sister had held him for above twenty years, then he showed the metal of
which he was made by at once placing himself at the head of his troops,
and marching into Asia. Persuaded that the great god, Ammon, had
promised him a long career of victory, he lost no time in setting to
work to accomplish his glorious destiny. Starting from an Egyptian post
on the Eastern frontier, called Garu or Zalu, in the month of February,
he took his march along the ordinary coast route, and in a short time
reached Gaza, the strong Philistine city, which was already a fortress
of repute, and regarded as "the key of Syria." The day of his arrival
was the anniversary of his coronation, and according to his reckoning
the first day of his twenty-third year. Gaza made no resistance: its
chief was friendly to the Egyptians, and gladly opened his gates to the
invading army. Having rested at Gaza no more than a single night,
Thothmes resumed his march, and continuing to skirt the coast, arrived
on the eleventh day at a fortified town called Jaham, probably Jamnia.
Here he was met by his scouts, who brought the intelligence that the
enemy was collected at Megiddo, on the edge of the great plain of
Esdraelon, the ordinary battle-field of the Palestinian nations. They
consisted of "all the people dwelling between the river of Egypt on the
one hand and the land of Naharaïn (Mesopotamia) on the other." At their
head was the king of Kadesh, a great city on the upper Orontes, which
afterwards became one of the chief seats of the Hittite power, but was
at this time in the possession of the Rutennu (Syrians). They were
strongly posted at the mouth of a narrow pass, behind the ridge of hills
which connects Carmel with the Samaritan upland, and Thothmes was
advised by his captains to avoid a direct attack, and march against them
by a circuitous route, which was undefended. But the intrepid warrior
scorned this prudent counsel. "His generals," he said, "might take the
roundabout road, if they liked; _he_ would follow the straight one." The
event justified his determination. Megiddo was reached in a week without
loss or difficulty, and a great battle was fought in the fertile plain
to the north-west of the fortress, in which the Egyptian king was
completely victorious, and his enemies were scattered like chaff before
him. The Syrians must have fled precipitately at the first attack; for
they lost in killed no more than eighty-three, and in prisoners no more
than two hundred and forty, or according to another account three
hundred and forty, while the chariots taken were nine hundred and
twenty-four, and the captured horses 2,132. Megiddo was near at hand,
and the bulk of the fugitives would reach easily the shelter of its
walls. Others may have dispersed themselves among the mountains. The
Syrian camp was, however, taken, together with vast treasures in silver
and gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and alabaster; and the son of the
king of Kadesh fell into Thothmes' hands. Megiddo itself, soon
afterwards, surrendered, as did the towns of Inunam, Anaugas, and
Hurankal or Herinokol. An immense booty in corn and cattle was also
carried off. Thothmes returned to Egypt in triumph, and held a prolonged
festival to Ammon-Ra in Thebes, accompanied by numerous sacrifices and
offerings. Among the last we find included three of the cities taken
from the Rutennu, which were assigned to the god in order that they
might "supply a yearly contribution to his sacred food."
It is a familiar saying, that "increase of appetite doth grow by what it
feeds on." Thothmes certainly found his appetite for conquest whetted,
not satiated, by his Syrian campaign. If we may trust M. Lenormant, he
took the field in the very year that followed his victory of Megiddo,
and after traversing the whole of Syria, and ravaging the country about
Aleppo, proceeded to Carchemish, the great Hittite town on the Upper
Euphrates, and there crossed the river into Naharaïn, or Mesopotamia,
whence he carried off a number of prisoners. Two other campaigns, which
cannot be traced in detail, belong to the period between his
twenty-fourth and his twenty-ninth year. Thenceforward to his fortieth
year his military expeditions scarcely knew any cessation. At one time
he would embark his troops on board a fleet, and make descents upon the
coast of Syria, coming as unexpectedly and ravaging as ruthlessly as the
Normans of the Middle Ages. He would cut down the fruit trees, carry off
the crops, empty the magazines of grain, lay hands upon all valuables
that were readily removable, and carry them on board his ships,
returning to Egypt with a goodly store of gold and silver, of lapis
lazuli and other precious stones, of vases in silver and in bronze, of
corn, wine, incense, balsam, honey, iron, lead, emery, and male and
female slaves. At another, he would march by land, besiege and take the
inland towns, demand and obtain the sons of the chiefs as hostages,
exact heavy war contributions, and bring back with him horses and
chariots, flocks and herds, strange animals, trees, and plants.
Of all his expeditions, that undertaken in his thirty-third year was
perhaps the most remarkable. Starting from the country of the Rutennu,
he on this occasion directed the main force of his attack upon the
Mesopotamian region, which he ravaged far and wide, conquering the
towns, and "reducing to a level plain the strong places of the miserable
land of Naharaïn," capturing thirty kings or chiefs, and erecting two
tablets in the region, to indicate its subjection. It is possible that
he even crossed the Tigris into Adiabene or the Zab country, since he
relates that on his return he passed through the town of Ni or Nini,
which many of the best historians of Egypt identify with Nineveh.
Nineveh was not now (about B.C. 1500) the capital of Assyria, which was
lower down the Tigris, at Asshur or Kileh Sherghat, but was only a
provincial town of some magnitude. Still it was within the dominions of
the Assyrian monarch of the time, and any attack upon it would have been
an insult and a challenge to the great power of Upper Mesopotamia, which
ruled from the alluvium to the mountains. It is certain that the king of
Assyria did not accept the challenge, but preferred to avoid an
encounter with the Egyptian troops. Both at this time and subsequently
he sent envoys with rich presents to court the favour of Thothmes, who
accepted the gifts as "tribute," and counted "the chief of Assuru" among
his tributaries. Submission was also made to him at the same time by the
"prince of Senkara," a name which still exists in the lower Babylonian
marsh region. Among the gifts which this prince sent was "lapis lazuli
of Babylon." It is an exaggeration to represent the expedition as having
resulted in the conquest of the great empires of Assyria and Babylon;
but it is quite true to say that it startled and shook those empires,
that it filled them with a great fear of what might be coming, and
brought Egypt into the position of the principal military power of the
time. Assyrian influence especially was checked and curtailed. There is
reason to believe, from the Egyptian remains found at Arban on the
Khabour,[17] that Thothmes added to the Egyptian empire the entire
region between the Euphrates and its great eastern affluent--a broad
tract of valuable territory--and occupied it with permanent garrisons.
The Assyrian monarch bought off the further hostility of his dangerous
neighbour by an annual embassy which conveyed rich gifts to the court
of the Pharaohs, gifts that were not reciprocated. Among these we find
enumerated gold and silver ornaments, lapis lazuli, vases of Assyrian
stone (alabaster?), slaves, chariots adorned with gold and silver,
silver dishes and silver beaten out into sheets, incense, wine, honey,
ivory, cedar and sycomore wood, mulberry trees, vines, and fig trees,
buffaloes, bulls, and a gold habergeon with a border of lapis lazuli.
A curious episode of the expedition is related by Amenemheb, an officer
who accompanied it, and was in personal attendance upon the Egyptian
monarch. It appears that in the time of Thothmes III. the elephant
haunted the woods and jungles of the Mesopotamian region, as he now does
those of the peninsula of Hindustan. The huge unwieldy beasts were
especially abundant in the neighbourhood of Ni or Nini, the country
between the middle Tigris and the Zagros range. As Amenemhat I. had
delighted in the chase of the lion and the crocodile, so Thothmes III.
no sooner found a number of elephants within his reach than he proceeded
to hunt and kill them, mainly no doubt for the sport, but partly in
order to obtain their tusks. No fewer than a hundred and twenty are said
to have been killed or taken. On one occasion, however, the monarch ran
a great risk. He was engaged in the pursuit of a herd, when the "rogue,"
or leading elephant, turned and made a rush at the royal sportsman, who
would probably have fallen a victim, gored by a tusk or trampled to
death under the huge beast's feet, had not Amenemheb hastened to the
rescue, and by wounding the creature's trunk drawn its rage upon
himself. The brute was then, after a short struggle, overpowered and
captured.
Further expeditions were led by Thothmes into Asia in his thirty-fourth,
thirty-fifth, thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, and forty-second
years; but in none of them does he seem to have outdone the exploits of
the great campaign of the year 33. The brunt of his attacks at this time
fell upon the Zahi, or Tahai, of northern Phœnicia, and upon the Naïri
of the Mesopotamian region, who continually rebelled, and had to be
reconquered. The Rutennu seem for the most part to have paid their
tribute without resistance and without much difficulty. This may have
been partly owing to the judicious system which Thothmes had established
among them, whereby each chief was forced to give a son or brother as
hostage for his good behaviour, and if the hostage died to send another
in his place. It was certainly not because the tribute was light, since
it consisted of a number of slaves, silver vases of the weight of 762
pounds, nineteen chariots, 276 head of cattle, 1,622 goats, several
hundredweight of iron and lead, a number of suits of armour, and "all
kinds of good plants." The Rutennu had also to supply the stations along
the military road, whereby Thothmes kept up the communications between
Egypt and Mesopopotamia, with bread, wine, dates, incense, honey, and
figs.
While thus engaged in enlarging the limits of his empire towards the
north and the north-east, the careful monarch did not allow the regions
brought under Egyptian influence by former rulers to escape him. He
took a tribute of gold, spices, male and female slaves, cattle, ivory,
ebony, and panther skins from the land of Punt, of cattle and slaves
from Cush, and of the same products from the Uauat. Altogether he is
said to have carried off from the subject countries above 11,000
captives, 1,670 chariots, 3,639 horses, 4,491 of the larger cattle, more
than 35,000 goats, silver to the amount of 3,940 pounds, and gold to the
amount of 9,054 pounds. He also conveyed to Egypt from the conquered
lands enormous quantities of corn and wine, together with incense,
balsam, honey, ivory, ebony and other rare woods, lapis lazuli,
furniture, statues, vases, dishes, basins, tent-poles, bows, habergeons,
fruit trees, live birds, and monkeys! With a curiosity which was
insatiable, he noted all that was strange or unusual in the lands which
he visited, and sought to introduce the various novelties into his own
proper country. Two unknown kinds of birds, and a variety of the goose,
which he found in Mesopotamia, and transported from the valley of the
Khabour to that of the Nile, are said to have been "dearer to the king
than anything else." His artists had instructions to make careful
studies of the different objects, and to represent them faithfully on
his monuments. We see on these "water-lilies as high as trees, plants of
a growth like cactuses, all sorts of trees and shrubs, leaves, flowers,
and fruits, including melons and pomegranates; oxen and calves also
figure, and among them a wonderful animal with three horns. There are
likewise herons, sparrow-hawks, geese, and doves. All these objects
appear gaily intermixed in the pictures, as suited the simple childlike
conception of the artist."[18] An inscription tells the intention of the
monarch. "Here," it runs, "are all sorts of plants and all sorts of
flowers of the Holy Land, which the king discovered when he went to the
land of Ruten to conquer it. Thus says the king--I swear by the sun, and
I call to witness my father Ammon, that all is plain truth; there is no
trace of deception in that which I relate. What the splendid soil brings
forth in the way of productions, I have had portrayed in these pictures,
with the intention of offering them to my father Ammon, as a memorial
for all times."
Besides his army, Thothmes also maintained a naval force, and used it
largely in his expeditions. According to one writer, he placed a fleet
on the Euphrates, and in an action which took place with the Assyrians,
defeated and chased the enemy for a distance of between seven and eight
miles. He certainly upon some occasions made his attacks on Syria and
Phœnicia from the sea; nor is it improbable that his maritime forces
reduced Cyprus (which was conquered and held in a much less flourishing
period by Amasis) and plundered the coast of Cilicia; but a judicious
criticism will scarcely extend the voyages of his fleet, as has been
done by another writer, to Crete, and the islands of the Ægean, the
sea-boards of Greece and Asia Minor, the southern coast of Italy,
Algeria, and the waters of the Euxine! There is no evidence in the
historical inscriptions of Thothmes of any such far-reaching
expeditions. The supposed evidence for them is in a song of victory,
put into the mouth of the god, Ammon, and inscribed on one of the walls
of the great temple of Karnak. The song is interesting, but it scarcely
bears out the deductions that have been drawn from it, as will appear
from the subjoined translation.
(AMMON _loquitur_.)
I came, and thou smotest the princes of Zahi;
I scattered them under thy feet over all their lands;
I made them regard thy Holiness as the blazing sun;
Thou shinest in sight of them in my form.
I came, and thou smotest them that dwell in Asia;
Thou tookest captive the goat-herds of Ruten;
I made them behold thy Holiness in thy royal adornments,
As thou graspest thy weapons in the war-chariot.
I came, and thou smotest the land of the East;
Thou marchedst against the dwellers in the Holy Land;
I made them behold thy Holiness as the star Canopus,
Which sends forth its heat and disperses the dew.
I came, and thou smotest the land of the West;
Kefa and Asebi (_i.e._ Phœnicia and Cyprus) held thee in fear;
I made them look upon thy Holiness as a young bull,
Courageous, with sharp horns, which none can approach.
I came, and thou smotest the subjects of their lords;
The land of Mathen trembled for fear of thee;
I made them look upon thy Holiness as upon a crocodile,
Terrible in the waters, not to be encountered.
I came, and thou smotest them that dwelt in the Great Sea;
The inhabitants of the isles were afraid of thy war-cry;
I made them behold thy Holiness as the Avenger,
Who shews himself at the back of his victim.
I came, and thou smotest the land of the Tahennu;
The people of Uten submitted themselves to thy power;
I made them see thy Holiness as a lion, fierce of eye,
Who leaves his den and stalks through the valleys.
I came, and thou smotest the hinder (_i.e._ northern) lands;
The circuit of the Great Sea is bound in thy grasp;
I made them behold thy Holiness as the hovering hawk.
Which seizes with his glance whatever pleases him.
I came, and thou smotest the lands in front:
Those that sat upon the sand thou carriedst away captive;
I made them behold thy Holiness like the jackal of the South,
Which passes through the lands as a hidden wanderer.
I came, and thou smotest the nomad tribes of Nubia,
Even to the land of Shut, which thou holdest in thy grasp;
I made them behold thy Holiness like thy pair of brothers,
Whose hands I have united to give thee power.[19]
It is impossible to conclude this sketch of Thothmes III. without some
notice of his buildings. He was the greatest of Egyptian conquerors, but
he was also one of the greatest of Egyptian builders and patrons of art.
The grand temple of Ammon at Thebes was the especial object of his
fostering care; and he began his career of builder and restorer by
repairs and restorations, which much improved and beautified that
edifice. Before the southern propylæa he re-erected, in the first year
of his independent reign, colossal statues of his father, Thothmes I.,
and his grandfather, Amenhotep, which had been thrown down in the
troublous time succeeding Thothmes the First's death. He then proceeded
to rebuild the central sanctuary, the work of Usurtasen I., which had
probably begun to decay, and, recognizing its importance as the very
_penetrale_ of the temple, he resolved to reconstruct it in granite,
instead of common stone, that he might render it, practically,
imperishable. With a reverence and a self-restraint that it might be
wished restorers possessed more commonly, he preserved all the lines and
dimensions of the ancient building, merely reproducing in a better
material the work of his great predecessor. Having accomplished this
pious task, he gave a vent to his constructive ambition by a grand
addition to the temple on its eastern side. Behind the cell, at the
distance of about a hundred and fifty feet, he erected a magnificent
hall, or pillared chamber, of dimensions previously unknown in Egypt, or
elsewhere in the world at the time--an oblong square, one hundred and
forty-three feet long by fifty-three feet wide, or nearly half as large
again as the nave of Canterbury Cathedral. The whole of the apartment
was roofed in with slabs of solid stone; it was divided in its longest
direction into five avenues or vistas by means of rows of pillars and
piers, the former being towards the centre, and attaining a height of
thirty feet, with bell capitals, and the latter towards the sides, with
a height of twenty feet. This arrangement enabled the building to be
lighted by means of a clerestory, in the manner shown by the
accompanying woodcut. In connection with this noble hall, on three sides
of it, northwards, eastwards, and southwards, Thothmes further erected
chambers and corridors, partly open, partly supported by pillars, which
might form convenient store-chambers for the vestments of the priests
and the offerings of the people.
Thothmes also added propylæa to the temple on the south, and erected in
front of the grand entrance which was (as usual) between the pylons of
the propylæa, two or perhaps four great obelisks, one of which exists
to the present day, and is the largest and most magnificent of all such
monuments now extant. It stands in front of the Church of St. John
Lateran at Rome, and has a height of a hundred and five feet, exclusive
of the base, with a width diminishing from nine feet six inches to eight
feet seven inches. It is estimated to weigh above four hundred and fifty
tons, and is covered with well-cut hieroglyphics. No other obelisk
approaches within twelve feet of its elevation, or within fifty tons of
its weight. Yet, if we may believe an inscription of Thothmes, found on
the spot, the pair of obelisks whereof this was one shrank into
insignificance in comparison with another pair, also placed by him
before his propylæa, the height of which was one hundred and eight
cubits, or one hundred and sixty-two feet, and their weight consequently
from seven hundred to eight hundred tons! As no trace has been found of
these monsters, and as it seems almost impossible that they should have
been removed, and highly improbable that they could have been broken up
without leaving some indication of their existence, perhaps we may
conclude that they were designed rather than executed, and that the
inscription was set up in anticipation of an achievement contemplated
but never effected.
[Illustration: SECTION OF PILLARED HALL OF THOTHMES III. AT KARNAK.]
Other erections of the Great Thothmes are the enclosure of the famous
Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, the temple of Phthah at Thebes, the
small temple at Medinet-Abou, a temple to Kneph adorned with obelisks at
Elephantine, and a series of temples and monuments erected at Ombos,
Esneh, Abydos, Coptos, Denderah, Eileithyia, Hermonthis, and Memphis in
Egypt, and at Amada, Corte, Talmis, Pselcis, Semneh, Koummeh, and Napata
in Nubia. Extensive ruins of many of these buildings still remain,
particularly at Koummeh, Semneh, Napata, Denderah, and Ombos.
Altogether, Thothmes III. is pronounced to have left behind him more
monuments than any other Pharaoh excepting Rameses II., and though
occasionally showing himself, as a builder, somewhat capricious and
whimsical, still, on the whole, to have worked in a pure style and
proved that he was not deficient in good taste.[20]
It has happened, moreover, by a curious train of circumstances, that
Thothmes III. is, of all the Pharaohs, the one whose great works are
most widely diffused, and display Egyptian skill and taste to the
largest populations, and in the most important cities, of the modern
world. Rome, as we have seen, possesses his grandest obelisk, which is
at the same time the greatest of all extant monoliths. The millions who
have flocked to Rome in all ages have learnt the lesson of Egyptian
greatness from the monument erected before the Church of St. John
Lateran. Constantinople holds an obelisk of Thothmes III., which is
placed in the middle of the Atmeidan. London has put on its embankment,
half-way between St. Paul's and the Palace and Abbey of Westminster,
another obelisk of the same monarch, erected originally at Heliopolis,
thence removed to Alexandria by Augustus, and now adorning the banks of
the Thames, nearly in the centre of the most populous city that the
world has ever seen. The companion monument, after having, similarly,
stood at Heliopolis for fifteen centuries, and then at Alexandria for
eighteen, has crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and now teaches the million
residents, and the tens of thousands of visitors, of New York what great
things could be done by the Egyptian engineers and artists of the time
of the eighteenth dynasty.
Thothmes III. has been called "the Alexander of Egyptian history." The
phrase is at once exaggerated and misleading. It is exaggerated as
applied to his military ability; for, though beyond a doubt this monarch
was by far the greatest of Egyptian conquerors, and possessed
considerable military talent, much personal bravery, and an energy that
has seldom been exceeded, yet, on the other hand, his task was trivial
as compared with that of the Macedonian general, and his achievements
insignificant. Instead of plunging with a small force into the midst of
populous countries, and contending with armies ten or twenty times as
numerous as his own, defeating them, and utterly subduing a vast empire,
Thothmes marched at the head of a numerous disciplined army into thinly
peopled regions, governed by petty chiefs jealous one of another,
fought scarcely a single great battle, and succeeded in conquering two
regions of a moderate size, Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, as far as the
Khabour river. Alexander overran and subdued the entire tract between
the Ægean and the Sutlej, the Persian Gulf and the Oxus. He conquered
Egypt, and founded a dynasty there which endured for nearly three
centuries. Thothmes subdued not a tenth part of the space, and the
empire which he established did not endure for much more than a century.
It is thus absurd to compare Thothmes III. to Alexander the Great as a
conqueror.
Alexander was, besides, much more than a conqueror; he was a first-rate
administrator. Had he lived twenty years longer he would probably have
built up a universal monarchy, which might have lasted for a millenium.
As it was, he so organized the East that it continued for nearly three
centuries mainly under Greek rule, in the hands of the monarchs who are
known as his "successors." Thothmes III., on the contrary, organized
nothing. He left his conquests in such a condition that they, all of
them, revolted at his death. His successor had to reconquer all the
countries that had submitted to his father, and to re-establish over
them the Egyptian sovereignty.
In person the great Egyptian monarch was not remarkable. He had a long,
well-shaped, and somewhat delicate nose, which was almost in line with
his forehead, an eye prominent and larger than that of most Egyptians, a
shortish upper lip, a resolute mouth with rather over-full lips, and a
rounded, slightly retreating chin. The expression of his portrait
statues is grave and serious, but lacks strength and determination.
Indeed, there is something about the whole countenance that is a little
womanish, though his character certainly presents no appearance of
effeminacy. He died after a reign of fifty-four years, according to his
own reckoning, having practically exercised the sovereign power for
about thirty-two of the fifty-four. His age at his death must have been
about sixty.
[Illustration: BUST OF THOTHMES III.]
During these stirring times, what were the children of Israel doing? We
have supposed that Joseph was minister of the last of the Shepherd
Kings, under whose reign his people had entered upon the peaceful
occupation of the land of Goshen, where they were received with
hospitality by a population of the same simple pastoral habits with
themselves; and it seems probable that, under Thothmes III., they were
increasing abundantly and waxing mighty, and that the land between the
Sebennytic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile was gradually being filled
by them. Their period of severe oppression had not yet begun; there had
as yet arisen no sufficient reason for any measures of repression, such
as were pursued by the new king who "knew not Joseph." The name and
renown of the great minister seems still to have protected his kinsmen
in the peaceful enjoyment of their privileges in the land that must by
this time have lost for them most of its strangeness.