even more shadowy, known to us only from the "Table of Karnak." This
prince, however, is followed by one who possesses a greater amount of
substance--Antef-aa, or "Antef the Great," grandson, as it would seem,
of the first Antef--a sort of Egyptian Nimrod, who delighted above all
things in the chase. Antefaa's sepulchral monument shows him to us
standing in the midst of his dogs, who wear collars, and have their
names engraved over them. The dogs are four in number, and are of
distinct types. The first, which is called _Mahut_ or "Antelope," has
drooping ears, and long but somewhat heavy legs; it resembles a
foxhound, and was no doubt both swift and strong, though it can scarcely
have been so swift as its namesake. The second was called _Abakaru_, a
name of unknown meaning; it has pricked up, pointed ears, a pointed
nose, and a curly tail. Some have compared it with the German _spitz_
dog, but it seems rather to be the original dog of nature, a near
congener of the jackal, and the type to which all dogs revert when
allowed to run wild and breed indiscriminately. The third, named
_Pahats_ or _Kamu, i.e._ "Blacky," is a heavy animal, not unlike a
mastiff; it has a small, rounded, drooping ear, a square, blunt nose, a
deep chest, and thick limbs. The late Dr. Birch supposed that it might
have been employed by Antefaa in "the chase of the lion;" but we should
rather regard it as a watch-dog, the terror of thieves, and we suspect
that the artist gave it the sitting attitude to indicate that its
business was not to hunt, but to keep watch and ward at its master's
gate. The fourth dog, who bears the name of _Tekal_, and walks between
his master's legs, has ears that seem to have been cropped. He has been
said to resemble "the Dalmatian hound": but this is questionable. His
peculiarities are not marked; but, on the whole, it seems most probable
that he is "a pet house-dog"[9] of the terrier class, the special
favourite of his master. Antefaa's dogs had their appointed keeper, the
master of his kennel, who is figured on the sepulchral tablet behind the
monarch, and bears the name of Tekenru.
The hunter king was buried in a tomb marked only by a pyramid of unbaked
brick, very humble in its character, but containing a mortuary chapel in
which the monument above described was set up. An inscription on the
tablet declared that it was erected to the memory of Antef the Great,
Son of the Sun, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, in the fiftieth year of
his reign.
Other Mentu-hoteps and other Antefs continued on the line of Theban
kings, reigning quietly and ingloriously, and leaving no mark upon the
scroll of time, yet probably advancing the material prosperity of their
country, and preparing the way for that rise to greatness which gives
Thebes, on the whole, the foremost place in Egyptian history. Useful
projects occupied the attention of these monarchs. One of them sank
wells in the valley of Hammamât, to provide water for the caravans which
plied between Coptos and the Red Sea. Another established military posts
in the valley to protect the traffic and the Egyptian quarrymen. Later
on, a king called Sankh-ka-ra launched a fleet upon the Red Sea waters,
and opened direct communications with the sacred land of Punt, the
region of odoriferous gums and of strange animals, as giraffes,
panthers, hunting leopards, cynocephalous apes, and long-tailed monkeys.
There is some doubt whether "Punt" was Arabia Felix, or the Somauli
country. In any case, it lay far down the Gulf, and could only be
reached after a voyage of many days.
The dynasty of the Antefs and Mentu-hoteps, which terminated with
Sankh-ka-ra, was followed by one in which the prevailing names were
Usurtasen and Amenemhat. This dynasty is Manetho's twelfth, and the time
of its rule has been characterized as "the happiest age of Egyptian
history?"[10] The second phase of Egyptian civilization now set in--a
phase which is regarded by many as outshining the glories of the first
The first civilization had subordinated the people to the monarch, and
had aimed especially at eternizing the memory and setting forth the
power and greatness of king after king. The second had the benefit and
advantage of the people for its primary object; it was utilitarian,
beneficent, appealing less to the eye than to the mind, far-sighted in
its aims, and most successful in the results which it effected. The wise
rulers of the time devoted their energies and their resources, not, as
the earlier kings, to piling up undying memorials of themselves in the
shape of monuments that "reached to heaven," but to useful works, to the
excavation of wells and reservoirs, the making of roads, the
encouragement of commerce, and the development of the vast agricultural
wealth of the country. They also diligently guarded the frontiers,
chastised aggressive tribes, and checked invasion by the establishment
of strong fortresses in positions of importance. They patronized art,
employing themselves in building temples rather than tombs, and adorned
their temples not only with reliefs and statues, but also with the novel
architectural embellishment of the obelisk, a delicate form, and one
especially suited to the country.
The founder of the "twelfth dynasty," Amenemhat I., deserves a few words
of description. He found Thebes in a state of anarchy; civil war raged
on every side; all the traditions of the past were forgotten; noble
fought against noble; the poor were oppressed; life and property were
alike insecure; "there was stability of fortune neither for the ignorant
nor for the learned man." One night, after he had lain down to sleep, he
found himself attacked in his bed-chamber; the clang of arms sounded
near at hand. Starting from his couch, he seized his own weapons and
struck out; when lo! his assailants fled; detected in their attempt to
assassinate him, they dared not offer any resistance, thus showing
themselves alike treacherous and cowardly. Amenemhat, having once taken
arms, did not lay them down till he had defeated every rival, and so
fought his way to the crown. Once acknowledged as king, he ruled with
moderation and equity; he "gave to the humble, and made the weak to
live;" he "caused the afflicted to cease from their afflictions, and
their cries to be heard no more;" he brought it to pass that none
hungered or thirsted in the land; he gave such orders to his servants
as continually increased the love of his people towards him. At the same
time, he was an energetic warrior. He "stood on the boundaries of the
land, to keep watch on its borders," personally leading his soldiers to
battle, armed with the _khopesh_ or falchion. He carried on wars with
the Petti, or bowmen of the Libyan interior, with the Sakti or Asiatics,
with the Maxyes or Mazyes of the north-west, and with the Ua-uat and
other negro tribes of the south; not, however, as it would seem, with
any desire of making conquests, but simply for the protection of his own
frontier. With the same object he constructed on his north-eastern
frontier a wall or fortress "to keep out the Sakti," who continually
harassed the people of the Eastern Delta by their incursions.
The wars of Amenemhat I. make it evident that by his time Thebes had
advanced from the position of a petty kingdom situated in a remote part
of Egypt, and held in check by two or more rival kingdoms in the lower
Nile valley and the Delta, to that of a power which bore sway over the
whole land from Elephantine to the Mediterranean. "I sent my messengers
up to Abu (Elephantine) and my couriers down to Athu" (the coast lakes),
says the monarch in his "Instructions" to his son--the earliest literary
production from a royal pen that has come down to our days; and there is
no reason to doubt the truth of his statement. In the Delta alone could
he come into contact with either the Mazyes or the Sakti, and a king of
Thebes could not hold the Delta without being master also of the lower
Nile valley from Coptos to Memphis. We must regard Egypt, then, under
the "twelfth dynasty." as once more consolidated into a single state--a
state ruled, however, not from Memphis, but from Thebes, a decidedly
inferior position.
[Illustration: SPEARING THE CROCODILE.]
Amenemhat I. is the only Egyptian king who makes a boast of his hunting
prowess. "I hunted the lion," he says, "and brought back the crocodile a
prisoner." Lions do not at the present time frequent Egypt, and, indeed,
are not found lower down the Nile valley than the point where the Great
Stream receives its last tributary, the Atbara. But anciently they seem
to have haunted the entire desert tracts on either side of the river.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian is said to have hunted one near Alexandria,
and the monuments represent lions as tamed and used in the chase by the
ancient inhabitants. Sometimes they even accompanied their masters to
the battlefield. We know nothing of Amenemhat's mode of hunting the king
of beasts, but may assume that it was not very different from that
which prevailed at a later date in Assyria. There, dogs and beaters were
employed to rouse the animals from their lairs, while the king and his
fellow-sportsmen either plied them with flights of arrows, or withstood
their onset with swords and spears. The crocodile was certainly
sometimes attacked while he was in the water, the hunters using a boat,
and endeavouring to spear him at the point where the head joins the
spine; but this could not have been the mode adopted by Amenemhat, since
it would have resulted in instant death, whereas he tells us that he
"brought the crocodile home a prisoner." Possibly, therefore, he
employed the method which Herodotus says was in common use in his day.
This was to bait a hook with a joint of pork and throw it into the water
at a point where the current would carry it out into mid-stream; then to
take a live pig to the river-side, and belabour him well with a stick
till he set up the squeal familiar to most ears. Any crocodile within
hearing was sure to come to the sound, and falling in with the pork on
the way, would instantly swallow it down. Upon this the hunters hauled
at the rope to which the hook was attached, and, notwithstanding his
struggles, drew "leviathan" to shore. Amenemhat, having thus "made the
crocodile a prisoner," may have carried his captive in triumph to his
capital, and exhibited him before the eyes of the people.
Amenemhat, having reigned as sole king for twenty years, was induced to
raise his eldest son, Usurtasen, to the royal dignity, and associate him
with himself in the government of the empire. Usurtasen was a prince of
much promise, He "brought prosperity to the affairs of his father. He
was, as a god, without fears; before him was never one like to him. Most
skilful in affairs, beneficent in his mandates, both in his going out
and in his coming in he made Egypt flourish." His courage and his
warlike capacity were great. Already, in the lifetime of his father, he
had distinguished himself in combats with the Petti and the Sakti. When
he was settled upon the throne, he made war upon the Cushite tribes who
bordered Egypt upon the south, employing the services of a general named
Ameni, but also taking a part personally in the campaign. The Cushites
or Ethiopians, who in later times became such dangerous neighbours to
Egypt, were at this early period weak and insignificant. After the king
had made his expedition, Ameni was able with a mere handful of four
hundred troops to penetrate into their country, to "conduct the golden
treasures" which it contained to the presence of his master, and to
capture and carry off a herd of three thousand cattle.
It was through his sculptures and his architectural works that the first
Usurtasen made himself chiefly conspicuous. Thebes, Abydos, Heliopolis
or On, the Fayoum and the Delta, were equally the scenes of his
constructive activity, and still show traces of his presence. At Thebes,
he carried to its completion the cell, or _naos_, of the great temple of
Ammon, in later times the innermost sanctuary of the building, and
reckoned so sacred, that when Thothmes III. rebuilt and enlarged the
entire edifice he reproduced the structure of Usurtasen, unchanged in
form, and merely turned from limestone into granite. At Abydos and
other cities of Middle Egypt, he constructed temples adorned with
sculptures, inscriptions, and colossal statues. At Tanis, he set up his
own statue, exhibiting himself as seated upon his throne. In the Fayoum
he erected an obelisk forty-one feet high to the honour of Ammon,
Phthah, and Mentu, which now lies prone upon the ground near the Arab
village of Begig. Indications of his ubiquitous activity are found also
at the Wady Magharah, in the Sinaitic peninsula, and at Wady Haifa in
Nubia, a little above the Second Cataract; but his grandest and most
elaborate work was his construction of the great temple of the Sun at
Heliopolis, and his best memorial is that tall finger pointing to the
sky which greets the traveller approaching Egypt from the east as the
first sample of its strange and mystic wonders. This temple the king
began in his third year. After a consultation with his lords and
counsellors, he issued the solemn decree: "It is determined to execute
the work; his majesty chooses to have it made. Let the superintendent
carry it on in the way that is desired; let all those employed upon it
be vigilant; let them see that it is made without weariness; let every
due ceremony be performed; let the beloved place arise." Then the king
rose up, wearing a diadem, and holding the double pen; and all present
followed him. The scribe read the holy book, and extended the measuring
cord, and laid the foundations on the spot which the temple was to
occupy. A grand building arose; but it has been wholly demolished by the
ruthless hand of time and the barbarity of conquerors. Of all its
glories nothing now remains but the one taper obelisk of pink
granite, which rises into the soft sleepy air above the green cornfields
of Matariyeh, no longer tipped with gold, but still catching on its
summit the earliest and latest sun-rays, while wild-bees nestle in the
crannies of the weird characters cut into the stone.
[Illustration: OBELISK OF USURTASEN I. ON THE SITE OF HELIOPOLIS.]
Usurtasen, after reigning ten years in conjunction with his father and
thirty-two years alone, associated his son, Amenemhat II., who became
sole king about three years later. His reign, though long, was
undistinguished, and need not occupy our attention. He followed the
example of his predecessors in associating a son in the government; and
this son succeeded him, and is known as Usurtasen II. One event of
interest alone belongs to this time. It is the reception by one of his
great officials of a large family or tribe of Semitic immigrants from
Asia, who beg permission to settle permanently in the fertile Egypt
under the protection of its powerful king. Thirty-seven Amu, men, women,
and children, present themselves at the court which the great noble
holds near the eastern border, and offer him their homage, while they
solicit a favourable hearing. The men are represented draped in long
garments of various colours, and wearing sandals unlike the
Egyptian--more resembling, in fact, open shoes with many straps. Their
arms are bows, arrows, spears, and clubs. One plays on a seven-stringed
lyre by means of a plectrum. Four women, wearing fillets round their
heads, with garments reaching below the knee, and wearing anklets but no
sandals, accompany them. A boy, armed with a spear, walks at the side
of the women; and two children, seated in a kind of pannier placed on
the back of an ass, ride on in front. Another ass, carrying a spear, a
shield, and a pannier, precedes the man who plays on the lyre. The great
official, who is named Khnum-hotep, receives the foreigners, accompanied
by an attendant who carries his sandals and a staff, and who is followed
by three dogs. A scribe, named Nefer-hotep, unrolls before his master a
strip of papyrus, on which are inscribed the words, "The sixth year of
the reign of King Usurtasen Sha-khepr-ra: account rendered of the Amu
who in the lifetime of the chief, Khnum-hotep, brought to him the
mineral, _mastemut_, from the country of Pit-shu--they are in all
thirty-seven persons." The mineral _mastemut_ is thought to be a species
of stibium or antimony, used for dying the skin around the eyes, and so
increasing their beauty. Besides this offering, the head of the tribe,
who is entitled _khak_, or "prince," and named Abusha, presents to
Khnum-hotep a magnificent wild-goat, of the kind which at the present
day frequents the rocky mountain tract of Sinai. He wears a richer dress
than his companions, one which is ornamented with a fringe, and has a
wavy border round the neck. The scene has been generally recognized as
strikingly illustrating the coming of Jacob's family into Egypt (Gen.
xlvi. 28-34), and was at one time thought by some to represent that
occurrence; but the date of Abusha's coming is long anterior to the
arrival in Egypt of Jacob's family, the number is little more than half
that of the Hebrew immigrants, the names do not accord; and it is now
agreed on all hands, that the interest of the representation is
confined to its illustrative force.
Usurtasen II. reigned for nineteen years. He does not seem to have
associated a son, but was succeeded by another Usurtasen, most probably
a nephew. The third Usurtasen was a conquering monarch, and advanced the
power and glory of Egypt far more than any other ruler belonging to the
Old Empire. He began his military operations in his eighth year, and
starting from Elephantine in the month Epiphi, or May, moved southward,
like another Lord Wolseley, with a fixed intention, which he expressed
in writing upon the rocks of the Elephantine island, of permanently
reducing to subjection "the miserable land of Cush." His expedition was
so far successful that in the same year he established two forts, one on
either side of the Nile, and set up two pillars with inscriptions
warning the black races that they were not to proceed further northward,
except with the object of importing into Egypt cattle, oxen, goats, or
asses. The forts are still visible on either bank of the river a little
above the Second Cataract, and bear the names of Koommeh and Semneh.
They are massive constructions, built of numerous squared blocks of
granite and sandstone, and perched upon two steep rocks which rise up
perpendicularly from the river. Usurtasen, having made this beginning,
proceeded, from his eighth to his sixteenth year, to carry on the war
with perseverance and ferocity in the district between the Nile and the
Red Sea--to kill the men, fire the crops, and carry off the women and
children, much as recently did the Arab traders whom Baker and Gordon
strove to crush. The memory of his razzias was perpetuated upon stone
columns set up to record his successes. Later on, in his nineteenth year
he made a last expedition, to complete the conquest of "the miserable
Kashi," and recorded his victory at Abydos.
The effect of these inroads was to advance the Egyptian frontier one
hundred and fifty miles to the south, to carry it, in fact, from the
First to above the Second Cataract. Usurtasen drew the line between
Egypt and Ethiopia at this period, very much where the British
Government drew it between Egypt and the Soudan in 1885. The boundary is
a somewhat artificial one, as any boundary must be on the course of a
great river; but it is probably as convenient a point as can be found
between Assouan (Syene) and Khartoum. The conquest was regarded as
redounding greatly to Usurtasen's glory, and made him the hero of the
Old Empire. Myths gathered about his name, which, softened into
Sesostris, became a favourite One in the mouths of Egyptian minstrels
and minnesingers. Usurtasen grew to be a giant more than seven feet
high, who conquered, not only all Ethiopia, but also Europe and Asia;
his columns were said to be found in Palestine, Asia Minor, Scythia, and
Thrace; he left a colony at Colchis, the city of the golden fleece; he
dug all the canals by which Egypt was intersected; he invented geometry;
he set up colossi above fifty feet high; he was the greatest monarch
that had ruled Egypt since the days of Osiris!
No doubt these tales were, in the main, imaginary; but they marked the
fact that in Usurtasen III. the military glories of the Old Empire
culminated.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] So Mr. A.D. Bartlett, F.Z.S., in the "Transactions of the Society of
Biblical Archæology," vol. iv. p. 195.
[10] R. Stuart Poole, "Cities of Egypt," p. 52.
VI.
THE GOOD AMENEMHAT AND HIS WORKS.
The great river to which Egypt owes her being, is at once the source of
all her blessings and her chiefest danger. Swelling with a uniformity,
well calculated to call forth man's gratitude and admiration, almost
from a fixed day in each year, and continuing to rise steadily for
months, it gradually spreads over the lands, covering the entire soil
with a fresh coating of the richest possible alluvium, and thus securing
to the country a perpetual and inexhaustible fertility. Nature's
mechanism is so perfect, that the rise year after year scarcely varies a
foot, and is almost exactly the same now as it was when the first
Pharaoh poured his libation to the river-god from the embankment which
he had made at Memphis; but though this uniformity is great, and
remarkable, and astonishing, it is not absolute. There are occasions,
once in two or three centuries, when the rainfall in Abyssinia is
excessive. The Blue Nile and the Atbara pour into the deep and steady
stream of the White Nile torrents of turbid water for months together.
The windows of heaven seem to have been opened, and the rain pours down
as if it would never cease. Then the river of the Egyptians assumes a
threatening character; faster and faster it rises, and higher and
higher; and further and further it spreads, until it begins to creep up
the sides of the two ranges of hills. Calamitous results ensue. The
mounds erected to protect the cities, the villages, and the pasture
lands, are surmounted, or undermined, or washed away; the houses, built
often of mud, and seldom of any better material than crude brick,
collapse; cattle are drowned by hundreds; human life is itself
imperilled; the population has to betake itself to boats, and to fly to
the desert regions which enclose the Nile valley to the east and west,
regions of frightful sterility, which with difficulty support the few
wandering tribes that are their normal inhabitants. If the excessive
rise continues long, thousands or millions starve; if it passes off
rapidly, then the inhabitants return to find their homes desolated,
their cattle drowned, their household goods washed away, and themselves
dependent on the few rich men who may have stored their corn in stone
granaries which the waters have not been able to penetrate. Disasters of
this kind are, however, exceedingly rare, though, when they occur, their
results are terrible to contemplate.
The more usual form of calamity is of the opposite kind. Once or twice
in a century the Abyssinian rainfall is deficient. The rise of the Nile
is deferred beyond the proper date. Anxious eyes gaze daily on the
sluggish stream, or consult the "Nilometers" which kings and princes
have constructed along its course to measure the increase of the waters.
Hopes and fears alternate as good or bad news reaches the inhabitants of
the lower valley from those who dwell higher up the stream. Each little
rise is expected to herald a greater one, and the agony of suspense is
prolonged until the "hundred days," traditionally assigned to the
increase, have gone by, and there is no longer a doubt that the river
has begun to fall. Then hope is swallowed up in despair. Only the lands
lying nearest to the river have been inundated; those at a greater
distance from it lie parched and arid during the entire summer-time, and
fail to produce a single blade of grass or spike of corn. Famine stares
the poorer classes in the face, and unless large supplies of grain have
been laid up in store previously, or can be readily imported from
abroad, the actual starvation of large numbers is the inevitable
consequence. We have heartrending accounts of such famines. In the year
457 of the Hegira (A.D. 1064) a famine began, which lasted seven years,
and was so severe that dogs and cats, and even human flesh, were eaten;
all the horses of the Caliph but three perished, and his family had to
fly into Syria. Another famine in A.D. 1199 is recorded by Abd-el-Latif,
an eye-witness, in very similar terms.