With such shifting and unstable conditions, it would be difficult to

build up a permanent State. From time to time some kinglet, more daring,

cunning, tenacious, or better fitted to govern than the rest, extended

his dominion over his neighbours, and advanced step by step, till he

united immense tracts under his single rule. As by degrees his kingdom

enlarged, he made no efforts to organize it on any regular system, to

introduce any uniformity in the administration of its affairs, or to

gain the adherence of its incongruous elements by just laws which would

be equally for the good of all: when the massacres which accompanied his

first victories were over, when he had incorporated into his own army

what was left of the vanquished troops, when their children were led

into servitude and he had filled his treasury with their spoil and his

harem with their women, it never occurred to him that there was anything

more to be done. If he had acted otherwise, it would not probably have

been to his advantage. Both his former and present subjects were too

divergent in language and origin, too widely separated by manners and

customs, and too long in a state of hostility to each other, to draw

together and to become easily welded into a single nation. As soon as

the hand which held them together relaxed its hold for a moment, discord

crept in everywhere, among individuals as well as among the tribes, and

the empire of yesterday resolved itself into its original elements

even more rapidly than it had been formed. The clash of arms which had

inaugurated its brief existence died quickly away, the remembrance of

its short-lived glory was lost after two or three generations in the

horrors of a fresh invasion: its name vanished without leaving a trace

behind. The occupation of Nubia brought Egypt into contact with this

horde of incongruous peoples, and the contact soon entailed a struggle.

It is futile for a civilized state to think of dwelling peacefully with

any barbarous nation with which it is in close proximity. Should it

decide to check its own advances, and impose limits upon itself which

it shall not pass over, its moderation is mistaken for feebleness and

impotence; the vanquished again take up the offensive, and either

force the civilized power to retire, or compel it to cross its former

boundary. The Pharaohs did not escape this inevitable consequence of

conquest: their southern frontier advanced continually higher and higher

up the Nile, without ever becoming fixed in a position sufficiently

strong to defy the attacks of the Barbarians. Usirtasen I. had subdued

the countries of Hahû, of Khonthanunofir, and Shaad, and had beaten in

battle the Shemîk, the Khasa, the Sus, the Aqîn, the Anu, the Sabiri,

and the people of Akîti and Makisa. Amenemhâît II., Usirtasen II., and

Usirtasen III. never hesitated to “strike the humbled Kush” whenever

the opportunity presented itself. The last-mentioned king in particular

chastised them severely in his VIIIth, XIIth, XVIth, and XIXth years,

and his victories made him so popular, that the Egyptians of the Greek

period, identifying him with the Sesostris of Herodotus, attributed to

him the possession of the universe. On the base of a colossal statue of

rose granite which he erected in the temple of Tanis, we find preserved

a list of the tribes which he conquered: the names of them appear to

us most outlandish--Alaka, Matakaraû, Tûrasû, Pamaîka, Uarakî,

Paramakâ--and we have no clue as to their position on the map. We know

merely that they lived in the desert, on both sides of the Nile, in the

latitude of Berber or thereabouts. Similar expeditions were sent after

Ûsirtasen’s time, and Amenem-hâît III. regarded both banks of the Nile,

between Semneh and Dongola, as forming part of the territory of Egypt

proper. Little by little, and by the force of circumstances, the making

of Greater Egypt was realized; she approached nearer and nearer towards

the limit which had been prescribed for her by nature, to that point

where the Nile receives its last tributaries, and where its peerless

valley takes its origin in the convergence of many others.

The conquest of Nubia was on the whole an easy one, and so much personal

advantage accrued from these wars, that the troops and generals entered

on them without the least repugnance. A single fragment has come down to

us which contains a detailed account of one of these campaigns, probably

that conducted by Usirtasen III. in the XVIth year of his reign. The

Pharaoh had received information that the tribes of the district of

Hûâ, on the Tacazze, were harassing his vassals, and possibly also

those Egyptians who were attracted by commerce to that neighbourhood.

He resolved to set out and chastise them severely, and embarked with

his fleet. It was an expedition almost entirely devoid of danger:

the invaders landed only at favourable spots, carried off any of the

inhabitants who came in their way, and seized on their cattle--on one

occasion as many as a hundred and twenty-three oxen and eleven asses, on

others less. Two small parties marched along the banks, and foraging to

the right and left, drove the booty down to the river. The tactics of

invasion have scarcely undergone any change in these countries;

the account given by Cailliaud of the first conquest of Fazogl by

Ismail-Pasha, in 1822, might well serve to complete the fragments of

the inscription of Usirtasen III., and restore for us, almost in every

detail, a faithful picture of the campaigns carried on in these regions

by the kings of the XIIth dynasty. The people are hunted down in

the same fashion; the country is similarly ravaged by a handful of

well-armed, fairly disciplined men attacking naked and disconnected

hordes, the young men are massacred after a short resistance or forced

to escape into the woods, the women are carried off as slaves, the huts

pillaged, villages burnt, whole tribes exterminated in a few hours.

Sometimes a detachment, having imprudently ventured into some thorny

thicket to attack a village perched on a rocky summit, would experience

a reverse, and would with great difficulty regain the main body of

troops, after having lost three-fourths of its men. In most cases there

was no prolonged resistance, and the attacking party carried the place

with the loss of merely two or three men killed or wounded. The spoil

was never very considerable in any one locality, but its total amount

increased as the raid was carried afield, and it soon became so bulky

that the party had to stop and retrace their steps, in order to place

it for safety in the nearest fortress. The booty consisted for the most

part of herds of oxen and of cumbrous heaps of grain, as well as wood

for building purposes. But it also comprised objects of small size but

of great value, such as ivory, precious stones, and particularly gold.

The natives collected the latter in the alluvial tracts watered by the

Tacazze, the Blue Nile and its tributaries. The women were employed

in searching for nuggets, which were often of considerable size; they

enclosed them in little leather cases, and offered them to the merchants

in exchange for products of Egyptian industry, or they handed them over

to the goldsmiths to be made into bracelets, ear, nose, or finger rings,

of fairly fine workmanship. Gold was found in combination with several

other metals, from which they did not know how to separate it: the

purest gold had a pale yellow tint, which was valued above all others,

but electrum, that is to say, gold alloyed with silver in the proportion

of eighty per cent., was also much in demand, while greyish-coloured

gold, mixed with platinum, served for making common jewellery.*

* Cailliaud has briefly described the auriferous sand of the

Qamâmyl, and the way in which it is worked: it is from him

that I have borrowed the details given in the text. From

analyses which I caused to be made at the Bûlaq Museum of

Egyptian jewellery of the time of the XVIIIth dynasty, which

had been broken and were without value, from an archeo-

logical or artistic point of view, I have demonstrated the

presence of the platinum and silver mentioned by Cailliaud

as being found in the nuggets from the Blue Nile.

None of these expeditions produced any lasting results, and the Pharaohs

established no colonies in any of these countries. Their Egyptian

subjects could not have lived there for any length of time without

deteriorating by intermarriage with the natives or from the effects of

the climate; they would have degenerated into a half-bred race, having

all the vices and none of the good qualities of the aborigines. The

Pharaohs, therefore, continued their hostilities without further

scruples, and only sought to gain as much as possible from their

victories. They cared little if nothing remained after they had passed

through some district, or if the passage of their armies was marked

only by ruins. They seized upon everything which came across their

path--men, chattels, or animals--and carried them back to Egypt; they

recklessly destroyed everything for which they had no use, and made a

desert of fertile districts which but yesterday had been covered with

crops and studded with populous villages. The neighbouring inhabitants,

realizing their incapacity to resist regular troops, endeavoured to buy

off the invaders by yielding up all they possessed in the way of slaves,

flocks, wood, or precious metals. The generals in command, however, had

to reckon with the approaching low Nile, which forced them to beat a

retreat; they were obliged to halt at the first appearance of it, and

they turned homewards “in peace,” their only anxiety being to lose the

smallest possible number of men or captured animals on their return

journey.

As in earlier times, adventurous merchants penetrated into districts not

reached by the troops, and prepared the way for conquest. The princes

of Elephantine still sent caravans to distant parts, and one of them,

Siranpîtû, who lived under Ûsirtasen I. and Amenemhâit II., recorded his

explorations on his tomb, after the fashion of his ancestors: the king

at several different times had sent him on expeditions to the Soudan,

but the inscription in which he gives an account of them is so

mutilated, that we cannot be sure which tribes he visited. We

learn merely that he collected from them skins, ivory, ostrich

feathers--everything, in fact, which Central Africa has furnished as

articles of commerce from time immemorial. It was not, however, by

land only that Egyptian merchants travelled to seek fortune in foreign

countries: the Red Sea attracted them, and served as a quick route for

reaching the land of Pûanît, whose treasures in perfumes and rarities

of all kinds had formed the theme of ancient traditions and navigators’

tales. Relations with it had been infrequent, or had ceased altogether,

during the wars of the Heracleo-politan period: on their renewal it

was necessary to open up afresh routes which had been forgotten for

centuries.

[Illustration: 362.jpg THE ROUTES LEADING FROM THE NILE TO THE RED SEA,

BETWEEN KOPTOS AND KOSSEIR.]

Traffic was confined almost entirely to two or three out of the

many,--one which ran from Elephantine or from Nekhabît to the “Head of

Nekhabît,” the Berenice of the Greeks; others which started from Thebes

or Koptos, and struck the coast at the same place or at Saû, the present

Kosseir. The latter, which was the shortest as well as the favourite

route, passed through Wady Hammamât, from whence the Pharaohs drew the

blocks of granite for their sarcophagi. The officers who were sent to

quarry the stone often took advantage of the opportunity to visit the

coast, and to penetrate as far as the Spice Regions. As early as the

year VIII. of Sônkherî, the predecessor of Amenemhâît I., the “sole

friend” Hûnû had been sent by this road, “in order to take the command

of a squadron to Pûanît, and to collect a tribute of fresh incense

from the princes of the desert.” He got together three thousand men,

distributed to each one a goatskin bottle, a crook for carrying it, and

ten loaves, and set out from Koptos with this little army. No water was

met with on the way: Hûnû bored several wells and cisterns in the rock,

one at a halting-place called Bait, two in the district of Adahaît, and

finally one in the valleys of Adabehaît. Having reached the seaboard,

he quickly constructed a great barge, freighted it with merchandise for

barter, as well as with provisions, oxen, cows, and goats, and set sail

for a cruise along the coast: it is not known how far he went, but he

came back with a large cargo of all the products of the “Divine Land,”

especially of incense. On his return, he struck off into the Uagai

valley, and thence reached that of Rohanû, where he chose out splendid

blocks of stone for a temple which the king was building: “Never had

‘Royal Cousin’ sent on an expedition done as much since the time of

the god Râ!” Numbers of royal officers and adventurers followed in his

footsteps, but no record of them has been preserved for us. Two or three

names only have escaped oblivion--that of Khnûmhotpû, who in the first

year of Ûsirtasen I. erected a stele in the Wady Gasûs in the very heart

of the “Divine Land;” and that of Khentkhîtioîrû, who in the XXVIIIth

year of Amenemhâît II. entered the haven of Saû after a fortunate cruise

to Pûanît, without having lost a vessel or even a single man. Navigation

is difficult in the Red Sea. The coast as a rule is precipitous,

bristling with reefs and islets, and almost entirely without strand or

haven. No river or stream runs into it; it is bordered by no fertile or

wooded tract, but by high cliffs, half disintegrated by the burning sun,

or by steep mountains, which appear sometimes a dull red, sometimes

a dingy grey colour, according to the material--granite or

sandstone--which predominates in their composition. The few tribes who

inhabit this desolate region maintain a miserable existence by fishing

and hunting: they were considered, during the Greek period, to be

the most unfortunate of mortals, and if they appeared to be so to the

mariners of the Ptolemies, doubtless they enjoyed the same reputation in

the more remote time of the Pharaohs. A few fishing villages, however,

are mentioned as scattered along the littoral; watering-places, at some

distance apart, frequented on account of their wells of brackish water

by the desert tribes: such were Nahasît, Tap-Nekhabît, Saû, and Tâû:

these the Egyptian merchant-vessels used as victualling stations,

and took away as cargo the products of the country--mother-of-pearl,

amethysts, emeralds, a little lapis-lazuli, a little gold, gums, and

sweet-smelling resins. If the weather was favourable, and the intake

of merchandise had been scanty, the vessel, braving numerous risks of

shipwreck, continued its course as far as the latitude of Sûakîn and

Massowah, which was the beginning of Pûanît properly so called. Here

riches poured down to the coast from the interior, and selection became

a difficulty: it was hard to decide which would make the best cargo,

ivory or ebony, panthers’ skins or rings of gold, myrrh, incense, or a

score of other sweet-smelling gums. So many of these odoriferous resins

were used for religious purposes, that it was always to the advantage of

the merchant to procure as much of them as possible: incense, fresh or

dried, was the staple and characteristic merchandise of the Red Sea, and

the good people of Egypt pictured Pûanît as a land of perfumes, which

attracted the sailor from afar by the delicious odours which were wafted

from it.

These voyages were dangerous and trying: popular imagination seized upon

them and made material out of them for marvellous tales. The hero chosen

was always a daring adventurer sent by his master to collect gold from

the mines of Nubia; by sailing further and further up the river, he

reached the mysterious sea which forms the southern boundary of the

world. “I set sail in a vessel one hundred and fifty cubits long, forty

wide, with one hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land

of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were more

resolute than those of lions. They had foretold that the wind would not

be contrary, or that there would be even none at all; but a squall came

upon us unexpectedly while we were in the open, and as we approached

the land, the wind freshened and raised the waves to the height of eight

cubits. As for me, I clung to a beam, but those who were on the vessel

perished without one escaping. A wave of the sea cast me on to an

island, after having spent three days alone with no other companion than

my own heart. I slept there in the shade of a thicket; then I set my

legs in motion in quest of something for my mouth.” The island produced

a quantity of delicious fruit: he satisfied his hunger with it, lighted

a fire to offer a sacrifice to the gods, and immediately, by the magical

power of the sacred rites, the inhabitants, who up to this time had

been invisible, were revealed to his eyes. “I heard a sound like that of

thunder, which I at first took to be the noise of the flood-tide in the

open sea; but the trees quivered, the earth trembled. I uncovered my

face, and I perceived that it was a serpent which was approaching. He

was thirty cubits in length, and his wattles exceeded two cubits; his

body was incrusted with gold, and his colour appeared like that of

real lapis. He raised himself before me and opened his mouth; while I

prostrated myself before him, he said to me: ‘Who hath brought thee, who

hath brought thee, little one, who hath brought thee? If thou dost not

tell me immediately who brought thee to this island, I will cause thee

to know thy littleness: either thou shalt faint like a woman, or thou

shalt tell me something which I have not yet heard, and which I knew

not before thee.’ Then he took me into his mouth and carried me to

his dwelling-place, and put me down without hurting me; I was safe and

sound, and nothing had been taken from me.” Our hero tells the serpent

the story of his shipwreck, which moves him to pity and induces him to

reciprocate his confidence. “Fear nothing, fear nothing, little one, let

not thy countenance be sad! If thou hast come to me, it is the god who

has spared thy life; it is he who has brought thee into this ‘Isle of

the Double,’ where nothing is lacking, and which is filled with all

good things. Here thou shalt pass one month after another till thou hast

remained four months in this island, then shall come a vessel from thy

country with mariners; thou canst depart with them to thy country,

and thou shalt die in thy city. To converse rejoices the heart, he who

enjoys conversation bears misfortune better; I will therefore relate

to thee the history of this island.” The population consisted of

seventy-five serpents, all of one family: it formerly comprised also a

young girl, whom a succession of misfortunes had cast on the island, and

who was killed by lightning. The hero, charmed with such good nature,

overwhelmed the hospitable dragon with thanks, and promised to send him

numerous presents on his return home. “I will slay asses for thee in

sacrifice, I will pluck birds for thee, I will send to thee vessels

filled with all the riches of Egypt, meet for a god, the friend of man

in a distant country unknown to men.” The monster smiled, and replied

that it was needless to think of sending presents to one who was the

ruler of Pûanît; besides, “as soon as thou hast quitted this place,

thou wilt never again see this island, for it will be changed into

waves.”--“And then, when the vessel appeared, according as he had

predicted to me, I went and perched upon a high tree and sought to

distinguish those who manned it. I next ran to tell him the news, but I

found that he was already informed of its arrival, and he said to me: ‘A

pleasant journey home, little one; mayst thou behold thy children again,

and may thy name be well spoken of in thy town; such are my wishes for

thee!’ He added gifts to these obliging words. I placed all these on

board the vessel which had come, and prostrating myself, I adored him.

He said to me: ‘After two months thou shalt reach thy country, thou wilt

press thy children to thy bosom, and thou shalt rest in thy sepulchre.’

After that I descended the shore to the vessel, and I hailed the sailors

who were in it. I gave thanks on the shore to the master of the island,

as well as to those who dwelt in it.” This might almost be an episode

in the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor; except that the monsters which

Sindbad met with in the course of his travels were not of such a kindly

disposition as the Egyptian serpent: it did not occur to them to console

the shipwrecked with the charm of a lengthy gossip, but they swallowed

them with a healthy appetite. Putting aside entirely the marvellous

element in the story, what strikes us is the frequency of the relations

which it points to between Egypt and Pûanît. The appearance of an

Egyptian vessel excites no astonishment on its coasts: the inhabitants

have already seen many such, and at such regular intervals, that they

are able to predict the exact date of their arrival. The distance

between the two countries, it is true, was not considerable, and a

voyage of two months was sufficient to accomplish it. While the new

Egypt was expanding outwards in all directions, the old country did not

cease to add to its riches. The two centuries during which the XIIth

dynasty continued to rule were a period of profound peace; the monuments

show us the country in full possession of all its resources and its

arts, and its inhabitants both cheerful and contented. More than ever do

the great lords and royal officers expatiate in their epitaphs upon

the strict justice which they have rendered to their vassals and

subordinates, upon the kindness which they have shown to the fellahîn,

on the paternal solicitude with which, in the years of insufficient

inundations or of bad harvests, they have striven to come forward and

assist them, and upon the unheard-of disinterestedness which kept them

from raising the taxes during the times of average Niles, or of unusual

plenty. Gifts to the gods poured in from one end of the country to the

other, and the great building works, which had been at a standstill

since the end of the VIth dynasty, were recommenced simultaneously on

all sides. There was much to be done in the way of repairing the ruins,

of which the number had accumulated during the two preceding centuries.

Not that the most audacious kings had ventured to lay their hands on

the sanctuaries: they emptied the sacred treasuries, and partially

confiscated their revenues, but when once their cupidity was satisfied,

they respected the fabrics, and even went so far as to restore a

few inscriptions, or, when needed, to replace a few stones. These

magnificent buildings required careful supervision: in spite of their

being constructed of the most durable materials--sand-stone, granite,

limestone,--in spite of their enormous size, or of the strengthening

of their foundations by a bed of sand and by three or four courses of

carefully adjusted blocks to form a substructure, the Nile was ever

threatening them, and secretly working at their destruction. Its waters,

filtering through the soil, were perpetually in contact with the lower

courses of these buildings, and kept the foundations of the walls and

the bases of the columns constantly damp: the saltpetre which the waters

had dissolved in their passage, crystallising on the limestone, would

corrode and undermine everything, if precautions were not taken. When

the inundation was over, the subsidence of the water which impregnated

the subsoil caused in course of time settlements in the most solid

foundations: the walls, disturbed by the unequal sinking of the ground,

got out of the perpendicular and cracked; this shifting displaced the

architraves which held the columns together, and the stone slabs which

formed the roof. These disturbances, aggravated from year to year, were

sufficient, if not at once remedied, to entail the fall of the portions

attacked; in addition to this, the Nile, having threatened the part

below with destruction, often hastened by direct attacks the work of

ruin, which otherwise proceeded slowly. A breach in the embankments

protecting the town or the temple allowed its waters to rush violently

through, and thus to effect large gaps in the decaying walls, completing

the overthrow of the columns and wrecking the entrance halls and secret

chambers by the fall of the roofs. At the time when Egypt came under

the rule of the XIIth dynasty there were but few cities which did not

contain some ruined or dilapidated sanctuary. Amenemhâît I., although

fully occupied in reducing the power of the feudal lords, restored; the

temples as far as he was able, and his successors pushed forward the

work vigorously for nearly two centuries.

The Delta profited greatly by this activity in building. The monuments

there had suffered more than anywhere else: fated to bear the first

shock of foreign invasion, and transformed into fortresses while the

towns in which they were situated were besieged, they have been captured

again and again by assault, broken down by attacking engines, and

dismantled by all the conquerors of Egypt, from the Assyrians to the

Arabs and the Turks. The fellahîn in their neighbourhood have for

centuries come to them to obtain limestone to burn in their kilns, or to

use them as a quarry for sandstone or granite for the doorways of their

houses, or for the thresholds of their mosques. Not only have they been

ruined, but the remains of their ruins have, as it were, melted away

and almost entirely disappeared in the course of ages. And yet, wherever

excavations have been made among these remains which have suffered such

deplorable ill-treatment, colossi and inscriptions commemorating the

Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty have been brought to light. Amenemhâît I.

founded a great temple at Tanis in honour of the gods of Memphis: the

vestiges of the columns still scattered on all sides show that the

main body of the building was of rose granite, and a statue of the same

material has preserved for us a portrait of the king. He is seated, and

wears the tall head-dress of Osiris. He has a large smiling face, thick

lips, a short nose, and big staring eyes: the expression is one of

benevolence and gentleness, rather than of the energy and firmness which

one would expect in the founder of a dynasty. The kings who were his

successors all considered it a privilege to embellish the temple and to

place in it some memorial of their veneration for the god. Ûsirtasen I.,

following the example of his father, set up a statue of himself in the

form of Osiris: he is sitting on his throne of grey granite, and his

placid face unmistakably recalls that of Amenemhâît I. Amenemhâît II.,

Usirtasen II., and his wife Nofrît have also dedicated their images

within the sanctuary.

Nofrît’s is of black granite: her head is almost eclipsed by the heavy

Hâthor wig, consisting of two enormous tresses of hair which surround

the cheeks, and lie with an outward curve upon the breast; her eyes,

which were formerly inlaid, have fallen out, the bronze eyelids are

lost, her arms have almost disappeared. What remains of her, however,

gives us none the less the impression of a young and graceful woman,

with a lithe and well-proportioned body, whose outlines are delicately

modelled under the tight-fitting smock worn by Egyptian women; the small

and rounded breasts curve outward between the extremities of her curls

and the embroidered hem of her garment; and a pectoral bearing the name

of her husband lies flat upon her chest, just below the column of her

throat.

[Illustration: 372.jpg THE STATUE OF NOFRIT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger. In

addition to the complete statue, the Museum at Gîzeh

possesses a torso from the same source. I believe I can

recognize another portrait of the same queen in a beautiful

statue in black granite, which has been in the Museum at

Marseilles since the beginning of the present century.

These various statues have all an evident artistic relationship to

the beautiful granite figures of the Ancient Empire. The sculptors who

executed them belonged to the same school as those who carved Khephren

out of the solid diorite: there is the same facile use of the chisel,

the same indifference to the difficulties presented by the material

chosen, the same finish in the detail, the same knowledge of the human

form. One is almost tempted to believe that Egyptian art remained

unchanged all through those long centuries, and yet as soon as a

statue of the early period is placed side by side with one of the XIIth

dynasty, we immediately perceive something in the one which is lacking

in the other. It is a difference in feeling, even if the technique

remains unmodified. It was the man himself that the sculptors desired

to represent in the older Pharaohs, and however haughty may be the

countenance which we admire in the Khephren, it is the human element

which predominates in him. The statues of Amenemhâît I. and his

successors appear, on the contrary, to represent a superior race: at the

time when these were produced, the Pharaoh had long been regarded as

a god, and the divine nature in him had almost eliminated the human.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, the sculptors idealized their model,

and made him more and more resemble the type of the divinities. The head

always appears to be a good likeness, but smoothed down and sometimes

lacking in expression.

Not only are the marks of age rendered less apparent, and the features

made to bear the stamp of perpetual youth, but the characteristics

of the individual, such as the accentuation of the eyebrows, the

protuberance of the cheek-bones, the projection of the under lip, are

all softened down as if intentionally, and made to give way to a uniform

expression of majestic tranquillity. One king only, Amenemhâît III.,

refused to go down to posterity thus effaced, and caused his portrait

to be taken as he really was. He has certainly the round full face

of Amenemhâît or of Usirtasen I., and there is an undeniable family

likeness between him and his ancestors; but at the first glance we

feel sure that the artist has not in any way flattered his model. The

forehead is low and slightly retreating, narrow across the temples; his

nose is aquiline, pronounced in form, and large at the tip; the thick

lips are slightly closed; his mouth has a disdainful curve, and its

corners are turned down as if to repress the inevitable smile common to

most Egyptian statues; the chin is full and heavy, and turns up in front

in spite of the weight of the false beard dependent from it; he has

small narrow eyes, with full lids; his cheekbones are accentuated and

projecting, the cheeks hollow, and the muscles about the nose and mouth

strongly defined. The whole presents so strange an aspect, that for a

long time statues of this type have been persistently looked upon as

productions of an art which was only partially Egyptian. It is, indeed,

possible that the Tanis sphinxes were turned out of workshops where the

principles and practice of the sculptor’s art had previously undergone

some Asiatic influence; the bushy mane which surrounds the face, and

the lion’s ears emerging from it, are exclusively characteristic of the

latter. The purely human statues in which we meet with the same type of

countenance have no peculiarity of workmanship which could be attributed

to the imitation of a foreign art. If the nameless masters to whom

we owe their existence desired to bring about a reaction against the

conventional technique of their contemporaries, they at least introduced

no foreign innovations; the monuments of the Memphite period furnished

them with all the models they could possibly wish for.

Bubastis had no less occasion than Tanis to boast of the generosity of

the Theban Pharaohs. The temple of Bastît, which had been decorated by

Kheops and Khephren, was still in existence: Amenemhâît I., Usirtasen

I., and their immediate successors confined themselves to the

restoration of several chambers, and to the erection of their own

statues, but Usirtasen III. added to it a new structure which must have

made it rival the finest monuments in Egypt. He believed, no doubt, that

he was under particular obligations to the lioness goddess of the city,

and attributed to her aid, for unknown reasons, some of his successes in

Nubia; it would appear that it was with the spoil of a campaign against

the country of the Hûâ that he endowed a part of the new sanctuary.*

* The fragment found by Naville formed part of an

inscription engraved on a wall: the wars which it was

customary to commemorate in a temple were always selected

from those in which the whole or a part of the booty had

been consecrated to the use of the local divinity.

Nothing now remains of it except fragments of the architraves and

granite columns, which have been used over again by Pharaohs of a later

period when restoring or altering the fabric.

[Illustration: 376.jpg ONE OF THE TANIS SPHINXES IN THE GÎZEH MUSEUM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-

Bey, taken in 1881. The sphinx bears on its breast the

cartouche of Psiûkhânû, a Tanite Pharaoh of the XXIst

dynasty.

A few of the columns belong to the lotiform type. The shaft is composed

of eight triangular stalks rising from a bunch of leaves, symmetrically

arranged, and bound together at the top by a riband, twisted thrice

round the bundle; the capital is formed by the union of the eight lotus

buds, surmounted by a square member on which rests the architrave. Other

columns have Hâthor-headed capitals, the heads being set back to back,

and bearing the flat head-dress ornamented with the urous. The face

of the goddess, which is somewhat flattened when seen closely on the

eye-level, stands out and becomes more lifelike in proportion as the

spectator recedes from it; the projection of the features has been

calculated so as to produce the desired effect at the right height

when seen from below. The district lying between Tanis and Bubastis is

thickly studded with monuments built or embellished by the Amenemhâîts

and Usirtasens: wherever the pickaxe is applied, whether at Fakus or

Tell-Nebêsheh, remains of them are brought to light--statues, stelæ,

tables of offerings, and fragments of dedicatory or historical

inscriptions. While carrying on works in the temple of Phtah at Memphis,

the attention of these Pharaohs was attracted to Heliopolis. The temple

of Râ there was either insufficient for the exigencies of worship, or

had been allowed to fall into decay. Usirtasen III. resolved, in the

third year of his reign, to undertake its restoration. The occasion

appears to have been celebrated as a festival by all Egypt, and the

remembrance of it lasted long after the event: the somewhat detailed

account of the ceremonies which then took place was copied out again at

Thebes, towards the end of the XVIIIth dynasty. It describes the king

mounting his throne at the meeting of his council, and receiving, as was

customary, the eulogies of his “sole friends” and of the courtiers

who surrounded him: “Here,” says he, addressing them, “has my Majesty

ordained the works which shall recall my worthy and noble acts to

posterity. I raise a monument, I establish lasting decrees in favour

of Harmakhis, for he has brought me into the world to do as he did, to

accomplish that which he decreed should be done; he has appointed me to

guide this earth, he has known it, he has called it together and he has

granted me his help; I have caused the Eye which is in him to become

serene, in all things acting as he would have me to do, and I have

sought out that which he had resolved should be known. I am a king by

birth, a suzerain not of my own making; I have governed from childhood,

petitions have been presented to me when I was in the egg, I have ruled

over the ways of Anubis, and he raised me up to be master of the two

halves of the world, from the time when I was a nursling; I had not yet

escaped from the swaddling-bands when he enthroned me as master of men;

creating me himself in the sight of mortals, he made me to find favour

with the Dweller in the Palace, when I was a youth.... I came forth as

Horus the eloquent, and I have instituted divine oblations; I accomplish

the works in the palace of my father Atûmû, I supply his altar on earth

with offerings, I lay the foundations of my palace in his neighbourhood,

in order that the memorial of my goodness may remain in his dwelling;

for this palace is my name, this lake is my monument, all that is famous

or useful that I have made for the gods is eternity.” The great lords

testified their approbation of the king’s piety; the latter summoned his

chancellor and commanded him to draw up the deeds of gift and all the

documents necessary for the carrying out of his wishes. “He arose,

adorned with the royal circlet and with the double feather, followed by

all his nobles; the chief lector of the divine book stretched the cord

and fixed the stake in the ground.” *

* Stehn, _Urkunde uber den Bau des Sonnentempels zu On_, pl.

i. 11. 13--15. The priest here performed with the king the

more important of the ceremonies necessary in measuring the

area of the temple, by “inserting the measuring stakes,”

and marking out the four sides of the building with the

cord.

This temple has ceased to exist; but one of the granite obelisks raised

by Usirtasen I. on each side of the principal gateway is still standing.

The whole of Heliopolis has disappeared: the site where it formerly

stood is now marked only by a few almost imperceptible inequalities

in the soil, some crumbling lengths of walls, and here and there some

scattered blocks of limestone, containing a few lines of mutilated

inscriptions which can with difficulty be deciphered; the obelisk has

survived even the destruction of the ruins, and to all who understand

its language it still speaks of the Pharaoh who erected it.

The undertaking and successful completion of so many great structures

had necessitated a renewal of the working of the ancient quarries, and

the opening of fresh ones. Amenemhâît I. sent Antuf, a great dignitary,

chief of the prophets of Mînû and prince of Koptos, to the valley

of Rohanû, to seek out fine granite for making the royal sarcophagi.

Amenemhâît III. had, in the XLIIIrd year of his reign, been present at

the opening of several fine veins of white limestone in the quarries of

Turah, which probably furnished material for the buildings proceeding at

Heliopolis and Memphis. Thebes had also its share of both limestone and

granite, and Amon, whose sanctuary up to this time had only attained

the modest proportions suited to a provincial god, at last possessed a

temple which raised him to the rank of the highest feudal divinities.

Amon’s career had begun under difficulties: he had been merely a

vassal-god of Montû, lord of Hermonthis (the Aûnû of the south), who

had granted to him the ownership of the village of Karnak only. The

unforeseen good fortune of the Antufs was the occasion of his emerging

from his obscurity: he did not dethrone Montû, but shared with him the

homage of all the neighbouring villages--Luxor, Medamut, Bayadîyeh; and,

on the other side of the Nile, Gurneh and Medînet-Habu. The accession of

the XIIth dynasty completed his triumph, and made him the most powerful

authority in Southern Egypt. He was an earth-god, a form of Mînû who

reigned at Koptos, at Akhmîm and in the desert, but he soon became

allied to the sun, and from thenceforth he assumed the name of Amon-Râ.

The title of “sûton nûtîrû” which he added to it would alone have

sufficed to prove the comparatively recent origin of his notoriety; as

the latest arrival among the great gods, he employed, to express his

sovereignty, this word “sûton,” king, which had designated the rulers

of the valley ever since the union of the two Egypts under the shadowy

Menés. Reigning at first alone, he became associated by marriage with a

vague indefinite goddess, called Maût, or Mût, the “mother,” who never

adopted any more distinctive name: the divine son who completed

this triad was, in early times, Montû; but in later times a being of

secondary rank, chosen from among the genii appointed to watch over the

days of the month or the stars, was added, under the name of Khonsû.

Amenemhâît laid the foundations of the temple, in which the cultus of

Amon was carried on down to the latest times of paganism. The building

was supported by polygonal columns of sixteen sides, some fragments of

which are still existing.

[Illustration: 381.jpg THE OBELISK OF ÛSIRTASEN I., STILL STANDING IN

THE PLAIN OF HELIOPOLIS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

The temple was at first of only moderate dimensions, but it was built

of the choicest sandstone and limestone, and decorated with exquisite

bas-reliefs. Ûsirtasen I. enlarged it, and built a beautiful house for

the high priest on the west side of the sacred lake. Luxor, Zorit, Edfu,

Hierakonpolis, El-Kab, Elephantine, and Dendera,* shared between them

the favour of the Pharaohs; the venerable town of Abydos became the

object of their special predilection.

* Dümichen pointed out, in the masonry of the great eastern

staircase of the present temple of Hâthor, a stone obtained

from the earlier temple, which bears the name of Amenemhâît;

another fragment, discovered and published by Mariette,

shows that Amenemhâît I. is here again referred to. The

buildings erected by this monarch at Dondera must have been

on a somewhat large scale, if we may judge from the size of

this last fragment, which is the lintel of a door.

Its reputation for sanctity had been steadily growing from the time of

the Papis: its god, Khontamentît, who was identified with Osiris, had

obtained in the south a rank as high as that of the Mendesian Osiris in

the north of Egypt. He was worshipped as the sovereign of the sovereigns

of the dead--he who gathered around him and welcomed in his domains

the majority of the faithful of other cults. His sepulchre, or, more

correctly speaking, the chapel representing his sepulchre, in which

one of his relics was preserved, was here, as elsewhere, built upon the

roof. Access to it was gained by a staircase leading up on the left side

of the sanctuary: on the days of the passion and resurrection of Osiris

solemn processions of priests and devotees slowly mounted its steps, to

the chanting of funeral hymns, and above, on the terrace, away from

the world of the living, and with no other witnesses than the stars of

heaven, the faithful celebrated mysteriously the rites of the divine

death and embalming. The “vassals of Osiris” flocked in crowds to these

festivals, and took a delight in visiting, at least once during their

lifetime, the city whither their souls would proceed after death, in

order to present themselves at the “Mouth of the Cleft,” there to embark

in the “bari” of their divine master or in that of the Sun. They

left behind them, “under the staircase of the great god,” a sort of

fictitious tomb, near the representation of the tomb of Osiris, in the

shape of a stele, which immortalized the memory of their piety, and

which served as a kind of hostelry for their soul, when the latter

should, in course of time, repair to this rallying-place of all

Osirian souls. The concourse of pilgrims was a source of wealth to

the population, the priestly coffers were filled, and every year the

original temple was felt to be more and more inadequate to meet the

requirements of worship. Usirtasen I. desired to come to the rescue:

he despatched Monthotpû, one of his great vassals, to superintend the

works. The ground-plan of the portico of white limestone which preceded

the entrance court may still be distinguished; this portico was

supported by square pillars, and, standing against the remains of these,

we see the colossi of rose granite, crowned with the Osirian head-dress,

and with their feet planted on the “Nine Bows,” the symbol of vanquished

enemies. The best preserved of these figures represents the founder, but

several others are likenesses of those of his successors who interested

themselves in the temple. Monthotpû dug a well which was kept fully

supplied by the infiltrations from the Nile. He enlarged and cleaned

out the sacred lake upon which the priests launched the Holy Ark, on the

nights of the great mysteries. The alluvial deposits of fifty centuries

have not as yet wholly filled it up: it is still an irregularly shaped

pond, which dries up in winter, but is again filled as soon as the

inundation reaches the village of El-Kharbeh.

[Illustration: 384.jpg USIRTASEN I. OF ABYDOS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Banville.

A few stones, corroded with saltpetre, mark here and there the lines

of the landing stages, a thick grove of palms fringes its northern and

southern banks, but to the west the prospect is open, and extends as

far as the entrance to the gorge, through which the souls set forth in

search of Paradise and the solar bark. Buffaloes now come to drink and

wallow at midday where once floated the gilded “bari” of Osiris, and the

murmur of bees from the neighbouring orchards alone breaks the silence

of the spot which of old resounded with the rhythmical lamentations of

the pilgrims.

Heracleopolis the Great, the town preferred by the earlier Theban

Pharaohs as their residence in times of peace, must have been one of

those which they proceeded to decorate _con amore_ with magnificent

monuments.

[Illustration: 385.jpg A PART OF THE ANCIENT SACRED LAKE OF OSIRIS NEAR

THE TEMPLE OF ABYDOS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey,

taken in 1884.

Unfortunately it has suffered more than any of the rest, and nothing

of it is now to be seen but a few wretched remains of buildings of the

Roman period, and the ruins of a barbaric colonnade on the site of a

Byzantine basilica almost contemporary with the Arab conquest. Perhaps

the enormous mounds which cover its site may still conceal the remains

of its ancient temples. We can merely estimate their magnificence by

casual allusions to them in the inscriptions.

[Illustration: 368.jpg THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT HERACLEOPOLIS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golénischeff

We know, for instance, that Usirtasen III. rebuilt the sanctuary of

Harshâfîtû, and that he sent expeditions to the Wady Hammamât to quarry

blocks of granite worthy of his god: but the work of this king and his

successors has perished in the total ruin of the ancient town. Something

at least has remained of what they did in that traditional dependency

of Heracleopolis, the Fayum: the temple which they rebuilt to the god

Sobkû in Shodît retained its celebrity down to the time of the Cæsars,

not so much, perhaps, on account of the beauty of its architecture as

for the unique character of the religious rites which took place there

daily. The sacred lake contained a family of tame crocodiles, the

image and incarnation of the god, whom the faithful fed with their

offerings--cakes, fried fish, and drinks sweetened with honey. Advantage

was taken of the moment when one of these creatures, wallowing on the

bank, basked contentedly in the sun: two priests opened his jaws, and a

third threw in the cakes, the fried morsels, and finally the liquid.

The crocodile bore all this without even winking; he swallowed down his

provender, plunged into the lake, and lazily reached the opposite bank,

hoping to escape for a few moments from the oppressive liberality of his

devotees.

[Illustration: 387.jpg SOBKÛ, THE GOD OF THE FAYÛM, UNDER THE FORM OF A

SACRED CROCODILE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-

Bey, taken in 1885. The original in black granite is now in

the Berlin Museum. It represents one of the sacred

crocodiles mentioned by Strabo; we read on the base a Greek

inscription in honour of Ptolemy Neos Dionysos, in which the

name of the divine reptile “Petesûkhos, the great god,” is

mentioned.

As soon, however, as another of these approached, he was again beset

at his new post and stuffed in a similar manner. These animals were in

their own way great dandies: rings of gold or enamelled terra-cotta

were hung from their ears, and bracelets were soldered on to their front

paws. The monuments of Shodît, if any still exist, are buried under the

mounds of Medinet el-Fayûm, but in the neighbourhood we meet with more

than one authentic relic of the XIIth dynasty. It was Usirtasen I. who

erected that curious thin granite obelisk, with a circular top, whose

fragments lie forgotten on the ground near the village of Begig: a

sort of basin has been hollowed out around it, which fills during the

inundation, so that the monument lies in a pool of muddy water during

the greater part of the year. Owing to this treatment, most of the

inscriptions on it have almost disappeared, though we can still make

out a series of five scenes in which the king hands offerings to several

divinities. Near to Biahmû there was an old temple which had become

ruinous: Amenemhâît III. repaired it, and erected in front of it two

of those colossal statues which the Egyptians were wont to place like

sentinels at their gates, to ward off baleful influences and evil

spirits.

[Illustration: 388.jpg THE REMAINS OF THE OBELISK OF BEGIG]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golûnischeff.

The colossi at Biahmû were of red sandstone, and were seated on high

limestone pedestals, placed at the end of a rectangular court; the

temple walls hid the lower part of the pedestals, so that the colossi

appeared to tower above a great platform which sloped gently away from

them on all sides. Herodotus, who saw them from a distance at the

time of the inundation, believed that they crowned the summits of

two pyramids rising out of the middle of a lake. Near Illahun, Queen

Sovkûnofriûri herself has left a few traces of her short reign.

The Fayum, by its fertility and pleasant climate, justified the

preference which the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty bestowed upon it.

On emerging from the gorges of Illahun, it opens out like a vast

amphitheatre of cultivation, whose slopes descend towards the north till

they reach the desolate waters of the Birket-Kerun.

[Illustration: 389.jpg THE RUINED PEDESTAL OF ONE OF THE COLOSSI OF

BIAHMÛ]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Major Brown.

On the right and left, the amphitheatre is isolated from the surrounding

mountains by two deep ravines, filled with willows, tamarisks, mimosas,

and thorny acacias. Upon the high ground, lands devoted to the

culture of corn, durra, and flax, alternate with groves of palms and

pomegranates, vineyards and gardens of olives, the latter being almost

unknown elsewhere in Egypt.

[Illustration: 390.jpg A VIEW IN THE FAYÛM IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE

VILLAGE OF FIDEMÎN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golenischeff.

The slopes are covered with cultivated fields, irregularly terraced

woods, and meadows enclosed by hedges, while lofty trees, clustered in

some places and thinly scattered in others, rise in billowy masses

of verdure one behind the other. Shodît [Shâdû] stood on a peninsula

stretching out into a kind of natural reservoir, and was connected with

the mainland by merely a narrow dyke; the water of the inundation flowed

into this reservoir and was stored here during the autumn. Countless

little rivulets escaped from it, not merely such canals and ditches as

we meet with in the Nile Valley, but actual running brooks, coursing and

babbling between the trees, spreading out here and there into pools

of water, and in places forming little cascades like those of our own

streams, but dwindling in volume as they proceeded, owing to constant

drains made on them, until they were for the most part absorbed by the

soil before finally reaching the lake.

[Illustration: 391.jpg THE COURT OF THE SMALL TEMPLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Major Brown.

They brought down in their course part of the fertilizing earth

accumulated by the inundation, and were thus instrumental in raising the

level of the soil. The water of the Birkeh rose or fell according to the

season of the year. It formerly occupied a much larger area than it does

at present, and half of the surrounding districts was covered by it.

Its northern shores, now deserted and uncultivated, then shared in the

benefits of the inundation, and supplied the means of existence for

a civilized population. In many places we still find the remains of

villages, and walls of uncemented stone; a small temple even has

escaped the general ruin, and remains almost intact in the midst of the

desolation, as if to point out the furthest limit of Egyptian territory.

[Illustration: 392.jpg THE SHORES OF THE BIRKET-KERUN NEAR THE

EMBOUCHURE OF THE WADY NAZLEH]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golénischeff.

It bears no inscriptions, but the beauty of the materials of which it

is composed, and the perfection of the work, lead us to attribute its

construction to some prince of the XIIth dynasty. An ancient causeway

runs from its entrance to what was probably at one time the original

margin of the lake. The continual sinking of the level of the Birkeh

has left this temple isolated on the edge of the Libyan plateau, and

all life has retired from the surrounding district, and has concentrated

itself on the southern shores of the lake.

[Illustration: 393.jpg THE TWO PYRAMIDS OF THE XIITH DYNASTY AT LISHT]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

Here the banks are low and the bottom deepens almost imperceptibly. In

winter the retreating waters leave exposed long patches of the shore,

upon which a thin crust of snow-white salt is deposited, concealing the

depths of mud and quicksands beneath. Immediately after the inundation,

the lake regains in a few days the ground it had lost: it encroaches

on the tamarisk bushes which fringe its banks, and the district is soon

surrounded by a belt of marshy vegetation, affording cover for ducks,

pelicans, wild geese, and a score of different kinds of birds which

disport themselves there by the thousand. The Pharaohs, when tired of

residing in cities, here found varied and refreshing scenery, an equable

climate, gardens always gay with flowers, and in the thickets of the

Kerun they could pursue their favourite pastimes of interminable fishing

and of hunting with the boomerang.

They desired to repose after death among the scenes in which they had

lived. Their tombs stretch from Heracleo-polis till they nearly meet the

last pyramids of the Memphites: at Dahshur there are still two of them

standing. The northern one is an immense erection of brick, placed in

close proximity to the truncated pyramid, but nearer than it to the edge

of the plateau, so as to overlook the valley. We might be tempted to

believe that the Theban kings, in choosing a site immediately to the

south of the spot where Papi II. slept in his glory, were prompted by

the desire to renew the traditions of the older dynasties prior to

those of the Heracleopolitans, and thus proclaim to all beholders the

antiquity of their lineage. One of their residences was situated at no

great distance, near Miniet Dahshur, the city of Titoui, the favourite

residence of Amenemhâîfc I. It was here that those royal princesses,

Nofirhonît, Sonît-Sonbît, Sîthâthor, and Monît, his sisters, wives, and

daughters, whose tombs lie opposite the northern face of the pyramid,

flourished side by side with Amenemhâît III.

[Illustration: 394.jpg PAINTING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTH TOMB]

There, as of old in their harem, they slept side by side, and, in spite

of robbers, their mummies have preserved the ornaments with which they

were adorned, on the eve of burial, by the pious act of their lords.

The art of the ancient jewellers, which we have hitherto known only

from pictures on the walls of tombs or on the boards of coffins, is here

exhibited in all its cunning. The ornaments comprise a wealth of

gold gorgets, necklaces of agate beads or of enamelled lotus-flowers,

cornelian, amethyst, and onyx scarabs. Pectorals of pierced gold-work,

inlaid with flakes of vitreous paste or precious stones, bear the

cartouches of Usirtasen III. and of Amenemhâît II., and every one of

these gems of art reveals a perfection of taste and a skilfulness of

handling which are perfectly wonderful.

[Illustration: 395.jpg PECTORAL ORNAMENT OF USIRTASEN III]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-

Bey.

Their delicacy, and their freshness in spite of their antiquity, make it

hard for us to realize that fifty centuries have elapsed since they

were made. We are tempted to imagine that the royal ladies to whom they

belonged must still be waiting within earshot, ready to reply to our

summons as soon as we deign to call them; we may even anticipate the joy

they will evince when these sumptuous ornaments are restored to them,

and we need to glance at the worm-eaten coffins which contain their

stiff and disfigured mummies to recall our imagination to the stern

reality of fact. Two other pyramids, but in this case of stone, still

exist further south, to the left of the village of Lisht: their casing,

torn off by the fellahîn, has entirely disappeared, and from a distance

they appear to be merely two mounds which break the desert horizon line,

rather than two buildings raised by the hand of man.

[Illustration: 396.jpg THE PYRAMID OF ILLAHUN, AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE

FAïÛM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Golénischeff.

The sepulchral chambers, excavated at a great depth in the sand, are now

filled with water which has infiltrated through the soil, and they have

not as yet been sufficiently emptied to permit of an entrance being

effected: one of them contained the body of Usirtasen I.; does

Amenemhâît I. or Amenemhâît II. repose in the other? We know, at all

events, that Usirtasen II. built for himself the pyramid of Illahun,

and Amenemhâît III. that of Hawâra. “Hotpû,” the tomb of Usirtasen II.,

stood upon a rocky hill at a distance of some two thousand feet from

the cultivated lands. To the east of it lay a temple, and close to

the temple a town, Haît-Usirtasen-Hotpû--“the Castle of the Repose of

Usirtasen”--which was inhabited by the workmen employed in building

the pyramid, who resided there with their families. The remains of the

temple consist of scarcely anything more than the enclosing wall, whose

sides were originally faced with fine white limestone covered with

hieroglyphs and sculptured scenes. It adjoined the wall of the town, and

the neighbouring quarters are almost intact: the streets were straight,

and crossed each other at right angles, while the houses on each side

were so regularly built that a single policeman could keep his eye on

each thoroughfare from one end to the other. The structures were of

rough material hastily put together, and among the _débris_ are to be

found portions of older buildings, stehe, and fragments of statues.

The town began to dwindle after the Pharaoh had taken possession of his

sepulchre; it was abandoned during the XIIIth dynasty, and its ruins

were entombed in the sand which the wind heaped over them. The city

which Amenemhâît III. had connected with his tomb maintained, on the

contrary, a long existence in the course of the centuries. The king’s

last resting-place consisted of a large sarcophagus of quartzose

sandstone, while his favourite consort, Nofriuphtah, reposed beside

him in a smaller coffin. The sepulchral chapel was very large, and its

arrangements were of a somewhat complicated character. It consisted of

a considerable number of chambers, some tolerably large, and others

of moderate dimensions, while all of them were difficult of access and

plunged in perpetual darkness: this was the Egyptian Labyrinth, to

which the Greeks, by a misconception, have given a world-wide renown.

Amenemhâît III. or his architects had no intention of building such a

childish structure as that in which classical tradition so fervently

believed. He had richly endowed the attendant priests, and bestowed upon

the cult of his double considerable revenues, and the chambers above

mentioned were so many storehouses for the safekeeping of the treasure

and provisions for the dead, and the arrangement of them was not more

singular than that of ordinary storage depots. As his cult persisted

for a long period, the temple was maintained in good condition during a

considerable time: it had not, perhaps, been abandoned when the Greeks

first visited it.*

* The identity of the ruins at Hawâra with the remains of

the Labyrinth, admitted by Jomard-Caristie and by Lepsius,

disputed by Vassali, has been definitely proved by Pétrie,

who found remains of the buildings erected by Amenemhâît

III. under the ruins of a village and some Græco-Roman

tombs.

The other sovereigns of the XIIth dynasty must have been interred not

far from the tombs of Amenemhâît III. and Usirtasen II.: they also had

their pyramids, of which we may one day discover the site. The outline

of these was almost the same as that of the Memphite pyramids, but the

interior arrangements were different. As at Illahun and Dahshur, the

mass of the work consisted of crude bricks of large size, between which

fine sand was introduced to bind them solidly together, and the whole

was covered with a facing of polished limestone. The passages and

chambers are not arranged on the simple plan which we meet with in

the pyramids of earlier date. Experience had taught the Pharaohs that

neither granite walls nor the multiplication of barriers could preserve

their mummies from profanation: no sooner was vigilance relaxed, either

in the time of civil war or under a feeble administration, than robbers

appeared on the scene, and boring passages through the masonry with

the ingenuity of moles, they at length, after indefatigable patience,

succeeded in reaching the sepulchral vault and despoiling the mummy of

its valuables.

[Illustration: 399.jpg THE MOUNTAIN OF SILT WITH THE TOMBS OF THE

PRINCES]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey,

taken in 1884.

With a view to further protection, the builders multiplied blind

passages and chambers without apparent exit, but in which a portion of

the ceiling was movable, and gave access to other equally mysterious

rooms and corridors. Shafts sunk in the corners of the chambers and

again carefully closed put the sacrilegious intruder on a false scent,

for, after causing him a great loss of time and labour, they only led

down to the solid rock. At the present day the water of the Nile fills

the central chamber of the Hawâra pyramid and covers the sarcophagus; it

is possible that this was foreseen, and that the builders counted on the

infiltration as an additional obstacle to depredations from without.*

* Indeed, it should be noted that in the Græco-Roman period

the presence of water in a certain number of the pyramids

was a matter of common knowledge, and so frequently was it

met with, that it was even supposed to exist in a pyramid

into which water had never penetrated, viz. that of Kheops.

Herodotus relates that, according to the testimony of the

interpreters who acted as his guides, the waters of the Nile

were carried to the sepulchral cavern of the Pharaoh by a

subterranean channel, and shut it in on all sides, like an

island.

The hardness of the cement, which fastens the lid of the stone coffin

to the lower part, protects the body from damp, and the Pharaoh, lying

beneath several feet of water, still defies the greed of the robber or

the zeal of the archaeologist.

The absolute power of the kings kept their feudal vassals in check: far

from being suppressed, however, the seignorial families continued

not only to exist, but to enjoy continued prosperity. Everywhere, at

Elephantine, Koptos, Thinis, in Aphroditopolis, and in most of the

cities of the Said and of the Delta, there were ruling princes who

were descended from the old feudal lords or even from Pharaohs of the

Memphite period, and who were of equal, if not superior rank, to the

members of the reigning family. The princes of Siut no longer en-joyed

an authority equal to that exercised by their ancestors under the

Heracleopolitan dynasties, but they still possessed considerable

influence. One of them, Hapizaûfi I., excavated for himself, in the

reign of Ûsirtasen I., nor far from the burying-place of Khîti and

Tefabi, that beautiful tomb, which, though partially destroyed by Coptic

monks or Arabs, still attracts visitors and excites their astonishment.

[Illustration: 401.jpg MAP OF PRINCIPALITY OF THE GAZELLE]

The lords of Shashotpu in the south, and those of Hermopolis in the

north, had acquired to some extent the ascendency which their neighbours

of Siût had lost. The Hermopolitan princes dated at least from the time

of the VIth dynasty, and they had passed safely through the troublous

times which followed the death of Papi II. A branch of their family

possessed the nome of the Hare, while another governed that of the

Gazelle. The lords of the nome of the Hare espoused the Theban cause,

and were reckoned among the most faithful vassals of the sovereigns of

the south: one of them, Thothotpû, caused a statue of himself, worthy

of a Pharaoh, to be erected in his loyal town of Hermopolis, and their

burying-places at el-Bersheh bear witness to their power no less than

to their taste in art. During the troubles which put an end to the XIth

dynasty, a certain Khnûmhotpû, who was connected in some unknown manner

with the lords of the nome of the Gazelle, entered the Theban service

and accompanied Amenemhâît I. on his campaigns into Nubia. He obtained,

as a reward of faithfulness, Monâît-Khûfûi and the district of

Khûît-Horû,--“the Horizon of Horus,”--on the east bank of the Nile. On

becoming possessed of the western bank also, he entrusted the government

of the district which he was giving up to his eldest son, Nakhîti I.;

but, the latter having died without heirs, Usirtasen I. granted to

Biqît, the sister of Nakhîti, the rank and prerogative of a reigning

princess. Biqît married Nûhri, one of the princes of Hermopolis, and

brought with her as her dowry the fiefdom of the Gazelle, thus doubling

the possessions of her husband’s house. Khnûmhotpû II., the eldest

of the children born of this union, was, while still young, appointed

Governor of Monâît-Khûfuî, and this title appears to have become an

appanage of his heir-apparent, just as the title of “Prince of Kaûshû”

was, from the XIXth dynasty onwards, the special designation of the heir

to the throne. The marriage of Khnûmhotpû II. with the youthful Khîti,

the heiress of the nome of the Jackal, rendered him master of one of

the most fertile provinces of Middle Egypt. The power of this family was

further augmented under Nakhîti II., son of Khnûmhotpû II. and Khîti:

Nakhîti, prince of the nome of the Jackal in right of his mother, and

lord of that of the Gazelle after the death of his father, received

from Usirtasen II. the administration of fifteen southern nomes, from

Aphroditopolis to Thebes. This is all we know of his history, but it is

probable that his descendants retained the same power and position for

several generations. The career of these dignitaries depended greatly

on the Pharaohs with whom they were contemporary: they accompanied the

royal troops on their campaigns, and with the spoil which they collected

on such occasions they built temples or erected tombs for themselves.

The tombs of the princes of the nome of the Gazelle are disposed along

the right bank of the Nile, and the most ancient are exactly opposite

Minieh. It is at Zawyet el-Meiyetîn and at Kom-el-Ahmar, nearly facing

Hibonu, their capital, that we find the burying-places of those who

lived under the VIth dynasty. The custom of taking the dead across the

Nile had existed for centuries, from the time when the Egyptians first

cut their tombs in the eastern range; it still continues to the present

day, and part of the population of Minieh are now buried, year after

year, in the places which their remote ancestors had chosen as the site

of their “eternal houses.” The cemetery lies peacefully in the centre

of the sandy plain at the foot of the hills; a grove of palms, like

a curtain drawn along the river-side, partially conceals it; a Coptic

convent and a few Mahommedan hermits attract around them the tombs of

their respective followers, Christian or Mussulman. The rock-hewn tombs

of the XIIth dynasty succeed each other in one long irregular line

along the cliffs of Beni-Hasan, and the traveller on the Nile sees their

entrances continuously coming into sight and disappearing as he goes

up or descends the river. These tombs are entered by a square aperture,

varying in height and width according to the size of the chapel. Two

only, those of Amoni-Amenemhâît and of Khnûm-hotpû II., have a columned

façade, of which all the members--pillars, bases, entablatures--have

been cut in the solid rock: the polygonal shafts of the façade look like

a bad imitation of ancient Doric. Inclined planes or nights of steps,

like those at Elephantine, formerly led from the plain up to the

terrace. Only a few traces of these exist at the present day, and the

visitor has to climb the sandy slope as best he can: wherever he enters,

the walls present to his view inscriptions of immense extent, as well

as civil, sepulchral, military, and historical scenes. These are not

incised like those of the Memphite mastabas, but are painted in fresco

on the stone itself. The technical skill here exhibited is not a whit

behind that of the older periods, and the general conception of the

subjects has not altered since the time of the pyramid-building kings.

The object is always the same, namely, to ensure wealth to the double in

the other world, and to enable him to preserve the same rank among

the departed as he enjoyed among the living: hence sowing, reaping,

cattle-rearing, the exercise of different trades, the preparation and

bringing of offerings, are all represented with the same minuteness as

formerly. But a new element has been added to the ancient themes.

[Illustration: 405.jpg THE MODERN CEMETERY OF ZAWYET EL-MEIYETÎN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

We know, and the experience of the past is continually reiterating the

lesson, that the most careful precautions and the most conscientious

observation of customs were not sufficient to perpetuate the worship of

ancestors. The day was bound to come when not only the descendants of

Khnûmhotpû, but a crowd of curious or indifferent strangers, would visit

his tomb: he desired that they should know his genealogy, his private

and public virtues, his famous deeds, his court titles and dignities,

the extent of his wealth; and in order that no detail should be omitted,

he relates all that he did, or he gives the representation of it upon

the wall. In a long account of two hundred and twenty-two lines, he

gives a _résumé_ of his family history, introducing extracts from his

archives, to show the favours received by his ancestors from the hands

of their sovereigns. Amoni and Khîti, who were, it appears, the warriors

of their race, have everywhere recounted the episodes of their military

career, the movements of their troops, their hand-to-hand fights, and

the fortresses to which they laid siege. These scions of the house

of the Gazelle and of the Hare, who shared with Pharaoh himself the

possession of the soil of Egypt, were no mere princely ciphers: they

had a tenacious spirit, a warlike disposition, an insatiable desire for

enlarging their borders, together with sufficient ability to realize

their aims by court intrigues or advantageous marriage alliances. We can

easily picture from their history what Egyptian feudalism really was,

what were its component elements, what were the resources it had at its

disposal, and we may well be astonished when we consider the power and

tact which the Pharaohs must have displayed in keeping such vassals in

check during two centuries.

Amenemhâît I. had abandoned Thebes as a residence in favour of

Heracleopolis and Memphis, and had made it over to some personage who

probably belonged to the royal household. The nome of Ûisît had relapsed

into the condition of a simple fief, and if we are as yet unable to

establish the series of the princes who there succeeded each other

contemporaneously with the Pharaohs, we at least know that all those

whose names have come down to us played an important part in the history

of their times. Montûnsîsû, whose stele was engraved in the XXIVth year

of Amenemhâît I., and who died in the joint reign of this Pharaoh and

his son Usirtasen I., had taken his share in most of the wars conducted

against neighbouring peoples,--the Anîtiû of Nubia, the Monîtû of Sinai,

and the “Lords of the Sands:” he had dismantled their cities and razed

their fortresses. The principality retained no doubt the same boundaries

which it had acquired under the first Antûfs, but Thebes itself grew

daily larger, and gained in importance in proportion as its frontiers

extended southward. It had become, after the conquests of Usirtasen

III., the very centre of the Egyptian world--a centre from which the

power of the Pharaoh could equally well extend in a northerly direction

towards the Sinaitic Peninsula and Libya, or towards the Red Sea and

the “humiliated Kûsh” in the south. The influence of its lords increased

accordingly: under Amenemhâît III. and Amenemhâît IV. they were perhaps

the most powerful of the great vassals, and when the crown slipped from

the grasp of the XIIth dynasty, it fell into the hands of one of these

feudatories. It is not known how the transition was brought about which

transferred the sovereignty from the elder to the younger branch of the

family of Amenemhâît I. When Amenemhâît IV. died, his nearest heir was a

woman, his sister Sovkûnofriûrî: she retained the supreme authority

for not quite four years,* and then resigned her position to a certain

Sovkhotpû.**

* She reigned exactly three years, ten months, and eighteen

days, according to the fragments of the “Royal Canon of

Turin” (Lepsius, Auswahl der wichtigten Urkunden, pl. v.

col. vii. 1. 2).

** Sovkhotpû Khûtoûirî, according to the present published

versions of the Turin Papyrus, an identification which led

Lieblein (Recherches sur la Chronologie Égyptienne, pp. 102,

103) and Wiedemann to reject the generally accepted

assumption that this first king of the XIIIth dynasty was

Sovkhotpû Sakhemkhûtoûirî. Still, the way in which the

monuments of Sovkhotpû Sakhemkhûtoûirî and his papyri are

intermingled with the monuments of Amenemhâît III. at Semneh

and in the Fayûm, show that it is difficult to separate him

from this monarch. Moreover, an examination of the original

Turin Papyrus shows that there is a tear before the word

Khûtoûirî on the first cartouche, no indication of which

appears in the facsimile, but which has, none the less,

slightly damaged the initial solar disk and removed almost

the whole of one sign. We are, therefore, inclined to

believe that _Sakhemkhûtoûirî_ was written instead of

_Khûtoûirî_, and that, therefore, all the authorities are in

the right, from their different points of view, and that the

founder of the XIIIth dynasty was a Sakhemkhûtoûirî I.,

while the Savkhotpû Sakhemkhûtoûirî, who occupies the

fifteenth place in the dynasty, was a Sakhemkhûtoûirî II.

[Illustration: 408.jpg THE TOMBS OF PRINCES OF THE GAZELLE-NOME AT

BENI-HASAN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius,

Denkm., i. pl. 61. The first tomb on the left, of which the

portico is shown, is that of Khnûmhotpû II.

Was there a revolution in the palace, or a popular rising, or a civil

war? Did the queen become the wife of the new sovereign, and thus bring

about the change without a struggle? Sovkhotpû was probably lord

of Ûisît, and the dynasty which he founded is given by the native

historians as of Theban origin. His accession entailed no change in the

Egyptian constitution; it merely consolidated the Theban supremacy, and

gave it a recognized position. Thebes became henceforth the head of

the entire country: doubtless the kings did not at once forsake

Heracleopolis and the Fayûm, but they made merely passing visits to

these royal residences at considerable intervals, and after a few

generations even these were given up. Most of these sovereigns resided

and built their Pyramids at Thebes, and the administration of the

kingdom became centralized there. The actual capital of a king was

determined not so much by the locality from whence he ruled, as by the

place where he reposed after death. Thebes was the virtual capital

of Egypt from the moment that its masters fixed on it as their

burying-place.

Uncertainty again shrouds the history of the country after Sovkhotpû I.:

not that monuments are lacking or names of kings, but the records of the

many Sovkhotpûs and Nonrhotpûs found in a dozen places in the valley,

furnish as yet no authentic means of ascertaining in what order to

classify them. The XIIIth dynasty contained, so it is said, sixty kings,

who reigned for a period of over 453 years.*

* This is the number given in one of the lists of Manetho,

in Muller-Didot, _Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum_, vol. ii.

p. 565. Lepsius’s theory, according to which the shepherds

overran Egypt from the end of the XIIth dynasty and

tolerated the existence of two vassal dynasties, the XIIIth

and XIVth, was disputed and refuted by E. de Rougé as soon

as it appeared; we find the theory again in the works of

some contemporary Egyptologists, but the majority of those

who continued to support it have since abandoned their

position.

The succession did not always take place in the direct line from father

to son: several times, when interrupted by default of male heirs, it

was renewed without any disturbance, thanks to the transmission of royal

rights to their children by princesses, even when their husbands did not

belong to the reigning family. Monthotpû, the father of Sovkhotpu III.,

was an ordinary priest, and his name is constantly quoted by his son;

but solar blood flowed in the veins of his mother, and procured for him

the crown. The father of his successor, Nofirhotpû IL, did not belong

to the reigning branch, or was only distantly connected with it, but his

mother Kamâît was the daughter of Pharaoh, and that was sufficient

to make her son of royal rank. With careful investigation, we should

probably find traces of several revolutions which changed the legitimate

order of succession without, however, entailing a change of dynasty. The

Nofirhotpûs and Sovkhotpûs continued both at home and abroad the work so

ably begun by the Amenemhâîts and the Usirtasens.

[Illustration: 410.jpg THE COLOSSAL STATUE OF KING SOVKHOTPU IN THE

LOUVRE]

They devoted all their efforts to beautifying the principal towns of

Egypt, and caused important works to be carried on in most of them--at

Karnak, in the great temple of Amon, at Luxor, at Bubastis, at Tanis,

at Tell-Mokhdam, and in the sanctuary of Abydos. At the latter

place, Khâsoshûshrî Nofirhotpû restored to Khontamentit considerable

possessions which the god had lost; Nozirri sent thither one of his

officers to restore the edifice built by Usirtasen I.; Sovkûmsaûf

II. dedicated his own statue in this temple, and private individuals,

following the example set them by their sovereigns, vied with each other

in their gifts of votive stehe. The pyramids of this period were of

moderate size, and those princes who abandoned the custom of building

them were content like Aûtûabrî I. Horû with a modest tomb, close to the

gigantic pyramids of their ancestors. In style the statues of this epoch

show a certain inferiority when compared with the beautiful work of the

XIIth dynasty: the proportions of the human figure are not so good, the

modelling of the limbs is not so vigorous, the rendering of the features

lacks individuality; the sculptors exhibit a tendency, which had been

growing since the time of the Usirtasens, to represent all their sitters

with the same smiling, commonplace type of countenance. There are,

however, among the statues of kings and private individuals which have

come down to us, a few examples of really fine treatment. The colossal

statue of Sovkhotpû IV., which is now in the Louvre side by side with an

ordinary-sized figure of the same Pharaoh, must have had a good effect

when placed at the entrance to the temple at Tanis: his chest is thrown

well forward, his head is erect, and we feel impressed by that noble

dignity which the Memphite sculptors knew how to give to the bearing

and features of the diorite Khephren enthroned at Gîzeh. The sitting

Mirmâshaû of Tanis lacks neither energy nor majesty, and the Sovkûmsaûf

of Abydos, in spite of the roughness of its execution, decidedly holds

its own among the other Pharaohs.

[Illustration: 414.jpg STATUE OF HARSÛF IN THE VIENNA MUSEUM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Ernest de Bergmann.

From Dahshur, now at Gîzeh; it has been published in

Morgan’s Dahshur.

The statuettes found in the tombs, and the smaller objects discovered in

the ruins, are neither less carefully nor less successfully treated. The

little scribe at Gîzeh, in the attitude of walking, is a _chef d’oeuvre_

of delicacy and grace, and might be attributed to one of the best

schools of the XIIth dynasty, did not the inscriptions oblige us to

relegate it to the Theban art of the XIIIth. The heavy and commonplace

figure of the magnate now in the Vienna Museum is treated with a rather

coarse realism, but exhibits nevertheless most skilful tooling. It is

not exclusively at Thebes, or at Tanis, or in any of the other great

cities of Egypt, that we meet with excellent examples of work, or that

we can prove that flourishing schools of sculpture existed at this

period; probably there is scarcely any small town which would not

furnish us at the present day, if careful excavation were carried out,

with some monument or object worthy of being placed in a museum. During

the XIIIth dynasty both art and everything else in Egypt were fairly

prosperous. Nothing attained a very high standard, but, on the other

hand, nothing fell below a certain level of respectable mediocrity.

Wealth exercised, however, an injurious influence upon artistic taste.

The funerary statue, for instance, which Aûtûabrî I. Horû ordered for

himself was of ebony, and seems to have been inlaid originally with

gold, whereas Kheops and Khephren were content to have theirs of

alabaster and diorite.

[Illustration: 415.jpg STATUE OF SOVKHOTPÛ III.]

Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch by Lepsius; the head was

“quite mutilated and separated from the bust.”

During this dynasty we hear nothing of the inhabitants of the Sinaitic

Peninsula to the east, or of the Libyans to the west: it was in the

south, in Ethiopia, that the Pharaohs expended all their surplus energy.

The most important of them, Sovkhotpu I., had continued to register the

height of the Nile on the rocks of Semneh, but after his time we

are unable to say where the Nilometer was moved to, nor, indeed, who

displaced it. The middle basin of the river as far as Gebel-Barkal

was soon incorporated with Egypt, and the population became quickly

assimilated. The colonization of the larger islands of Say and Argo

took place first, as their isolation protected them from sudden attacks:

certain princes of the XIIIth dynasty built temples there, and erected

their statues within them, just as they would have done in any of the

most peaceful districts of the Said or the Delta. Argo is still at the

present day one of the largest of these Nubian islands:* it is said to

be 12 miles in length, and about 2 1/2 in width towards the middle.

* The description of Argo and its ruins is borrowed from

Caillaud, Voyage à Méroé, vol. ii. pp. 1-7.

It is partly wooded, and vegetation grows there with tropical

luxuriance; creeping plants climb from tree to tree, and form an

almost impenetrable undergrowth, which swarms with game secure from the

sportsman. A score of villages are dotted about in the clearings,

and are surrounded by carefully cultivated fields, in which durra

predominates. An unknown Pharaoh of the XIIIth dynasty built, near to

the principal village, a temple of considerable size; it covered an

area, whose limits may still easily be traced, of 174 feet wide by 292

long from east to west. The main body of the building was of sandstone,

probably brought from the quarries of Tombos: it has been pitilessly

destroyed piecemeal by the inhabitants, and only a few insignificant

fragments, on which some lines of hieroglyphs may still be deciphered,

remain _in situ_. A small statue of black granite of good workmanship is

still standing in the midst of the ruins. It represents Sovkhotpû III.

sitting, with his hands resting on his knees; the head, which has been

mutilated, lies beside the body.

[Illustration: 417.jpg ONE OF THE OVERTURNED AND BROKEN STATUES OF

MIRMASIIAÛ AT TANIS]

Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph in Rougé-Banville’s

_Album photographique de la Mission de M. de Bougé_, No.

114.

The same king erected colossal statues of himself at Tanis, Bubastis,

and at Thebes: he was undisputed master of the whole Nile Valley, from

near the spot where the river receives its last tributary to where

it empties itself into the sea. The making of Egypt was finally

accomplished in his time, and if all its component parts were not as yet

equally prosperous, the bond which connected them was strong enough

to resist any attempt to break it, whether by civil discord within or

invasions from without. The country was not free from revolutions, and

if we have no authority for stating that they were the cause of the

downfall of the XIIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho at least show that

after that event the centre of Egyptian power was again shifted. Thebes

lost its supremacy, and the preponderating influence passed into the

hands of sovereigns who were natives of the Delta. Xoïs, situated in the

midst of the marshes, between the Phatnitic and Sebennytic branches of

the Nile, was one of those very ancient cities which had played but

an insignificant part in shaping the destinies of the country. By what

combination of circumstances its princes succeeded in raising themselves

to the throne of the Pharaohs, we know not: they numbered, so it was

said, seventy-five kings, who reigned four hundred and eighty-four

years, and whose mutilated names darken the pages of the Turin Papyrus.

The majority of them did little more than appear upon the throne, some

reigning three years, others two, others a year or scarcely more than a

few months: far from being a regularly constituted line of sovereigns,

they appear rather to have been a series of Pretenders, mutually jealous

of and deposing one another.

The feudal lords who had been so powerful under the Usirtasens had

lost none of their prestige under the Sovkhotpûs: and the rivalries of

usurpers of this kind, who seized the crown without being strong enough

to keep it, may perhaps explain the long sequence of shadowy Pharaohs

with curtailed reigns who constitute the XIVth dynasty. They did not

withdraw from Nubia, of that fact we are certain: but what did they

achieve in the north and north-east of the empire? The nomad tribes were

showing signs of restlessness on the frontier, the peoples of the Tigris

and Euphrates were already pushing the vanguards of their armies into

Central Syria. While Egypt had been bringing the valley of the Nile and

the eastern corner of Africa into subjection, Chaldæa had imposed both

her language and her laws upon the whole of that part of Western Asia

which separated her from Egypt: the time was approaching when these two

great civilized powers of the ancient world would meet each other face

to face and come into fierce collision.

END OF VOL. II.