a
divine title.
According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that the
soul of the dead passed into an animal, born at the time; from this it
wandered into all the other animals on earth, in the air and the sea,
and after 3,000 years it was again born with a human body.[129] That
this account is incorrect is proved by the records already quoted; it
may perhaps have arisen from the Egyptian conception that the soul of
the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. But a
purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the
bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the
Egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and
the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. If a
pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts was really regarded by the
Egyptians as a course of punishment and amelioration, the beasts meant
can only be such as were not sacred. But as yet the examination of the
monuments and records has by no means completely cleared up the relation
of the soul to the body it has left, nor has it attained to any result
on the fate in store for the souls which were found wanting when weighed
in the balance.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Herod. 3, 37.
[35] De Rouge, "Revue archeolog." 1860, 1, 357.
[36] "De Isid." c. 51, 52; "De Pyth. Oraculis," p. 400.
[37] Macrob. "Sat." 6, 18.
[38] "De Isid." c. 36.
[39] De Rouge, "Zeitsch. d. d. m. Gesellschaft," after a sepulchral
pillar in the Berlin Museum, 4, 375.
[40] Champollion, Monuments, pl. 123 _seq._ Duemichen,
"Tempelinschriften." 1, 24. Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs,"
s. 13.
[41] Lepsius, "Die Goetter der vier Elemente;" Duemichen, in "Zeitsch. fuer
aegyptische Sprache," 1869 s. 7.
[42] Herod. 2, 61.
[43] Plut. "De Isid." c. 38.
[44] The identification of Neith with Athene (Herod. 2, 62; Plat. "Tim."
p. 21) rests on the similarity of the name, on the torch-races in honour
of Pallas at Athens, and the feast of lamps at Sais. Gutschmid,
"Beitraege zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 39, 45 ff., has shown
that Neith and Athene cannot be brought into agreement in points of
language. The inscription on the throne of Neith at Sais, given by
Plutarch ("De Isid." c. 9), "I am all that has been, is, will be, and no
mortal has lifted my robe," does not in the first part of it contradict
certain applications of the oldest text of the "Book of the Dead" (see
below). On the other hand, the second part is doubtful. In any case, the
fact that the _peplos_ has not been raised does not refer to the
inconceivable nature of the goddess, but to seclusion from sexual
intercourse. It can only mean that Neith was born from her own creative
force.
[45] Herod. 2, 60, 137, 138.
[46] Horapoll. 1, 10.
[47] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. morgenland. Gesellschaft," 10, 683.
[48] De Rouge, "Revue archeolog." 1860, 1, 339.
[49] Plutarch, "De Isid." c. 63; cf. Eber's "Gosen," s. 484.
[50] Plut. "De Isid." c. 9.
[51] Bunsen, "AEgypten," I, 446.
[52] Lepsius in "Zeitschrift fuer aeg. Sprache," 1868, s. 127.
[53] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 42, 48, 52; "Goetterkreis," s. 31-43.
[54] Plut. "De Isid." c. 11.
[55] Ibid. c. 21.
[56] Wilkinson, 4, 237, 242, 246.
[57] Parthey, "Abh. der Berl. Akademie," 1863; Minutoli, "Reise zum
Tempel des Ammon;" cf. Herod. 4. 181.
[58] Bunsen, "AEgypten," 1, 470; Lepsius, "Briefe," s. 105.
[59] Diod. 1, 13.
[60] Plut. "De Isid." c. 12-20.
[61] Herod. 2, 144; Diod. 1, 25, 44.
[62] Compare the beautiful explanation given by Lepsius of the game at
dice between Hermes and Selene, narrated in Plutarch, _loc. cit._
[63] Lepsius, "Chronol." 1, 91. As to the meaning of Seb, I should be
inclined to give the preference to the view of Brugsch.
[64] Brugsch and Lepsius in "Zeitschrift fuer aeg. Sprache," 1868, s. 122
ff.
[65] Wilkinson, "Ancient Egypt," 4, 189.
[66] Lepsius, "Goetterkreis," s. 35; "Briefe," 106-111.
[67] Diod. 1, 22.
[68] Plut. "De Isid." c. 20
[69] Plut. _ib._ 12-20; Strab. p. 803.
[70] Herod. 2, 59; Plut. _loc. cit._ 21; Diod. 1, 88.
[71] Busiris was the name of several towns in Lower Egypt; we must
assume that the chief town of the district of this name was the scene of
the festival. How the Greeks turned the name of this town into a king
Busiris who used to slay strangers, I cannot explain. Eratosthenes in
Strabo, p. 802, says: "There never was a king Busiris; the story may
have been invented owing to the inhospitality of the inhabitants of
Busiris;" and Diodorus observes: "It was not a king who was called
Busiris, but the grave of Osiris was so named in the native language"
(1, 88), which is near the truth.
[72] Herod. 2, 40, 42, 144.
[73] Plut. "De Isid." c. 35, 39.
[74] Plut. _loc. cit._ 12, 21, 42.
[75] Plut. _loc. cit._ c. 52. The inscriptions on the temple at Dendera
prescribe a seven days' lamentation for Osiris, beginning on the 24th
Choiak, and give full directions for the burial. Lauth, in the
"Zeitschr. f. aeg. Sprache," 1866, s. 64 ff.
[76] Herod. 2, 41, 132.
[77] "De Isid." c. 42.
[78] Diod. 1, 88.
[79] Plutarch, _loc. cit._ c. 12.
[80] Lepsius, "Goetterkreis," s. 53.
[81] Plut. _loc. cit._ c. 32, 40, 50.
[82] Plut. _loc. cit._ c. 65.
[83] Parthey, on Plut. "De Isid." c. 12.
[84] Plut. _loc. cit._ 50.
[85] Wilkinson, _loc. cit._ 4, 436.
[86] Brugsch in the "Zeitschr. d. d. m. Gesellschaft," 9, 10, 68 c. ff.
[87] Plut. "De Isid." c. 33, 39, 40, 49, 53, 65, 71.
[88] Plut. "De Isid." c. 64.
[89] Diod. 1, 27; Plut. "De Isid." c. 9, 56, 63.
[90] Plut. _loc. cit._ c. 61.
[91] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 46.
[92] Birch. "Gall." 1, 24, 44.
[93] Herod. 2, 66.
[94] Diod. 1, 83, 84.
[95] Plut. "De Isid." c. 43.
[96] Herod. 3, 28; AElian ("De Nat. Anim." 1, 10) speaks of twenty-nine
marks of Apis; cf Plin. "Hist. Nat." 8, 184.
[97] Diod. 1, 84, 85.
[98] Diod. 1, 85; Plut. "De Iside." c. 29; Strabo, p. 807.
[99] "Mem. pres. a l'Acad. des Inscript." ser. 1, 2, p. 15.
[100] Mariette, "Bulletin de l'Athen-Francais," Oct. 1856, p. 75; Juill.
Nov. 1855, pp. 67, 96, 98.
[101] "Ardea purpurea;" Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 50.
[102] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 43, 46, 51.
[103] Brugsch in "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.
[104] Herod. 2, 73.
[105] Plin. "Hist. Nat." 10, 2; cf. 13, 9; Pompon. Mela. 3, 8.
[106] "Annal." 6, 28.
[107] "De Nat. Anim." 6, 58.
[108] "Hist. Nat." 10, 5.
[109] Ibid. 1, 34, 35.
[110] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.; Lepsius, "Aelteste
Texte," s. 51; De Rouge, "Bulletin de l'Athen. Francais," 1856, p. 25
_seqq._
[111] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 683.
[112] Herod. 2, 69.
[113] Strabo, p. 811.
[114] Herod. 2, 65-67.
[115] Wilkinson, "Egypt," 5. 117, 123, 230 ff.
[116] Diod. 1, 51, cf. 92.
[117] Diod. 1, 92; Wilkinson, "Egypt," sec. ser. 2, 411.
[118] Diod. 1, 25.
[119] Plut. "De Iside," c. 33, 78.
[120] Herod. 2, 42; Diod. 1, 11, 13, 25.
[121] Ibid. 2, 123.
[122] "De Iside," c. 54, 61, 79, 80.
[123] Pierret, "Traduct. du Chap. I. du Livre des Morts;" "Zeitsch. fuer
aeg. Sprache," 1869, s. 135; 1870, s. 18 ff.
[124] De Rouge, "Revue archeolog." 1860, p. 79 ff.
[125] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 4.
[126] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 6, 9.
[127] Lepsius, _loc. cit._ s. 30 ff.
[128] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 25.
[129] Herod. 2, 123.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KINGDOM OF MEMPHIS.
The lists of the Egyptians place Menes (Mena) at the head of their
series of kings. They describe him as a native of This, a place in the
neighbourhood of Abydus, below Thebes, a district which Diodorus
considers the oldest part of Egypt. Menes passes for the founder of the
kingdom and the builder of Memphis (Mennefer); he is said to have taught
the Egyptians the worship of the gods and the offering of
sacrifice.[130] Herodotus informs us that he learnt from the Egyptian
priests that Menes had thrown a dam across the Nile about 100 stades
above Memphis, and thus forced the stream which previously flowed at the
foot of the Libyan chain of hills to leave its ancient channel, and flow
at an equal distance between the two ranges. When the land thus gained
by the dam had become firm, he built upon it the city, now called
Memphis, and still situated in the narrow part of Egypt. Towards the
north and west sides of the city, Menes had excavated a lake, and filled
it with water from the river--which was itself a protection to the city
on the east,--and in the city he built the greatest and most remarkable
temple of Hephaestus (Ptah).[131] Diodorus observes:--The founder of
Memphis, the most splendid city in Egypt, selected the most suitable
site by founding the city in the place where the Nile separates into
several arms, so that the city, lying on the pass, commanded the
navigation up the Nile. He also obtained for the place a wonderful
advantage and security by throwing a huge dam in front of it towards the
south, as the Nile at the time of inundation overflows the district.
This dam was a protection against the rising water, and at the same time
served as an acropolis and defence from the attack of enemies. On all
the other sides of the city he caused a large and deep lake to be
excavated, which received the overflow of the water and afforded the
strongest protection for the city. The circuit of the city he placed at
150 stades, and owing to the excellence of the situation, Memphis was
generally chosen by the kings as their place of residence.[132] The
situation, just a little above the place where the river-valley,
hitherto enclosed between the two ranges of hills, opens out into the
Delta, was certainly the best adapted to form the centre of an empire
extending over the narrow valley of the upper river and the broader
district of the Delta, with its wealth of corn-land and meadows, and to
check the entrance of enemies who came from the north-west or the
north-east into the upper valley, even when it was no longer possible to
maintain the Delta against them. About fifteen miles above Memphis, at
Kafr-el-Yat, the Nile makes a considerable bend to the east, and modern
investigations claim to have discovered traces showing that this curve
is due to the hand of man.
Menes, whose accession, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, would
fall in the year 3892 B.C., was followed on the throne by King Athotis
(Ateta), who was said to have built the citadel at Memphis. Next came
Kenkenes, whose successor was Uenephes, to whom is ascribed the erection
of the pyramids. We have seen what care and labour the Egyptians devoted
to their tombs, their "everlasting houses." The west, where the sun
sets, and the desert spreads out in boundless expanse beyond the Libyan
range, belonged in their minds to the gods of night, of the under-world,
and of death. About ten miles to the west of Memphis there rises a
desolate and barren plateau of rock, which for many miles runs parallel
to the river, about 100 feet above the blooming and animated valley
through which the Nile takes its course. In that rocky soil, which
separates the fruitful land from the desert, the bodies of the dead were
placed in chambers, either hewn in the solid stone, or, where the soil
was less firm, built of masonry, and thus secured even from the overflow
of the river. Even the kings sought their resting-places on this plateau
of rock. They, above all, gave attention to the solidity and durability
of their tombs; and in death, as in life, they wished to be kings. The
place where a king rested must be marked as royal, and visible from a
distance; the grave of a king must tower over the rest; his chamber must
be of all most difficult to open. Thus at first blocks of stone were
rolled upon the closed burial-place of a king, or a mound of earth was
raised over it, if sand and soil were to be obtained in the
neighbourhood. The strong winds which blew from the desert made it,
however, necessary to secure these mounds, and cover them with stone.
Hence by degrees the sepulchral heaps acquired a definite shape: they
were rectangular structures, lessening toward the apex; then, by
extending the base and sharpening the gradient, they were brought into
the form of pyramids, and thus obtained the greatest possible firmness
and solidity. For a similar reason the core, or central part, was no
longer made of earth, but of brick; where blocks of stone could be
obtained they were fitted into the core with more and more regularity,
until at last these structures were completed within and without of
rectangular hewn blocks of stone in regular layers, and artificial
mountains of stone towered over the sepulchral chambers of the kings.
"At a distance of forty stades from Memphis," Strabo tells us, "is a
range of hills, on which stand the pyramids, or sepulchres of the kings.
Among these, three are especially deserving of notice. Rectangular in
shape, they are about one stadium high; and the height is slightly less
than the length of either side. The sides are not equal, one is a little
longer than the other, and near the middle of the longer side is a
stone, which can be taken out. Behind this a winding, hollow passage
leads to the tomb. Two of these pyramids stand close to each other on
the same level; at a distance, on a higher level, rises the third,
which, though much smaller, has been erected at much greater cost."
"Like mountains," says Tacitus, "the pyramids have been raised amid
impassable quicksands by the emulation and power of the kings."[133]
About seventy of these structures, which rise in a long line on the
plateau of Memphis, from Abu Roash to Dahshur,[134] remain as witnesses
of the rulers of the old kingdom of Memphis and their dependants, of the
artistic skill and laborious industry of their nation. Of some only the
bases and a few fragments are in existence; of the largest, the points,
and at least a part of the casing, are either decayed, fallen down, or
broken off; for at a later time the Arabs used these monuments as
quarries. Three pyramids which stand in the neighbourhood of the modern
Abusir are formed of rough blocks of stone, both in the cores and in the
passages to the sepulchral chambers; and these blocks are fastened
together by mud from the Nile poured in between them; their casings, now
decayed, were of lime-stone blocks, and in height they extended from 150
to 200 feet. Others, originally at least, of an equal height, of which
the core was regularly built of brick, are found farther to the south
near Dahshur. The architecture of these remains shows that the kings of
Memphis commenced building their tombs soon after their accession. They
began, it would seem, with a core of moderate size, and in this they
probably constructed a sort of temporary chamber. If time sufficed, the
first plan was overlaid with new strata, and thus it gradually increased
in size. Should the builder die before the whole was completed, the
casing of the structure thus raised in the form of steps was left to the
successor.[135] Between seven smaller pyramids, built regularly of stone
blocks, which are about 150 feet in height, and of similar plan and
structure, rise the three largest at Gizeh; the highest was originally
480 feet in height, though now it measures only 450 feet; the next
greatest, standing south-west of the highest, is now 447 feet, and was
originally 457 feet in height; the third measures but 218 feet. The
second largest, originally twenty-three feet lower than the largest, is
on a slightly higher level, the masonry is inferior to the largest, and
the chamber lies immediately under the area of the structure. The
largest measures 716 feet, or 500 Egyptian cubits,[136] on each side of
the area; the height along the slope is 574 feet, and the structure
contains about ninety million cubic feet of masonry. Fifty feet above
the original area, now covered with the sand of the desert, in the
middle of the north side, there commences a gradually descending
passage, about three feet broad and four feet high, leading to a chamber
hewn deep in the foundation rock. This chamber lies more than one
hundred feet below the level of the pyramid, exactly 600 feet under the
apex, and in a perpendicular line with it; it is thirty-six feet above
the level of the Nile. From this passage to the chamber there branches
off, just behind the entrance, a horizontal shaft, and from this rises
an ascending passage leading to two chambers, one over the other, which,
like the sepulchral chamber below, lie in the axis of the pyramid. The
third and smaller pyramid--its sides measure 333 feet, and the height of
the slope is 262 feet--being built upon looser soil, required a greater
substructure, on which it rose in five or six perpendicular and
gradually diminishing stories, the spaces between being filled up with
bevelled masonry. Up to a considerable height the casing consists of
polished slabs of granite. Under this structure in the native rock lies
a larger chamber, and behind this the sepulchral chamber.
When Herodotus visited Egypt about the middle of the fifth century B.C.,
and questioned his interpreter and guide about the builders of these
three pyramids, he was told in answer that they were built by Cheops,
Chephren, and Mycerinus. He was told that Cheops first caused a road to
be made from the stone quarries in the Arabian chain of hills--the range
east of the Nile--down to the river, and again from the west side of the
river to the high ground above Memphis. The road was built of smoothed
stones five stades in length, ten fathoms broad, and at the highest
places thirty-two fathoms high; and it was intended to convey the
materials from the Arabian side of the river. In making this road and
building the subterranean chamber for the grave of Cheops ten years were
consumed, although 100,000 men were constantly employed upon it by
spaces of three months, when they were relieved by an equal number of
fresh workmen. Twenty years were then spent upon the pyramid, of which
each side and the height measured 800 feet; it was built in such a
manner that the structure was carried out by landings and steps, like a
staircase. When the proper height was reached, the landings were covered
from top to bottom with smoothed and carefully-fitted stones, and no
stone is less than thirty feet. Under the surface was a canal carried in
masonry from the Nile round the subterranean chamber. "It is also
inscribed on the pyramid," Herodotus continues, "what the workmen
consumed in radishes, onions, and garlic, and on these, as I well
remember, the interpreter who read the letters told me, 1,600 talents of
silver were spent. If this is true, what must have been expended upon
iron for the tools, and on food and clothing for the workmen?" When
Cheops had reigned fifty years he was succeeded by his brother Chephren,
who also built a pyramid, though not equal in size to the other, and
without any chamber or subterranean canal. "Both pyramids stand on the
same elevation, of about one hundred feet; but the second is forty feet
lower than the first; the lower stratum is built of vari-coloured
Ethiopian stone." When Chephren had reigned fifty-six years, he was
followed by Mycerinus, the son of Cheops. This king also left a pyramid
behind him, "but his pyramid was much smaller than that built by his
father: the sides are only 280 feet in length; the lower half is built
of Ethiopian stone."[137]
The account of Diodorus is as follows:--King Chemmis of Memphis reigned
fifty years, and built the largest of the three pyramids, which in
height measures more than six plethra, and along the sides more than
seven plethra. It is entirely constructed of solid stone, very difficult
to work, and therefore of endless durability. Even now, although not
less than a thousand, or as some say even more than 3,400, years have
passed, the structure is uninjured, and the joints of the stones
unloosened. Besides, we are told that these stones were brought from a
considerable distance out of Arabia, and the structure was carried to
its present height by means of mounds of earth. Most wonderful of all,
no traces of these mounds, no fragments from the hewing and smoothing of
the stones remain; so that it would seem that this work was not
accomplished gradually by the hand of man, but was planted complete by a
god in the midst of the surrounding sand. Though it is said that 360,000
men bestowed their labour on the structure, the work can hardly have
been finished in twenty years, and the number of men who erected it must
also have removed the mounds of earth and excavated material, and put
everything in its original condition. Chemmis was followed by his
brother Kephren, who reigned fifty-six years. Other accounts tell us
that the kingdom descended on his son, Chabryes, and not on his
brother. But all agree that he built the second pyramid, which resembles
the first in the art of the execution, though much inferior in size,
since on the sides it measures only one stadium (or, according to recent
measurement, exactly 700-1/2 Greek feet). And while the money spent in
radishes and garden herbs for the builders is inscribed on the larger
one, the smaller remains without any inscription. Though both these
kings had destined these tombs for their place of burial, neither is
buried there. Roused by the burden of their labours, the cruelty and
violence of these kings--and in Herodotus also Cheops and Chephren
appear as wicked and godless kings--the people threatened to take their
bodies out of their graves and insult them. Terrified by this threat,
each of the kings in his last moments bade his relations bury him
privately in a secret place. After Kephren reigned Mycerinus, whom
others call Mencherinus, the son of Chemmis. He built the smallest
pyramid. Though less in size, it surpasses the others in the excellence
of the work and the beauty of the stone; up to the fifteenth layer it
consists of black stone resembling the stone of Thebes; from thence to
the top the stone is the same as in the other pyramids. On the north
side is written the name of the builder, Mycerinus. Abhorring the
cruelty of his predecessors, Mycerinus, as we learn, sought to make his
rule moderate and beneficent to his subjects, and did everything to gain
the affections of the nation. He paid great attention to the
administration of justice; and to the common people who had not received
from the tribunals such a sentence as seemed just to him, he made
presents. "But as to the building of the pyramids, there is no agreement
either among the Egyptians or their historians; some ascribe them to
the kings I have mentioned; some to other kings."[138]
The accounts given by Herodotus and Diodorus of the structure of the
largest pyramid are completely confirmed by modern researches. Even now
it is thought that traces can be recognised of the causeway which served
for the transport of the materials from the left bank of the Nile to the
plateau.[139] The pyramid itself is built in large regular steps
constructed of squares of granite. The yellow lime-stone of the casing
must also have been really brought from the Arabian side of the Nile,
because better stone of that kind was found there.[140] On the other
hand, the account of a subterranean canal round the grave chamber is
merely a legend of the people, who desired to adorn with new marvels the
structure already so marvellous; it is impossible, simply because the
lower chamber, and not only the area of the pyramid, is above the lower
level of the Nile. The 100,000 workmen of Herodotus, changed every three
months, and the 360,000 of Diodorus--a number formed from the days in
the old Egyptian year--have arisen out of the free invention of later
times, although the building must certainly have occupied more than a
decade of years. Inscriptions are not found now on the external side of
the pyramid. If such were in existence at the time of Herodotus, they
certainly contained other things than those which the interpreter
pretended to read there. The interpreters who served as guides to the
travellers of that day in Egypt, as the dragoman does now, could hardly
have read the hieroglyphics; they contented themselves with narrating
the traditions and stories popularly connected with the great monuments
of past time, not without certain exaggerations and additions.[141]
But the names of the builders of the three largest pyramids, which these
interpreters mentioned to the Greeks, are confirmed by the monuments. In
the deep chamber of the largest pyramid there is no sarcophagus; in the
upper of the two chambers which lie in the axis of the pyramid there has
been found, it is true, a simple sarcophagus of red granite, but it
bears no inscription. Above these chambers, however, there are certain
small spaces left open, with a view no doubt of diminishing the pressure
of the stone-work upon them, and on the walls of these spaces is written
the name, Chufu, Chnemu Chufu, in hieratic characters.[142] The same
name frequently recurs in the tombs surrounding this pyramid, in which,
according to the inscriptions, the wives, sons, officers, and priests of
Chufu were buried; and among them the scribe of the buildings of the
kings and the priest of Apis, who was at the same time keeper of the
gates and of the palace. In this inscription the pyramid of Chufu is
called "Chut." On a monumental stone found in the Apis tombs--now in
Cairo--we read, "The living Horus, the King of Egypt, Chufu, has built a
temple to Isis near the temple of the Sphinx, north of the temple of
Osiris, and has erected his pyramid beside the temple of Isis."[143]
Chufu himself is not found in Egypt, but in the peninsula of Sinai he is
pictured in relief on the rocks in the Wadi Maghara. He is represented
as lifting his war-club against an enemy whom he has forced upon his
knee and seized by the head-dress with the left hand.[144] In an
inscription in the same valley, the oldest which we possess, his
predecessor Snefru claims to have subjugated these regions.
In the second pyramid, in the chamber under the surface, a sarcophagus
of granite has been discovered on the floor without any inscription. But
in the inscriptions on the graves, especially on the grave of the
architect of King Chafra, his pyramid is mentioned as "the great
pyramid." Between the paws of the Sphinx which stands to the north of
the second pyramid, hewn out of the living rock, is a monumental stone,
on which is read the name Chafra,[145] and in the ruins of a temple
lying near the Sphinx--the same without doubt which is mentioned in the
stone at Cairo--seven statues have been exhumed, the inscriptions on
which prove that they represent "the Master and Gold Horus, Chafra, the
good god, the lord of the crown," _i.e._, King Chafra himself.[146] And
lastly, the inscriptions on the tomb of a woman whose name is read as
Mertitef, prove that she was the chief favourite of Snefru and of Chufu,
and had been united to Chafra.[147] Hence Chafra must have succeeded
Chufu, and the "great" pyramid built by him can hardly have been any
other than that which now holds the second place.
In the sepulchral chamber of the third pyramid, it is known in the
inscriptions as "Har," _i.e._, "the supreme," the sarcophagus of King
Menkera with his mummy has been discovered. It is made of blue basalt,
and bears the following inscription:--"O Osiris, King Menkera, ever
living one; begotten of the sky, carried in the bosom of Nut, scion of
Seb (p. 55). Thy mother Nut is outstretched over thee, in her name of
the mystery of the sky may she deify thee and destroy thy enemies, King
Menkera, ever living one."[148]
It is therefore an ascertained fact that Chufu, Chafra, and Menkera were
the builders of the three great pyramids. In the mouth of the Greeks the
name Chufu passed into Cheops, and by a farther change into Suphis. The
name Chemmis in Diodorus has arisen out of the name Chnemu in the form
Chnemu Chufu; from Chafra naturally arose Chephren, Kephren, and
Chabryes. In the list of kings in Eratosthenes, the fourteenth successor
of Menes is Saophis; Eratosthenes allows him a reign of twenty-nine
years. His successor, who has a reign of twenty-seven years, bears the
same name. The second Saophis is followed by Moscheres with a reign of
thirty-one years. Manetho's list gives the name Suphis to the
twenty-seventh king after Menes, and he is said to have reigned
sixty-three years. Then follows a second Suphis, with a reign of
sixty-six years, and this king is succeeded by Menchres, who reigned
sixty-three years. On the first Suphis in Manetho's list the excerpt of
Africanus remarks: "This king built the largest pyramid, which Herodotus
assigns to the time of Cheops;" in the excerpt of Eusebius, both in the
Greek text and the Armenian translation, this remark is made on the
second Suphis. Hence we can have no hesitation in identifying the Cheops
and Chephren of Herodotus, the Chemmis and Kephren of Diodorus, with the
first and second Saophis and Sufis of the lists, the Chufu and Chafra
of the inscriptions; and the Mycerinus of Herodotus and Diodorus is
beyond doubt the same as the Moscheres of Eratosthenes, the Mencheres of
Manetho, and the Menkera of the sarcophagus in the third pyramid. In the
national tradition of the Egyptians, as received by the Greeks, Cheops
and Chephren were called brothers, and this is no doubt mainly due to
the fact that the monuments of these two kings surpassed all the other
pyramids, and were of nearly the same height and size. It is impossible
that Cheops should have reigned fifty years, and his brother Chephren
who succeeded him, fifty-six years, as Herodotus and Diodorus tell
us--the inscription quoted above makes the same woman the favourite of
the predecessor of Chufu, of Chufu, and Chafra also; even more
impossible is it that the first Suphis should have reigned sixty-three
years, and the second sixty-six, as given in the list of Manetho, if
they were brothers; or that Mycerinus, whom Herodotus as well as
Diodorus calls the son of Cheops, should have succeeded Chephren with a
reign of sixty-three years, as Manetho tells us. Like their brotherhood,
the wickedness of Cheops and Chephren is due to the popular legends of
later times. The sight of the enormous structures forced on later
generations the reflection what labour, what stupendous efforts must
have been necessary for their erection. This reflection united with
certain dim memories, and gathered round the rule of the strangers, the
shepherd-tribes, which for a long time afflicted Egypt, as is clear
enough from a trait in the narrative of Herodotus. He assures us that
the Egyptians could scarcely be induced to mention the names of the
kings who built the great pyramids: they spoke of them as the works of
the shepherd Philitis.[149] In the eyes of the Egyptians of the olden
time, tombs would never have appeared to be works of impiety and
wickedness, realising as they did in such an extraordinary degree the
object most eagerly desired, a secure and indestructible resting-place
for the dead: with them they would rather pass as works of singular
piety. Without doubt it is the older tradition, that of the priests,
which meets us in the observation appended in the list of Manetho and
the excerpt of Africanus to the first Suphis, and in the excerpt of
Eusebius, both in the Greek text and Armenian translation, to the second
Suphis, in which we are told that this king had composed a sacred book,
and the Egyptians regarded it as a very great treasure.
According to the inscription, Chufu had erected a temple to Isis by the
side of the temple of the Sphinx, and therefore the latter temple must
have been already in existence. And as a fact the ruins still found
beside the great Sphinx give evidence of very ancient workmanship. There
was a court, the ante-court of the temple, which surrounded a portico
supported on twelve square pillars; next came a hall supported on
monoliths, the temple itself, and finally the Holy of Holies, surrounded
by small chambers. The material used in building was limestone and
granite. The symbolic form of the deity, to whom the temple belonged,
was the enormous Sphinx, 190 feet in length, hewn out of the rock, with
the body of a lion and the head of a man. From the memorial stone before
it we learn that it symbolized the god Harmachu (Armachis of the
Greeks), _i.e._ Horus in Splendour (_har-em-chu_).[150] From the
inscription on this stone, which dates from the time of Tuthmosis IV.,
it seems to follow that it was Chafra, who caused this shape to be hewn
out of the rock and consecrated it to the god. Other inscriptions inform
us that the pyramids were regarded as sepulchral temples, and that there
were priests for the service of the princes who were buried there, and
had attained to a divine nature, and these services were still in
existence at the time of the Ptolemies. One of the tombs at Gizeh
belongs to a priest, a relation of Chafra, whose duty it was to "honour
the pyramid Uer (the Great) of king Chafra;" another is found at
Sakkarah belonging to "a priest of Chufu, and Chafra."[151] On a
monumental stone of the time of the Ptolemies (found in the Serapeum,
and now in the Louvre) mention is made of the temple of Harmachu on the
south of the house of Isis, and of a certain Psamtik, the prophet of
Isis, of Osarhapi (p. 67), of Harmachu, of Chufu and Chafra.[152]
The temples of Osiris and Isis, near the three great pyramids, and the
inscription on the sarcophagus of king Menkera are evidence that the
cultus of Osiris, the belief in his rule in the next world, in the
return of the soul to her divine origin, and her deification after
death, was already in existence at the time when these monuments were
erected. The use not of hieroglyphics only, but also of the hieratic
alphabet, in red and black colours, in the pyramid of Chufu, and the
graves around it, in the sculptures of which writing materials and rolls
of papyrus are frequently engraved, the forms of domestic and household
life, of agriculture and the cultivation of the vine, of hunting and
fishing, preserved on the tombs of Gizeh, are evidence of the long
existence and manifold development of civilisation, no less than those
great monuments, or even the graves themselves with their artistic mode
of construction, their severe and simple style of execution, and the
pleasing forms of their ornaments. Of the seven statues of Chafra,
discovered in the temple of the Sphinx, one, chiselled out of hard green
and yellow basalt, has been preserved uninjured. The king is represented
sitting, and naked, with the exception of a covering on the head and a
girdle round the loins. The lower arms rest on the thighs, the left hand
is outstretched, the right holds a fillet. The sides of the cube, on
which Chafra is seated, are formed by lions, between the feet of which
are stems of papyrus. On the high back of the chair, behind the head of
the king, sits the hawk of Horus, whose wings are spread forwards in an
attitude of protection. The execution of the statue of the king is a
proof of long practice in sculpture. The natural form is truly and
accurately rendered, and though even here Egyptian art displays its
characteristic inclination to severity, and correctness in the
proportions of the body, to repose and dignity, yet in the head there is
an unmistakable attempt to individualize an outline already fixed--an
attempt not without success. Still more distinctly individual are two
statues found near the pyramids of Meidum, from the reign of the
predecessor of Chufu, a wooden statue, and certain pictures in relief
from the tombs near the great pyramids. The architecture, no less than
the sculpture, of these most ancient monuments, displays a high degree
of experience and a knowledge of the principles of art, a conscious
purpose and effort existing together with a fixed obedience to rule.
We learnt from Diodorus that the great pyramids were erected 1,000, or,
according to some, 3,400 years before his time. According to the list
of Manetho, Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus belonged to the fourth
dynasty. If we accept the incredible reigns of sixty-three, sixty-six,
and again, sixty-three years, which Manetho allows to those three kings,
they reigned over Egypt, according to Lepsius' dates, from the year 3095
B.C., to 2903 B.C.
At a period subsequent to these kings the list of Manetho speaks in the
sixth dynasty of a king Phiops, who came to the throne as a child in his
sixth year, and lived to be 100 years old. The list of Erastosthenes
mentions a king Apappus, who reigned for 100 years. The monuments show
us a king Pepi, in whom we recognise Phiops and Apappus, and in
consequence a reign of ninety-five years is assigned to him (2654-2559
B.C.). Yet hitherto the sixteenth year is the highest found on the
monuments for the reign of Pepi; and in the inscription on a tomb at
Abydus, now in the museum at Cairo, a man of the name of Una declares
that he had filled the highest offices in the kingdom under Teta, the
predecessor of Pepi, under Pepi, and again under his successor, Merenra.
If one person could be the minister of three successive rulers, it is
clear that the second of these reigns could not have lasted 95 or 100
years. Under the reign of Pepi, as well as his immediate predecessors
and successors, _i.e._, in the sixth dynasty of Manetho, the development
of Egypt must have undergone a certain change. The kings, previous to
this family, are represented on the monuments with a cap falling to one
side, or with a tall head-dress; Pepi is represented on one relief with
this head-dress, but on another with one of a lower shape. The tall
white cap is the crown of Upper Egypt, the lower red one is the crown
of Lower Egypt. It is no longer on the plateau of Memphis, and among the
tombs there, but in Middle Egypt, near El Kab, and in the valley of
Hamamat, which leads from Coptus to the Red Sea, that we find the
monuments of Pepi and his race, and the tombs of their priests and
magistrates are at Abydus. Under this dynasty, therefore, the central
point of the kingdom appears to have been moved from Memphis in the
direction of Middle Egypt. On the west coast of the peninsula of Sinai,
in the Wadi Maghara, Pepi is seen striking down an enemy; and from the
inscription on the tomb of Una, it is clear that Pepi's kingdom extended
up the Nile as far as the negroes, that his successor caused dockyards
to be built in Nubia, and that Una had to procure blocks of fine stone
for the sarcophagus of Pepi and his successor, and also for the pyramid
of the latter.[153]
The removal of the centre of the kingdom from Memphis, which is
noticeable under the family of Pepi, was completely carried out under a
later house, which is stated in the lists to belong to Thebes--the
eleventh and twelfth dynasty of Manetho. Upper Egypt became the seat of
the royal power; Thebes (the No-Amon, _i.e._ possession of Ammon, of the
Hebrews) took her place beside Memphis. The princes of this new dynasty
are no longer called in the monuments the lords of Upper and Lower
Egypt, but the "lords of both lands;" they always wear both crowns.
Hence it is possible that this royal house in the first instance ruled
over Upper Egypt only from Thebes, and that for a long time Upper and
Lower Egypt existed side by side independently, till the kings of Thebes
succeeded in reducing Lower Egypt under their dominion.
Of Amenemha, the first king of this house, who ruled over Upper and
Lower Egypt (2380-2371 B.C.), a colossal figure of red granite is still
in existence, which was discovered in Lower Egypt at Tanis (San), not
far from Lake Menzaleh.[154] His power must have extended up the Nile
over the adjacent part of Nubia, for a pillar discovered there informs
us that he intrusted an officer with the superintendence of the gold
mines in Nubia.[155] His successor, Sesurtesen I. (2371-2325 B.C.),
erected a temple to Ammon at Thebes, and set up obelisks, _i.e._ pointed
monolithic pillars, dedicated to the sun-god, in Lower Egypt, in Fayum,
and at Heliopolis. The obelisk at Fayum, not far from the ancient
Arsinoe, was about forty feet in height; it has been broken by the fall
into two pieces. The obelisk of Heliopolis is sixty feet in height; it
still towers over the ruins of this city, near the village of Matarieh.
It is not the first obelisk erected in Egypt, for the inscriptions of
Chufu mention an obelisk erected by that king, but it is the oldest
which has come down to our time. The inscription, repeated on all four
sides, runs thus:--"Horus, the life of that which is born, the child of
the sun, Sesurtesen, who is beloved by the spirits of Heliopolis, who
will live for ever, the golden hawk, the life of that which is born,
this gracious god has erected this obelisk at the beginning of the great
festival. He has erected it who assures us of life for ever."[156] That
this king also ruled in Nubia, and forced his way far up the Nile above
Egypt, is proved by a monument in Nubia on the cataracts of the Wadi
Halfa; a pillar, on which is depicted Sesurtesen, representing Nubians
and negroes, the prisoners of eight nations or tribes, to the god
Horus.[157] In the rock tombs of Beni Hassan is buried an officer of
this king, Amenj, overseer of the canton of Hermopolis (Ashmunein). The
inscription tells us that Amenj had served the king when on a campaign
to destroy his enemies; that he had approached the land of Cush, and
reached the limits of the earth. The king had returned in peace after
the overthrow of his enemies. Afterwards Amenj with 600 warriors had
conveyed the produce of the goldmines from the canton of Hermopolis to
the stronghold of Coptus. He had loved his canton; and all the works
required for the house of the king he had carried out in his canton by
his own arm, and had paid in the tribute. He had laboured, and the
canton had been in full activity. He had not afflicted the children, or
ill-treated the widows; he had not disturbed the fishermen, or hindered
the herdsmen. Famine had never prevailed, because every plot had been
planted. He had caused the inhabitants to live, had given gifts without
regarding the great before the small.[158] The fragment of a seated
colossus of Sesurtesen I., of black granite, is to be seen in the museum
at Berlin; his colossus of red granite is at Tanis. A third statue of
this king has been found at Abydus.[159]
Amenemha II. and Sesurtesen II. carried on the campaigns of the first
Sesurtesen in the south of Egypt. A monument in the valley of Hamamat
exhibits battles with the Punt, _i.e._ with the tribes of the Arabians
and the negroes.[160] Sesurtesen III., who succeeded Sesurtesen II.,
completed the subjugation of Lower Nubia. To protect the new border
of the kingdom, he caused fortresses to be erected a little above
the falls of the Wadi Halfa, at Semne and Kumne, about 250 miles
south of Syene. A pillar discovered in this district has the following
inscription:--"Southern border; erected in the eighth year, under the
rule of his holiness King Sesurtesen III., who gives life for all
eternity. No negro shall pass over it on his way, except the boats
laden with the oxen, goats, and asses of the negroes."[161]
The third Sesurtesen was followed by the third Amenemha (2221 to 2179
B.C.). Inscriptions in the Wadi Maghara, in the peninsula of Sinai, tell
us that Amenemha III. caused the copper to be conveyed from the mines
there by 734 soldiers, in the second year of his reign; and inscriptions
in the valley of Hamamat show that the quarries there were frequently
used by this king.[162] Near the fortifications of his predecessor, on
the rocks of Semne and Kumne, are found numerous records of the height
reached by the Nile in the reign of Amenemha III. Here we read--"Level
of Hapi (the Nile) in the fourteenth, sixteenth, thirtieth years, &c.,
under his holiness King Amenemha III., who lives for ever." From these
observations we find that the average height of the inundations at that
time was more than twenty-four feet higher than at present; and the
greatest height reached under Amenemha III. was twenty-seven feet above
the greatest height of modern times.[163]
Herodotus tells us the following story;--Among the successors of Menes,
Moeris carried out some remarkable works; he built the north gateway in
the temple of Hephaestus, excavated a great lake, and erected pyramids
in it. "The priests told me that under the rule of Moeris, the Nile
overflowed the land below Memphis, although it had only risen to the
height of eight cubits, but now the water does not cover the land unless
it reaches a height of sixteen or at least fifteen cubits; and it seems
to me that if the land were raised again in the same proportion, the
Egyptians who live in the Delta below the lake of Moeris would be in
distress. The circuit of the lake of Moeris is about 3,600 stades, or
sixty schoenes, and the depth in the deepest place about fifty fathoms.
The lake extends from north to south. That it was the work of human
hands, is clear from the nature of it. About the middle are two
pyramids, each of which rises about fifty fathoms out of the water, and
on each is a stone colossus seated on a throne. The water of the lake
does not arise from springs, for the whole district there is entirely
without water, it is introduced by a canal from the Nile. For six months
the water flows from the Nile into the lake, and again for six months
from the lake into the Nile. While it runs out the fishery brings in a
talent of silver a day for the King's treasury; but when the water flows
into the lake the product is a third of a talent only.[164]"
Diodorus tells us that king Moeris erected the north gateway at Memphis,
the splendour of which excelled all others; and above the city at about
ten schoenes distance he excavated a lake of marvellous utility and
incredible size. The circuit was 3,600 stades, and the depth in most
places was fifty fathoms. "Who would not ask, when contemplating the
vast extent of this work, how many myriads of men were required to
complete it, and for how many years? But no one could ever speak in
worthy terms of the utility of the lake and the advantage it is to the
inhabitants of Egypt and the wise prudence of the king in making it. As
the Nile does not rise evenly, and the fruitfulness of the land depends
on the evenness of the overflow, Moeris excavated this lake to receive
the superfluous water, in order that an excessive inundation might not
create marshes and morasses, or a deficiency of water imperil the
fruitfulness of the soil. He carried a canal 300 feet in breadth from
the river for eighty stades (about ten miles) to the lake, through which
he first admitted the superfluous water and then drew it off. In this
way he procured for the tillers of the soil the desired medium in the
water, since the mouth of the canal was sometimes closed, sometimes
opened, which was both a difficult and costly thing to do. The lake has
remained to our time, and is still called by the name of the
constructor, the lake of Moeris. In the middle, the king who excavated
it left a place on which he built his own tomb, and two pyramids. One
was erected for himself, the other for his wife. On these he placed
stone statues of himself and his wife, sitting on thrones, in the
impression that by means of this work he would be for ever held in
grateful remembrance."[165]
Of the lake above Memphis, Strabo gives the following account:--"The
canton of the city Arsinoe, which was formerly known as the City of
Crocodiles, surpasses all others in the beauty of its appearance, in
fruitfulness, and also in the wonders to be seen there. It alone is
covered with green and large olive trees, whereas there are no olives
in the rest of Egypt; it produces a considerable amount of wine, and
corn, and pulse, and many other cereals. In it also lies the wonderful
lake of Moeris, which in size and colour is like a sea, and has shores
like the shores of the sea. Owing to its size and depth this lake is
able to receive the superfluous water at the time of the inundation, so
that it does not overflow the inhabited and planted districts. On the
other hand, when the river begins to subside, after it has poured the
overflow into one of the two mouths of the canal, the lake and the canal
together retain the water required for irrigation. This takes place in
the natural course of things, b
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