"In spite ... of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications in many

respects for the task he undertook; in spite of his ignorance

of even common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and

cyphered badly, and knew next to nothing of classics or

science); in spite of his want of worldly wisdom, of any

comprehensive and exact knowledge of men and of things; in

spite of his being merely an elementary teacher,--through the

force of his all-conquering love, the nobility of his heart,

the resistless energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a

few first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in

words, his resolute manifestation of them in deeds,--he stands

forth among educational reformers as the man whose influence

on education is wider, deeper, more penetrating, than that of

all the rest--the prophet and the sovereign of the domain in

which he lived and laboured. ...

{742}

It was late in life--he was fifty-two years of age--before

Pestalozzi became a practical school-master. He had even begun

to despair of ever finding the career in which he might

attempt to realize the theories over which his loving heart

and teeming brain had been brooding from his earliest youth.

... At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pestalozzi

utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of

education, and very scantily furnished even with elementary

knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton of Unterwalden,

the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war had

rendered homeless and destitute. ... The house in which the

eighty children were assembled to be boarded, lodged, and

taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline convent, scarcely

habitable, and destitute of all the conveniences of life. The

only apartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty-four

feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms; and into

this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty,

diseased, and ignorant, with the manners and habits of

barbarians. Pestalozzi's only helper in the management of the

institution was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept

the rooms; so that he was, as he tells us himself, not only

the teacher, but the paymaster, man-servant, and almost the

housemaid of the children. ... 'My wishes [he writes] were now

accomplished. I felt convinced that my heart would change the

condition of my children as speedily as the springtide sun

reanimates the earth frozen by the winter. Nor,' he adds, 'was

I mistaken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow

from our mountains, you could no longer recognise the same

children.' ... 'I was obliged,' he says, 'unceasingly to be

everything to my children. I was alone with them from morning

to night. It was from my hand they received whatever could be

of service both to their bodies and minds. All succour, all

consolation, all instruction came to them immediately from

myself. Their hands were in my hand; my eyes were fixed on

theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles encountered

theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. I

had around me neither family, friends, nor servants; I had

only them. I was with them when they were in health, by their

side when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the

last to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we

were in bed I used to pray with them and talk to them till

they went to sleep. They wished me to do so.' ... 'I knew,' he

says, 'no system, no method, no art but that which rested on

the simple consequences of the firm belief of the children in

my love towards them. I wished to know no other.' ...

Gradually ... Pestalozzi advanced to the main principles of

his system of moral education. ... He says:--'Nature develops

all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends

on their exercise.' 'The circle of knowledge commences close

around a man, and thence extends concentrically.' 'Force not

the faculties of children into the remote paths of knowledge,

until they have gained strength by exercise on things that are

near them.' 'There is in Nature an order and march of

development. If you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the

peace and harmony of the mind. And this you do, if, before you

have formed the mind by the progressive knowledge of the

realities of life, you fling it into the labyrinth of words,

and make them the basis of development.' 'The artificial march

of the ordinary school, anticipating the order of Nature,

which proceeds without anxiety and without haste, inverts this

order by placing words first, and thus secures a deceitful

appearance of success at the expense of natural and safe

development.' In these few sentences we recognise all that is

most characteristic in the educational principles of

Pestalozzi. ... To set the intellectual machinery in

motion--to make it work, and keep it working; that was the

sole object at which he aimed; of all the rest he took little

account. ... He relied upon a principle which must be insisted

on as cardinal and essential in education. He secured the

thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly

through their own direct share in it. ... Observation, ...

according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon had said the same thing

before him), is the absolute basis of all knowledge, and is

therefore the prime agent in elementary education. It is

around this theory, as a centre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's

system revolves."

_J. Payne, Lectures on the History of Education,

lecture. 9._

"During the short period, not more than a year, which

Pestalozzi spent among the children at Stanz, he settled the

main features of the Pestalozzian system. Sickness broke out

among the children, and the wear and tear was too great even

for Pestalozzi. He would probably have sunk under his efforts

if the French, pressed by the Austrians, had not entered

Stanz, in January, 1799, and taken part of the Ursuline

Convent for a military hospital. Pestalozzi was, therefore,

obliged to break up the school, and he himself went to a

medicinal spring on the Gurnigel in the Canton Bern. ... He

came down from the Gurnigel, and began to teach in the primary

schools (i. e., schools for children from four to eight years

old) of Burgdorf, the second town in the Canton. Here the

director was jealous of him, and he met with much opposition.

... In less than a year Pestalozzi left this school in bad

health, and joined Krüsi in opening a new school in Burgdorf

Castle, for which he afterward (1802) obtained Government aid.

Here he was assisted in carrying out his system by Krüsi,

Tobler, and Bluss. He now embodied the results of his

experience in a work which has obtained great celebrity--'How

Gertrude Teaches her Children' [also published in England

under the title of 'Leonard and Gertrude]. In 1802 Pestalozzi,

for once in his life a successful and popular man, was elected

a member of a deputation sent by the Swiss people to Paris. On

the restoration of the Cantons in 1804. the Castle of Burgdorf

was again occupied by one of the chief magistrates, and

Pestalozzi and his establishment were moved to the Monastery

of Buchsee. Here the teachers gave the principal direction to

another, the since celebrated Fellenburg, 'not without my

consent,' says Pestalozzi, 'but to my profound mortification.'

He therefore soon accepted an invitation from the inhabitants

of Yverdun to open an institution there, and within a

twelvemonth he was followed by his old assistants, who had

found government by Fellenburg less to their taste than

no-government by Pestalozzi.

{743}

The Yverdun Institute had soon a world-wide reputation.

Pestalozzian teachers went from it to Madrid, to Naples, to

St. Petersburg. Kings and philosophers joined in doing it

honor. But, as Pestalozzi himself has testified, these praises

were but as a laurel-wreath encircling a skull. The life of

the Pestalozzian institutions had been the love which the old

man had infused into all the members, teachers as well as

children; but this life was wanting at Yverdun. The

establishment was much too large to be carried on successfully

without more method and discipline than Pestalozzi,

remarkable, as he himself says, for his 'unrivalled incapacity

to govern,' was master of. The assistants began each to take

his own line, and even the outward show of unity was soon at

an end. ... Thus the sun went down in clouds, and the old man,

when he died at the age of eighty, in 1827, had seen the

apparent failure of all his toils. He had not, however, failed

in reality. It has been said of him that his true fortune was

to educate ideas, not children, and when twenty years later

the centenary of his birth was celebrated by school-masters,

not only in his native country, but throughout Germany, it was

found that Pestalozzian ideas had been sown, and were bearing

fruit, over the greater part of central Europe."

_R. H. Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers, chapter 8._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1804-1891.

Co-education and the Higher Education of

Women in the United States.

"When to a few daring minds the conviction came that education

was a right of personality rather than of sex, and when there

was added to this growing sentiment the pressing demand for

educated women as teachers and as leaders in philanthropy, the

simplest means of equipping women with the needful preparation

was found in the existing schools and colleges. ... In nearly

every State west of the Alleghanies, 'Universities' had been

founded by the voluntary tax of the whole population.

Connected with all the more powerful religious denominations

were schools and colleges which called upon their adherents

for gifts and students. These democratic institutions had the

vigor of youth, and were ambitious and struggling. 'Why,'

asked the practical men of affairs who controlled them,

'should not our daughters go on with our sons from the public

schools to the university which we are sacrificing to equip

and maintain?' It is not strange that with this and much more

practical reasoning of a similar kind, co-education was

established in some colleges at their beginning, in others

after debate, and by a radical change in policy. When once the

chivalrous desire was aroused to give girls as good an

education as their brothers, Western men carried out the

principle unflinchingly. From the kindergarten to the

preparation for the doctorate of philosophy, educational

opportunities are now practically alike for men and women. The

total number of colleges of arts and sciences empowered by law

to give degrees, reporting to Washington in 1888, was three

hundred and eighty-nine. Of these, two hundred and

thirty-seven, or nearly two-thirds, were co-educational. Among

them are nearly all the State universities, and nearly all the

colleges under the patronage of the Protestant sects. Hitherto

I have spoken as if co-education were a Western movement; and

in the West it certainly has had greater currency than

elsewhere. But it originated, at least so far as concerns

superior secondary training, in Massachusetts. Bradford

Academy, chartered in 1804, is the oldest incorporated

institution in the country to which boys and girls were from

the first admitted; but it closed its department for boys in

1836, three years after the foundation of co-educational

Oberlin, and in the very year when Mount Holyoke was opened by

Mary Lyon, in the large hope of doing for young women what

Harvard had been founded to do for young men just two hundred

years before. Ipswich and Abbot Academies in Massachusetts had

already been chartered to educate girls alone. It has been the

dominant sentiment in the East that boys and girls should be

educated separately. The older, more generously endowed, more

conservative seats of learning, inheriting the complications

of the dormitory system, have remained closed to women. ... In

the short period of the twenty years after the war the four

women's colleges which are the richest in endowments and

students of any in the world were founded and set in motion.

These colleges--Vassar, opened in 1865, Wellesley and Smith in

1875, and Bryn Mawr in 1885--have received in gifts of every

kind about $6,000,000, and are educating nearly two thousand

students. For the whole country the Commissioner of Education

reports two hundred and seven institutions for the superior

instruction of women, with more than twenty-five, thousand

students. But these resources proved inadequate. There came an

increasing demand, especially from teachers, for education of

all sorts. ... In an attempt to meet a demand of this sort the

Harvard Annex began twelve years ago [in 1879] to provide a

few women with instruction from members of the Harvard

faculty. ... Barnard College in New York is an annex of

Columbia only in a sense, for not all her instruction is given

by Columbia's teaching force, though Columbia will confer

degrees upon her graduates. The new woman's college at

Cleveland sustains temporarily the same relations to, Adelbert

College, though to a still greater extent she provides

independent instruction."

_A. F. Palmer, Review of the Higher Education of Women

(Woman and the Higher Education, pages 105-127)._

"The Cleveland College for Women, Cleveland, Ohio, was first

opened for instruction in 1888 as a department of Western

Reserve University. At the same time the trustees of the

university decided to receive no more women into Adelbert

College. That the success of the new school might be assured,

the faculty of Adelbert College generously offered their

services for a term of years as instructors. During the first

year twenty-three young women were admitted, but two of whom

were in the regular courses. During 1889-90 the number of

students increased to thirty-eight. ... In 1887 Evelyn

College, an institution for women, was opened at Princeton, N.

J. Its location at this place gives the institution very great

advantages, inasmuch as the use of the libraries and museums

of the College of New Jersey, popularly known as Princeton

College, are granted to the students."

_U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report,

1889-90, volume 2, page 744._

{744}

"The latest report of the United States Commissioner of

Education contains over two hundred institutions for the

superior education of women. The list includes colleges and

seminaries entitled to confer degrees, and a few seminaries,

whose work is of equal merit, which do not give degrees. Of

these more than two hundred institutions for the education of

women exclusively, only 47 are situated within [western

states]. ... Of these 47, but 30 are chartered with authority

to confer degrees. ... The extent to which the higher

education of women is in the West identified with

co-education, can be seen by comparing the two statements

above given. Of the total 212 higher institutions receiving

women, and of the total 195 such institutions which confer the

regular degrees in arts, science, and letters, upon their

graduates, 165 are co-educational. ... Among colleges

characterized from birth by a liberal and progressive spirit

may be mentioned 'The Cincinnati Wesleyan Woman's College.'

This institution was chartered in 1842, and claims to be 'the

first liberal collegiate institution in the world for the

exclusive education of women.' ... The West is committed to

co-education, excepting only the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran,

and the Protestant Episcopal sects,--which are not yet, as

sects, committed to the collegiate education of women at

all,--and the Presbyterian sect, whose support, in the West,

of 14 co-educational colleges against 4 for the separate

education of young men, almost commits it to the

co-educational idea. ... In 1853, Antioch College was opened

at Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was the first endeavor in the West

to found a college under Christian but non-sectarian auspices.

Its president, Horace Mann, wrote of it: 'Antioch is now the

only first-class college in all the West that is really an

unsectarian institution.' ... Antioch was from the first

avowedly co-educational."

_M. W. Sewall, Education of Women in the Western

States (Woman's Work in America, pages 61-70)._

"Most people would probably be ready to say that except for

the newly founded Woman's College in Baltimore and Tulane

University [State university of Louisiana], the collegiate

education of women does not exist in the South. But as matter

of fact, there are no less than one hundred and fifty

institutions in the South which are authorized by the

Legislatures of their respective States to confer the regular

college degrees upon women. Of these, forty-one are

co-educational, eighty-eight are for women alone, and

twenty-one are for colored persons of both sexes. The bureau

of education makes no attempt to go behind the verdict of the

State Legislatures, but on looking over the catalogues of all

these institutions it is, as might have been expected, easy to

see that the great majority of them are not in any degree

colleges, in the ordinary sense of the word. Not a single one

of the so-called female colleges presents a real college

course, and many of the co-educational colleges are colleges

only in name."

_C. L. Franklin, Education of Women in the Southern

States (Woman's Work in America, pages 93-94)._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1816-1892,

Froebel and the Kindergarten.

"Frœbel (Friedrich Wilhelm August) was born April 21, 1782, at

Oberweissbach, in the principality of Schwanburg-Rudolstadt.

His mother died when he was so young that he never even

remembered her; and he was left to the care of an ignorant

maid-of-all-work, who simply provided for his bodily wants.

... Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the

slightest regular instruction. He was then sent to school, to

an uncle who lived in the neighborhood, ... He pronounced the

boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true)

and lazy (which certainly was not true)--a boy, in short, that

you could do nothing with. ... It was necessary for him to

earn his bread, and we next find him a sort of apprentice to a

woodsman in the great Thuringian forest. Here, as he afterward

tells us, he lived some years in cordial intercourse with

nature and mathematics, learning even then, though

unconsciously, from the teaching he received, how to teach

others. ... In 1801 he went to the University of Jena, where

he attended lectures on natural history, physics, and

mathematics; but, as he tells us, gained little from them. ...

This ... was put an end to by the failure of means to stay at

the University. For the next few years he tried various

occupations. ... While engaged in an architect's office at

Frankfort, he formed an acquaintance with the Rector of the

Model School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabilities

of Frœbel, and detected also his entire want of interest in

the work that he was doing; and one day suddenly said to him:

'Give up your architect's business; you will do nothing at it.

Be a teacher. We want one now in the school; you shall have

the place.' This was the turning point in Frœbel's life. He

accepted the engagement, began work at once, and tells us that

the first time he found himself in the midst of a class of 30

or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element that he had

missed so long--'the fish was in the water.' He was

inexpressibly happy. ... In a calmer mood he severely

questioned himself as to the means by which he was to satisfy

the demands of his new position. About this time he met with

some of Pestalozzi's writings, which so deeply impressed him

that he determined to go to Yverdun and study Pestalozzi on

the spot. He accomplished his purpose, and lived and worked

for two years with Pestalozzi. His experience at Yverdun

impressed him with the conviction that the science of

education had still to draw out from Pestalozzi's system those

fundamental principles which Pestalozzi himself did not

comprehend. 'And therefore,' says Schmidt, 'this genial

disciple of Pestalozzi supplemented his system by advancing

from the point which Pestalozzi had reached through pressure

from without, to the innermost conception of man, and arriving

at the thought of the true development and culture of

mankind.' ... His educational career commenced November 13th,

1816, in Greisheim, a little village near Stadt-Ilm, in

Thuringia; but in 1817, when his Pestalozzian friend,

Middendorf, joined him ... the school was transferred to the

beautiful village of Keilhau, near Rudolstadt, which may be

considered as his chief starting-place. ... Langenthal,

another Pestalozzian, associated himself with them, and they

commenced building a house. The number of pupils rose to

twelve in 1818. Then the daughter of war-counselor Hoffman of

Berlin, from enthusiasm for Frœbel's educational ideas, became

his wife. She had a considerable dowry, which, together with

the accession of Frœbel's elder brother, increased the funds

and welfare of the school. In 1831 he was invited by the

composer, Schnyder von Wartensee, to erect a similar garden on

his estate, near the lake of Sempach, in the canton Luzern. It

was done. Frœbel changed his residence the next year, from

Keilhau to Switzerland. In,1834 the government of Bern invited

him to arrange a training course for teachers in Burgdorf. In

1835 he became principal of the orphan asylum in Burgdorf, but

in 1836 he and his wife wished to return to Germany. There he

was active in Berlin, Keilhau, Blankenburg, Dresden,

Liebenstein in Thuringia, Hamburg, (1849,) and Marienthal,

near Liebenstein, where he lived until his decease in 1852,

among the young ladies, whom he trained as nurses for the

kindergarten, and the little children who attended his

school."

_H. Barnard, editor, Papers on Froebel's Kindergarten:

Memoir._

{745}

"The child thinks only through symbols. In other words, it

explains all it sees not by the recorded experience of others,

as does an adult, but by marshaling and comparing its own

concept or symbol of what it has itself seen. Its sole

activity is play. 'The school begins with teaching the

conventionalities of intelligence. Froebel would have the

younger children receive a symbolic education in plays, games,

and occupations which symbolize the primitive arts of man.'

For this purpose, the child is led through a series of

primitive occupations in plaiting, weaving, and modeling,

through games and dances, which bring into play all the social

relations, and through songs and the simple use of number,

form and language. The 'gifts' all play their manifold

purpose, inspiring the child, awakening its interest, leading

the individual along the path the race has trod, and teaching

social self-control. The system has its palpable dangers. The

better and more intricate the tool, the more skill needed in

its safe use. ... The kindergarten requires trained hands.

With trivial teachers its methods may easily degenerate into

mere amusement, and thwart all tendency to attention,

application, or industry. Valuable as it is in its hints for

the care and development of children, its gay round needs to

be ballasted with the purpose and theory uppermost in

Froebel's mind when he opened his first school in a German

peasant village, down whose main street a brook tumbled, and

through whose lanes the halberdier still walked by night and

sang the hours. It is idle to suppose that Froebel founded a

perfect system, or to insist on all the details of the

professional kindergartner's creed. Here as elsewhere, and

aforetime, it has taken only forty years from the founder's

death for faith to degenerate into religion and sect. But the

central purpose he had in view must be steadily maintained. He

sought his ends through play, and not through work. It is as

dangerous for this method to harden into an approach to the

primary school as it is for it to soften into a riot of

misrule, and lax observance of order. ... Switzerland, then

the only republic in Europe, was the first country to adopt

Froebel's method, though in some Swiss towns the kindergarten

is still supported by private associations. France, another

republic, has more children beginning school under an

adaptation of Froebel than all the rest of the world put

together. It was Froebel's own opinion that 'the spirit of

American nationality was the only one in the world with which

his method was in complete harmony, and to which its

legitimate institutions would present no barriers.' The

figures given below of the growth of the kindergarten in this

country are the best possible proof of the truth of Froebel's

prescient assertion. ... In 1870 there were in this country

only five kindergarten schools, and in 1872 the National

Education Association at its Boston meeting appointed a

committee which reported a year later recommending the system.

Between 1870 and 1873, experimental kindergartens were

established in Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis, public

attention was enlisted by the efforts of Miss Elizabeth Palmer

Peabody, the most important worker in the early history of the

kindergarten in this country, and the system began a rapid

growth. Taking private and public kindergartens together, the

advance of the system has displayed this most rapid progress:

1875 1880 1885 1891-2

Schools. 95 232 413 1,001

Teachers. 216 524 902 2,242

Pupils. 2,809 8,871 18,780 50,423

Down to 1880, these figures, outside of St. Louis, relate

almost altogether to private schools. By 1885 the public

kindergartens were not over a fifth in number of the schools,

and held not over a fourth of the pupils. In the figures last

given in this table there are 724 private kindergartens with

1,517 teachers and 29,357 pupils, and 277 public kindergartens

with 725 teachers and 21,066 pupils, so that the latter have

now 27 per cent. of the schools, 33 per cent. of the teachers,

and 42 per cent. of the pupils. ... Yet great as is this

advance, the kindergarten as yet plays but an infinitesimal

part in our educational system as a whole. ... Of the sixteen

American cities with a population of over 200,000 in 1890,

only four--Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee, and St. Louis

have incorporated the kindergarten on any large scale in their

public-school systems. Four more--New York, Chicago, Brooklyn,

and Buffalo--have kindergarten associations organized to

introduce the new method as a part of free public education."

_T. Williams, The Kindergarten Movement

(The Century, January, 1893)._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1865-1883.

The Higher Education of Women in England.

The movement in England to secure a higher education for women

dates from 1865. "In that year a Royal Commission was

appointed to inquire into and report on the endowed grammar

schools of England and Wales, and on what is called

'secondary' education generally. Several ladies who were

already alive to the deficiencies in the education of their

own sex, memorialized this Commission to extend the scope of

its inquiry to girls' schools, and the Commission taking what

was then thought quite a bold step, consented to do so. ...

One of the points brought out was the absence of any

institutions doing for women what the universities did for

men, and the consequent difficulty in which women stood of

obtaining the highest kind of education--a difficulty which

told on girls' schools by making it hard for them to procure

thoroughly competent mistresses. This led in the course of the

next year or two--the report of the Commission having been

published in 1868--to the establishment of a college for

women, which was first placed at Hitchin, a town on the Great

Northern Railway, between London and Cambridge, and in a

little while, when money had been collected sufficient for the

erection of buildings, this college was finally settled at

Girton, a spot about two miles from Cambridge, whence it takes

the name of Girton College. Its purpose was to provide for

women the same teaching in the same subjects as men receive in

Cambridge University, and the teachers were nearly all of them

professors or tutors there, men in some cases of high

eminence.

{746}

Meanwhile, in Cambridge itself, a system of day classes for

women, taught by University teachers, had been created, at

first as an experiment for one year only. When several years

had passed, when the number attending had increased, and it

was found that women came to lodge in Cambridge in order to

profit by these lectures, a house was hired in which to

receive them, and ultimately a company was formed and a

building erected a little way out of Cambridge, under the name

of Newnham Hall, to which the lectures, now mainly designed

for these students coming from a distance, were attached.

Thus, at about the same time, though from somewhat different

origins, Girton and Newnham came into being and began their

course of friendly rivalry. Both have greatly developed since

then. Their buildings have been repeatedly enlarged. Their

numbers have risen steadily. ... In Girton the charge for

lodging, board and instruction is £100 per annum, in Newnham a

little less. The life in both is very similar, a lady being

placed at the head as resident principal, while the affairs

are managed by a committee including both men and women. The

lectures are delivered partly by Cambridge men, professors in

the University, or tutors or lecturers in some of the

colleges, partly by ladies, who, having once been students

themselves, have come back as teachers. These lectures cover

all the subjects required in the degree examinations of the

University; and although students are not obliged to enter

themselves for those examinations, they are encouraged to do

so, and do mostly set the examinations before them as their

goal. Originally the University took no official notice of the

women students, and their being examined by the regular degree

examiners of the University was a matter of pure favor on the

part of those gentlemen. ... At last, however, some examiners

came into office (for the examiners are changed every two

years) who disapproved of this informal examination of the

women candidates, and accordingly a proposal was made to the

University that it should formally authorize and impose on the

examiners the function heretofore discharged by them in their

individual capacity. This proposal, after some discussion and

opposition, was carried, so that now women may enter both for

the honor examinations and the pass examinations for the

University degree as a matter of right. Their names do not

appear in the official lists among those of the men, but

separately; they are, however, tested by the same question

papers and judged by the same standard. ... Some Oxford

graduates and their friends, stimulated by the success of

Girton and Newnham, have founded two similar institutions in

Oxford, one of which, Episcopalian and indeed High Church in

its proclivities, is called Lady Margaret Hall, while the

other, in compliment to the late Mrs. Somerville, has been

given the title of Somerville Hall. These establishments are

conducted on much the same lines as the two Cambridge

colleges. ... In the large towns where new colleges have been

lately founded or courses of lectures established, such as

Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, steps are usually taken to

provide lectures for women. ... What is called among you the

question of co-education has come up very little in England.

All the lectures given inside the walls of the four English

colleges I have mentioned are, of course, given to women only,

the colleges being just as exclusively places for women as

Trinity and St. John's are places for men. ... At this moment

the principal of one of the two halls of which Newnham

consists is a daughter of the Prime Minister [Miss Helen

Gladstone], while her predecessor was a niece of the Marquis

of Salisbury. The principal of Girton is a niece of the late

Lord Lawrence, the famous Governor-General of India. Of the

students a fair proportion belong to the wealthy classes,

while a somewhat larger proportion mean to take teaching as

their profession."

_Progress of Female Education in England.

(Nation, July 5, 1883)._

See, also, above, SCOTLAND.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1865-1886.

Industrial Education in the United States.

"In 1865 John Boynton of Templeton, Mass., gave $100,000 for

the endowment and perpetual support of a Free Institute for

the youth of Worcester County, Mass. He thus explained his

objects: 'The aim of this school shall ever be the instruction

of youth in those branches of education not usually taught in

the public schools, which are essential and best adapted to

train the young for practical life'; especially such as were

intending to be mechanics, or manufacturers, or farmers. In

furtherance of this object, ten months later, in 1866, Ichabod

Washburn of Worcester gave $25,000, and later $50,000 more to

erect, equip, and endow a machine-shop which should

accommodate twenty apprentices and a suitable number of

skilled workmen to instruct them and to carry on the shop as a

commercial establishment. The apprentices were to be taught

the use of tools in working wood and metals, and to be

otherwise instructed, much as was customary fifty years ago

for boys learning a trade. The Worcester Free Institute was

opened for students in November, 1868, as a technical school

of about college grade; and the use of the shops and shop

instruction was limited to those students in the course of

mechanical engineering. Thus did the Worcester School under

the leadership of Prest. C. O. Thompson incorporate

tool-instruction and shop-practice into the training of

mechanical engineers. ... In the same year, 1868, Victor

Della-Vos introduced into the Imperial Technical (engineering)

School at Moscow the Russian method of class-instruction in

the use of tools. ... The great value of the work of Della-Vos

lay in the discovery of the true method of tool-instruction,

for without his discovery the later steps would have been

impossible. In 1870, under the direction of Professor Robinson and

Prest. J. M. Gregory of the University of Illinois, a

wood-working shop was added to the appliances for the course

in architecture, and an iron-working shop to the course in

mechanical engineering in that institution. In 1871, the

Stevens Institute of Hoboken, N. J., munificently endowed by

Edwin A. Stevens, as a school of mechanical engineering,

fitted up a series of shops for the use of its students. The

next step forward was taken by Washington University in St.

Louis in providing for all its engineering students systematic

instruction in both wood and metals. In 1872, a large shop in the

Polytechnic School was equipped with work-benches, two lathes,

a forge, a gear-cutter and full sets of carpenters',

machinists', and forging tools. ...

{747}

Thus far had we progressed when the Philadelphia Exposition of

1876 was opened. None of us knew anything of the Moscow

school, or of the one in Bohemia in which the Russian method

had been adopted in 1874. ... In his report of 1876, Prest. J.

D. Runkle, of the Mass. Institute of Technology, gave a full

exposition of the theory and practice of tool-instruction of

Della-Vos as exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition, and he

recommended that without delay the course in mechanical

engineering at the Institute be completed by the addition of a

series of Instruction Shops. The suggestion was acted on, and

in the spring of 1877 a class of mechanical engineering

students was given instruction in chipping and filing. ... The

St. Louis Manual Training School was established June 6, 1879.

It embodied hopes long cherished and plans long formed. For

the first time in America the age of admission to school-shops

was reduced to fourteen years as a minimum, and a very general

three-years' course of study was organized. The ordinance by

which the school was established specified its objects in very

general terms:--'Its objects shall be instruction in

mathematics, drawing, and the English branches of a

high-school course, and instruction and practice in the use of

tools. The tool-instruction, as at present contemplated, shall

include carpentry, wood-turning, pattern-making, iron clipping

and filing, forge-work, brazing and soldering, the use of

machine-shop tools, and such other instruction of a similar

character, its it may be deemed advisable to add to the

foregoing from time to time. The students will divide their

working hours, as nearly as possible, equally between mental

and manual exercises.' ... The Baltimore Manual Training

School, a public school, on the same footing as the high

school, was opened in 1883. The Chicago Manual Training

School, established as an incorporated school by the

Commercial Club of that city, was opened in January, 1884. ...

Manual training was introduced into the high school of Eau

Claire, Wisconsin, in 1884. The 'Scott Manual Training School'

was organized as a part of the high school of Toledo in 1884.

... Manual training was introduced into the College (high

school) of the City of New York in 1884. The Philadelphia

Manual Training School, a public high school, was opened in

September, 1885. The Omaha high school introduced manual

training in 1885. ... Dr. Adler's Workingman's School for poor

children has for several years taught manual training to the

very lowest grades. ... The Cleveland Manual Training School

was incorporated in 1885, and opened in connection with the

city high school, in 1886. New Haven, which had for some time

encouraged the use of tools by the pupils of several of its

grammar schools, in September, 1886, opened a regular shop and

furnished systematic instruction in tool-work. The school

board of Chicago added manual training to the course of the

'West Side High School' in September, 1886."

_C. M. Woodward, The Manual Training School, chapter 1._

"Concerning the manual-training school there are two widely

different views. The one insists that it shall teach no trade,

but the rudiments of all of them; the other that the

particular industries may properly be held to maintain schools

to recruit their own ranks. The first would teach the use of

the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the

chisel, and the file; claiming that 'the graduate from such a

course at the end of three years is within from one to three

months of knowing quite as thoroughly as an apprentice who had

served seven years any one of the twenty trades to which he

may choose to turn.' Of this class are, besides most of those

already named, the Haish Manual Training School of Denver;

that of Tulane University, New Orleans; the Felix Adler's

'Workingman's School, of New York City; and the School of

Manual Technology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville. Among

schools of the second class are some interesting institutions.

They include the numerous general and special trade-schools

for boys, instruction in the manifold phases of domestic

economy for girls, and the yet small but rapidly growing class

of industries open alike to both. Sewing is taught in public

or private schools in Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago,

New York, Philadelphia, Providence, St. Louis, and about a

dozen other cities, besides in a number of special

institutions. Cooking-schools are no longer a novelty in half

as many of the larger cities, since their introduction into

New York city in 1876. Printing may be learned in the Kansas

Agricultural College; Cooper Union, New York; Girard College,

Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Telegraphy, stenography,

wood-engraving, various kinds of smithing, and carpentry,

have, especially the last two, numerous representatives. The

New York Kitchen Garden, for the instruction of children in

the work of the household, is an interesting modification of

the Kindergarten along the industrial line. For young ladies,

the Elizabeth Aull Seminary, Lexington, Missouri, is a school

of home-work, in which 'are practically taught the mysteries

of the kitchen and laundry,' and upon whose graduates is

conferred the degree of 'Mistress of Home-Work.' The Lasell

Seminary at Auburndale, Massachusetts, also has recently

(1885) undertaken a similar but more comprehensive experiment,

including lessons and lectures in anatomy and physiology, with

hygiene and sanitation, the principles of common law by an

eminent attorney, instruction and practice in the arts of

domestic life, the principles of dress, artistic

house-furnishing, healthy homes, and cooking. Of

training-schools for nurses there are thirty-one. ... Of

schools of a different character still, there have been or are

the Carriage Builder's Apprenticeship School, New York; those

of Hoe & Co., printing-press manufacturers; and Tiffany & Co.,

jewelers; and the Tailors' 'Trades School' recently

established and flourishing in Baltimore, besides the

Pennsylvania Railroad novitiate system, at Altoona; in which

particular trades or guilds or corporations have sought to

provide themselves with a distinct and specially trained class

of artisans. The latest and in some respects the most

interesting experiment of the kind is that of the 'Baltimore

and Ohio Railroad service' at Mt. Clare, Baltimore. It was

inaugurated in 1885, apprentices being selected from

applicants by competitive examination."

_R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 13._

{748}

EDUCATION: A. D. 1873-1889.

University Extension in England.

"The University Extension Movement, which has now been before

the country eighteen years, has revealed the existence of a

real need for larger opportunities of higher education amongst

the middle and working classes. From the time of its

inauguration in 1873 by the University of Cambridge, owing

mainly to the enthusiastic advocacy and skill in practical

affairs of Mr. James Stuart (at that time Fellow and Lecturer

of Trinity College), down to the present day, when the

principle has been accepted by all the Universities in Great

Britain and by some in countries beyond the seas, the movement

has shown marvellous vitality and power of adjustment to

changing conditions. From a small beginning in three towns in

the Midlands, it has grown until the centres in connection

with the various branches are to be numbered by hundreds and

the students by tens of thousands. The success attained by

Cambridge in the first three years led, in 1876, to the

formation of the London Society for the Extension of

University Teaching, for the express purpose of carrying on

similar work within the metropolitan area. In 1878 the

University of Oxford undertook to make similar arrangements

for Lectures, but after a year or two, they were for the time

abandoned. Subsequently in 1885 the Oxford work was revived

and has since been carried on with vigour and success. The

University of Durham is associated with Cambridge in this work

in the northeast of England, while courses of Lectures on the

Extension plan have been given for several years in connection

with Victoria University in centres around Manchester. Two or

three years ago the four Scottish Universities united in

forming a like scheme for Scotland, while at the close of 1889

a Society for the Extension of University Teaching was formed

in the north of Ireland. Finally the movement has spread to

Greater Britain and the United States, and there are signs

that work on similar lines is about to be established in

various countries on the continent of Europe."

_R. D. Roberts, Eighteen years of University Extension,

chapter 1._

"One of the chief characteristics of the system is the method

of teaching adopted in connection with it. A working man at

one of the centres in the north of England who had attended

the lectures for several terms, described the method as

follows in a paper read by him at a meeting:--

'Any town or village which is prepared to provide an audience,

and pay the necessary fees, can secure a course of twelve

lectures on any subject taught in the University, by a

lecturer who has been educated at the University, and who is

specially fitted for lecturing work. A syllabus of the course

is printed and put into the hands of students. This syllabus

is a great help to persons not accustomed to note-taking.

Questions are given on each lecture, and written answers can

be sent in by anyone, irrespective of age or sex. All the

lectures, except the first, are preceded by a class, which

lasts about an hour. In this class the students and the

lecturer talk over the previous lecture. The written answers

are returned with such corrections as the lecturer deems

necessary. At the end of the course an examination is held and

certificates are awarded to the successful candidates. These

lectures are called University Extension Lectures.'

Another definition which has been given is this:

'Advanced systematic teaching for the people, without

distinction of rank, sex, or age, given by means of lectures,

classes, and written papers during a connected course,

conducted by men "who believe in their work, and intend to do

it," teachers who connect the country with the University by

manner, method, and information.'"

_R. D. Roberts, The University Extension Scheme, pages 6-7._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1892.

University Extension in the United States.

"The first conscious attempts to introduce English University

Extension methods into this country were made in 1887, by

individuals connected with the Johns Hopkins University. The

subject was first publicly presented to the American Library

Association at their meeting upon one of the Thousand Islands

in September, 1887. The idea was heartily approved," and the

first result of the suggestion was a course of lectures on

economic questions given in one of the lecture-rooms of the

Buffalo Library the following winter by Dr. Edward W. Bemis.

The next winter "Dr. Bemis repeated his course on 'Economic

Questions of the Day' in Canton, Ohio. ... The Canton

experiment was followed in February, 1889, by another course,

conducted by Dr. Bemis, in connection with the Public Library

at St. Louis. ... About the time when these various

experiments were being tried in St. Louis, Canton, and

Buffalo, individual members of Johns Hopkins University were

attempting to introduce University Extension methods in

connection with local lectures in the city of Baltimore. ...

The idea of University Extension in connection with Chautauqua

was conceived by Dr. J. H. Vincent during a visit to England,

in 1886, when he saw the English lecture system in practical

operation and his own methods of encouraging home reading in

growing favor with university men. The first definite American

plan, showing at once the aims, methods, cost, and history, of

University Extension lectures, was drawn up at Chautauqua by

the writer of this article in the early summer of 1888. ...

Contemporary with the development of Chautauqua College and

University Extension was the plan of Mr. Seth T. Stewart, of

Brooklyn, New York, for 'University and School Extension.' ...

Several public meetings were held in New York in 1889-90 for

the promotion of University and School Extension. ... One of

the most gratifying recent experiments in University Extension

in America has been in the city of Philadelphia under the

auspices of the American Society for the Extension of

University Teaching. At various local centres Mr. Richard G.

Moulton, one of the most experienced lecturers from Cambridge,

England, lectured for ten weeks in the winter and spring of

1891 to large and enthusiastic audiences. All the essential

features of English University Extension were methodically and

persistently carried out. ... The American field for

University Extension is too vast for the missionary labors of

any one society or organization. ... The most significant sign

of the times with regard to University Extension in America is

the recent appropriation of the sum of $10,000 for this very

object by the New York legislature. The money is to be

expended under the direction of the Regents of the University

of the State of New York. ... The intention of the New York

act is simply to provide the necessary means for organizing a

State system of University Extension ... and to render such

general assistance and co-operation as localities may

require."

_H. B. Adams, University Extension in America,

(Forum, July, 1891)._

On the opening, in 1892, of the Chicago University,

munificently endowed by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, of Cleveland,

University Extension was made one of the three grand divisions

of its organization.

{749}

EDWARD,

King of Portugal,

A. D. 1433-1438..

Edward, called the Confessor, King of England,

A. D. 1042-1065.

Edward, called the Elder, King of Wessex,

A. D. 901-925.

Edward, called the Martyr, King of Wessex,

A. D. 975.

Edward I., King of England,

A. D. 1274-1307.

Edward II., King of England,

A. D. 1307-1327.

Edward III., King of England,

A. D. 1327-1377.

Edward V., King of England (first king of the House of York),

A. D. 1461-1483.

Edward V., titular King of England,

A. D. 1483 (from April 9, when his father, Edward IV.,

died, until June 22, when he is believed to have been

murdered in the Tower by command of his uncle, the usurper,

Richard III.).

Edward VI., King of England,

A. D. 1547-1553.

EDWARD, Fort: A. D. 1755.

Built by the New England troops.

See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER).

EDWARD, Fort: A. D. 1717.

Abandoned to the British.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D.1777(JULY-OCTOBER).

----------EDWARD, Fort: End----------

EDWIG, King of Wessex, A. D. 955-957.

EDWIN, King of Northumbria, A. D. 617-633.

Egesta.

See SYRACUSE: B. C. 415-413;

and SICILY: B. C. 409-405.

EGFRITH, King of Northumbria, A. D. 670-685.

EGINA.--EGINETANS.

See ÆGINA.

EGMONT, Count, and the struggle in the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1562-1566, and 1566-1568.

EGNATIAN WAY, The.

A Roman road constructed from Apollonia on the Adriatic to the

shores of the Hellespont; finally carried to Byzantium.

EGRA: A. D. 1647.

Siege and capture by the Swedes.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1646-1648.

EGYPT:

Its Names.

"Egypt is designated in the old inscriptions, as well as in

the books of the later Christian Egyptians, by a word which

signifies 'the black land,' and which is read in the Egyptian

language Kern, or Kami."

[Footnote: Kamit in the edition of 1891.]

"The ancients had early remarked that the cultivable land of

Egypt was distinguished by its dark and almost black colour.

... The neighbouring region of the Arabian desert bore the

name of Tesher, or the red land. ... The Egyptians designated

themselves simply as 'the people of the black land,' and ...

the inscriptions, so far as we know, have handed down to us no

other appellation. ... A real enigma is proposed to us in the

derivation and meaning of the curious proper name, by which

the foreign peoples of Asia, each in its own dialect, were

accustomed to designate Egypt. The Hebrews gave the land the

name of Mizraim; the Assyrians Muzur; the Persians, Mudraya.

We may feel assured that at the basis of all these

designations there lies an original form which consisted of

the three letters M-z-r, all explanations of which have been

as yet unsuccessful. Although I intend hereafter to consider

more particularly the derivation of this puzzling name, which

is still preserved at the present day in the Arabic

appellation Misr, I will here premise the remark that this

name was originally applied only to a certain definite part of

Egypt, in the east of the Delta, which, according to the

monuments, was covered and defended by many 'zor,' or

fortresses, and was hence called in Egyptian Mazor (that is,

fortified)."

_H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,

chapter 2._

"Brugsch explains the name Egypt by 'ha-ka-ptah,' i. e. 'the

precinct of Ptah.' As Ptah was more especially the god of

Memphis, this name would have come from Memphis."

_M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 1, chapter 1, note._

"The last use of Kem died out in the form Chemi in Coptic, the

descendant of the classical language, which ceased to be

spoken a century ago. It survives among us in the terms

'chemistry' and 'alchemy,' sciences thought to be of Egyptian

origin."

_R. S. Poole, Cities of Egypt, introduction._

EGYPT:

Its Historical Antiquity.

The lists of Egyptian kings which have been found "agree in

presenting the name of Mena [or Menes] as that of the first

Pharaoh of Egypt, and as such he is unhesitatingly accepted,

although no contemporary monumental record of the fact has yet

been discovered. According to Manetho, the age of Mena dates

back to a period of 5,004 years before the Christian era, a

date which is nearly equal to 7,000 years from the present

day. Brugsch favours a somewhat less interval, namely, 4455 B. C.;

others place it as low as 2700 B. C., whilst Birch and

Chabas adopt a medium date, namely 4000 B. C., which is

equivalent to 6000 years backward from the existing time.

These extreme variations are chiefly referable to the

difficulty of ascertaining the precise length of each

individual reign, and especially to the occasional

contemporaneous reign of two or more kings, and sometimes the

existence of two or more dynasties in different parts of the

empire. ... Lieblein gives full credit to the chronology of

Manetho [a priest of Heliopolis, who wrote about 260 B. C.],

as recorded by the historian Africanus, as likewise did the

distinguished Mariette, and differs very little from the

standard adopted by Birch. He assigns to Mena, as the pioneer

of the first monarchy, a date in round numbers of 3900 years."

_E. Wilson, The Egypt of the Past, chapter 1._

"As to the era ... when the first Pharaoh mounted the throne,

the German Egyptologers have attempted to fix it at the

following epochs: Boeckh, B. C. 5702; Unger, 5613; Brugsch,

4455; Lauth, 4157; Lepsius, 3892; Bunsen, 3623. The difference

between the two extreme points of the series is amazingly

great, for its number of years amounts to no less than 2079.

... The calculations in question are based on the extracts

already often mentioned from a work by the Egyptian priest

Manetho on the history of Egypt. That learned man had then at

his command the annals of his country's history, which were

preserved in the temples, and from them, the best and most

accurate sources, be derived the materials for his work,

composed in the Greek language, on the history of the ancient

Egyptian Dynasties. His book, which is now lost, contained a

general review of the kings of the land, divided into Thirty

Dynasties, arranged in the order of their names, with the

lengths of their reigns, and the total duration of each

dynasty. Though this invaluable work was little known and

certainly but little regarded by the historians of the old

classical age, large extracts were made from it by some of the

ecclesiastical writers. In process of time the copyists,

either by error or designedly, corrupted the names and the

numbers, and thus we only possess at the present day the ruins

instead of the complete building. The truth of the original,

and the authenticity of its sources were first proved by the

deciphering of the Egyptian writings. And thus the Manethonian

list served, and still serves, as a guide for assigning to the

royal names read on the monuments their places in the

Dynasties."

_H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,

chapter 4._

See, also, MANETHO, LIST OF.

{750}

EGYPT:

Origin of the ancient people.

"The Egyptians, together with some other nations, form, as it

would seem, a third branch of that [the Caucasian] race,

namely, the family called Cushite, which is distinguished by

special characters from the Pelasgian and the Semitic

families. Whatever relations may be found always to exist

between these great races of mankind, thus much may be

regarded as certain, that the cradle of the Egyptian people

must be sought in the interior of the Asiatic quarter of the

world. In the earliest ages of humanity, far beyond all

historical remembrance, the Egyptians, for reasons unknown to

us, left the soil of their primeval home, took their way

towards the setting sun, and finally crossed that bridge of

nations, the Isthmus of Suez, to find a new fatherland on the

favoured banks of the holy Nile. Comparative philology, in its

turn, gives powerful support to this hypothesis. The Egyptian

language ... shows in no way any trace of a derivation and

descent from the African families of speech. On the contrary,

the primitive roots and the essential elements of the Egyptian

grammar point to such an intimate connection with the

Indo-Germanic and Semitic languages that it is almost

impossible to mistake the close relations which formerly

prevailed between the Egyptians and the races called

Indo-Germanic and Semitic."

_H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,

chapter 1._

"It has been maintained by some that the immigration was from

the south, the Egyptians having been a colony from Ethiopia

which gradually descended the Nile and established itself in

the middle and lower portions of the valley; and this theory

can plead in its favour, both a positive statement of

Diodorus, and the fact, which is quite certain, of an ethnic

connection between the Egyptians and some of the tribes who

now occupy Abyssinia (the ancient Ethiopia). But modern

research has shown quite unmistakably that the movement of the

Egyptians was in the opposite direction. ... We must look,

then, rather to Syria or Arabia than to Ethiopia as the cradle

of the Egyptian nation. At the same time we must admit that

they were not mere Syrians or Arabs, but had, from the

remotest time whereto we can go back, distinct

characteristics, whereby they have a good claim to be

considered as a separate race."

_G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 3._

"So far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of Africa,

like the valley of the Nile as far as the marshes at the foot

of the Abyssinian hills, was inhabited by nations who in

colour, language, and customs were sharply distinguished from

the negro. These nations belong to the whites: their languages

were most closely allied to the Semitic. From this, and from

their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been drawn

that these nations at some time migrated from Asia to the soil

of Africa. They formed a vast family, whose dialects still

continue in the language of the Berbers. Assisted by the

favourable conditions of their land, the tribe which settled

on the Lower Nile quickly left their kinsmen far behind.

Indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life. The

descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the

Nile, in spite of the numerous layers which the course of

centuries has subsequently laid upon the soil of the land,

still form the larger part of the population of Egypt, and the

ancient language is preserved in the dialect of the Copts."

_M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 1, chapter 1._

EGYPT:

The Old Empire and the Middle Empire.

The following are the Egyptian Dynasties, from the first

Pharaoh, Mena, to the epoch of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings,

with the dates and periods assigned to each by Brugsch:

The First Dynasty; of Thinis: B. C. 4400-4166.

The Second; of Thinis: 4133-4000.

The Third; of Memphis: 3966-3766.

The Fourth; of Memphis: 3733-3600.

The Fifth; of Elephantine: 3566-3333.

The Sixth; of Memphis: 3300-3066.

The Seventh to the Eleventh

(a confused and obscure period): 3033-2500.

The Twelfth; of Thebes: 2466-2266.

_H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,

appendix A._

"The direct descendants of Menes [or Mena] form the First

Dynasty, which, according to Manetho, reigned 253 years. No

monument contemporary with these princes has come down to us.

... The Second Dynasty, to which Manetho assigns nine kings,

lasted 302 years. It was also originally from This [or

Thinis], and probably related to the First. ... When this

family had become extinct, a Dynasty, originally from Memphis,

seized the throne, forming the Third, and to it a duration of

214 years is attributed. ... With the Fourth Dynasty, Memphite

like the Third, and which reigned 284 years, history becomes

clearer and monuments more numerous. This was the age of the

three Great Pyramids, built by the three kings, Khufu (the

Cheops of Herodotus), Shafra (Chefren), and Menkara

(Mycerinus). ... The Fifth Dynasty came originally from

Elephantine, at the southern extremity of Upper Egypt, and

there possibly the kings generally resided, though at the same

time Memphis was not deprived of its importance. ... On the

death of the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, a new family, of

Memphitic origin according to Manetho, came to the throne. ...

Primitive art attained its highest point under the Sixth

Dynasty. ... But, from the time of the civil commotions in

which Neit-aker [the Nitocris of Herodotus] perished, Egyptian

civilization underwent a sudden and unaccountable eclipse.

From the end of the Sixth Dynasty to the commencement of the

Eleventh, Manetho reckons 436 years, and for this whole period

the monuments are absolutely silent. Egypt seems then to have

disappeared from the rank of nations; and when this long

slumber ended, civilization commenced a new career, entirely

independent of the past. ...

{751}

Thus ends that period of nineteen centuries, which modern

scholars know as the Old Empire. ... Thebes did not exist in

the days of the glory of the Old Empire. The holy city of Amen

seems to have been founded during the period of anarchy and

obscurity, succeeding, as we have said, to the Sixth Dynasty.

Here was the birthplace of that renewed civilization, that new

monarchy, we are accustomed to call the Middle Empire, the

middle age in fact of ancient Egypt--a middle age anterior to

the earliest ages of all other history. From Thebes cane the

six kings of the Eleventh Dynasty. ... We again quote the

excellent remarks of M. Mariette: 'When, with the Eleventh

Dynasty, we see Egypt awake from her long slumber, all old

traditions appear to be forgotten; the proper names used in

ancient families, the titles of functionaries, the style of

writing, and even the religion--all seem new. This,

Elephantine, and Memphis, are no longer the favourite

capitals. Thebes for the first time becomes the seat of

sovereign power. Egypt, moreover, has lost a considerable

portion of her territory, and the authority of her legitimate

kings hardly extends beyond the limited district of the

Thebaid. The study of the monuments confirms these general

views; they are rude, primitive, sometimes coarse; and when we

look at them we may well believe that Egypt, under the

Eleventh Dynasty, again passed through a period of infancy, as

she had already done under the Third Dynasty.' A dynasty

probably related to, and originally from the same place as

these first Theban princes succeeded them. ... This Twelfth

Dynasty reigned for 213 years, and its epoch was one of

prosperity, of peace at home and glorious achievements abroad.

... Although the history of the Twelfth Dynasty is clear and

well known, illustrated by numerous monuments, there is,

nevertheless, no period in the annals of Egypt more obscure

than the one closing with the Thirteenth Dynasty. It is one

long series of revolutions, troubles, and internal

dissensions, closed by a terrible catastrophe, the greatest

and most lasting recorded in Egyptian history, which a second

time interrupted the march of civilization on the banks of the

Nile, and for a while struck Egypt from the list of nations."

_F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier,

Manual of Ancient History of the East, book 3, chapter 1-2._

ALSO IN:

_C. C. J. Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, volume 2._

See, also, MEMPHIS, and THEBES, EGYPT.

EGYPT:

The Hyksos, or Shepherd-Kings.

According to the Manethouian account which the Jewish

historian Josephus has preserved to us by transcribing it, the

Egyptian Netherlands were at a certain time overspread by a

wild and rough people, which came from the countries of the

east, overcame the native kings who dwelt there, and took

possession of the whole country, without finding any great

opposition on the part of the Egyptians. They were called

Hyksos, which Josephus interpreted as meaning Shepherd-kings.

"Hyk," he explained, meant King, in the holy language, and

"sos," in the dialect of the people, signified Shepherd. But

Dr. Brugsch identifies "sos" with the name "Shasu," which the

old Egyptians gave to the Bedouins, whose name became

equivalent to Shepherds. Hence Dr. Brugsch inclines to the

ancient opinion transmitted by Josephus, that the Hyksos were

Arabs or Bedouins--the Shasu of the Egyptian records, who hung

on the northeastern frontier of Egypt from the most ancient

times and were always pressing into the country, at every

opportunity. But many objections against this view are raised

and the different theories advanced to account for the Hyksos

are quite numerous. Canon Rawlinson says: "The Egyptians of

the time of Herodotus seem to have considered that they were

Philistines. Moderns have regarded them as Canaanites,

Syrians, Hittites. It is an avoidance rather than a solution

of the difficulty to say that they were 'a collection of all

the nomad hordes of Arabia and Syria' [Lenormant], since there

must have been a directing hand. ... On the whole, therefore,

we lean to the belief that the so-called Hyksos or Shepherds

were Hittites."

_G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt. chapter 19._

"It is maintained on good authority that the Hyksos, or

Shepherd-Kings, had secured possession of the eastern frontier

of Lower Egypt immediately after the close of the Twelfth

Dynasty; that at this time the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth

Dynasties ruled contemporaneously, the former in Upper, the

latter in Lower Egypt; one was illegitimate, the other the

illegitimate line; but authors are not in accord as to their

right of priority. It is supposed that, while Egypt claimed

the Thirteenth Dynasty as her own, the Hyksos usurped the

mastery over the Fourteenth Dynasty, and governed through the

agency of its kings, treating them meanwhile as vassal chiefs.

These local kings had cities from which they were unable to

escape, and were deprived of an army of defence. Such was the

state of the country for 184 years, when the Fourteenth

Dynasty died out, and when the Fifteenth Dynasty, constituted

of six successive Hyksos kings, took the reins of government

into their own hands. Lieblein, whose views we are now

endeavouring to express, assigns as the date of the invasion

of the Hyksos 2108 years B. C. ... It is not improbable that

the well-known journey of Abraham to Egypt was made during the

early period of the reign of the Shepherd-Kings; whilst the

visit of Joseph occurred near the close of their power."

_E. Wilson, The Egypt of the Past, chapter 5._

"'The Shepherds possessed themselves of Egypt by violence,'

writes Mariette-Bey, 'but the civilization which they

immediately adopted on their conquest was rather Egyptian than

Asiatic, and the discoveries of Avaris (San) prove that they

did not even banish from their temples the gods of the ancient

Egyptian Pantheon.' In fact the first shepherd-king, Solatis

himself, employed an Egyptian artist to inscribe ... his title

on the statue of a former legitimate Pharaoh. 'They did not

disturb the civilization more than the Persians or the Greeks,

but simply accepted the higher one they had conquered.' So our

revered scholar Dr. Birch has summed up the matter; and Professor

Maspero has very happily described it thus: 'The popular

hatred loaded them with ignominious epithets, and treated them

as accursed, plague-stricken, leprous. Yet they allowed

themselves very quickly to be domesticated. ... Once admitted

to the school of Egypt, the barbarians progressed quickly in

the civilized life. The Pharaonic court reappeared around

these shepherd-kings, with all its pomp and all its following

of functionaries great and small. The royal style and title of

Cheops and the Amenemhas were fitted to the outlandish names

of Jannes and Apapi. The Egyptian religion, without being

officially adopted, was tolerated, and the religion of the

Canaanites underwent some modifications to avoid hurting

beyond measure the susceptibility of the worshippers of

Osiris.'"

_H. G. Tomkins, Studies on the Times of Abraham, chapter 8._

{752}

In a late Italian work ("Gli Hyksos") by Dr. C. A. de Cara,

"he puts together all that is ascertained in regard to them

[the Hyksos], criticises the theories that have been

propounded on their behalf, and suggests a theory of his own.

Nothing that has been published on the subject seems to have

escaped his notice. ... His own view is that the Hyksos

represented a confederacy of various Asiatic tribes, under the

leadership of the northern Syrians. That their ruling class

came from this part of the world seems to me clear from the

name of their supreme god Sutekh, who occupied among them the

position of the Semitic Baal."

_A. H. Sayce, The Hyksôs (Academy, September 20,1890)._

"Historical research concerning the history of the Hyksos may

be summed up as follows:

I. A certain number of non-Egyptian kings of foreign

origin, belonging to the nation of the Menti, ruled for a

long time in the eastern portion of the Delta.

II. These chose as their capitals the cities of Zoan and

Avaris, and provided them with strong fortifications.

III. They adopted not only the manners and customs of the

Egyptians, but also their official language and writing,

and the order of their court was arranged on Egyptian

models.

IV. They were patrons of art, and Egyptian artists erected,

after the ancient models, monuments in honour of these

usurpers, in whose statues they were obliged to reproduce

the Hyksos physiognomy, the peculiar arrangement of the

beard und head-dress, as well as other variations of their

costume.

V. They honored Sutekh, the son of Nut, as the supreme god

of their newly acquired country, with the surname Nub, 'the

golden.' He was the origin of all that is evil and perverse

in the visible and invisible world, the opponent of good

and the enemy of light. In the cities of Zoan and Avaris,

splendid temples were constructed in honour of this god,

and other monuments raised, especially Sphinxes, carved out

of stone from Syene.

VI. In all probability one of them was the founder of a new

era, which most likely began with the first year of his

reign. Down to the time of the second Ramses, four hundred

years had elapsed of this reckoning which was acknowledged

even by the Egyptians.

VII. The Egyptians were indebted to their contact with them

for much useful knowledge. In particular their artistic views

were expanded and new forms and shapes, notably that of the

winged sphinx, were introduced, the Semitic origin of which is

obvious at a glance. ...

The inscriptions on the monuments designate that foreign

people who once ruled in Egypt by the name of Men or Menti. On

the walls of the temple of Edfû it is stated that 'the

inhabitants of the land of Asher are called Menti.' ... In the

different languages, ... and in the different periods of

history, the following names are synonymous: Syria, Rutennu of

the East, Asher, and Menti."--"Since, on the basis of the

most recent and best investigations in the province of ancient

Egyptian chronology, we reckon the year 1350 B. C. as a mean

computation for the reign of Ramses, the reign of the Hyksos

king, Nub, and probably its beginning, falls in the year 1750

B. C., that is, 400 years before Ramses II. Although we are

completely in the dark as to the place King Nub occupied in

the succession of the kindred princes of his house, yet the

number mentioned is important, as an approximate epoch for the

stay of the foreign kings in Egypt. According to the statement

in the Bible, the Hebrews from the immigration of Jacob into

Egypt until the Exodus remained 430 years in that land. Since

the Exodus from Egypt took place in the time of Meneptah II.,

the son of Ramses II.--the Pharaoh of the oppression--the

year B. C. 1300 may be an approximate date. If we add to this

430 years, as expressing the total duration of the sojourn of

the Hebrews in Egypt, we arrive at the year 1730 B. C. as the

approximate date for the immigration of Jacob into Egypt, and

for the time of the official career of Joseph at the court of

Pharaoh. In other words, the time of Joseph (1730 B. C.) must

have fallen in the period of the Hyksos domination, about the

reign of the above-mentioned prince Nub (1750 B. C)."

_H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs (edition of 1891,

by.M. Brodrick), pages 106-109, and 126._

See JEWS: THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

ALSO IN:

F. C. H. Wendel, History of Egypt, chapter 4.

EGYPT: About B. C. 1700-1400.

The New Empire.

The Eighteenth Dynasty.

"The dominion of the Hyksos by necessity gave rise to profound

internal divisions, alike in the different princely families

and in the native population itself. Factions became rampant

in various districts, and reached the highest point in the

hostile feeling of the inhabitants of Patoris or the South

country against the people of Patomit or North country, who

were much mixed with foreign blood. ... From this condition of

divided power and of mutual jealousy the foreign rulers

obtained their advantage and their chief strength, until King

Aahmes made himself supreme."

_H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs

(edition of 1891, by M. Brodrick)._

"The duration of the reign of this first Pharaoh of the New

Empire was twenty-five years. He was succeeded by his son

Amenhotep I. and the latter by his son Thothmes I. "The reign

of Thothmes 1. ... derives its chief distinction from the fact

that, at this period of their history, the Egyptians for the

first time carried their arms deep into Asia, overrunning

Syria, and even invading Mesopotamia, or the tract between the

Tigris and the Euphrates. Hitherto the furthest point reached

in this direction had been Sharuhen in Southern Palestine. ...

Syria was hitherto almost an undiscovered region to the

powerful people which nurturing its strength in the Nile

valley, had remained content with its own natural limits and

scarcely grasped at any conquests. A time was now come when

this comparative quietude and absence of ambition were about

to cease. Provoked by the attack made upon her from the side

of Asia, and smarting from the wounds inflicted upon her pride

and prosperity by the Hyksos during the period of their rule,

Egypt now set herself to retaliate, and for three centuries

continued at intervals to pour her armies into the Eastern

continent, and to carry fire and sword over the extensive and

populous regions which lay between the Mediterranean and the

Zagros mountain range. There is some uncertainty as to the

extent of her conquests; but no reasonable doubt can be

entertained that for a space of three hundred years Egypt was

the most powerful and the most aggressive state that the world

contained, and held a dominion that has as much right to be

called an 'Empire' as the Assyrian, the Babylonian or the Persian.

{753}

While Babylonia, ruled by Arab conquerors, declined in

strength, and Assyria proper was merely struggling into

independence, Egypt put forth her arm and grasped the fairest

regions of the earth's surface." The immediate successor of

Thothmes I. was his son, Thothmes II., who reigned in

association with a sister of masculine character, queen

Hatasu. The strong-minded queen, moreover, prolonged her reign

after the death of this elder brother, until a younger

brother, Thothmes III. displaced her. The Third Thothmes was

the greatest of Egyptian conquerors and kings. He carried his

arms beyond the Euphrates, winning a memorable victory at

Megiddo over the confederated kings of the Syrian and

Mesopotamian countries. He left to his son (Amenhotep II.) "a

dominion extending about 1,100 miles from north to south, and

(in places) 450 miles from west to east." He was a great

builder, likewise, and "has left the impress of his presence

in Egypt more widely than almost any other of her kings, while

at the same time he has supplied to the great capitals of the

modern world their most striking Egyptian monuments." The

larger of the obelisks now standing in Rome and

Constantinople, as well as those at London and New York were

all of them produced in the reign of this magnificent Pharaoh.

The two obelisks last named stood originally, and for fourteen

centuries at the front of the great temple of the sun, in

Heliopolis. They were removed by the Roman Emperor, Augustus,

B. C: 23, to Alexandria, where they took in time the name of

Cleopatra's Needles,--although Cleopatra had no part in their

long history. After nineteen centuries more of rest, these

strangely coveted monuments were again disturbed, and

transported into lands which their builder knew not of. The

later kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty seem to have, none of

them, possessed the energy and character of Thothmes III. The

line ended about 1400 B. C. with Horemheb, who left no heirs.

_G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 20._

ALSO IN:

_H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs chapter 13._

_H. H. Gorringe, Egyptian ·Obelisks._

EGYPT: About B. C. 1500-1400.

The Tell el-Amarna Tablets.

Correspondence of the Egyptian kings with Babylonia, Assyria,

Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine.

"The discovery made in 1887 by a peasant woman of Middle Egypt

may be described as the most important of all contributions to

the early political history of Western Asia. We have become

possessed of a correspondence, dating from the fifteenth

century B. C., which was carried on during the reigns of three

Egyptian kings, with the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Armenia,

Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, during a period of great

activity, when revolutions which affected the whole history of

the east shore lands of the Mediterranean were in progress;

and we find in these tablets a contemporary picture of the

civilisation of the age. ... The Tell Amarna tablets represent

a literature equal in bulk to about half the Pentateuch, and

concerned almost exclusively with political affairs, They are

clay tablets, varying from two inches to a foot in length,

with a few as large as eighteen inches, covered with cuneiform

writing generally on both sides, and often on the edges as

well. The peasantry unearthed nearly the complete collection,

including some 320 pieces in all; and explorers afterwards

digging on the site have added only a few additional

fragments. The greater number were bought for the Berlin

Museum, while eighty-two were acquired for England, and the

rest remain either in the Boulak Museum at Cairo; or, in a few

instances, in the hands of private collectors. ... Tell Amarna

(apparently 'the mound of the tumuli ') is an important ruined

site on the east bank of the Nile, about a hundred and fifty

miles in a straight line south of Cairo. Its Egyptian name is

said to have been Khu-en-aten, 'Glory of the Sun-disk.'"

_The Tell Amarna Tablets (Edinburgh Review, July, 1893)._

"The collection of Cuneiform Tablets recently found [1887] at

Tell el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, consisted of about three

hundred and twenty documents, or portions of documents. The

British Museum possesses eighty-two ... the Berlin Museum has

one hundred and sixty, a large number being fragments; the

Gizeh Museum has sixty; and a few are in the hands of private

persons. ... In color the Tablets vary from a light to a dark

dust tint, and from a flesh-color to dark brick-red. The

nature of the clay of which they are made sometimes indicates

the countries from which they come. The size of the Tablets in

the British Museum varies from 8¾ inches x 4-7/8 inches to 2-1/8

inches x 1-11/16 inches; the longest text contains 98 lines, the

shortest 10. ... The greater number are rectangular, and a few

are oval; and they differ in shape from any other cuneiform

documents known to us. ... The writing ... resembles to a

certain extent the Neo-Babylonian, i. e., the simplification

of the writing of the first Babylonian Empire used commonly in

Babylonia and Assyria for about seven centuries B. C. It

possesses, however, characteristics different from those of

any other style of cuneiform writing of any period now known

to exist; and nearly every tablet contains forms of characters

which have hitherto been thought peculiar to the Ninevite or

Assyrian style of writing. But, compared with the neat,

careful hand employed in the official documents drawn up for

the kings of Assyria, it is somewhat coarse and careless, and

suggests the work of unskilled scribes. One and the same hand,

however, appears in tablets which come from the same person

and the same place. On some of the large tablets the writing

is bold and free; on some of the small ones the characters are

confused and cramped, and are groups of strokes rather than

wedges. The spelling ... is often careless, and in some

instances syllables have been omitted. At present it is not

possible to say whether the irregular spelling is due to the

ignorance of the scribe or to dialectic peculiarities. ... The

Semitic dialect in which these letters are written is

Assyrian, and is, in some important details, closely related

to the Hebrew of the Old Testament. ... The documents were

most probably written between the years B. C. 1500 to 1450.

... They give an insight into the nature of the political

relations which existed between the kings of Western Asia and

the kings of Egypt, and prove that an important trade existed

between the two countries from very early times. ... A large

number of the present tablets are addressed to 'the King of

Egypt,' either Amenophis III. or Amenophis IV. Nearly all of

them consist of reports of disasters to the Egyptian power and

of successful intrigues against it, coupled by urgent

entreaties for help, pointing to a condition of distraction

and weakness in Egypt. ... The most graphic details of the

disorganized condition, and of the rival factions, of the

Egyptian dependencies lying on the coastline of Phoenicia and

Northern Palestine, are to be gathered from a perusal of the

dispatches of the governors of the cities of Byblos, Beyrut

and Tyre."

_The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, introduction._

{754}

"In the present state of cuneiform research I believe it to be

impossible to give a translation of the Tell el-Amarna texts

which would entirely satisfy the expert or general reader. No

two scholars would agree as to any interpretation which might

be placed upon certain rare grammatical forms and unknown

words in the Babylonian text, and any literal translation in a

modern language would not be understood by the general reader

on account of the involved style and endless repetition of

phrases common to a Semitic idiom and dialect. About the

general meaning of the contents of the greater number of the

letters there can be no doubt whatever, and it is therefore

possible to make a summary of the contents of each letter,

which should, as a rule, satisfy the general reader, and at

the same time form a guide to the beginner in cuneiform.

Summaries of the contents of the Tell el-Amarna tablets in the

British Museum have been published in 'The Tell el-Amarna

Tablets in the British Museum, with autotype facsimiles,'

printed by order of the Trustees, London, 1892, and it is

hoped that the transliteration, given in the following pages

may form a useful supplement to that work." ...

No. 1. A Letter from Egypt--Amenophis III. to Kallimma (?)

Sin, King of Karaduniyash, referring to his proposed marriage

with Sukharti, the daughter of Kallimma-Sin, and containing

the draft of a commercial treaty, and an allusion to the

disappearance of certain chariots and horses.

No.2. Letters from Babylonia-Burraburiyash, King of

Karaduniyash, to Amenophis IV., referring to the friendship

which had existed between their respective fathers, and the

help which had been rendered to the King of Egypt by

Burraburiyash himself; the receipt of two manahs of gold is

acknowledged and a petition is made for more.

No. 3. Burraburiyash, King of Karaduniyash to Amenophis IV.,

complaining that the Egyptian messengers had visited his

country thrice without bringing gifts, and that they withheld

some of the gold which had been sent to him from Egypt;

Burraburiyash announces the despatch of a gift of lapis-lazuli

for the Egyptian princess who was his son's wife. ...

No. 30. Letter from Abi-milki, governor of Tyre, to the King

of Egypt, reporting that he believes Zimrida will not be able

to stir up disaffection in the city of Sidon, although he has

caused much hostility against Tyre. He asks for help to

protect the city, and for water to drink and wood to burn, and

he sends with his messenger Ili-milki five talents of copper

and other gifts for the King of Egypt. He reports that the

King of Danuna is dead and that his brother reigns in his

stead; one half of the city of Ugarit has been destroyed by

fire; the soldiers of the Khatti have departed; Itagamapairi,

governor of Kedesh, and Aziru are fighting against Namyawiza.

If the King of Egypt will but send a few troops, all will be

well with Tyre. ...

No. 43. Letter from the governor of a town in Syria to the

King of Egypt, reporting that the rebels have asserted their

independence; that Biridashwi has stirred up rebellion in the

city of Inu-Amma; that its people have captured chariots in

the city of Ashtarti: that the kings of the cities of Buzruna

and Khalunni have made a league with Biridashwi to slay

Namyawiza (who, having taken refuge in Damascus and being

attacked by Arzawiya, declared himself to be a vassal of

Egypt); that Arzawiya went to the city of Gizza and afterwards

captured the city of Shaddu; that Itakkama ravaged the country

of Gizza; and that Arzawiya and Biridashwi have wasted the

country of Abitu.

No. 44. Continuation (1) of a letter to the King of Egypt,

reporting that, owing to the hostilities of Abd-Ashirta,

Khâya, an official, was unable to send ships to the country of

Amurri, as he had promised. The ships from Arvad which the

writer has in his charge, lack their full complement of men

for war service, and he urges the king to make use of the

ships and crews which he has had with him in Egypt. The writer

of the letter also urges the King of Egypt to appoint an

Egyptian official over the naval affairs of Sidon, Beyrut and

Arvad, and to seize Abd-Ashirta and put him under restraint to

prevent him obstructing the manning of the ships of war. ...

No. 58. Letter from the governor of a district in Palestine

(?) to the governors of neighbouring states in the land of

Canaan, informing them that he is about to send his messenger

Akiya on a mission to the King of Egypt, and to place himself

and every thing that he has at his disposal. Akiya will go to

Egypt by the way of Canaan, and the writer of this letter

suggests that any gifts they may have to send to Egypt should

be carried by him, for Akiya is a thoroughly trustworthy man.

_C. Bezold, Oriental Diplomacy: Being the transliterated

text of the Cuneiform Despatches, preface._

Under the title of "The Story of a 'Tell,'" Mr. W. M. Flinders

Petrie, the successful excavator and explorer of Egyptian

antiquities, gave a lecture in London, in June, 1892, in which

he described the work and the results of an excavation then in

progress under his direction on the supposed site of Lachish,

at a point where the maritime plain of Philistia rises to the

mountains of Judæa, on the route from Egypt into Asia. The

chairman who introduced Mr. Petrie defined the word "Tell" as

follows: "A Tell is a mound of earth showing by the presence

of broken pottery or worked stone that it is the site of a

ruined city or village. In England when a house falls down or

is pulled down the materials are usually worth the expense of

removing for use in some new building. But in Egypt common

houses have for thousands of years been built of sun-dried

bricks; in Palestine of rough rubble walling, which, on

falling, produces many chips, with thick flat roofs of

plaster. It is thus often less trouble to get new than to use

old material; the sites of towns grow in height, and

depressions are filled up." The mound excavated by Mr. Petrie

is known as Tell el Hesy. After he left the work it was

carried on by Mr. Bliss, and Mr. Petrie in his lecture says

"The last news is that Mr. Bliss has found the long looked for

prize, a cuneiform tablet. ... From the character of the

writing, which is the same as on the tablets written in

Palestine in 1400. B. C., to the Egyptian king at Tel el

Amarna, we have a close agreement regarding the chronology of

the town. Further, it mentions Zimrida as a governor, and this

same man appears as governor of Lachish on the tablets found

at Tel el Amarna. We have thus at last picked up the other end

of the broken chain of correspondence between Palestine and

Egypt, of which one part was so unexpectedly found in Egypt a

few years ago on the tablets at Tel el Amarna; and we may hope

now to recover the Palestinian part of this intercourse and so

establish the pre-Israelite history of the land."

W_. M. F. Petrie, The Story of a "Tell"

(The City and the Land, lecture 6)._

See, also, PALESTINE.

ALSO IN:

_C. R. Conder, The Tell Amarna Tablets, translated._

{755}

EGYPT: About B. C. 1400-1200.

The first of the Ramesides.

The Pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus,

"Under the Nineteenth Dynasty, which acquired the throne after

the death of Har-em-Hebi [or Hor-em-heb] the fortune of Egypt

maintained to some extent its ascendancy; but, though the

reigns of some war-like kings throw a bright light on this

epoch, the shade of approaching trouble already darkens the

horizon." Ramses I. and his son, or son-in-law, Seti I., were

involved in troublesome wars with the rising power of the

Hittites, in Syria, and with the Shasu of the Arabian desert.

Seti was also at war with the Libyans, who then made their

first appearance in Egyptian history. His son Ramses II., the

Sesostris of the Greeks, who reigned for sixty-seven years, in

the fourteenth century B. C., has always been the most famous

of the Egyptian kings, and, by modern discovery, has been made

the most interesting of them to the Christian world. He was a

busy and boastful warrior, who accomplished no important

conquests; but "among the Pharaohs he is the builder 'par

excellence.' It is almost impossible to find in Egypt a ruin

or an ancient mound, without reading his name." ... It was to

these works, probably, that the Israelites then in Egypt were

forced to contribute their labor; for the Pharaoh of the

oppression is identified, by most scholars of the present day,

with this building and boasting Sesostris.

_F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier, Manual of the

Ancient History of the East, book 3, chapter 3._

"The extreme length of the reign of Ramses was, as in other

histories, the cause of subsequent weakness and disaster. His

successor was an aged son, Menptah, who had to meet the

difficulties which were easily overcome by the youth of his

energetic father. The Libyans and their maritime allies broke

the long tranquillity of Egypt by a formidable invasion and

temporary conquest of the north-west. The power of the

monarchy was thus shaken, and the old king was not the leader

to restore it. His obscure reign was followed by others even

obscurer, and the Nineteenth Dynasty ended in complete

anarchy, which reached its height when a Syrian chief, in what

manner we know not, gained the rule of the whole country. It

is to the reign of Menptah that Egyptian tradition assigned

the Exodus, and modern research has come to a general

agreement that this is its true place in Egyptian history. ...

Unfortunately we do not know the duration of the oppression of

the Israelites, nor the condition of Lower Egypt during the

Eighteenth Dynasty, which, according to the hypothesis here

adopted, corresponds to a great part of the Hebrew sojourn. It

is, however, clear from the Bible that the oppression did not

begin till after the period of Joseph's contemporaries, and

had lasted eighty years before the Exodus. It seems almost

certain that this was the actual beginning of the oppression,

for it is very improbable that two separate Pharaohs are

intended by the 'new king which knew not Joseph' and the

builder of Rameses, or, in other words, Ramses II., and the

time from the accession of Ramses II. to the end of Menptah's

reign can have little exceeded the eighty years of Scripture

between the birth of Moses and the Exodus. ... If the

adjustment of Hebrew and Egyptian history for the oppression,

as stated above, be accepted, Ramses II. was probably the

first, and certainly the great oppressor. His character suits

this theory; he was an undoubted autocrat who ... covered

Egypt and Lower Nubia with vast structures that could only

have been produced by slave-labor on the largest scale."

_R. S. Poole, Ancient Egypt (Contemporary Review,

March, 1879)._

ALSO IN:

_H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt Under the Pharaohs, chapter 14._

_H. G. Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph._

See, also:

JEWS: THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

EGYPT: About B. C. 1300.

Exodus of the Israelites.

See JEWS: THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS.

EGYPT: About B. C. 1200-670.

The decline of the empire of the Pharaohs.

From the anarchy in which the Nineteenth Dynasty came to its

end, order was presently restored by the seating in power of a

new family, which claimed to be of the Rameside stock. The

second of its kings, who called himself Ramses III. and who is

believed to be the Rhampsinitus of the Greeks, appears to have

been one of the ablest of the monarchs of his line. The

security and prosperity of Egypt were recovered under his

reign and he left it in a state which does not seem to have

promised the rapid decay which ensued. "It is difficult to

understand and account for the suddenness and completeness of

the collapse. ... The hieratic chiefs, the high priests of the

god Ammon at Thebes, gradually increased in power, usurped one

after another the prerogatives of the Pharaohs, by degrees

reduced their authority to a shadow, and ended with an open

assumption not only of the functions, but of the very insignia

of royalty. A space of nearly two centuries elapsed, however,

before this change was complete. Ten princes of the name of

Ramses, and one called Meri-Tum, all of them connected by

blood with the great Rameside house, bore the royal title and

occupied the royal palace, in the space between B. C. 1280 and

B. C. 1100. Egyptian history during this period is almost

wholly a blank. No military expeditions are conducted--no

great buildings are reared--art almost disappears--literature

holds her tongue." Then came the dynasty of the priest-kings,

founded by Her-Hor, which held the throne for more than a

century and was contemporary in its latter years with David

and Solomon. The Twenty-Second Dynasty which succeeded had its

capital at Bubastis and is concluded by Dr. Brugsch to have

been a line of Assyrian kings, representing an invasion and

conquest of Egypt by Nimrod, the great king of Assyria. Other

Egyptologists disagree with Dr. Brugsch in this, and Professor

Rawlinson, the historian of Assyria, finds objections to the

hypothesis from his own point of view.

{756}

The prominent monarch of this dynasty was the Sheshonk of

Biblical history, who sheltered Jeroboam, invaded Palestine

and plundered Jerusalem. Before this dynasty came to an end it

had lost the sovereignty of Egypt at large, and its Pharaohs

contended with various rivals and invaders. Among the latter,

power grew in the hands of a race of Ethiopians, who had risen

to importance at Napata, on the Upper Nile, and who extended

their power, at last, over the whole of Egypt. The Ethiopian

domination was maintained for two-thirds of a century, until

the great wave of Assyrian conquest broke upon Egypt in 672 B.

C. and swept over it, driving the Ethiopians back to Napata

and Meroë.

_G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 25._

ALSO IN:

_H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs, chapter 15-18._

_E. Wilson, Egypt of the Past, chapter 8._

See, also, ETHIOPIA.

EGYPT: B. C. 670-525.

Assyrian conquest and restored independence.

The Twenty-sixth Dynasty.

The Greeks at Naucratis.

Although Syria and Palestine had then been suffering for more

than a century from the conquering arms of the Assyrians, it

was not until 670 B. C., according to Professor Rawlinson, that

Esarhaddon passed the boundaries of Egypt and made himself

master of that country. His father Sennacherib, had attempted

the invasion thirty years before, at the time of his siege of

Jerusalem, and had recoiled before some mysterious calamity

which impelled him to a sudden retreat. The son avenged his

father's failure. The Ethiopian masters of Egypt were expelled

and the Assyrian took their place. He "broke up the country

into twenty governments, appointing in each town a ruler who

bore the title of king, but placing all the others to a

certain extent under the authority of the prince who reigned

at Memphis. This was Neco, the father of Psammetichus (Psamtik

I.)--a native Egyptian of whom we have some mention both in

Herodotus and in the fragments of Manetho. The remaining

rulers were likewise, for the most part, native Egyptians."

These arrangements were soon broken up by the expelled

Ethiopian king, Tirhakah, who rallied his forces and swept the

Assyrian kinglets out of the country; but Asshur-bani-pal, son

and successor of Esarhaddon, made his appearance with an army

in 668 or 667 B. C. and Tirhakah fled before him. Again and

again this occurred, and for twenty years Egypt was torn

between the Assyrians and the Ethiopians, in their struggle

for the possession of her. At length, out of the chaos

produced by these conflicts there emerged a native ruler--the

Psammetichus mentioned above--who subjugated his fellow

princes and established a new Egyptian monarchy, which

defended itself with success against Assyria and Ethiopia,

alike. The Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, of Sais, founded by

Psammetichus, is suspected to have been of Libyan descent. It

ruled Egypt until the Persian conquest, and brought a great

new influence to bear on the country and people, by the

introduction of Greek soldiers and traders. It was under this

dynasty that the Greek city of Naucratis was founded, on the

Canobic branch of the Nile.

_G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies: Assyria, chapter 9._

The site of Naucratis, near the Canobic branch of the Nile,

was determined by excavations which Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie

began in 1884, and from which much has been learned of the

history of the city and of early relations between the

Egyptians and the Greeks. It is concluded that the settlement

of Naucratis dates from about 660 B. C.--not long after the

beginning of the reign of Psammitichus--and that its Greek

founders became the allies of that monarch and his successors

against their enemies. "All are agreed that before the reign

of Psammitichus and the founding of Naucratis, Egypt was a

sealed book to the Greeks. It is likely that the Phoenicians,

who were from time to time the subjects of the Pharaohs, were

admitted, where aliens like the Greeks were excluded. We have

indeed positive evidence that the Egyptians did not wish

strange countries to learn their art, for in a treaty between

them and the Hittites it is stipulated that neither country

shall harbour fugitive artists from the other. But however the

fact may be accounted for, it is an undoubted fact that long

before Psammitichus threw Egypt open to the foreigner, the

Phoenicians had studied in the school of Egyptian art, and

learned to copy all sorts of handiwork procured from the

valley of the Nile. ... According to Herodotus and Diodorus,

the favour shown to the Greeks by the King was the cause of a

great revolt of the native Egyptian troops, who left the

frontier fortresses, and marched south beyond Elephantine,

where they settled, resisting all the entreaties of

Psammitichus, who naturally deplored the loss of the mainstay

of his dominions, and developed into the race of the Sebridae.

Wiedemann, however, rejects the whole story as unhistorical,

and certainly, if we closely consider it, it contains great

inherent improbabilities. ... Psammitichus died in B. C: 610,

and was succeeded by his son Necho, who was his equal in

enterprise and vigour. This King paid great attention to the

fleet of Egypt, and Greek shipwrights were set to work on both

the Mediterranean and Red Seas to build triremes for the State

navy. A fleet of his ships, we are told, succeeded in sailing

round Africa, a very great feat for the age. The King even

attempted the task, of which the completion was reserved for

the Persian Darius, the Ptolemies, and Trajan, of making a

canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Herodotus says

that, after sacrificing the lives of 120,000 men to the labour

and heat of the task, he gave it up, in consequence of the

warning of an oracle that he was toiling only for the

barbarians. ... Necho, like his father, must needs try the

edge of his new weapon, the Ionian mercenaries, on Asia. At

first he was successful. Josiah, King of Judah, came out

against him, but was slain, and his army dispersed. Greek

valour carried Necho as far as the Euphrates. ... But

Nebuchadnezzar, son of the King of Babylon, marched against

the invaders, and defeated them in a great battle near

Carehemish. His father's death recalled him to Babylon, and

Egypt was for the moment saved from counter-invasion by the

stubborn resistance offered to the Babylonian arms by

Jehoiakim, King of Judah, a resistance fatal to the Jewish

race; for Jerusalem was captured after a long siege, and most

of the inhabitants carried into captivity. Of Psammitichus

II., who succeeded Necho, we should know but little were it

not for the archaeological record. Herodotus only says that he

attacked Ethiopia, and died after a reign of six years.

{757}

But of the expedition thus summarily recorded we have a

lasting and memorable result in the well-known inscriptions

written by Rhodians and other Greek mercenaries on the legs of

the colossi at Abu Simbel in Nubia, which record how certain

of them came thither in the reign of Psammitichus, pushing up

the river in boats as far as it was navigable, that is,

perhaps, up to the second cataract. ... Apries, the Hophra of

the Bible, was the next king. The early part of his reign was

marked by successful warfare against the Phoenicians and the

peoples of Syria; but, like his predecessor, he was unable to

maintain a footing in Asia in the face of the powerful and

warlike Nebuchadnezzar. The hostility which prevailed between

Egypt and Babylon at this time caused King Apries to open a

refuge for those Jews who fled from the persecution of

Nebuchadnezzar. He assigned to their leaders, among whom were

the daughters of the King of Judah, a palace of his own at

Daphnae, 'Pharaoh's house at Tahpanhes,' as it is called by

Jeremiah. That prophet was among the fugitives, and uttered in

the palace a notable prophecy, (xliii. 9) that King

Nebuchadnezzar should come and spread his conquering tent over

the pavement before it. Formerly it was supposed that this

prophecy remained unfulfilled, but this opinion has to be

abandoned. Recently discovered Egyptian and Babylonian

inscriptions prove that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Egypt as far

as Syene. ... The fall of Apries as brought about by his

ingratitude to the Greeks, and his contempt for the lives of

his own subjects. He had formed the project of bringing under

his sway the Greek cities of the Cyrenaica. ... Apries

despatched against Cyrene a large force; but the Cyreneans

bravely defended themselves, and as the Egyptians on this

occasion marched without their Greek allies, they were

entirely defeated, and most of them perished by the sword, or

in the deserts which separate Cyrene from Egypt. The defeated

troops, and their countrymen who remained behind in garrison

in Egypt, imputed the disaster to treachery on the part of

Apries. ... They revolted, and chose as their leader Amasis, a

man of experience and daring. But Apries, though deserted by

his subjects, hoped still to maintain his throne by Greek aid.

At the head of 30,000 Ionians and Carians he marched against

Amasis. At Momemphis a battle took place between the rival

kings and between the rival nations; but the numbers of the

Egyptians prevailed over the arms and discipline of the

mercenaries, and Apries was defeated and captured by his

rival, who, however, allowed him for some years to retain the

name of joint-king. It is the best possible proof of the

solidity of Greek influence in Egypt at this time that Amasis,

though set on the throne by the native army after a victory

over the Greek mercenaries, yet did not expel these latter

from Egypt, but, on the contrary, raised them to higher favour

than before. ... In the delightful dawn of connected European

history we see Amasis as a wise and wealthy prince, ruling in

Egypt at the time when Polycrates was tyrant of Samos; and

when Croesus of Lydia, the richest king of his time, was

beginning to be alarmed by the rapid expansion of the Persian

power under Cyrus. ... In the days of Psammitichus III., the

son of Amasis, the storm which had overshadowed Asia broke

upon Egypt. One of the leaders of the Greek mercenaries in

Egypt named Phanes, a native of Halicarnassus, made his way to

the Persian Court, and persuaded Cambyses, who, according to

the story, had received from Amasis one of those affronts

which have so often produced wars between despots, to invade

Egypt in full force."

_P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chapter 7._

ALSO IN:

_W. M. F. Petrie, Naukratis._

See, also, NAUKRATIS.

EGYPT: B. C. 525-332.

Persian conquest and sovereignty.

The kings of the Twenty-Sixth or Saite Dynasty maintained the

independence of Egypt for nearly a century and a half, and

even revived its military glories briefly, by Necho's

ephemeral conquests in Syria and his overthrow of Josiah king

of Judah. In the meantime, Assyria and Babylonia had fallen

and the Persian power raised up by Cyrus had taken their

place. In his own time, Cyrus did not finish a plan of

conquest which included Egypt; his son Cambyses took up the

task. "It appears that four years were consumed by the Persian

monarch in his preparations for his Egyptian expedition. It

was not until B. C. 525 that he entered Egypt at the head of

his troops and fought the great battle which decided the fate

of the country. The struggle was long and bloody [see PERSIA:

B. C. 549-521]. Psammenitus, who had succeeded his father

Amasis, had the services, not only of his Egyptian subjects,

but of a large body of mercenaries besides, Greeks and

Carians. ... In spite of their courage and fanaticism, the

Egyptian army was completely defeated. ... The conquest of

Egypt was followed by the submission of the neighbouring

tribes. ... Even the Greeks of the more remote Barca and

Cyrene sent gifts to the conqueror and consented to become his

tributaries." But Cambyses wasted 50,000 men in a disastrous

expedition through the Libyan desert to Ammon, and he

retreated from Ethiopia with loss and shame. An attempted

rising of the Egyptians, before he had quitted their country,

was crushed with merciless severity. The deities, the temples

and the priests of Egypt were treated with insult and contempt

and the spirit of the people seems to have been entirely

broken. "Egypt became now for a full generation the obsequious

slave of Persia, and gave no more trouble to her subjugator

than the weakest, or the most contented, of the provinces."

_George Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies: Persia,

chapter 7._

"The Persian kings, from Cambyses to Darius II. Nothus, are

enrolled as the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty of Manetho. The ensuing

revolts [see ATHENS: B. C. 460-449] are recognized in the

Twenty-Eighth (Saite) Dynasty, consisting only of Amyrtæus,

who restored the independence of Egypt (B. C. 414-408), and

the Twenty-Ninth (Mendesian) and Thirtieth (Sebennyte)

Dynasties (about B. C. 408-353), of whose intricate history we

need only here say that they ruled with great prosperity and

have left beautiful monuments of art. The last king of

independent Egypt was Nectanebo II., who succumbed to the

invasion of Artaxerxes Ochus, and fled to Ethiopia (B. C.

353). The last three kings of Persia, Ochus, Arses, and Darius

Codomannus, form the Thirty-First Dynasty of Manetho, ending

with the submission of Egypt to Alexander the Great (B. C.

332)."

_P. Smith, Ancient History of the East (Students'), chapter 8._

ALSO IN: _S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapter 5._

{758}

EGYPT: B. C. 332.

Alexander's conquest.

"In the summer of 332 [after the siege and destruction of

Tyre--see TYRE: B. C. 332, and MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 334-330]

Alexander set forward on his march toward Egypt, accompanied

by the fleet, which he had placed under the orders of

Hephæstion." But, being detained on the way several months by

the siege of Gaza, it was not before December that he entered

Egypt. "He might safely reckon not merely on an easy conquest,

but on an ardent reception, from a people who burnt to shake

off the Persian tyranny. ... Mazaces [the Persian commander]

himself, as soon as he heard of the battle of Issus, became

aware that all resistance to Alexander would be useless, and

met him with a voluntary submission. At Pelusium he found the

fleet, and, having left a garrison in the fortress, ordered it

to proceed up the Nile as far as Memphis, while he marched

across the desert. Here he conciliated the Egyptians by the

honours which he paid to all their gods, especially to Apis,

who had been so cruelly insulted by the Persian invaders. ...

He then embarked, and dropt down the western or Canobic arm of

the river to Canobus, to survey the extremity of the Delta on

that side, and having sailed round the lake Mareotis, landed

on the narrow belt of low ground which parts it from the sea,

and is sheltered from the violence of the northern gales ...

by a long ridge of rock, then separated from the main land by

a channel, nearly a mile (seven stades) broad and forming the

isle of Pharos. On this site stood the village of Racotis,

where the ancient kings of Egypt had stationed a permanent

guard to protect this entrance of their dominions from

adventurers. ... Alexander's keen eye was immediately struck

by the advantages of this position for a city, which should

become a great emporium of commerce, and a link between the

East and the West. ... He immediately gave orders for the

beginning of the work, himself traced the outline, which was

suggested by the natural features of the ground itself, and

marked the site of some of the principal buildings, squares,

palaces and temples" (see ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 332). Alexander

remained in Egypt until the spring of 331, arranging the

occupation and administration of the country. "The system

which he established served in some points as a model for the

policy of Rome under the Emperors." Before quitting the

country he made a toilsome march along the coast, westward,

and thence, far into the desert, to visit the famous oracle of

Ammon.

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 50._

EGYPT: B. C. 323-30.

The kingdom of the Ptolemies.

In the division of the empire of Alexander the Great between

his generals, when he died, Ptolemy Lagus--reputed to be a

natural son of Alexander's father Philip--chose Egypt (see

MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316), with a modesty which proved to be

wise. In all the provinces of the Macedonian conquest, it was

the country most easily to be held as an independent state, by

reason of the sea and desert which separated it from the rest

of the world. It resulted from the prudence of Ptolemy that he

founded a kingdom which lasted longer and enjoyed more

security and prosperity than any other among the monarchies of

the Diadochi. He was king of Egypt, in fact, for seventeen

years before, in 307, B. C., he ventured to assume the name

(see MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301). Meantime, he had added to his

dominion the little Greek state of Cyrene, on the African

coast with Phœnicia, Judæa, Cœle-Syria, and the island of

Cyprus. These latter became disputed territory, fought over

for two centuries, between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids,

sometimes dominated by the one and sometimes by the other (see

SELEUCIDÆ: B. C. 281-224, and 224-187). At its greatest

extent, the dominion of the Ptolemies, under Ptolemy

Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Lagus, included large parts of

Asia Minor and many of the Greek islands. Egypt and Cyrene

they held, with little disturbance, until Rome absorbed them.

Notwithstanding the vices which the family of Ptolemy

developed, and which were as rank of their kind as history can

show, Egypt under their rule appears to have been one of the

most prosperous countries of the time. In Alexandria, they

more than realized the dream of its Macedonian projector. They

made it not only the wealthiest city of their day, but the

greatest seat of learning,--the successor of Athens as the

capital of Greek civilization in the ancient world.

_S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapter 7-12._

The first Ptolemy abdicated in favor of his son, Ptolemy

Philadelphus, in 284 B. C., and died in the second year

following.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280.

"Although the political constitution of Egypt was not greatly

altered when the land fell into Greek hands, yet in other

respects great changes took place. The mere fact that Egypt

took its place among a family of Hellenistic nations, instead

of claiming as of old a proud isolation, must have had a great

effect on the trade, the manufactures, and the customs of the

country. To begin with trade. Under the native kings Egypt had

scarcely any external trade, and trade could scarcely spring

up during the wars with Persia. But under the Ptolemies,

intercourse between Egypt and Sicily, Syria or Greece, would

naturally and necessarily advance rapidly. Egypt produced

manufactured goods which were everywhere in demand; fine

linen, ivory, porcelain, notably that papyrus which Egypt

alone produced, and which was necessary to the growing trade

in manuscripts. Artificial barriers being once removed,

enterprising traders of Corinth and Tarentum, Ephesus and

Rhodes, would naturally seek these goods in Egypt, bringing in

return whatever of most attractive their own countries had to

offer. It seems probable that the subjects of the Ptolemies

seldom or never had the courage to sail direct down the Red

Sea to India. In Roman times this voyage became not unusual,

but at an earlier time the Indian trade was principally in the

hands of the Arabs of Yemen and of the Persian Gulf.

Nevertheless the commerce of Egypt under the Ptolemies spread

eastwards as well as westwards. The important towns of Arsinoë

and Berenice arose on the Red Sea as emporia of the Arabian

trade. And as always happens when Egypt is in vigorous hands,

the limits of Egyptian rule and commerce were pushed further

and further up the Nile. The influx into Alexandria and

Memphis of a crowd of Greek architects, artists, and artizans,

could not fail to produce movement in that stream of art which

had in Egypt long remained all but stagnant. ... If we may

trust the somewhat over-coloured and flighty panegyrics which

have come down to us, the material progress of Egypt under

Ptolemy Philadelphus was most wonderful. We read, though we

cannot for a moment trust the figures of Appian, that in his

reign Egypt possessed an army of 200,000 foot soldiers and

40,000 horsemen, 300 elephants and 2,000 chariots of war. The

fleet at the same period is said to have included 1,500 large

vessels, some of them with twenty or thirty banks of oars.

Allowing for exaggeration, we must suppose that Egypt was then

more powerful than it had been since the days of Rameses."

_P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chapter 7._

See, also, ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 282-246;

and EDUCATION, ANCIENT: ALEXANDRIA.

{759}

EGYPT: B. C. 80-48.

Strife among the Ptolemies.

Roman pretensions.

The throne of Egypt being disputed, B. C. 80, between

Cleopatra Berenice, who had seized it, and her step-son,

Ptolemy Alexander, then in Rome, the latter bribed the Romans

to support his claims by making a will in which he named the

Roman Republic as his heir. The Senate, thereat, sent him to

Alexandria with orders that Berenice should marry him and that

they should reign jointly, as king and queen. The order was

obeyed. The foully mated pair were wedded, and, nineteen days

afterwards, the young king procured the death of his queen.

The crime provoked an insurrection in which Ptolemy Alexander

was slain by his own guard. This ended the legitimate line of

the Ptolemies; but an illegitimate prince, usually called

Auletes, or "the piper," was put on the throne, and he

succeeded in holding it for twenty-four years. The claim of

the Romans, under the will of Ptolemy Alexander, seems to have

been kept in abeyance by the bribes which Auletes employed

with liberality among the senatorial leaders. In 58 B. C. a

rising at Alexandria drove Auletes from the throne; in 54 B.

C. he bought the support of Gabinius, Roman pro-consul in

Syria, who reinstated him. He died in 51 B. C. leaving by will

his kingdom to his elder daughter, Cleopatra, and his elder

son, Ptolemy, who, according to the abominable custom of the

Ptolemies, were to marry one another and reign together. The

Roman people, by the terms of the will were made its

executors. When, therefore, Cæsar, coming to Alexandria, three

years afterwards, found the will of Auletes set at nought,

Ptolemy occupying the throne, alone, and Cleopatra struggling

against him, he had some ground for a pretension of right to

interfere.

_S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapter 11._

EGYPT: B. C. 48-47.

Civil war between Cleopatra and Ptolemy.

Intervention of Cæsar.

The rising against him.

The Romans besieged in Alexandria.

Their ruthless victory.

See ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 48-47.

EGYPT: B. C. 30.

Organized as a Roman province.

After the battle of Actium and the death of Cleopatra, Egypt

was reduced by Octavius to the rank of a Roman province and

the dynasty of the Ptolemies extinguished. But Octavius "had

no intention of giving to the senate the rich domain which he

tore from its native rulers. He would not sow in a foreign

soil the seeds of independence which he was intent upon

crushing nearer home. ... In due time he persuaded the senate

and people to establish it as a principle, that Egypt should

never be placed under the administration of any man of

superior rank to the equestrian, and that no senator should be

allowed even to visit it, without express permission from the

supreme authority."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 29.

EGYPT: A. D. 100-500.

Roman and Christian.

See ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 48-47 to A. D. 413-415;

and CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 33-100, and 100-312.

EGYPT: A. D. 296.

Revolt crushed by Diocletian.

See ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 296.

EGYPT: A. D. 616-628.

Conquest by Chosroes, the Persian.

The career of conquest pursued by Chosroes, the last Persian

conqueror, extended even to Egypt, and beyond it. "Egypt

itself, the only province which had been exempt since the time

of Diocletian from foreign and domestic war, was again subdued

by the successors of Cyrus. Pelusium, the key of that

impervious country, was surprised by the cavalry of the

Persians: they passed with impunity the innumerable channels

of the Delta, and explored the long valley of the Nile from

the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of Æthiopia.

Alexandria might have been relieved by a naval force, but the

archbishop and the præfect embarked for Cyprus; and Chosroes

entered the second city of the empire, which still preserved a

wealthy remnant of industry and commerce. His western trophy

was erected, not on the walls of Carthage, but in the

neighbourhood of Tripoli: the Greek colonies of Cyrene were

finally extirpated." By the peace concluded in 628, after the

death of Chosroes, all of his conquests were restored to the

empire and the cities of Syria and Egypt evacuated by their

Persian garrisons.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 46.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

See PERSIA: A. D. 226-627.

EGYPT: A. D. 640-646.

Moslem conquest.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 640-646.

EGYPT: A. D. 967-1171.

Under the Fatimite Caliphs.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171.

EGYPT: A. D. 1168-1250.

Under the Atabeg and Ayoubite sultans.

See SALADIN, THE EMPIRE OF.

EGYPT: A. D. 1218-1220.

Invasion by the Fifth Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1216-1229.

EGYPT: A. D. 1249-1250.

The crusading invasion by Saint Louis of France.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.

EGYPT: A. D. 1250-1517.

The Mameluke Sultans.

The Mamelukes were a military body created by Saladin. "The

word means slave (literally, the possessed'), and ... they

were brought in youth from northern countries to serve in the

South. Saladin himself was a Kurd, and long before his

accession to power, Turkish and Kurdish mercenaries were

employed by the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cairo, as the Pope

employs Swiss. ... Subsequently, however, Circassia became the

country which most largely furnished this class of troops.

Their apprenticeship was a long and laborious one: they were

taught, first of all, to read the Koran and to write; then

followed lance-exercise, during which time nobody was allowed

to speak to them. At first they either resided in the castle,

or were exercised living under tents; but after the time of

Sultan Barkouk they were allowed to live in the town [Cairo],

and the quarter now occupied by the Jews was at that time

devoted to the Circassian Mamelukes. After this period they

neglected their religious and warlike exercises, and became

degenerate and corrupt. ... The dynasty of Saladin ... was of

no duration, and ended in 648 A. H., or 1250 of the Christian era.

{760}

Then began the so-called Bahrite Sultans, in consequence of

the Mamelukes of the sultan Negm-ed-din having lodged in

Rodah, the Island in the Nile (Bahr-en-Nil). The intriguer of

the period was Sheger-ed-dur, the widow of the monarch, who

married one of the Mamelukes, Moez-eddin-aibek-el-Turcomany,

who became the first of these Bahrite Sultans, and was himself

murdered in the Castle of Cairo through this woman. ... Their

subsequent history, until the conquest of Egypt by Sultan

Selim in 1517, presents nothing but a series of acts of lust,

murder and rapine. So rapidly did they expel each other from

power, that the average reign of each did not exceed five or

six years. ... The 'fleeting purple' of the decline and fall

of the Roman Empire is the spectacle which these Mameluke

Dynasties constantly present."

_A. A. Paton, History of the Egyptian Revolution,

volume 1, chapter 3-5._

EGYPT: A. D. 1516-1517.

Overthrow of the Mameluke Sultans.

Ottoman conquest by Sultan Selim.

See TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520.

EGYPT: A. D. 1798-1799.

The French conquest and occupation by Bonaparte.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (MAY-AUGUST),

and 1798-1799 (AUGUST-AUGUST).

EGYPT: A. D. 1798-1799.

Bonaparte's organization of government.

His victory at Aboukir.

His return to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (AUGUST-AUGUST),

and 1799 (NOVEMBER).

EGYPT: A. D. 1800.

Discontent and discouragement of the French.

The repudiated Treaty of El Arish.

Turkish defeat at Heliopolis.

Revolt crushed at Cairo.

Assassination of Kleber.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800 (JANUARY-JUNE).

EGYPT: A. D. 1801-1802.

Expulsion of the French by the English.

Restoration of the province to Turkey.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802.

EGYPT: A. D. 1803-1811.

The rise of Mohammad 'Aly (or Mehemet Ali) to power.

His treacherous destruction of the Mamelukes.

"It was during the French occupation that Mohammad 'Aly [or

Mehemet Ali] came on the scene. He was born in 1768 at the

Albanian port of Kaballa, and by the patronage of the governor

was sent to Egypt in 1801 with the contingent of troops

furnished by Kaballa to the Ottoman army then operating with

the English against the French. He rapidly rose to the command

of the Arnaut or Albanian section of the Turkish army, and

soon found himself an important factor in the confused

political position which followed the departure of the British

army. The Memluk Beys had not been restored to their former

posts as provincial governors, and were consequently ripe for

revolt against the Porte; but their party was weakened by the

rivalry of its two leaders, El-Elfy and El-Bardisy, who

divided their followers into two hostile camps. On the other

hand, the Turkish Pasha appointed by the Porte had not yet

gained a firm grip of the country, and was perpetually

apprehensive of a recall to Constantinople. Mohammad 'Aly at

the head of his Albanians was an important ally for either

side to secure, and he fully appreciated his position. He

played off one party against the other, the Pasha against the

Beys, so successfully, that he not only weakened both sides,

but made the people of Cairo, who were disgusted with the

anarchy of Memluk and Turk alike, his firm friends; and at

last suffered himself, with becoming hesitation, to be

persuaded by the entreaty of the populace to become [1805]

their ruler, and thus stepped to the supreme power in the

curious guise of the people's friend. A fearful time followed

Mohammad 'Aly's election--for such it was--to the governorship

of Egypt. The Turkish Pasha, Khurshid, held the citadel, and

Mohammad 'Aly, energetically aided by the people of Cairo,

laid siege to it. From the minaret of the mosque of Sultan

Hasan, and from the heights of Mukattam, the besiegers poured

their fire into the citadel, and Khurshid replied with an

indiscriminate cannonade upon the city. The firing went on for

weeks (pausing on Fridays), till a messenger arrived from

Constantinople bringing the confirmation of the popular vote,

in the form of a firman, appointing Mohammad 'Aly governor of

Egypt. Khurshid shortly afterwards retired, and the soldiery

amused themselves in the approved Turkish and (even worse)

Albanian fashion by making havoc of the houses of the

citizens. Mohammad 'Aly now possessed the title of Governor of

Egypt, but beyond the walls of Cairo his authority was

everywhere disputed by the Beys. ... An attempt was made to

ensnare certain of the Beys, who were encamped north of the

metropolis. On the 17th of August, 1805, the dam of the canal

of Cairo was to be cut, and some chiefs of Mohammad 'Aly's

party wrote informing them that he would go forth early on

that morning with most of his troops to witness the ceremony,

inviting them to enter and seize the city, and, to deceive

them, stipulating for a certain sum of money as a reward. The

dam, however, was cut early in the preceding night, without

any ceremony. On the following morning these Beys, with their

Memluks, a very numerous body, broke open the gate of the

suburb El-Hosey-niyeh, and gained admittance into the city.

... They marched along the principal street for some distance,

with kettle-drums behind each company, and were received with

apparent joy by the citizens. At the mosque called the

Ashrafiyeh they separated, one party proceeding to the Azhar

and the houses of certain sheykhs, and the other party

continuing along the main street, and through the gate called

Bab-Zuweyleh, where they turned up towards the citadel. Here

they were fired on by some soldiers from the houses; and with

this signal a terrible massacre commenced. Falling back

towards their companions, they found the by-streets closed;

and in that part of the main thoroughfare called

Beyn-el-Kasreyn, they were suddenly placed between two fires.

Thus shut up in a narrow street, some sought refuge in the

collegiate mosque of the Barkukiyeh, while the remainder

fought their way through their enemies, and escaped over the

city wall with the loss of their horses. Two Memluks had in

the meantime succeeded, by great exertions, in giving the

alarm to their comrades in the quarter of the Azhar, who

escaped by the eastern gate called Bab-el-Ghureyyib. A

horrible fate awaited those who had shut themselves up in the

Barkukiyeh. Having begged for quarter and surrendered, they

were immediately stripped nearly naked, and about fifty were

slaughtered on the spot; and about the same number were

dragged away. ... The wretched captives were then chained and

left in the court of the Pasha's house; and on the following

morning the heads of their comrades, who had perished the day

before, were skinned and stuffed with straw before their eyes.

{761}

One Bey and two other men paid their ransom, and were

released; the rest, without exception, were tortured, and put

to death in the course of the ensuing night. ... The Beys were

disheartened by this revolting butchery, and most of them

retired to the upper country. Urged by England, or more

probably by the promise of a bribe from El-Elfy, the Porte

began a leisurely interference in favour of the Memluks; but

the failure of El-Elfy's treasury, and a handsome bribe from

Mohammad 'Aly, soon changed the Sultan's views, and the

Turkish fleet sailed away. ... An attempt of the English

Government to restore the Memluks by the action of a force of

5,000 men under General Fraser ended in disaster and

humiliation, and the citizens of Cairo had the satisfaction of

seeing the heads of Englishmen exposed on stakes in the

Ezbekiyeh. Mohammad 'Aly now adopted a more conciliatory

policy towards the Memluks, granted them land, and encouraged

them to return to Cairo. The clemency was only assumed in

order to prepare the way for the act of consummate treachery

which finally uprooted the Memluk power. ... Early in the year

1811, the preparations for an expedition against the Wahhabis

in Arabia being complete, all the Memluk Beys then in Cairo

were invited to the ceremony of investing Mohammad 'Aly's

favourite son, Tusun, with a pelisse and the command of the

army. As on the former occasion, the unfortunate Memluks fell

into the snare. On the 1st of March, Shahin Bey and the other

chiefs (one only excepted) repaired with their retinues to the

citadel, and were courteously received by the Pasha. Having

taken coffee, they formed in procession, and, preceded and

followed by the Pasha's troops, slowly descended the steep and

narrow road leading to the great gate of the citadel; but as

soon as the Memluks arrived at the gate it was suddenly closed

before them. The last of those who made their exit before the

gate was shut were Albanians under Salih Kush. To those troops

their chief now made known the Pasha's orders to massacre all

the Memluks within the citadel; therefore having returned by

another way, they gained the summit of the walls and houses,

that hem in the road in which the Memluks were, and some

stationed themselves upon the eminences of the rock through

which that road is partly cut. Thus securely placed, they

commenced a heavy fire on their defenceless victims, and

immediately the troops who closed the procession, and who had

the advantage of higher ground, followed their example. ...

470 Memluks entered the citadel, and of these very few, if

any, escaped. One of these is said to have been a Bey.

According to some, he leaped his horse from the ramparts, and

alighted uninjured, though the horse was killed by the fall.

Others say that he was prevented from joining his comrades,

and discovered the treachery while waiting without the gate.

He fled and made his way to Syria. This massacre was the

signal for an indiscriminate slaughter of the Memluks

throughout Egypt, orders to this effect being transmitted to

every governor; and in Cairo itself, the houses of the Beys

were given over to the soldiery, who slaughtered all their

adherents, treated their women in the most shameless manner,

and sacked their dwellings. ... The last of his rivals being

now destroyed, Mohammad 'Aly was free to organize the

administration of the country, and to engage in expeditions

abroad."

_S. Lane-Poole, Egypt, chapter 8._