Chronology 368-396
External Circumstances in favour of an Historical Development 368-374
Influence of the Local Character and Climate upon the
Preservation of the Monuments 368-371
Abundance of Building Stone 371
Bricks. Papyrus used as a Writing Material 372
Intellectual Basis and Proofs of Historical Activity 374-396
National Historical Sense of the Egyptians 374-380
Earlier and more extended Habit of Writing 377-380
Books. Libraries 380
Fame of Egyptian Wisdom and Learning among the Greeks 382
Sacred Writings of the Egyptians 387
Remains of Historical Literature 392
Retrospective View 397-400
FIRST PART OF THE CHRONOLOGY.
Criticism upon the Authorities.
The Hebrew Tradition 401-493
Uncertainty of the Hebrew Numbers 401
The Exodus according to Manetho 404
The Exodus according to Hecataeus and Diodorus 408
The Exodus of the Lepers the same as that of the Israelites 411
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Manetho 417
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Ptolemy Mendesius,
Apion Josephus 420
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Eusebius 422
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Lysimachus 423
Intimations concerning the Time of the Exodus in the Old
Testament 424
The Situation of Abaris 425
The Situation of Heroonpolis 434
The Situation of Ramses 437
The Town of Ramses built by Ramses-Miamun (Ramses II.) 438
Canal Connection between the Nile and the Red Sea 439
The Towns Pithom and Ramses, on the Canal of Ramses II.,
built in the Reign of Ramses II. 446
The Exodus of the Israelites later than Ramses II. 449
The Exodus in the year B.C. 1314 according to the Rabbinical
Chronology 450
The Date of the Exodus according to the Jewish Generations 457
The Date of the Exodus according to the Book of Judges 470
The Period from Jacob and Joseph to Moses 475-485
The Pharaoh of Joseph in Herodotus and Diodorus 480
The Period from Abraham to Moses 485-492
Joseph placed during the Reign of Aphophis 487
End of Hebrew Tradition 492
The genuine Manethonic Numbers 494
Retrospective View 496
Tables of Egyptian Dynasties 499
INTRODUCTION TO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS.
While the beginnings of Greek and Roman history, by the strict
investigations of modern criticism, have lost more and more of their
historical character, and while cautious inquirers consider it impossible
to obtain a fixed date for separate events, earlier than the seventh and
eighth centuries before Christ, the history of Egypt treats of strictly
historical facts, and its chronology contains exact numbers of years,
months, and days in the third and fourth millennium previous to our
era. This appears such a palpable contradiction, that it is not alone
worth while on account of the larger circle of readers who are more out
of the scope of these investigations, but it must also be important to
the inquirers in this field, to answer for themselves the preliminary
question, how it is possible to prosecute the history of Egypt so much
farther back than the history of the nations of the West and East,
without denying the principles of that criticism which has pointed out
limits to the history of classical antiquity, and which must justly be
considered the most valuable treasure of modern science?
In order to answer this question, we must first call to mind that it has
now become a principle, derived from experience, that the real history
of a nation, in the strictest sense of the word, never recedes much
farther back than its _oldest contemporaneous authorities_, and this
once expressed, becomes, from its intrinsic necessity, self-evident.
This principle applies both to us—since our certain conclusions in
historical investigations do not extend much farther back—and also to
the nations themselves; for they only obtain historical consciousness
and historical experience when they begin to produce monuments,
especially written monuments, to bear witness to posterity of what is
occurring. Monuments form the dial-plate of history; until they exist,
the present alone belongs to a nation, not the past—it exists without a
history. If a nation loses its monuments, either through its own fault
or through circumstances, it will be unable to preserve its history,
which becomes confused and traditionary, and in place of the purely
historical account which it has lost, it obtains, at the best, another
principle of internal order; a poetic-mythological, as with the Greeks;
a philosophic-mythological, as with the Indians; or a religious one,
as with the Israelites; but it always loses its original value as a
reproduction of a series of real facts.
Now if we start from this axiom, that the commencement of every true
history and chronology, as it is scientifically understood at the
present day, cannot be carried much farther back than their _oldest
contemporaneous authorities_, and that we find this confirmed in the
nations of Europe and Asia to the prejudice of their earliest histories,
then it is here precisely that exists the marked _superiority_ of the
history of Egypt above all other histories. It is because we have here
_such very early contemporaneous authorities_—not only _literary_, but
the most direct which exist, namely, _monumental authorities_—that we
possess the means of obtaining so early a history of the Egyptians.
If, with reference to this, we first observe the local and climatal
conditions of Egypt, we shall at once perceive that they aid in a
wonderful manner in preserving all kinds of monuments and other relics
of the earliest antiquity. A damp climate generally prevails in the more
elevated and northern parts of Asia; and in the more favoured regions,
owing to a periodical rainy season, the extensive plains are covered with
a fertile soil and luxuriant vegetation (the barren and stony deserts
being always deprived of any high cultivation), consequently all, even
the most solid, monuments of art, where we might have hoped to find
them in considerable numbers, are overpowered and destroyed by the
predominating vital power of nature, ever inimical to the works of man;
whereas the fertility of Egypt, as is well known, is almost entirely
independent of rain. This certainly applies less to the damp air, often
pregnant with rain, along the sea-coast, or to the well-watered and
marshy low district of the Delta. But it is principally for that reason
that there are so few remains of the numerous large and flourishing towns
of the Delta, and that these are hardly worth mentioning. Irregular
heaps of ruins alone exist now of Memphis, the rich metropolis of Lower
Egypt, renowned in the earliest and latest periods of the Monarchy, and
of Heliopolis, Sais, Bubastis, and other important towns. The granite
obelisks in Alexandria are so corroded by the weather that their
inscriptions are hardly recognisable.
In Upper Egypt, where it _scarcely ever_ rains, it is totally different,
especially with respect to all the monuments which are situated on the
borders of the desert, out of reach of the annual inundation, and this
is uniformly the case with the _tombs_, the richest store-houses for
our knowledge of ancient Egyptian life, which in this country alone
really fulfil their true destination, by serving as an asylum against
destruction and decay. The narrow district of the Nile, annually
recreated, borders in its whole length on the wide, rocky, and petrifying
desert. The towns and temples were therefore chiefly built on the
boundary between the two, partly not to intrench upon the fertile ground,
partly in order that the buildings should be upon a drier and more secure
foundation. And thus, in fact, we find the numerous temples and palaces
in wonderful preservation, so far as they are not mutilated by the hand
of man.
Even the black bricks made of Nile mud, and dried in the sun, apparently
the most perishable material, have not unfrequently been preserved in
the open air for thousands of years, in the form in which they were
built up, and with their coating of plaster. A row of great vaulted
halls, built entirely of black Nile bricks, and partly covered in the
inside with stucco, stands about the celebrated temple of the great
Ramses, in Thebes. They date from the same period as the temple itself,
the beginning of the thirteenth century before Christ. This is not alone
testified by the architectonic plan of the building, but most irrefutably
by the bricks themselves, which bear the name of Ramses-Miamun stamped
upon them, as a mark of the royal manufacture. At that time, and
earlier, during the whole of the 18th and 19th Dynasties, it was a very
common practice to line the excavated rock-tombs with Nile bricks,
and afterwards to paint upon the stucco, especially wherever the rock
was friable, and was therefore hewn into a vaulted roof. But the same
custom is sometimes found even in the earliest period of the Pyramids
of Memphis. In enclosed places, not only the building material, but the
colours, both upon the stone and upon the plaster covering, have almost
without exception retained their original freshness and perfection, and
also, very frequently, where they have been exposed to the open air.
The peculiar incorruptibility of vegetable and even of animal matter
is, however, still more astonishing. Our museums are filled with such
remains. In the most ancient tombs of Memphis, a multitude of objects are
found made of wood, such as sarcophagi, chests, and boxes of all kinds,
chairs, instruments, small ships, likewise grains of corn, and dried
fruits, such as pomegranates, dates, the fruit of the Doum Palm, nuts,
almonds, beans, grapes; also bread and other food, besides cloth made of
bast, a texture of reeds, papyrus, and an incredible quantity of linen.
The countless number of mummies, also, are well known, which, though
taken out of their tombs, still last for centuries with their skin and
hair; also all mummified bodies of animals, with their furs and feathers;
even the internal parts of the human body could there be embalmed for
ever, and are still found in vases expressly designed for that purpose.
This wonderful conservative property belonging to all ancient Egyptian
objects, depends therefore chiefly upon the sky being without rain, and
the dry soil of the non-irrigated desert. But the country offered another
marked advantage above other lands, namely, the greatest abundance of
_materials especially adapted for all kinds of monuments_.
Chief among these, is an admirable stone of the most varied quality,
suited as well to building of all kinds, as to the most delicate
sculpture. The mountain range which flanks the valley, and follows the
course of the river from the Delta to beyond Thebes, is composed of
limestone; in the neighbourhood of ancient Memphis, upon the Lybian
side, where the Pyramids stand, it is a solid nummulitic limestone, more
adapted for excavations in the rock, and for building stone, than for
sculpture; on the opposite side, among the Arabian mountains, it has
the finest grain, and is of a uniform density, approaching almost to
marble; it is capable of being worked in any manner, and on account of
the beautiful polish it takes, was used, among other purposes, for the
external covering of the Pyramids, while the interior was made of the
Lybian stone off the ground, upon which they were erected. The Theban
range of mountains is almost everywhere composed of rock, of such an
extremely fine quality, that the sepulchral passages and chambers of the
dead, hewn out in the living rock, most of them several hundred feet
deep, running in various directions, were capable of receiving everywhere
the richest sculptures, in the most delicate bas-reliefs, directly
upon the polished surface of the rock. Beyond Thebes there are ranges
of sandstone mountains, from Gebel-Selseleh to Assuan. From these, and
especially from the enormous stone-quarries of Selseleh, the architects
as well as the sculptors of the New Monarchy obtained their chief supply
of the most excellent and durable fine-grained sandstone. Finally, the
syenite and granite of Assuan are still considered the most beautiful
and valuable of their kind, and were also used by the ancient Egyptians
not only for their monolithic colossi, obelisks, sarcophagi, statues for
entire small temples, &c., but were employed as a building stone, at
all periods. In the Pyramid of Chufu, the high walls, the ceiling, and
floor of the greatest sarcophagus chamber, are entirely made of polished
granite, and the third Pyramid of Mencheres was cased with it up to a
certain height.
I shall here pass over all the other more valuable kinds of stone,
particularly those of the higher Arabian mountains, abundantly used in
ancient Egypt, each in its own way, especially the beautiful yellow
alabaster, several very valuable breccias, greenstone, serpentine, and
the bluish-red porphyry of Gebel-Dochân, which was much employed at a
later period, as they were all reserved rather for purposes of luxury.
But we must not omit to mention here, that the abundance of building
stone in this country was doubled by the _ease of transport_ from one end
of Egypt to the other, upon the great water road of the Nile; therefore,
sandstone and granite were used nearly as much at Thebes, and in all that
part of the country where limestone rock alone was to be found near at
hand, as in Upper Egypt, where it was hewn.
Limestone or sandstone have been always, and in all countries, the most
important material for monumental productions. Where this was wanting,
or was obtained with difficulty, as in Babylon, or on the Indus, or in
the north of Germany, earthen bricks were used as the best substitute,
at least for building purposes. But in Egypt also they could be replaced
by bricks of the best quality, since the soft, clayey Nile mud was
especially adapted for the latter. Thus the wary Egyptians not only did
not neglect this expedient, but made the utmost use of it, and with
greater results than anywhere else, because here it was not required to
take the place of some better material, but only preferred in those cases
where the object itself made it appear best adapted. This more especially
applies to great dykes, town walls, and those temple enclosures which
were to contain no covered rooms, and no delicately constructed parts;
therefore, even in the earliest times, Pyramids were also built of
bricks. They were employed to fill up the ground and to make elevations,
but were more especially everywhere used where large spaces had to be
covered in, without incurring the great expense of huge slabs of stone,
before the useful principle of concentric stone-cutting was known.
This occasioned the remarkably early use of brick-vaulted roofs, along
with the imperfect stone arch, which was, as it were, only cut out of
horizontal layers of stone. Hence arose the custom connected with this,
which we have already mentioned, of lining rock-chambers of crumbling
stone with arches of Nile bricks. The external layers of the brick
buildings in Babylon and Nineveh were generally made of burnt bricks, and
yet they could not resist the climate and time. In Egypt, dried bricks
alone were everywhere used; owing to their natural solidity, and to the
climate, they answered better for their monumental purpose than the burnt
bricks of Babylon, which is still proved by the numerous extant brick
buildings, with their stucco and their pictures.
But in the history of a nation, a substance favourable to its book
literature is of no less importance than the material for building and
sculpture. Egypt possessed also for this purpose an invaluable product
of the country, the _papyrus plant_, from which they were able to obtain
a perfect material for writing upon, unsurpassed throughout antiquity.
Neither the skins of the Ionians, nor the linen of the ancient Romans,
nor the cotton stuff and palm leaves of the Indian, nor the parchment of
Mysia, are to be compared with the Egyptian papyrus in pliability, or
in the power of extension, in durability and cheapness; therefore its
use became gradually more widely spread, and was preserved far down into
the middle ages. Even the later discovered paper of our own time has not
only retained the name of the ancient plant, but, with regard to its
material, can only be looked upon as a continuation and perfecting of
the Egyptian paper, since pressed fibres of plants (particularly of flax
and hemp) have proved to be the most suitable material, even up to the
present day. In ancient times the papyrus plant grew more especially in
the marshy ground of the Nile Delta, and is only elsewhere mentioned by
Pliny as growing near Syracuse, where to this day it is found in great
abundance. Why, on the other hand, it has become almost entirely extinct
in Egypt, may be explained by the circumstance that it was artificially
cultivated to an extent far beyond its natural powers of growth, and
became therefore, like other plants, exhausted. Its use may be traced
back to the most ancient times of Egypt; the papyrus roll and the writing
apparatus are found upon monuments as early as the 4th and 5th Dynasties,
therefore between three and four thousand years before Christ. But this
discovery of very ancient Egypt, which may perhaps be considered as the
most important, next to the invention of writing, only obtains its full
significance in history by the unaltered preservation of those very
rolls of writing for thousands of years. For they not only afforded the
Egyptian priests the benefit of primeval uninjured archives, but we still
obtain from them the instructive contemplation of a multitude of such
original documents, written on papyrus, from the prosperous times of the
Monarchy.
In addition, however, to the external aid afforded by the climate and
productions of Egypt, for the preservation of its history, is to be
mentioned the internal and more efficient influence derived from the
original direction of the national character—its _historical sense_. This
can by no means be explained solely by the reaction which the facility
of immortalising the present, and the peculiarly conservative nature of
the neighbouring desert, might produce upon the original tendency of the
national mind; as little as we can interpret the striking want of a sense
for history, among the Indian people, by the less favourable locality of
their country. The ultimate foundation for such national individualities
can always alone be sought, in the particular part they are called to
play in the general history of the world. But, on a nearer examination,
we can have no doubt that such an historical sense existed among the
Egyptian people in an unusually high degree, and was cultivated by them
in all its stages.
It is first of all demonstrated by the incredible multitude of monuments
of every kind, which were at all periods erected by kings, and persons of
private fortune. All the chief cities of Egypt were adorned with temples
and palaces, and the other towns, frequently indeed more insignificant
places, with at least one, often with several sanctuaries; these were
filled with statues of the gods and kings of all sizes, composed of the
most valuable stone, and the walls externally and internally were covered
with coloured sculptures. To erect these public buildings, and to endow
them splendidly, was the exclusive privilege and pride of kings. In their
turn the richer portion of the people vied with them in their concern for
the dead, by erecting monumental tombs. Whilst with reference to public
buildings, the passion for building among the Greeks and Romans, in their
most prosperous days, can alone be placed beside that of the Pharaonic
time, the Egyptian necropoli far surpass those of Greece and Rome, both
in extent and in the number of the monuments, as well as in the richness
of their execution, especially in their endowment of pictures and
inscriptions.
But next to the multitude and splendour of these works, the unsurpassed
attention paid to their durability, especially proves the innate
historical sense of the Egyptians. That they laid due stress on the great
age of their buildings, follows from the annalistic account of Manetho,
which is in no respect liable to suspicion, by which we learn that even
TOSORTHROS, the second king of the 2nd Dynasty, and the cotemporary of
Menes, commenced building with _hewn stones_ διὰ ξεστῶν λίθων.
And it is hardly necessary to mention the great Pyramids of Memphis,
those colossal massive structures, which, solid throughout, and built
of strong nicely joined hewn stones, are piled up above the sepulchral
chambers, cut out of the living rock, generally without leaving any
vacant space, like artificial rocks in the simplest form, as if he who
built them had been aware that, in them he laid the foundation of the
future gigantic building—the _History of Man_. This may equally refer to
all the other buildings, whether they are destined for the living or the
dead; the desire to labour for eternity is imprinted upon all of them.
The belief which was early formed of a life after death, and of a
relation continuing to subsist between the soul and the body, was closely
connected with this; and along with it the exaggerated care that was
bestowed upon the bodies of the dead, embalming them, and swathing
them, and shutting them up in double and triple sarcophagi, made of the
strongest wood, and the hardest stone, which were buried in deep pits,
and in laboriously excavated rock-chambers. Even in the most peaceful
times this nation appears always to have anticipated the possibility of
future hostile invasions, and of barbarous and rapacious races; for that
reason they so ingeniously closed the large granite sarcophagi by means
of metal rods, which only fell down into the holes prepared for them in
the sides, at the last thrust of the cover, which was driven drawer-like
in, so that the sarcophagi could only be opened by the destruction of the
colossal masses of stone. They also endeavoured to guard even the passage
which led to the sarcophagi chambers by heavy stone trap-doors, and by
ingeniously building up the walls, so as to divert the attention, and to
protect them in every other possible way from inroad and desecration. For
that reason many subterranean tombs are undoubtedly still hidden from us;
only a few tombs of kings are known, and many important monuments will
still be discovered in the inexhaustible necropoli of Memphis, Abydos,
and Thebes.
However, we already possess such an abundant supply of works of art, and
other things belonging to daily life, from the earliest, down to the
latest times of the Pharaonic Monarchy, that these in themselves alone,
considered only objectively, would form an extremely important source of
knowledge concerning the mode of life in ancient Egypt. The great work of
Napoleon, the “_Description de l’Egypte_,” has splendidly demonstrated
how much in fact may be gained by such an objective examination of the
monuments; it contains matter that will always deserve praise, and a rich
treasure was collected for the cause of science, although the key to
the hieroglyphics had not yet been discovered, and consequently all the
monuments being chronologically uncomprehended, or wrongly comprehended,
stood beside each other, as in a picture without perspective, on one
plane surface.
This very work, however, is an evident proof of what could _not_ be done,
even with the greatest expenditure of means and learning, without aid
obtained from the inscriptions. The _history_ of the people in all its
varied development remained dark and fabulous as before. It is the same
with the monuments of all nations, which have come down to us either
without any written character, or with it undeciphered, like those of our
own heathen ancestors, or of the aborigines of South America, or even of
the Babylonians. History profits very little by them.