speaking, in the immortality of the soul, yet, at any rate, in a life
after death, and a judgment of every man according to the deeds which
he had done in the body while upon earth. It was universally received,
that, immediately after death, the soul descended into the Lower World,
and was conducted to the "Hall of Truth," where it was judged in the
presence of Osiris and of the forty-two assessors, the "Lords of Truth"
and judges of the dead. Anubis, "the director of the weight," brought
forth a pair of scales, and, placing in one scale a figure or emblem of
Truth, set in the other a vase containing the good actions of the
deceased; Thoth standing by the while, with a tablet in his hand,
whereon to record the result. According to the side on which the balance
inclined, Osiris, the president, delivered sentence. If the good deeds
preponderated, the blessed soul was allowed to enter the "boat of the
Sun," and was led by good spirits to Aahlu (Elysium), to the "pools of
peace" and the dwelling-place of Osiris. If, on the contrary, the good
deeds were insufficient, if the ordeal was not passed, then the unhappy
soul was sentenced, according to its deserts, to begin a round of
transmigrations into the bodies of more or less unclean animals, the
number, nature, and duration of the transmigrations depending on the
degree of the deceased's demerits, and the consequent length and
severity of the punishment which he deserved or the purification which
he needed. Ultimately, if after many trials purity was not attained,
then the wicked and incurable soul underwent a final sentence at the
hands of Osiris, Judge of the Dead, and being condemned to annihilation,
was destroyed upon the steps of heaven by Shu, the Lord of Light. The
good soul, having first been completely cleansed of its impurities by
passing through the basin of purgatorial fire guarded by the four
ape-faced genii, was made the companion of Osiris for a period of three
thousand years; after which it returned from Amenti, re-entered its
former body, and lived once more a human life upon the earth. The
process was repeated till a mystic number of years had gone by, when,
finally, the blessed attained the crowning joy of union with God, being
absorbed into the Divine Essence, from which they had emanated, and thus
attaining the true end and full perfection of their being.
Such a belief as this, if earnest and thorough, should be productive of
a high standard of moral action; and undoubtedly the Egyptians had a
code of morality that will compare favourably with that of most ancient
nations. It has been said to have contained "three cardinal
requirements--love of God, love of virtue, and love of man." The hymns
sufficiently indicate the first; the second may be allowed, if by
"virtue" we understand justice and truth; the third is testified by the
constant claim of men, in their epitaphs, to have been benefactors of
their species. "I was not an idler," says one; "I was no listener to the
counsels of sloth; my name was not heard in the place of reproof ... all
men respected me; I gave water to the thirsty; I set the wanderer on his
path; I took away the oppressor, and put a stop to violence." "I myself
was just and true," writes another: "without malice, having put God in
my heart, and being quick to discern His will. I have done good upon
earth; I have harboured no prejudice; I have not been wicked; I have
not approved of any offence or iniquity; I have taken pleasure in
speaking the truth.... Pure is my soul; while living I bore no malice.
There are no errors attributable to me; no sins of mine are before the
judges.... The men of the future, while they live, will be charmed by my
remarkable merits." And another: "I have not oppressed any widow; no
prisoner languished in my days; no one died of hunger. When there were
years of famine, I had my fields ploughed. I gave food to the
inhabitants, so that there was no hungry person. I gave the widow an
equal portion with the married; I did not prefer the rich to the poor."
The moral standard thus set up, though satisfactory, so far as it went,
was in many respects deficient. It did not comprise humility; it
scarcely seems to have comprised purity. The religious sculptures of the
Egyptians were grossly indecent; their religious festivals were kept in
an indecent way; phallic orgies were a part of them, and phallic orgies
of a gross kind. The Egyptians tolerated incest, and could defend it by
the example of the gods. Osiris had married his sister; Khem was "the
Bull of his mother". The Egyptian novelettes are full of indecency and
immorality, and Egyptian travellers describe their amours very much in
the spirit of Ferdinand, Count Fathom; moreover, the complacency with
which each Egyptian declares himself on his tomb to have possessed every
virtue, and to have been free from all vices, is most remarkable. "I was
a good man before the king; I saved the population in the dire calamity
which befell all the land; I shielded the weak against the strong; I did
all good things when the time came to do them; I was pious towards my
father, and did the will of my mother; I was kind-hearted towards my
brethren ... I made a good sarcophagus for him who had no coffin. When
the dire calamity befell the land, I made the children to live, I
established the houses, I did for them all such good things as a father
does for his sons."
And, notwithstanding all this braggadocio, performance seems to have
lagged sadly behind profession. Kings boast of slaying their unresisting
prisoners with their own hand, and represent themselves in the act of
doing so. They come back from battle with the gory heads of their slain
enemies hanging from their chariots. Licentiousness prevailed in the
palace, and members of the royal harem intrigued with those who sought
the life of the king. A belief in magic was general, and men endeavoured
to destroy or injure those whom they hated by wasting their waxen
effigies at a slow fire to the accompaniment of incantations. Thieves
were numerous, and did not scruple even to violate the sanctity of the
tomb in order to obtain a satisfactory booty. A famous "thieves'
society," formed for the purpose of opening and plundering the royal
tombs, contained among its members persons of the sacerdotal order.
Social ranks in Egypt were divided somewhat sharply. There was a large
class of nobles, who were mostly great landed proprietors living on
their estates, and having under them a vast body of dependents,
servants, labourers, artizans &c. There was also a numerous official
class, partly employed at the court, partly holding government posts
throughout the country, which regarded itself as highly dignified, and
looked down _de haut en has_ on "the people." Commands in the army seem
to have been among the prizes which from time to time fell to the lot of
such persons. Further, there was a literary class, which was eminently
respectable, and which viewed with contempt those who were engaged in
trade or handicrafts.
Below these three classes, and removed from them by a long interval, was
the mass of the population--"the multitude" as the Egyptians called
them. These persons were engaged in manual labour of different kinds.
The greater number were employed on the farms of the nobles, in the
cultivation of the soil or in the rearing of cattle. A portion were
boatmen, fishermen, or fowlers. Others pursued the various known
handicrafts. They were weavers, workers in metal, stone-cutters, masons,
potters, carpenters, upholsterers, tailors, shoe-makers, glass-blowers,
boat-builders, wig-makers, and embalmers. There were also among them
painters and sculptors. But all these employments "stank" in the
nostrils of the upper classes, and were regarded as unworthy of any one
who wished to be thought respectable.
Still, the line of demarcation, decided as it was, might be crossed. It
is an entire mistake to suppose that caste existed in Egypt. Men
frequently bred up their sons to their own trade or profession, as they
do in all countries, but they were not obliged to do so--there was
absolutely no compulsion in the matter. The "public-schools" of Egypt
were open to all comers, and the son of the artizan sat on the same
bench with the son of the noble, enjoyed the same education, and had an
equal opportunity of distinguishing himself. If he showed sufficient
promise, he was recommended to adopt the literary life; and the literary
life was the sure passport to State employment. State employment once
entered upon, merit secured advancement; and thus there was, in fact, no
obstacle to prevent the son of a labouring man from rising to the very
highest positions in the administration of the empire. Successful
ministers were usually rewarded by large grants of land from the royal
domain; and it follows that a clever youth of the labouring class might
by good conduct and ability make his way even into the ranks of the
landed aristocracy.
On the other hand, practically, the condition of the labouring class
was, generally speaking, a hard and sad one. The kings were entitled to
employ as many of their subjects as they pleased in forced labours, and
monarchs often sacrificed to their inordinate vanity the lives and
happiness of thousands. Private employers of labour were frequently
cruel and exacting; their overseers used the stick, and it was not easy
for those who suffered to obtain any redress. Moreover, taxation was
heavy, and inability to satisfy the collector subjected the defaulter to
the bastinado. Those who have studied the antiquities of Egypt with most
care, tell us that there was not much to choose between the condition of
the ancient labourers and that of the unhappy _fellahin_[6] of the
present day.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Nefer-hotep, a deceased king.
[5] Brugsch, "Histoire d'Egypte," p. 15.
[6] A fellah is a peasant, one of the labouring class, just above the
slave.
III.
THE DAWN OF HISTORY.
All nations, unless they be colonies, have a prehistoric time--a dark
period of mist and gloom, before the keen light of history dawns upon
them. This period is the favourite playground of the myth-spirits, where
they disport themselves freely, or lounge heavily and listlessly,
according to their different natures. The Egyptian spirits were of the
heavier and duller kind--not light and frolicsome, like the Greek and
the Indo-Iranian. It has been said that Egypt never produced more than
one myth, the Osirid legend; and this is so far true that in no other
case is the story told at any considerable length, or with any
considerable number of exciting incidents. There are, however, many
short legends in the Egyptian remains, which have more or less of
interest, and show that the people was not altogether devoid of
imagination, though their imagination was far from lively. Seb, for
instance, once upon a time, took the form of a goose, and laid the
mundane egg, and hatched it. Thoth once wrote a wonderful book, full of
wisdom and science, which told of everything concerning the fowls of the
air, and the fishes of the sea, and the four-footed beasts of the earth.
He who knew a single page of the book could charm the heaven, the
earth, the great abyss, the mountains, and the seas. Thoth took the work
and enclosed it in a box of gold, and the box of gold he placed within a
box of silver, and the silver box within a box of ivory and ebony, and
that again within a box of bronze; and the bronze box he enclosed within
a box of brass, and the brass box within a box of iron; and the box,
thus guarded, he threw into the Nile at Coptos. But a priest discovered
the whereabouts of the book, and sold the knowledge to a young noble for
a hundred pieces of silver, and the young noble with great trouble
fished the book up. But the possession of the book brought him not good
but evil. He lost his wife; he lost his child; he became entangled in a
disgraceful intrigue. He was glad to part with the book. But the next
possessor was not more fortunate; the book brought him no luck. The
quest after unlawful knowledge involved all who sought it in calamity.
Another myth had for its subject the proposed destruction of mankind by
Ra, the Sun-god. Ra had succeeded Phthah as king of Egypt, and had
reigned for a long term of years in peace, contented with his subjects
and they with him. But a time came when they grew headstrong and unruly;
they uttered words against Ra; they plotted evil things; they grievously
offended him. So Ra called the council of the gods together and asked
them to advise him what he should do. They said mankind must be
destroyed, and committed the task of destruction to Athor and Sekhet,
who proceeded to smite the men over the whole land. But now fear came
upon mankind; and the men of Elephantine made haste, and extracted the
juice from the best of their fruits, and mingled it with human blood,
and filled seven thousand jars, and brought them as an offering to the
offended god. Ra drank and was content, and ordered the liquor that
remained in the jars to be poured out; and, lo! it was an inundation
which covered the whole land of Egypt; and when Athor went forth the
next day to destroy, she saw no men in the fields, but only water, which
she drank, and it pleased her, and she went away satisfied.
It would require another Euhemerus to find any groundwork of history in
these narratives. We must turn away from the "shadow-land" which the
Egyptians called the time of the gods on earth, if we would find trace
of the real doings of men in the Nile valley, and put before our readers
actual human beings in the place of airy phantoms. The Egyptians
themselves taught that the first man of whom they had any record was a
king called M'na, a name which the Greeks represented by Mên or Menes.
M'na was born at Tena (This or Thinis) in Upper Egypt, where his
ancestors had borne sway before him. He was the first to master the
Lower country, and thus to unite under a single sceptre the "two
Egypts"--the long narrow Nile valley and the broad Delta plain. Having
placed on his head the double crown which thenceforth symbolized
dominion over both tracts, his first thought was that a new capital was
needed. Egypt could not, he felt, be ruled conveniently from the
latitude of Thebes, or from any site in the Upper country; it required a
capital which should abut on both regions, and so command both. Nature
pointed out one only fit locality, the junction of the plain with the
vale--"the balance of the two regions," as the Egyptians called it; the
place where the narrow "Upper Country" terminates, and Egypt opens out
into the wide smiling plain that thence spreads itself on every side to
the sea. Hence there would be easy access to both regions; both would
be, in a way, commanded; here, too, was a readily defensible position,
one assailable only in front. Experience has shown that the instinct of
the first founder was right, or that his political and strategic
foresight was extraordinary. Though circumstances, once and again,
transferred the seat of government to Thebes or Alexandria, yet such
removals were short-lived. The force of geographic fact was too strong
to be permanently overcome, and after a few centuries power gravitated
back to the centre pointed out by nature.
If we may believe the tradition, there was, when the idea of building
the new capital arose, a difficulty in obtaining a site in all respects
advantageous. The Nile, before debouching upon the plain, hugged for
many miles the base of the Libyan hills, and was thus on the wrong side
of the valley. It was wanted on the other side, in order to be a
water-bulwark against an Asiatic invader. The founder, therefore, before
building his city, undertook a gigantic work. He raised a great
embankment across the natural course of the river; and, forcing it from
its bed, made it enter a new channel and run midway down the valley, or,
if anything, rather towards its eastern side. He thus obtained the
bulwark against invasion that he required, and he had an ample site for
his capital between the new channel of the stream and the foot of the
western hills.
It is undoubtedly strange to hear of such a work being constructed at
the very dawn of history, by a population that was just becoming a
people. But in Egypt precocity is the rule--a Minerva starts full-grown
from the head of Jove. The pyramids themselves cannot be placed very
long after the supposed reign of Menes; and the engineering skill
implied in the pyramids is simply of a piece with that attributed to the
founder of Memphis.
In ancient times a city was nothing without a temple; and the capital
city of the most religious people in the world could not by any
possibility lack that centre of civic life which its chief temple always
was to every ancient town. Philosophy must settle the question how it
came to pass that religious ideas were in ancient times so universally
prevalent and so strongly pronounced. History is only bound to note the
fact. Coeval, then, with the foundation of the city of Menes was,
according to the tradition, the erection of a great temple to
Phthah--"the Revealer," the Divine artificer, by whom the world and man
were created, and the hidden thought of the remote Supreme Being was
made manifest to His creatures, Phthah's temple lay within the town, and
was originally a _naos_ or "cell," a single building probably not unlike
that between the Sphinx's paws at Ghizeh, situated within a _temenos_,
or "sacred enclosure," watered from the river, and no doubt planted with
trees. Like the medieval cathedrals, the building grew with the lapse
of centuries, great kings continually adding new structures to the main
edifice, and enriching it with statuary and painting. Herodotus saw it
in its full glory, and calls it "a vast edifice, very worthy of
commemoration." Abd-el-Latif saw it in its decline, and notes the beauty
of its remains: "the great monolithic shrine of breccia verde, nine
cubits high, eight long, and seven broad, the doors which swung on
hinges of stone, the well-carven statues, and the lions terrific in
their aspect."[7] At the present day scarcely a trace remains. One
broken colossus of the Great Ramesses, till very recently prostrate, and
a few nondescript fragments, alone continue on the spot, to attest to
moderns the position of that antique fane, which the Egyptians
themselves regarded as the oldest in their land.
The new city received from its founder the name of Men-nefer--"the Good
Abode." It was also known as Ei-Ptah--"the House of Phthah." From the
former name came the prevailing appellations--the "Memphis" of the
Greeks and Romans, the "Moph" of the Hebrews, the "Mimpi" of the
Assyrians, and the name still given to the ruins, "Tel-Monf." It was
indeed a "good abode"--watered by an unfailing stream, navigable from
the sea, which at once brought it supplies and afforded it a strong
protection, surrounded on three sides by the richest and most productive
alluvium, close to quarries of excellent stone, warm in winter, fanned
by the cool northern breezes in the summer-time, within easy reach of
the sea, yet not so near as to attract the cupidity of pirates. Few
capitals have been more favourably placed. It was inevitable that when
the old town went to ruins, a new one should spring up in its stead.
Memphis still exists, in a certain sense, in the glories of the modern
Cairo, which occupies an adjacent site, and is composed largely of the
same materials.
The Egyptians knew no more of their first king than that he turned the
course of the Nile, founded Memphis, built the nucleus of the great
temple of Phthah, and "was devoured by a hippopotamus." This last fact
is related with all due gravity by Manetho, notwithstanding that the
hippopotamus is a graminivorous animal, one that "eats grass like an ox"
(Job xi. 15). Probably the old Egyptian writer whom he followed meant
that M'na at last fell a victim to Taourt, the Goddess of Evil, to whom
the hippopotamus was sacred, and who was herself figured as a
hippopotamus erect. This would be merely equivalent to relating that he
succumbed to death. Manetho gave him a reign of sixty-two years.
The question is asked by the modern critics, who will take nothing on
trust, "Have we in Menes a real Egyptian, a being of flesh and blood,
one who truly lived, breathed, fought, built, ruled, and at last died?
Or are we still dealing with a phantom, as much as when we spoke of Seb,
and Thoth, and Osiris, and Set, and Horus?" The answer seems to be, that
we cannot tell. The Egyptians believed in Menes as a man; they placed
him at the head of their dynastic lists; but they had no contemporary
monument to show inscribed with his name. A name like that of Menes is
found at the beginning of things in so many nations, that on that
account alone the word would be suspicious; in Greece it is Minos, in
Phrygia Manis, in Lydia Manes, in India Menu, in Germany Mannus. And
again, the name of the founder is so like that of the city which he
founded, that another suspicion arises--Have we not here one of the many
instances of a personal name made out of a local one, as Nin or Ninus
from Nineveh (Ninua), Romulus from Roma, and the like? Probably we shall
do best to acquiesce in the judgment of Dr. Birch: "Menes must be placed
among those founders of monarchies whose personal existence a severe and
enlightened criticism doubts or denies."
The city was, however, a reality, the embankment was a reality, the
temple of Phthah was a reality, and the founding of a kingdom in Egypt,
which included both the Upper and the Lower country some considerable
time before the date of Abraham, was a reality, which the sternest
criticism need not--nay, cannot--doubt. All antiquity attests that the
valley of the Nile was one of the first seats of civilization. Abraham
found a settled government established there when he visited the
country, and a consecutive series of monuments carries the date of the
first civilization at least as far back as B.C. 2700--probably further.
If the great Menes, then, notwithstanding all that we are told of his
doings, be a mere shadowy personage, little more than _magni nominis
umbra_, what shall we say of his twenty or thirty successors of the
first, second, and third dynasties? What but that they are shadows of
shadows? The native monuments of the early Ramesside period (about B.C.
1400-1300) assign to this time some twenty-five names of kings; but they
do not agree in their order, nor do they altogether agree in the names.
The kings, if they were kings, have left no history--we can only by
conjecture attach to them any particular buildings, we can give no
account of their actions, we can assign no chronology to their reigns.
They are of no more importance in the "story of Egypt" than the Alban
kings in the "story of Rome." "Non ragionam di loro, ma guarda e passi."