EGYPT DOWN TO 1500 B.C.
I told you that one of the ways by which man, at different ages of
the world, has been described is to speak of him in the Hunting
stage, the Pastoral, and the Agricultural. Although these people
along the great rivers probably settled down into the agricultural
stage earlier than others, still, that did not prevent them from
keeping cattle and hunting wild creatures. The older the
inscriptions and records, the more we see of the hunting, so that we
may imagine, as we should expect, that the quieter business of
farming gradually came to occupy more of their lives as time went on,
and that the hunting occupied them less. The wild beasts would no
doubt get hunted farther and farther back from the country that man
had settled in. An interesting fact is that one of the very oldest
of all the Egyptian engravings portrays ostriches, showing that these
great birds were inhabitants of Egypt at that time, though they do
not appear in any later engravings and are, of course, not living in
any part of Egypt now. These ostriches are carved on the face of a
sandstone rock, standing as nature placed it, and not worked into any
building. It is near a place which in the old days was called
Silsilla, and it was nearly at the southern end of the Egypt of those
times. For that Egypt did not extend nearly as far {12} south as the
country which we call by that name now. It ended at the first
cataract, where is now the town called Assouan. In ancient times
this Assouan was called Syene. Farther south than this, the country
was no longer called Egypt, but Nubia, though some Egyptians
inhabited the region a little south of the cataract. Look at your
map and you will very likely see that region still written down as
the "Nubian Desert." Look to the west of the line of the Nile and
you may read "Libyan Desert." Look to the right, again, and there is
"Arabian Desert."
[Sidenote: The Nile]
You will realise now what this means: that these people were here
living all along the banks of the great river, and that on either
side were deserts--sandy, barren wastes--which, for all they knew,
stretched away without end. They lived along this narrow and very
fertile strip which depended almost entirely on the river for its
fertility, and which that river fertilised in a very peculiar way.
At a certain time in the year it came down in a great flood and
inundated, that is to say, flowed over, all the low land lying on
either side of its course. This happened just about the season that
the star which we call Sirius, or the Dog-Star, but which they called
Sothis, or the star of their god Seth, showed itself above the
horizon at the moment of sunrise; and they dated the beginning of
their year from this rising with the sun of this exceedingly bright
and large star. This occurred in middle summer, so that the
beginning of their year, their "New Year's Day," was very different
from ours. It came nearly at the season of our Midsummer's Day. But
they had a very good reason for counting the beginning of their year
from it, because it was such a very important date for them. {13} It
really did begin a new year for them, for it was this inundation, or
overflow of the river, which gave their seeds, when they put them
into the ground, a chance of growing and giving them good crops.
After a time, during which the water had lain out over the low land,
it fell back again into the usual channel of the river and left all
the land which it had covered with a deposit, or layer, of rich dark
mud, better than any manure they could have given it.
We know now what it was that caused, and that still every year
causes, this overflow; it is the excessively heavy rainfall which
occurs annually in the interior of the country, where the sources of
the river are. But they did not know the reason, and made many
curious guesses to account for it.
Although there were these deserts around them, it seems certain that
the country quite close about the river had more trees and bushes on
it than it has now. For one thing, as the people settled in the
country and their numbers grew, they would be likely to clear off
patches of the woodland for their crops, and in the second place a
great eating down of the vegetation must have happened when they
began, as we know they did begin, to keep goats and, later, camels.
The long-necked camels would be able to reach up to the tops of small
trees, and to the lower branches of the taller ones, and, together,
it seems that the goats and camels made a great difference after a
while in the number of the trees. When a country is much stripped of
its trees, one of the results is that less rain falls there; so it is
quite sure that this stripping of the trees by the goats and camels
in Egypt caused the rainfall to be less than it had been before those
creatures were brought in. The country had to {14} depend more than
ever, for its crops, on the overflow of the river. Of course the
cutting down of the trees by carpenters with the stone or bronze axes
would help to reduce the numbers, and we know that the ancient
Egyptians understood the use of charcoal, which is made by burning
wood. So it is easy to understand that, in a country which had no
great supply of woodland to start with, what there was of it was soon
almost destroyed.
But until that destruction happened there was woodland enough to give
shelter to numbers of wild animals. Many of the animals which the
early Egyptians hunted were of kinds that are able to live in sandy
places where there is very little shelter, and, as it seems, very
little grass for them to eat. We find, by the old carvings and
written records, that they hunted the lion, leopard, jackal, wild
boars, antelopes of many kinds, wild sheep and oxen, the hippopotamus
in the river, and that they caught a variety of fish in the river and
in the Lake Moeris, into which water was led from the river by a
canal. The making of canals, to carry the water to places where it
was required, was done in very early days, and at the season of the
river's overflow water was led by a canal into this big lake which
acted as a reservoir, or storing place, for the water, from which
they could draw it off when wanted. The crocodiles, by which the
Nile was infested, were looked on as sacred.
They understood the use of nets for fishing, and used nets also for
surrounding four-footed animals and for catching birds. For the
killing of the larger and dangerous animals they had spears of
various make, and bows and arrows. It is doubtful whether they used
the boomerang--that wooden, flat, curved {15} weapon, used still by
the natives of Australia, which returns to the thrower after going
out to a distance of more than a hundred yards. There are carved
figures which look as if they might be figures of boomerangs, but
they might be "throwing sticks" such as some savage people still use
to give greater length of "leverage"--if you know what that means--to
increase the length and force of their throw of a spear. There were
immense numbers of wild-fowl about the river and the marshes. So the
ancient Egyptians must have had splendid sport.
[Sidenote: Domestic animals]
They seem to have kept, as domestic animals, ducks and geese, but it
was not till several thousand years later than the date of those
engravings in which we see the ostriches that our domestic fowls were
introduced. Hairy-coated sheep are shown on some of the early
carvings, but later a better sort of sheep, with woollier coat, and
curved, instead of straight, horns appears. They had oxen, which
drew their wooden ploughs and trod out the corn from the straw on the
threshing-floors, and were also used to draw weights. They had,
after a time, as we have seen, goats and camels, but the donkey was
the most common beast of burden, both when they traversed the desert
and when they were in their own fertile strip of country. Horses
were only brought in at rather a late date in the story. At first
they seem to have been used only for drawing chariots, and we find
them thus harnessed a long while before we are shown a rider mounted
on a horse, or, indeed, on any animal. They do not seem to have
known either the elephant or the giraffe, which are perhaps the most
remarkable creatures in all Africa. We know that they kept bees for
their honey. They had dogs, of a variety of breeds, and {16} used
them for hunting, apparently not regarding them as the unclean
creatures that most people in the East consider them now. They kept
cats and monkeys as pets, and used the cats to catch birds.
But the great business of their lives was the cultivation of their
crops. Egypt was a great corn-producing country. Make a note of
that in your minds, for the corn supply of Egypt became of great
importance in the later story of the Mediterranean and its shores.
The corn was principally of the kinds that we call wheat and barley.
And they had vegetables, such as lettuce, beans, peas, onions, and so
on. We may imagine a certain amount of sowing and hoeing, and
weeding and harvesting going on at the right seasons; but a great
deal of their time must have been taken up with the watering under
the scorching Egyptian sun. When the big flood had ceased to come
down from the rain-filled lakes in the south, and the river had gone
back into its ordinary channel, they had, after a while, to refresh
the ground again by raising water in buckets hung by a rope to a long
pole. The pole worked on a hinge about three-quarters of the way
down from the end to which the rope was fastened, so that the bucket
could be let down or drawn up by a man working at the end of the
pole. There are many pictures and carvings of this apparatus.
Probably very little rain fell at any part of the year in Egypt
itself after most of the trees had gone.
They had the palm trees on which the dates grow, and fig trees and
pomegranates. The wood of the palm must have been useful to them for
timber, in a country where timber trees were so scarce. And they had
the flax, of which they made linen. In early days there does not
seem to have been any cultivation of {17} the vine, though the wine
made in Egypt became quite important later. And they had the papyrus.
[Illustration: CYPERUS PAPYRUS.]
[Sidenote: The papyrus]
The papyrus was a plant which grew wild in the marshes, and it was of
the greatest importance to them, and also to us, because it was on
strips cut from the stalk and fastened flat together that the
substance was made which served them for paper, on which very much of
the story which I am now telling you was written. I have said that
much of the story is taken from the writings and pictures on stone,
whether on {18} the rocks as they stood where nature had put them, or
as the stone was worked into the tombs or monuments of kings and
great people, into pyramids and the like. But the greatest part of
the record is written on the papyrus. The stem of the plant was used
also for the building of boats, and it supplied them with material
for ropes. Though it was found wild, they cultivated it, and so
increased the natural supply.
It is likely that their houses were commonly built of brick. You
will have noticed that as the country was so poorly supplied with
timber-trees few wooden houses could be built. But the brick of
which the houses of most of the people were made would not be of the
brick that we know. You will remember that one of the burdens
imposed on the Israelites in Egypt was to make bricks "without
straw," and it may have happened to you to wonder at that, because,
as you know, our bricks are not made with straw. But straw and
pieces of reed were used in the making of much of the ancient brick,
because the clay often was not burnt in a kiln, but only dried by the
sun's heat. This did not give nearly so hard or lasting a brick as
the brick that was burnt by the fire in a kiln, but a mixture of the
straw helped to hold the clay together and to prevent its crumbling.
They knew all about the proper burning of bricks, to make them
durable, also, but this sun-drying was a less troublesome way, and
was used for the commoner kind of brick.
[Sidenote: Works of art]
At a very early period they became skilful in the making of pottery,
by which I mean vessels for household use, such as jugs, etc., in
clay, and they were clever workers of glass. They made ornaments of
gold, and engraved jewels. They were interested in {19} medicine,
and knew the use of splints for setting broken bones. They knew
something of the movement of the stars, as seen from the earth. We
have noticed that they began their New Year at the date of the rising
of Sothis, as they called the Dog-Star, about the season that the
Nile began to rise. The carvings and drawings on stone and on
papyrus are remarkable, even from the first, for the correctness and
firmness of the outline. The earliest show the hands and feet left
in a curiously unfinished state, and many of the figures have the two
legs shown as one. As time went on they came to draw the figure very
much more perfectly and with attention to finishing the hands and
feet. The faces indicate quite clearly the race of men to which the
originals of the portraits belonged.
But, of course, the achievements of the old Egyptians by which they
are best known to us are those gigantic monuments the Pyramids, that
strange head of the Sphinx, the many temples and the mummied corpses
found within them. All these, as well as their hieroglyphical or
picture writing, are connected very closely with their religious
beliefs; and this is such a very curious and interesting subject that
I propose to write about it in a chapter of its own.
I do not know whether you will agree, but it seems to me that the
story of mankind is much more amusing, and will do us much more good,
if we try to see how the peoples of the world lived from time to
time, what kind of people they were, and how they worked and played
and fought, rather than if we just study a list of the names of their
kings and of their towns. I do not think the names can help us much,
unless we know what the people that the names belonged to did, or
what happened in the towns so called. For that {20} reason I have
avoided mentioning any names that do not seem to have that kind of
interest in the story. I think they only confuse us and get in the
way of our seeing how the things happened that really did make a
difference in the world.
But you are not to suppose that when these Egyptian people had
settled themselves down along the course of this pleasant river, they
were allowed to remain there quite peaceably, without any
interference from their neighbours who lived in a far less fertile
and agreeable country. The greatest of all facts in Egypt was the
Nile. It went from end to end of the country. People went along it
in boats and ships, they fished in it, hunted the hippopotamus, and
possibly the crocodile, in it. Sometimes they were killed by either
of these, and especially by the latter. The Nile was their life.
Without it they would have died.
There was desert all about them, but it was not desert so deserted
that it was quite without inhabitants. There were "oases," or
fertile patches, in the desert itself, and the deserts had their
limits; there were tolerably fertile lands beyond them again. And it
has always been a wonder how the desert-dwellers, such as the Arabs
and some kinds of antelopes, do manage to subsist where there seems
to be so little for them to eat, and almost nothing for them to drink.
But there were people--Libyans on the west, Nubians on the south,
Ethiopians (what we should call negroes)--of various tribes who
probably were envious enough of the easy life that they saw their
neighbours living along the river-bank. Therefore, although it
sounds as if it were a very peaceful, as well as pleasant, life that
I have tried to show you that these {21} ancient Egyptians were
leading, you are not to suppose that they were not beset, from time
to time, by incursions and invasions and attacks by the peoples round
about them. It would take far too long to recite all these invasions
against which they succeeded more or less in holding their own. That
they were not always successful is quite evident from the records.
[Sidenote: The First Dynasty]
The record of Egyptian kings is given to us by an Egyptian priest,
named Manctho, and the date of the earliest king, the founder of what
is called the First Dynasty, has been estimated by some students to
have been as far back as 5500 years before Christ was born. That is
to say, more than seven thousand years ago. Other learned men have
supposed the date of this first king to be quite two thousand years
later in the story. This shows the very great difficulty of fixing
the dates of these events that happened so very long ago.
What is more important is that we know at least one of the great acts
of this first Egyptian king, whose name was Menes. It is known, from
inscriptions, that he united into one kingdom what had, before him,
been two countries, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.
And here I must warn you of a difficulty which may perplex you. On
the map you may see that Lower Egypt is the part near the Delta, that
is the mouth, or mouths, of the Nile where it flows into the sea.
Upper Egypt is the more southern part reaching as far south as the
first cataract. But, as you look at the map, this Lower Egypt looks
upper, to your eye. You must not pay any attention to that, but must
remember that the northern part must be lower, really, because it is
the part towards which the river runs; and a river, as you know, must
run from higher ground to {22} lower. Remember, then, that Lower
Egypt is the northern part, near the sea and Upper Egypt the southern.
Menes united these into one kingdom, but they were separated for a
time again, under later kings, and this shows that not only were the
Egyptians sometimes at war with the tribes from the deserts, who
invaded them, but also that the people along the river-banks were
sometimes fighting among themselves.
By a dynasty is meant both the king who is the founder, the first, of
that dynasty, and also those of his children and grandchildren, or
relatives, who followed him on the throne. It is as we may speak of
the Stuart dynasty or the Hanover dynasty, of our own kings. When
there were no more relations of a dynasty to come to the throne, or
when one king was conquered by a foreign invader, or by a revolution
of his own subjects, the next king was called the founder of a new
dynasty, which went on till his family also died out or was turned
out.
In the long history of Egypt, from the time of Menes, the founder of
the first dynasty, to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander of Macedon
in 332 B.C.--that is, 332 years before the birth of Christ--there
were thirty-one of these dynasties, or kingly families, which ruled
Egypt one after the other.
We speak of the rulers of all these dynasties as kings, but it is
evident that they did not all have the same authority over their
subjects. In our own history we know that sometimes the barons were
very powerful, and the king of England had great difficulty in
keeping them under his rule. Something of the same kind happened at
various times in Egypt. There were local chiefs, with a large
following of men, who {23} were nearly independent of the actual
king. But in the end the kings regained the authority over them.
[Sidenote: The new empire]
The capital city, in the earliest times, was Memphis, in Lower Egypt,
and so it remained until the ninth and tenth dynasties, when the
power of the Memphis kings was overthrown by conquerors from the
north, and the country was distracted by revolutions, so far as we
can learn, for a long period. Then a people called the Hyksos,
coming from the north-east, from Syria, invaded Egypt and established
their power there for many generations. And then came a new dynasty,
which is thought to have arisen from a combining together of the
chief men in Upper Egypt, of which Thebes was the capital. This
rising drove out the foreign Hyksos and gave a military strength to
Egypt which it never had before. The greatest king of this the
greatest period of Egypt in the old days was Tethmosis III. He was a
stepson of Hatshepsut, the wife of his father Tethmosis II., and
Hatshepsut herself ruled as queen until Tethmosis came of age. That
was in, or about, 1500 B.C.
The date of the founding of this, the eighteenth, dynasty was 1580
B.C.; and with this period begins what is called the New Empire. The
word "empire," taking the place of that of kingdom, seems to show
that the Egyptians were claiming to extend their power beyond their
own country. And we know that they actually did so.
I do not want, for the moment, to follow down the story of Egypt any
further than this, because it is time that we turned our eyes
eastward, to see what was going on along that other great river-fed
region, where the Euphrates and the Tigris flow down together. The
point which we have now come to in the Egyptian {24} story is a point
at or about which new and great things began to happen. The two
great world forces--that of Egypt on the one side and that of
Babylonia, which is the name given to the empire established in the
east, on the other--began to clash together as they had not clashed
before. Their rivalry, and the wars between them, and the catching
up into these wars and the squeezing between them of the unfortunate
smaller peoples that lived in the country by which the two big
empires were divided--these are the principal things in the story of
the world for a thousand years and more after the time of the
founding of the eighteenth dynasty. So we must now try to make out
something of the story of that other great power along those more
eastern rivers.
But before we go to that eastern story I want to put in a chapter,
the chapter that I spoke of a few pages back, to tell you something
about the religion of the old Egyptians, the strange gods that they
worshipped, the burial of their dead, their tombs, their language,
and their sacred writing or hieroglyphic.
I think, however, before we begin the new chapter, I should like you
to take a look at the map again and observe the position of the two
great river-courses--the western, which we have been talking about,
and the eastern, to which we are soon to come--because these are the
real big facts which matter in the world's story. The Egyptian
religion and all connected with it are most interesting, but the
clash of the big empires was what made the early history of the world.
[Sidenote: The two empires]
You will see, then, these great river regions and will imagine the
two powerful empires established in them, and then you will see that
there lies between the two a country in which lies the land of
Palestine, {25} where the Jews lived. You will see that the big
empires are divided from each other, nearly separated, by the Red Sea
running up into the land with two arms, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf
of Akaba. Between these two stretches or arms lies the Sinai
Peninsula, and northward of Egypt and westward of Palestine there is
the Mediterranean Sea. The result of this distribution of sea and
land is that the only way by which the two big empires could come
into touch with one another was by way of Palestine. The southern
desert, even where those big arms of the sea did not run up into it,
was almost as impassable for the passage of armies as the sea itself.
Neither of the empires, in the early days, had much of a fleet, by
which they could get at one another across sea. The consequence is
that we have to regard that stretch of land which is occupied on the
map by Palestine as the bridge, and the only bridge, by which they
could come into contact, either for purposes of trade or of war.
It is only natural to think, therefore, that when they began, as they
did in the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, to make big wars on each
other, the tribes that held, or that vainly tried to hold, that
bridge, would be terribly squeezed and harassed by first one and then
the other of the big neighbours coming upon them, with very little
respect for their rights. That is, in fact, exactly what we know did
happen. And it is only a wonder that the Jews at that time were not
squeezed utterly out of existence between the two. It is one of the
biggest wonders, as well as one of the biggest facts, in history that
they were not so squeezed out. When I say it is one of the biggest
facts, I mean that it made an enormous difference to the history of
{26} the world, for if they had allowed themselves to be squeezed
out, if they had not even then showed that extraordinary toughness
and tenacity which has always been a great part of their national
character, the history of the world would have been very different
from what it has been, Christianity could not have spread through the
world as it has spread, and the whole course of events would have
been largely changed.
In what way it would have been changed we cannot say; but that it
would have been changed enormously we cannot doubt.
Keep, then, these great facts clearly in your minds: the position of
these two big empires to west and east, and the comparatively narrow
bridge between them, by which they could communicate with each other.
If you have this, like a map without any of the other names filled
in, in the background of your minds, you will be able to fit in the
happenings as they occur.
And now for our chapter on the Egyptian religions, beliefs, customs,
and so on.
{27}