commonly term Amenophis the Second. This king was a warrior like his
father, and succeeded in reducing, without much difficulty, the various
nations that had thrown off the authority of Egypt on receiving the news
of his father's death. He even carried his arms, according to some, as
far as Nineveh, which he claims to have besieged and taken; he does not,
however, mention the Assyrians as his opponents. His contests were with
the Naïri, the Rutennu, and the Shasu (Arabs) in Asia, with the Tahennu
(Libyans) and Nubians in Africa. On all sides victory crowned his arms;
but he stained the fair fame that his victories would have otherwise
secured him by barbarous practices, and cruel and unnecessary bloodshed.
He tells us that at Takhisa in northern Syria he killed seven kings with
his own hand, and he represents himself in the act of destroying them
with his war-club, not in the heat of battle, but after they have been
taken prisoners. He further adds that, after killing them, he suspended
their bodies from the prow of the vessel In which he returned to Egypt,
and brought them, as trophies of victory, to Thebes, where he hung six
of the seven outside the walls of the city, as the Philistines hung the
bodies of Saul and Jonathan on the wall of Beth-shan (i Sam. xxxi. 10,
12); while he had the seventh conveyed to Napata in Nubia, and there
similarly exposed, to terrify his enemies in that quarter. It has been
said of the Russians--not perhaps without some justice--"Grattez le
Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare;" with far greater reason may we say
of the ancient Egyptians, that, notwithstanding the veneer of
civilization which they for the most part present to our observation,
there was In their nature, even at the best of times, an underlying
ingrained barbarism which could not be concealed, but was continually
showing itself.
Amenophis II. appears to have had a short reign; his seventh year is the
last noted upon his monuments. As a builder he was unenterprizing. One
temple at Amada, one hall at Thebes, and his tomb at Abd-el-Qurnah, form
almost the whole of his known constructions. None of them is remarkable.
Egypt under his sway had a brief rest before she braced herself to fresh
efforts, military and architectural.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Layard, "Nineveh and Babylon," pp. 280-282.
[18] Brugsch, "History of Egypt," vol. 1. pp. 367, 368.
[19] Brugsch, "History of Egypt" (first ed., 1879), vol. 1. pp. 371,
372.
[20] Wilkinson in Rawlinson's "Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 302.
XIII.
AMENHOTEP III. AND HIS GREAT WORKS--THE VOCAL MEMNON.
The fame of Amen-hotep the Third, the grandson of the great Thothmes,
rests especially upon his Twin Colossi, the grandest, if not actually
the largest, that the world has ever beheld. Imagine sitting figures,
formed of a single solid block of sandstone, which have sat on for above
three thousand years, mouldering gradually away under the influence of
time and weather changes, yet which are still more than sixty feet high,
and must originally, when they wore the tall crown of an Egyptian king,
have reached very nearly the height of seventy feet! We think a statue
vast, colossal, of magnificent dimensions, if it be as much as ten or
twenty feet high--as Chantrey's statue of Pitt, or Phidias's
chryselephantine statue of Jupiter. What, then, must these be, which are
of a size so vastly greater? Let us hear how they impress an eye-witness
of world-wide experience. "There they sit," says Harriet Martineau,
"together, yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant,
still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse
of Europe. I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this
pair has been conceived of by the imagination of art. Nothing
certainly, even in nature, ever affected me so unspeakably; no
thunderstorms in my childhood, nor any aspect of Niagara, or the great
lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years.... The
pair, sitting alone amid the expanse of verdure, with islands of ruins
behind them, grew more striking to us every day. To-day, for the first
time, we looked up to them from their base. The impression of sublime
tranquillity which they convey when seen from distant points, is
confirmed by a nearer approach. There they sit, keeping watch--hands on
knees, gazing straight forward; seeming, though so much of the face is
gone, to be looking over to the monumental piles on the other side of
the river, which became gorgeous temples, after these throne-seats were
placed here--the most immovable thrones that have ever been established
on this earth!"[21]
[Illustration: THE TWIN COLOSSI OF AMENHOTEP III, AT THEBES.]
The design of erecting two such colossi must be attributed to the
monarch himself, and we must estimate, from the magnificence of the
design, the grandeur of his thoughts and the wonderful depth of his
artistic imagination; but the skill to execute, the genius to express in
stone such dignity, majesty, and repose as the statues possess, belongs
to the first-rate sculptor, who turned the rough blocks of stone, hewn
by the masons in a distant quarry, into the glorious statues that have
looked down upon the plain for so many ages. The sculptors of Egyptian
works are, in general, unknown; but, by good fortune, in this particular
case, the name of the artist has remained on record, and he has himself
given us an account of the feelings with which he saw them set up in the
places where they still remain. The sculptor, who bore the same name as
his royal master, _i.e._ Amenhotep or Amen-hept, declares in the
exultation of his heart: "I immortalized the name of the king, and no
one has done the like of me in my works. I executed two portrait-statues
of the king, astonishing for their breadth and height; their completed
form dwarfed the temple tower--forty cubits was their measure; they were
cut in the splendid sandstone mountain on either side, the eastern and
the western. I caused to be built eight ships, whereon the statues were
carried up the river; they were emplaced in their sublime temple; they
will last as long as heaven. A joyful event was it when they were landed
at Thebes and raised up in their place."
A peculiar and curious interest attaches to one--the more eastern--of
the two statues. It was known to the Romans of the early empire as "The
Vocal Memnon," and formed one of the chief attractions which drew
travellers to Egypt, from the fact, which is quite indisputable, that at
that time, for two centuries or perhaps more, it emitted in the early
morning a musical sound, which was regarded as a sort of standing
miracle. The fact is mentioned by Strabo, Pliny the elder, Pausanias,
Tacitus, Juvenal, Lucian, Philostratus, and others, and is recorded by a
number of ear-witnesses on the lower part of the colossus itself in
inscriptions which may be seen at the present day. Amenhotep, identified
by the idle fancy of some Greek or Roman scholar with the Memnon of
Homer, son of Tithonus and _The Dawn_, who led an army of Ethiopians to
the assistance of Priam of Troy against the Greeks, was regarded as a
god, and to hear the sound was not only to witness a miracle, but to
receive an assurance of the god's favourable regard. For the statue did
not emit a sound--the god did not speak--every day. Sometimes travellers
had to depart disappointed altogether, sometimes they had to make a
second, a third, or a fourth visit before hearing the desired voice. But
still it was a frequent phenomenon; and a common soldier has recorded
the fact on the base of the statue, that he heard it no fewer than
thirteen times. The origin of the sound, the time when it began to be
heard, and the circumstances under which it ceased, are all more or less
doubtful. Some of those exceedingly clever persons who find priest-craft
everywhere, think that the musical sound was the effect of human
contrivance, and explain the whole matter to their entire satisfaction
by "the jugglery of the priests." The priests either found a naturally
vocal piece of rock, and intentionally made the statue out of it; or
they cunningly introduced a pipe into the interior of the figure, by
which they could make musical notes issue from the mouth at their
pleasure. It is against this view that in the palmy days of the Egyptian
hierarchy, the vocal character of the statue was entirely unknown; we
have no evidence of the sound having been heard earlier than the time of
Strabo (B.C. 25-10), when Egypt was in the possession of the Romans, and
the priests had little influence. Moreover, the theory is disproved by
the fact that, during the two centuries of the continuance of the
marvel, there were occasions when Memnon was obstinately silent, though
the priests must have been most anxious that he should speak, while
there were others when he spoke freely, though they must have been
perfectly indifferent. The wife of a prefect of Egypt made two visits to
the spot to no purpose; and the Empress Sabina, wife of the Emperor
Hadrian, was, on her first visit, also disappointed, so that "her
venerable features were inflamed with anger." On the other hand, as
already mentioned, a common Roman soldier heard the sound thirteen
times.
With respect to the time when, and the circumstances under which, the
phenomenon first showed itself, all that can be said is, that the
earliest literary witness to the fact is Strabo (about B.C. 25); that
the earliest of the inscriptions on the base that can be dated belongs
to the reign of Nero, and that it is at least questionable whether the
sound ever issued from the stone before B.C. 27. In that year there was
an earthquake which wrought great havoc at Thebes; and it is an acute
suggestion, that it was this earthquake which at once shattered the
upper part of the colossus, and so affected the remainder of the block
of stone that it became vocal then for the first time. For centuries the
figure remained a _torso_, and it was while a _torso_ that it emitted
the musical tone--
"_Dimidio_ magicæ resonabant Memnone chordæ."
After a long interval of years, probably about A.D. 174, that
restoration of the monument took place which is to be seen to the
present day. Five blocks of stone, rudely shaped into a form like that
of the unharmed colossus, were emplaced upon the _torso_, which was thus
reconstructed. The intention was to do Memnon honour; but the effect was
to strike him dumb. The peculiar condition of the stone, which the
earthquake had superinduced, and which made it vocal, being changed by
the new arrangement, the sound ceased, and has been heard no more.
It is a fact well known to scientific persons at the present day, that
musical sounds are often given forth both by natural rocks and by
quarried masses of stone, in consequence of a sudden change of
temperature. Baron Humboldt, writing on the banks of the Oronooko, says:
"The granite rock on which we lay is one of those where travellers have
heard from time to time, towards sunrise, subterraneous sounds,
resembling those of the organ. The missionaries call these stones _loxas
de musica_. 'It is witchcraft,' said our young Indian pilot.... But the
existence of a phenomenon that seems to depend on a certain state of the
atmosphere cannot be denied. The shelves of rock are full of very narrow
and deep crevices. They are heated during the day to about 50°. I often
found their temperature during the night at 39°. It may easily be
conceived that the difference of temperature between the subterraneous
and the external air would attain its _maximum_ about sunrise."
Analogous phenomena occur among the sandstone rocks of El Nakous, in
Arabia Petræa, near Mount Maladetta in the Pyrenees, and (perhaps) in
the desert between Palestine and Egypt. "On the fifth day of my
journey," says the accomplished author of 'Eothen.' "the sun growing
fiercer and fiercer, ... as I drooped my head under his fire, and closed
my eyes against the glare that surrounded me, I slowly fell asleep--for
how many minutes or moments I cannot tell--but after a while I was
gently awakened by a peal of church bells--my native bells--the innocent
bells of Marlen that never before sent forth their music beyond the
Blagdon hills! My first idea naturally was that I still remained fast
under the power of a dream. I roused myself, and drew aside the silk
that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into the light. Then at
least I was well enough awakened, _but still those old Marlen bells rang
on_, not ringing for joy, but properly, prosily, steadily, merrily
ringing 'for church.' _After a while the sound died away slowly_; it
happened that neither I nor any of my party had a watch to measure the
exact time of its lasting; but it seemed to me that about ten minutes
had passed before the bells ceased."[22] The gifted writer proceeds to
give a metaphysical explanation of the phenomena; but it may be
questioned whether he did not hear actual musical sounds, emitted by the
rocks that lay beneath the sands over which he was moving.
And similar sounds have been heard when the stones that sent them forth
were quarried blocks, no longer in a state of nature, but shaped by
human tools, and employed in architecture. Three members of the French
Expedition, MM. Jomard, Jollois, and Devilliers, were together in the
granite cell which forms the centre of the palace-temple of Karnak,
when, according to their own account, they "heard a sound, resembling
that of a chord breaking, issue from the blocks at sunrise." Exactly the
same comparison is employed by Pausanias to describe the sound that
issued from "the vocal Memnon."
On the whole, we may conclude that the musical qualities of his
remarkable colossus were unknown alike to the artist who sculptured the
monument and to the king whom it represented. To them, in its purpose
and object, it belonged, not to Music, but wholly to the sister art of
Architecture. "The Pair" sat at one extremity of an avenue leading to
one of the great palace-temples reared by Amenhotep III.--a
palace-temple which is now a mere heap of sandstone, "a little roughness
in the plain." The design of the king was, that this grand edifice
should be approached by a _dromos_ or paved way, eleven hundred feet
long, which should be flanked on either side by nine similar statues,
placed at regular intervals along the road, and all representing
himself. The egotism of the monarch may perhaps be excused on account of
the grandeur of his idea, which we nowhere else find repeated, avenues
of sphinxes being common in Egypt, and avenues of sitting human
_life-size_ figures not unknown to Greece, but the history of art
containing no other instance of an avenue of colossi.
Another of Amenhotep's palace-temples has been less unkindly treated by
fortune than the one just mentioned. The temple of Luxor, or El-Uksur,
on the eastern bank of the river, about a mile and a half to the south
of the great temple of Karnak, is a magnificent edifice to this day; and
though some portions of it, and some of its most remarkable features,
must be assigned to Rameses II., yet still it is, in the main, a
construction of Amenhotep's, and must be regarded as being, even if it
stood alone, sufficient proof of his eminence as a builder. The length
of the entire building is about eight hundred feet, the breadth varying
from about one hundred feet to two hundred. Its general arrangement
comprised, first, a great court, at a different angle from the rest,
being turned so as to face Karnak. In front of this stood two colossal
statues of the founder, together with two obelisks, one of which has
been removed to France, and now adorns the centre of the Place de la
Concorde at Paris. Behind this was a great pillared hall, of which only
the two central ranges of columns are now standing. Still further back
were smaller halls and numerous apartments, evidently meant for the
king's residence, rather than for a temple or place exclusively devoted
to worship. The building is remarkable for its marked affectation of
irregularity. "Not only is there a considerable angle in the direction
of the axis of the building, but the angles of the courtyards are hardly
ever right angles; the pillars are variously spaced, and pains seem to
have been gratuitously taken to make it as irregular as possible in
nearly every respect."[23]
Besides this grand edifice, Amenhotep built two temples at Karnak to
Ammon and Maut, embellished the old temple of Ammon there with a new
propylon, raised temples to Kneph, or Khnum, at Elephantine and built a
shrine to contain his own image at Soleb in Nubia, another shrine at
Napata, and a third at Sedinga. He left traces of himself at Semneh, in
the island of Konosso, on the rocks between Philæ and Assouan, at
El-Kaab, at Toora near Memphis, at Silsilis, and at Sarabit-el-Khadim in
the Sinaitic peninsula. He was, as M. Lenormant remarks, "un prince
essentiellement batisseur." The scale and number of his works are such
as to indicate unremitting attention to sculpture and building during
the entire duration of his long reign of thirty-six years.
On the other hand, as a general he gained little distinction. He
maintained, indeed, the dominion over Syria and Western Mesopotamia,
which had been established by Thothmes III., and his cartouche has been
found at Arban on the Khabour; but there is no appearance of his having
made any additional conquests in this quarter. The subjected peoples
brought their tribute regularly, and the neighbouring nations, whether
Hittites, Assyrians, or Babylonians, gave him no trouble. The dominion
of Egypt over Western Asia had become "an accomplished fact," and was
generally recognized by the old native kingdoms. It did not extend,
however, beyond Taurus and Niphates towards the north, or beyond the
Khabour eastward or southward, but remained fixed within the limits
which it had attained under the Third Thothmes.
The only quarter in which Amenhotep warred was towards Ethiopia. He
conducted in person several expeditions up the valley of the Nile,
against the negro tribes of the Soudan. But these attacks were not so
much wars as raids, or razzias. They were not made with the object of
advancing the Egyptian frontier, or even of extending Egyptian
influence, but partly for the glorification of the monarch, who thus
obtained at a cheap rate the credit of military successes, and
partly--probably mainly--for the material gain which resulted from them
through the capture of highly valuable slaves. The black races have
always been especially sought for this purpose, and were in great demand
in the Egyptian slave-market: ladies of rank were pleased to have for
their attendants negro boys, whom they dressed in a fanciful manner; and
the court probably indulged in a similar taste. Amenhotep's aim was
certainly rather to capture than to kill. In one of his most successful
raids the slain were only three hundred and twelve, while the captives
consisted of two hundred and five men, two hundred and fifty women, and
two hundred and eighty-five children, or a total of seven hundred and
forty; and the proportion in the others was similar. The trade of slave
hunting was so lucrative that even a Great King could not resist the
temptation of having a share in its profits.
When Amenhotep was not engaged in hunting men his favourite recreation
was to indulge in the chase of the lion. On one of his scarabæi he
states that between his first and his tenth year he slew with his own
hand one hundred and ten of these ferocious beasts. Later on in his
reign he presented to the priests who had the charge of the ancient
temple of Karnak a number of live lions, which he had probably caught in
traps. The lion was an emblem both of Horus and of Turn, and may, when
tamed, have been assigned a part in religious processions. It is
uncertain what was Amenhotep's hunting-ground; but the large number of
his victims makes it probable that the scene of his exploits was
Mesopotamia rather than any tract bordering on Egypt: since lions have
always been scarce animals in North-Eastern Africa, but abounded in
Mesopotamia even much later than the time of Amenhotep, and are "not
uncommon" there even at the present day. We may suppose that he had a
hunting pavilion at Arban, where one of his scarabs has been found, and
from that centre beat the reed-beds and jungles of the Khabour.
[Illustration: BUST OF AMENHOTEP III.]
In person, Amenhotep III. was not remarkable. His features were good,
except that his nose was somewhat too much rounded at the end; his
expression was pensive, but resolute; his forehead high, his upper lip
short, his chin a little too prominent. He left behind him a character
for affectionateness, kindliness, and generosity. Some historians have
reproached him with being too much under female influence; and certainly
in the earlier portion of his reign he deferred greatly to his mother,
Mutemua, and in the latter portion to his wife, Tii or Taia; but there
is no evidence that any evil result followed, or that these princesses
did not influence him for good. It is too much taken for granted by many
writers that female influence is corrupting. No doubt it is so in some
cases; but it should not be forgotten that there are women whom to have
known is "a liberal education." Mutemua and Tii may have been of the
number.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] "Eastern Life," vol. i. pp. 84, 289.
[22] Kinglake, "Eothen," pp. 188, 189.
[23] Fergusson, "Handbook of Architecture," vol. i. p. 234.
XIV.
KHUENATEN AND THE DISK-WORSHIPPERS.
On the death of Amenhotep III., his son, Amenhotep IV., mounted the
throne. Left by Amenhotep III to the guardianship of his mother, Tii,
who was of some entirely foreign race, he embraced a new form of
religion, which she appears to have introduced, and shocked the
Egyptians by substituting, so far as he found to be possible, this new
creed for the old polytheism of the country. The heresy of Amenhotep IV
has been called "Disk-worship;" and he, and the next two or three kings,
are known in Egyptian history as "the Disk-worshippers." It is difficult
to discover what exactly was the belief professed. Externally, it
consisted, primarily, in a marked preference of a single one of the
Egyptian gods over all the others, and a certain hatred or contempt for
the great bulk of the deities composing the old Pantheon. Thus far it
resembled the religion which Apepi, the last "Shepherd King," had
endeavoured to introduce; but the new differed from the old reformation
in the matter of the god selected for special honour. Apepi had sought
to turn the Egyptians away from all other worships except the worship of
Set; Amenhotep desired their universal adhesion to the worship of Aten.
Aten, in Egyptian theology, had hitherto represented a particular aspect
or character of Ra, "the sun"--that aspect which is expressed by the
phrase, "the solar disk." How it was possible to keep Aten distinct from
the other sun-gods, Ra, Khepra, Turn, Shu, Mentu, Osiris, and Horus or
Harmachis, is a puzzle to moderns; but it seems to have been a
difficulty practically overcome by the Egyptians, to whom it did not
perhaps even present itself as a difficulty at all. Disk-worship
consisted then, primarily, in an undue exaltation of this god, who was
made to take the place of Ammon-Ra in the Pantheon, and was ordinarily
represented by a circle with rays proceeding from it, the rays mostly
terminating in hands, which frequently presented the symbols of life and
health and strength to the worshipper.