deceased, the workshops required a large quantity of drinking water for
the men engaged in them. In every gang of workmen, even in the present
day, two or three men are set apart to provide drinking-water for the
rest; in some arid places, indeed, at a distance from the river, such
as the Valley of the Kings, as many water-carriers are required as there
are workmen. To the trades just mentioned must be added the low-caste
crowd depending oh the burials of the rich, the acrobats, female
mourners, dancers and musicians. The majority of the female corporations
were distinguished by the infamous character of their manners, and
prostitution among them had come to be associated with the service of
the god.*
* The heroine of the erotic papyrus of Turin bears the title
of Singing-woman of Amon, and the illustrations indicate
her profession so clearly and so expressively, that no
details of her sayings and doings are wanting.
[Illustration: 049.jpg THE GODDESS MABÎTSAKBO]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Lanzone.
There was no education for all this mass of people, and their religion
was of a meagre character. They worshipped the official deities, Amon,
Mût, Isis, and Hâthor, and such deceased Pharaohs as Amenôthes I.
and Nofrîtari, but they had also their own Pantheon, in which animals
predominated--such as the goose of Amon, and his ram Pa-rahaninofir,
the good player on the horn, the hippopotamus, the cat, the chicken,
the swallow, and especially reptiles. Death was personified by a great
viper, the queen of the West, known by the name Marîtsakro, the friend
of silence. Three heads, or the single head of a woman, attached to the
one body, were assigned to it. It was supposed to dwell in the mountain
opposite Karnak, which fact gave to it, as well as to the necropolis
itself, the two epithets of Khafîtnîbûs and Ta-tahnît, that is, The
Summit.*
* The abundance of the monuments of Marîtsakro found at
Sheikh Abd el-Gurneh, inclines me to believe that her
sanctuary was situated in the neighbourhood of the temple of
Uazmosû, but there was also on the top of the hill another
sanctuary which would equally satisfy the name Ta-tahnît.
Its chapel was situated at the foot of the hill of Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh,
but its sacred serpents crawled and wriggled through the necropolis,
working miracles and effecting the cure of the most dangerous maladies.
The faithful were accustomed to dedicate to them, in payment of their
vows, stelas, or slabs of roughly hewn stone, with inscriptions
which witnessed to a deep gratitude. Hearken! I, from the time of my
appearance on earth, I was a Servant of the True Place, Nofirâbû, a
stupid ignorant person, who knew not good from evil, and I committed
sin against The Summit. She punished me, and I was in her hand day and
night. I lay groaning on my couch like a woman in childbed, and I made
supplication to the air, but it did not come to me, for I was hunted
down by The Summit of the West, the brave one among all the gods and all
the goddesses of the city; so I would say to all the miserable sinners
among the people of the necropolis: Give heed to The Summit, for there
is a lion in The Summit, and she strikes as strikes a spell-casting
Lion, and she pursues him who sins against her! I invoked then my
mistress, and I felt that she flew to me like a pleasant breeze;
she placed herself upon me, and this made me recognise her hand, and
appeased she returned to me, and she delivered me from suffering, for
she is my life, The Summit of the West, when she is appeased, and she
ought to be invoked! There were many sinners, we may believe, among
that ignorant and superstitious population, but the governors of Thebes
did not put their confidence in the local deities alone to keep them
within bounds, and to prevent their evil deeds; commissioners, with the
help of a detachment of Mazaîû, were an additional means of conducting
them into the right way. They had, in this respect, a hard work to
accomplish, for every day brought with it its contingent of crimes,
which they had to follow up, and secure the punishment of the authors.
Nsisûamon came to inform them that the workman Nakhtummaût and his
companions had stolen into his house, and robbed him of three large
loaves, eight cakes, and some pastry; they had also drunk a jar of beer,
and poured out from pure malice the oil which they could not carry
away with them. Panîbi had met the wife of a comrade alone near an
out-of-the-way tomb, and had taken advantage of her notwithstanding her
cries; this, moreover, was not the first offence of the culprit, for
several young girls had previously been victims of his brutality, and
had not ventured up to this time to complain of him on account of the
terror with which he inspired the neighbourhood. Crimes against the dead
were always common; every penniless fellow knew what quantities of gold
and jewels had been entombed with the departed, and these treasures,
scattered around them at only a few feet from the surface of the ground,
presented to them a constant temptation to which they often succumbed.
Some were not disposed to have accomplices, while others associated
together, and, having purchased at a serious cost the connivance of the
custodians, set boldly to work on tombs both recent and ancient. Not
content with stealing the funerary furniture, which they disposed of to
the undertakers, they stripped the mummies also, and smashed the
bodies in their efforts to secure the jewels; then, putting the remains
together again, they rearranged the mummies afresh so cleverly that
they can no longer be distinguished by their outward appearance from the
originals, and the first wrappings must be removed before the fraud can
be discovered. From time to time one of these rogues would allow himself
to be taken for the purpose of denouncing his comrades, and avenging
himself for the injustice of which he was the victim in the division
of the spoil; he was laid hold of by the Mazaîû, and brought before the
tribunal of justice. The lands situated on the left bank of the
Nile belonged partly to the king and partly to the god Amon, and any
infraction of the law in regard to the necropolis was almost certain
to come within the jurisdiction of one or other of them. The commission
appointed, therefore, to determine the damage done in any case, included
in many instances the high priest or his delegates, as well as the
officers of the Pharaoh. The office of this commission was to examine
into the state of the tombs, to interrogate the witnesses and the
accused, applying the torture if necessary: when they had got at the
facts, the tribunal of the notables condemned to impalement some half
a dozen of the poor wretches, and caused some score of others to be
whipped.* But, when two or three months had elapsed, the remembrance of
the punishment began to die away, and the depredations began afresh. The
low rate of wages occasioned, at fixed periods, outbursts of discontent
and trouble which ended in actual disturbances. The rations allowed to
each workman, and given to him at the beginning of each month, would
possibly have been sufficient for himself and his family, but, owing to
the usual lack of foresight in the Egyptian, they were often consumed
long before the time fixed, and the pinch soon began to be felt. The
workmen, demoralised by their involuntary abstinence, were not slow to
turn to the overseer; We are perishing of hunger, and there are still
eighteen days before the next month. The latter was prodigal of fair
speeches, but as his words were rarely accompanied by deeds, the
workmen would not listen to him; they stopped work, left the workshop in
turbulent crowds, ran with noisy demonstrations to some public place to
hold a meeting--perhaps the nearest monument, at the gate of the temple
of Thûtmosis III.,** behind the chapel of Mînephtah,*** or in the court
of that of Seti I.
* This is how I translate a fairly common expression, which
means literally, to be put on the wood. Spiegelberg sees in
this only a method of administering torture.
** Perhaps the chapel of Uazmôsû, or possibly the free space
before the temple of Deîr el-Baharî.
*** The site of this chapel was discovered by Prof. Petrie
in the spring of 1896. It had previously been supposed to be
a temple of Amenôthes III.
Their overseers followed them; the police commissioners of the locality,
the Mazaîû, and the scribes mingled with them and addressed themselves
to some of the leaders with whom they might be acquainted. But these
would not at first give them a hearing. We will not return, they would
say to the peacemakers; make it clear to your superiors down below
there. It must have been manifest that from their point of view their
complaints were well founded, and the official, who afterwards gave an
account of the affair to the authorities, was persuaded of this. We
went to hear them, and they spoke true words to us. For the most part
these strikes had no other consequence than a prolonged stoppage of
work, until the distribution of rations at the beginning of the next
month gave the malcontents courage to return to their tasks. Attempts
were made to prevent the recurrence of these troubles by changing
the method and time of payments. These were reduced to an interval of
fifteen days, and at length, indeed, to one of eight. The result was
very much the same as before: the workman, paid more frequently, did not
on that account become more prudent, and the hours of labour lost did
not decrease. The individual man, if he had had nobody to consider but
himself, might have put up with the hardships of his situation, but
there were almost always wife and children or sisters concerned, who
clamoured for bread in their hunger, and all the while the storehouses
of the temples or those of the state close by were filled to overflowing
with durrah, barley, and wheat.*
* Khonsu, for example, excites his comrades to pillage the
storehouses of the gate.
The temptation to break open the doors and to help themselves in the
present necessity must have been keenly felt. Some bold spirits among
the strikers, having set out together, scaled the two or three boundary
walls by which the granaries were protected, but having reached this
position their hearts, failed them, and they contented themselves with
sending to the chief custodian an eloquent pleader, to lay before him
their very humble request: We are come, urged by famine, urged by
thirst, having no more linen, no more oil, no more fish, no more
vegetables. Send to Pharaoh, our master, send to the king, our lord,
that he may provide us with the necessaries of life. If one of them,
with less self-restraint, was so carried away as to let drop an oath,
which was a capital offence, saying, By Amon! by the sovereign, whose
anger is death! if he asked to be taken before a magistrate in order
that he might reiterate there his complaint, the others interceded for
him, and begged that he might escape the punishment fixed by the law
for blasphemy; the scribe, good fellow as he was, closed his ears to the
oath, and, if it were in his power, made a beginning of satisfying their
demands by drawing upon the excess of past months to such an extent as
would pacify them for some days, and by paying them a supplemental wage
in the name of the Pharaoh. They cried out loudly: Shall there not be
served out to us corn in excess of that which has been distributed to
us; if not we will not stir from this spot?
At length the end of the month arrived, and they all appeared together
before the magistrates, when they said: Let the scribe, Khâmoîsît,
who is accountable, be sent for! He was thereupon brought before the
notables of the town, and they said to him: See to the corn which thou
hast received, and give some of it to the people of the necropolis.
Pmontunîboîsît was then sent for, and rations of wheat were given to
us daily. Famine was not caused only by the thriftlessness of the
multitude: administrators of all ranks did not hesitate to appropriate,
each one according to his position, a portion of the means entrusted
to them for the maintenance of their subordinates, and the latter often
received only instalments of what was due to them. The culprits often
escaped from their difficulties by either laying hold of half a dozen
of their brawling victims, or by yielding to them a proportion of
their ill-gotten gains, before a rumour of the outbreak could reach
head-quarters. It happened from time to time, however, when the
complaints against them were either too serious or too frequent, that
they were deprived of their functions, cited before the tribunals, and
condemned. What took place at Thebes was repeated with some variations
in each of the other large cities. Corruption, theft, and extortion had
prevailed among the officials from time immemorial, and the most active
kings alone were able to repress these abuses, or confine them within
narrow limits; as soon as discipline became relaxed, however, they began
to appear again, and we have no more convincing proof of the state of
decadence into which Thebes had fallen towards the middle of the XXth
dynasty, than the audacity of the crimes committed in the necropolis
during the reigns of the successors of Ramses III.
The priesthood of Amon alone displayed any vigour and enjoyed any
prosperity in the general decline. After the victory of the god over the
heretic kings no one dared to dispute his supremacy, and the Ramessides
displayed a devout humility before him and his ministers. Henceforward
he became united to Râ in a definite manner, and his authority not only
extended over the whole of the land of Egypt, but over all the countries
also which were brought within her influence; so that while Pharaoh
continued to be the greatest of kings, Pharaohs god held a position
of undivided supremacy among the deities. He was the chief of the two
Bnneads, the Heliopolitan and the Hermopolitan, and displayed for
the latter a special affection; for the vague character of its eight
secondary deities only served to accentuate the position of the ninth
and principal divinity with whose primacy that of Amon was identified.
It was more easy to attribute to Amon the entire work of creation when
Shû, Sibû, Osiris, and Sit had been excluded--the deities whom the
theologians of Heliopolis had been accustomed to associate with the
demiurge; and in the hymns which they sang at his solemn festivals they
did not hesitate to ascribe to him all the acts which the priests of
former times had assigned to the Ennead collectively. He made earth,
silver, gold,--the true lapis at his good pleasure.--He brought forth
the herbs for the cattle, the plants upon which men live.--He made to
live the fish of the river,--the birds which hover in the air,--giving
air to those which are in the egg.--He animates the insects,--he makes
to live the small birds, the reptiles, and the gnats as well.--He
provides food for the rat in his hole,--supports the bird upon the
branch.--May he be blessed for all this, he who is alone, but with many
hands. Men spring from his two eyes, and quickly do they lose
their breath while acclaiming him--Egyptians and Libyans, Negroes and
Asiatics: Hail to thee! they all say; praise to thee because thou
dwellest amongst us!--Obeisances before thee because thou createst
us!--Thou art blessed by every living thing,--thou hast worshippers in
every place,--in the highest of the heavens, in all the breadth of
the earth,--in the depths of the seas.--The gods bow before thy
Majesty,--magnifying the souls which form them,--rejoicing at meeting
those who have begotten them,--they say to thee: Go in peace,--father
of the fathers of all the gods,--who suspended the heaven, levelled the
earth;--creator of beings, maker of things,--sovereign king, chief of
the gods,--we adore thy souls, because thou hast made us,--we lavish
offerings upon thee, because thou hast given us birth,--we shower
benedictions upon thee, because thou dwellest among us. We have here
the same ideas as those which predominate in the hymns addressed to
Atonû,* and in the prayers directed to Phtah, the Nile, Shû, and the
Sun-god of Heliopolis at the same period.
* Breasted points out the decisive influence exercised by
the solar hymns of Amenôthes IV. on the development of the
solar ideas contained in the hymns to Amon put forth or re-
edited in the XXIIIrd dynasty.
The idea of a single god, lord and maker of all things, continued to
prevail more and more throughout Egypt--not, indeed, among the lower
classes who persisted in the worship of their genii and their animals,
but among the royal family, the priests, the nobles, and people of
culture. The latter believed that the Sun-god had at length absorbed
all the various beings who had been manifested in the feudal divinities:
these, in fact, had surrendered their original characteristics in order
to become forms of the Sun, Amon as well as the others--and the new
belief displayed itself in magnifying the solar deity, but the solar
deity united with the Theban Amon, that is, Amon-Râ. The omnipotence of
this one god did not, however, exclude a belief in the existence of his
compeers; the theologians thought all the while that the beings to whom
ancient generations had accorded a complete independence in respect of
their rivals were nothing more than emanations from one supreme being.
If local pride forced them to apply to this single deity the designation
customarily used in their city--Phtah at Memphis, Anhûri-Shû at Thinis,
Khnûmû in the neighbourhood of the first cataract--they were quite
willing to allow, at the same time, that these appellations were but
various masks for one face. Phtah, Hâpi, Khnûmû, Râ,--all the gods, in
fact,--were blended with each other, and formed but one deity--a unique
existence, multiple in his names, and mighty according to the importance
of the city in which he was worshipped. Hence Amon, lord of the capital
and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect,
and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god
of Egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers. He
did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead
as he exercised over the living; he had delegated his functions in this
respect to a goddess, Marîtsakro, for whom the poorer inhabitants of the
left bank entertained a persistent devotion. She was a kind of Isis or
hospitable Hathor, whose subjects in the other world adapted themselves
to the nebulous and dreary existence provided for their disembodied
doubles. The Osirian and solar doctrines were afterwards blended
together in this local mythology, and from the XIth dynasty onwards the
Theban nobility had adopted, along with the ceremonies in use in the
Memphite period, the Heliopolitan beliefs concerning the wanderings
of the soul in the west, its embarkation on the solar ship, and its
resting-places in the fields of Ialû. The rock-tombs of the XVIIIth
dynasty demonstrate that the Thebans had then no different concept of
their life beyond the world from that entertained by the inhabitants
of the most ancient cities: they ascribed to that existence the same
inconsistent medley of contradictory ideas, from which each one might
select what pleased him best--either repose in a well-provisioned tomb,
or a dwelling close to Osiris in the middle of a calm and agreeable
paradise, or voyages with Râ around the world.*
* The Pyramid texts are found for the most part in the tombs
of Nofirû and Harhôtpû; the texts of the Book of the Dead
are met with on the Theban coffins of the same period.
[Illustration: 060.jpg DECORATED WRAPPINGS OF A MUMMY]
The fusion of Râ and Amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which
arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these
inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be
out of harmony with the new views. The devout servant of Amon, desirous
of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other
would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going
forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on
the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick
darkness of, Hades. To this end he endeavoured to collect the formulae
which would enable him to attain to this supreme happiness, and also
inform him concerning the hidden mysteries of that obscure half of the
world in which the sun dwelt between daylight and daylight, teaching him
also how to make friends and supporters of the benevolent genii, and how
to avoid or defeat the monsters whom he would encounter. The best
known of the books relating to these mysteries contained a geographical
description of the future world as it was described by the Theban
priests towards the end of the Ramesside period; it was, in fact, an
itinerary in which was depicted each separate region of the underworld,
with its gates, buildings, and inhabitants.*
* The monumental text of this book is found sculptured on a
certain number of the tombs of the Theban kings. It was
first translated into English by Birch, then into French by
Dévéria, and by Maspero.
The account of it given by the Egyptian theologians did not exhibit much
inventive genius. They had started with the theory that the sun, after
setting exactly west of Thebes, rose again due east of the city, and
they therefore placed in the dark hemisphere all the regions of the
universe which lay to the north of those two points of the compass. The
first stage of the suns journey, after disappearing below the horizon,
coincided with the period of twilight; the orb travelled along the open
sky, diminishing the brightness of his fires as he climbed northward,
and did not actually enter the underworld till he reached Abydos,
close to the spot where, at the Mouth of the Cleft, the souls of the
faithful awaited him. As soon as he had received them into his boat,
he plunged into the tunnel which there pierces the mountains, and the
cities through which he first passed between Abydos and the Fayûm were
known as the Osirian fiefs. He continued his journey through them for
the space of two hours, receiving the homage of the inhabitants, and
putting such of the shades on shore as were predestined by their special
devotion for the Osiris of Abydos and his associates, Horus and Anubis,
to establish themselves in this territory. Beyond Heracleopolis, he
entered the domains of the Memphite gods, the land of Sokaris, and
this probably was the most perilous moment of his journey.
[Illustration: 062.jpg ONE OF THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKS OF AMON]
The feudatories of Phtah were gathered together in grottoes, connected
by a labyrinth of narrow passages through which even the most fully
initiated were scarcely able to find their way; the luminous boat,
instead of venturing within these catacombs, passed above them by
mysterious tracks. The crew were unable to catch a glimpse of the
sovereign through whose realm they journeyed, and they in like manner
were invisible to him; he could only hear the voices of the divine
sailors, and he answered them from the depth of the darkness. Two hours
were spent in this obscure passage, after which navigation became easier
as the vessel entered the nomes subject to the Osirises of the Delta:
four consecutive hours of sailing brought the bark from the province in
which the four principal bodies of the god slept to that in which
his four souls kept watch, and, as it passed, it illuminated the eight
circles reserved for men and kings who worshipped the god of Mendes.
From the tenth hour onwards it directed its course due south, and passed
through the Aûgàrît, the place of fire and abysmal waters to which the
Heliopolitans consigned the souls of the impious; then finally quitting
the tunnel, it soared up in the east with the first blush of dawn. Each
of the ordinary dead was landed at that particular hour of the twelve,
which belonged to the god of his choice or of his native town. Left to
dwell there they suffered no absolute torment, but languished in the
darkness in a kind of painful torpor, from which condition the approach
of the bark alone was able to rouse them. They hailed its daily coming
with acclamations, and felt new life during the hour in which its rays
fell on them, breaking out into lamentations as the bark passed away and
the light disappeared with it. The souls who were devotees of the sun
escaped this melancholy existence; they escorted the god, reduced though
he was to a mummied corpse, on his nightly cruise, and were piloted by
him safe and sound to meet the first streaks of the new day. As the
boat issued from the mountain in the morning between the two trees which
flanked the gate of the east, these souls had their choice of several
ways of spending the day on which they were about to enter. They might
join their risen god in his course through the hours of light, and
assist him in combating Apophis and his accomplices, plunging again at
night into Hades without having even for a moment quitted his side.
[Illustration: 066.jpg THE ENTRANCE TO A ROYAL TOMB]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph, by Beato, of the
tomb of Ramses IV.
[Illustration: 066b.jpg ONE OF THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT]
They might, on the other hand, leave him and once more enter the world
of the living, settling themselves where they would, but always by
preference in the tombs where their bodies awaited them, and where they
could enjoy the wealth which had been accumulated there: they might walk
within their garden, and sit beneath the trees they had planted; they
could enjoy the open air beside the pond they had dug, and breathe the
gentle north breeze on its banks after the midday heat, until the time
when the returning evening obliged them to repair once more to Abydos,
and re-embark with the god in order to pass the anxious vigils of the
night under his protection. Thus from the earliest period of Egyptian
history the life beyond the tomb was an eclectic one, made up of a
series of earthly enjoyments combined together.
The Pharaohs had enrolled themselves instinctively among the most ardent
votaries of this complex doctrine. Their relationship to the sun made
its adoption a duty, and its profession was originally, perhaps, one of
the privileges of their position. Râ invited them on board because they
were his children, subsequently extending this favour to those whom
they should deem worthy to be associated with them, and thus become
companions of the ancient deceased kings of Upper and Lower Egypt.*
* This is apparently what we gather from the picture
inserted in chapter xvii. of the Book of the Dead, where
we see the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt guiding the divine
bark and the deceased with them.
The idea which the Egyptians thus formed of the other world, and of the
life of the initiated within it, reacted gradually on their concept of
the tomb and of its befitting decoration. They began to consider the
entrances to the pyramid, and its internal passages and chambers, as a
conventional representation of the gates, passages, and halls of Hades
itself; when the pyramid passed out of fashion, and they had replaced
it by a tomb cut in the rock in one or other of the branches of the Bab
el-Moluk valley, the plan of construction which they chose was an exact
copy of that employed by the Memphites and earlier Thebans, and they
hollowed out for themselves in the mountain-side a burying-place on the
same lines as those formerly employed within the pyramidal structure.
The relative positions of the tunnelled tombs along the valley were not
determined by any order of rank or of succession to the throne; each
Pharaoh after Ramses I. set to work on that part of the rock where the
character of the stone favoured his purpose, and displayed so little
respect for his predecessors, that the workmen, after having tunnelled
a gallery, were often obliged to abandon it altogether, or to change the
direction of their excavations so as to avoid piercing a neighbouring
tomb. The architects design was usually a mere project which could be
modified at will, and, which he did not feel bound to carry out with
fidelity; the actual measurements of the tomb of Ramses IV. are almost
everywhere at variance with the numbers and arrangement of the working
drawing of it which has been preserved to us in a papyrus. The general
disposition of the royal tombs, however, is far from being complicated;
we have at the entrance the rectangular door, usually surmounted by the
sun, represented by a yellow disk, before which the sovereign kneels
with his hands raised in the posture of adoration; this gave access to
a passage sloping gently downwards, and broken here and there by a level
landing and steps, leading to a first chamber of varying amplitude, at
the further end of which a second passage opened which descended to one
or more apartments, the last of which, contained the coffin. The oldest
rock-tombs present some noteworthy exceptions to this plan, particularly
those of Seti I. and Ramses III.; but from the time of Ramses IV., there
is no difference to be remarked in them except in the degree of finish
of the wall-paintings or in the length of the passages. The shortest of
the latter extends some fifty-two feet into the rock, while the longest
never exceeds three hundred and ninety feet. The same artifices
which had been used by the pyramid-builders to defeat the designs of
robbers--false mummy-pits, painted and sculptured walls built across
passages, stairs concealed under a movable stone in the corner of a
chamber--were also employed by the Theban engineers. The decoration of
the walls was suggested, as in earlier times, by the needs of the royal
soul, with this difference--that the Thebans set themselves to render
visible to his eyes by paintings that which the Memphites had been
content to present to his intelligence in writing, so that the Pharaoh
could now see what his ancestors had been able merely to read on the
walls of their tombs. Where the inscribed texts in the burial-chamber
of Unas state that Unas, incarnate in the Sun, and thus representing
Osiris, sails over the waters on high or glides into the Elysian fields,
the sculptured or painted scenes in the interior of the Theban catacombs
display to the eye Ramses occupying the place of the god in the solar
bark and in the fields of laid. Where the walls of Unas bear only the
prayers recited over the mummy for the opening of his mouth, for the
restoration of the use of his limbs, for his clothing, perfuming, and
nourishment, we see depicted on those of Seti I. or Ramses IV. the
mummies of these kings and the statues of their doubles in the hands
of the priests, who are portrayed in the performance of these various
offices. The starry ceilings of the pyramids reproduce the aspect of the
sky, but without giving the names of the stars: on the ceilings of some
of the Ramesside rock-tombs, on the other hand, the constellations are
represented, each with its proper figure, while astronomical tables give
the position of the heavenly bodies at intervals of fifteen days, so
that the soul could tell at a glance into what region of the firmament
the course of the bark would bring him each night. In the earlier
Ramesside tombs, under Seti I. and Ramses II., the execution of these
subjects shows evidence of a care and skill which are quite marvellous,
and both figures and hieroglyphics betray the hand of accomplished
artists. But in the tomb of Ramses III. the work has already begun to
show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured
in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of
the reds and blues remind us of a childs first efforts at painting.
This decline is even more marked under the succeeding Ramessides; the
drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude,
and the latest paintings seem but a lamentable caricature of the earlier
ones.
The courtiers and all those connected with the worship of
Amon-Râ--priests, prophets, singers, and functionaries connected with
the necropolis--shared the same belief with regard to the future world
as their sovereign, and they carried their faith in the suns power
to the point of identifying themselves with him after death, and of
substituting the name of Râ for that of Osiris; they either did not
venture, however, to go further than this, or were unable to introduce
into their tombs all that we find in the Bab el-Moluk. They confined
themselves to writing briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to
the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the Book of the
Dead, a copy of the Book of knowing what there is in Hades, or of
some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed. Hastily
prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly
written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set
down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory
illustrations. The representations of the gods in them are but little
better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely
decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the
correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs.
Although Amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of
the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the
Egyptians: the other divinities previously associated with him still
held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with
a more decided personality. The goddess regarded as his partner was at
first represented as childless, in spite of the name of Maût or Mût--the
mother--by which she was invoked, and Amon was supposed to have adopted
Montû, the god of Hermonthis, in order to complete his triad. Montû,
however, formerly the sovereign of the Theban plain, and lord over Amon
himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine
son.
[Illustration: 074.jpg KHONSÛ* AND TEMPLE OF KHONSÛ**.]
* Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette in the
Gizeh Museum.
** Drawn by Thuillier: A is the pylon, B the court, C the
hypostyle hall, E the passage isolating the sanctuary, D the
sanctuary, F the opisthodomos with its usual chambers.
The priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage
of lesser importance, named Khonsû, who up to that period had been
relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. How they
came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and
Thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place
before the XIXth dynasty drew to its close. Khonsû, thus honoured, soon
became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes,
at first merely supplementing Montû, but finally supplanting him in the
third place of the Triad. From the time of Sesostris onwards, Theban
dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with Amon-Râ and Mût the
divine mother.
* It is possible that this assimilation originated in the
fact that Khonsû is derived from the verb khonsû, to
navigate: Khonsû would thus have been he who crossed the
heavens in his bark--that is, the moon-god.
[Illustration: 075.jpg THE TEMPLE OF KHONSÛ AT KARNAK]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
It was now incumbent on the Pharaoh to erect to this newly made
favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the
rank to which his votaries had exalted him. To this end, Ramses III.
chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of Karnak,
close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations
of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.*
* The proof that the temple was founded by Ramses III. is
furnished by the inscriptions of the sanctuary and the
surrounding chambers.
Its proportions are by no means perfect, the sculpture is wanting in
refinement, the painting is coarse, and the masonry was so faulty, that
it was found necessary in several places to cover it with a coat of
stucco before the bas-reliefs could be carved on the walls; yet, in
spite of all this, its general arrangement is so fine, that it may
well be regarded, in preference to other more graceful or magnificent
buildings, as the typical temple of the Theban period. It is divided
into two parts, separated from each other by a solid wall. In the centre
of the smaller of these is placed the Holy of Holies, which opens
at both ends into a passage ten feet in width, isolating it from the
surrounding buildings. To the right and left of the sanctuary are dark
chambers, and behind it is a hall supported by four columns, into which
open seven small apartments. This formed the dwelling-place of the god
and his compeers. The sanctuary communicates, by means of two doors
placed in the southern wall, with a hypostyle hall of greater width
than depth, divided by its pillars into a nave and two aisles. The
four columns of the nave are twenty-three feet in height, and have
bell-shaped capitals, while those of the aisles, two on either side, are
eighteen feet high, and are crowned with lotiform capitals.
[Illustration: 077.jpg THE COURT OF THE TEMPLE OF KHONSÛ]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The roof of the nave was thus five feet higher than those of the aisles,
and in the clear storey thus formed, stone gratings, similar to those
in the temple of Amon, admitted light to the building. The courtyard,
surrounded by a fine colonnade of two rows of columns, was square, and
was entered by four side posterns in addition to the open gateway at the
end placed between two quadrangular towers.
[Illustration: 078.jpg THE COLONNADE BUILT BY THÛTMOSIS III]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger and
Daniel Héron.
This pylon measures 104 feet in length, and is 32 feet 6 inches wide,
by 58 feet high. It contains no internal chambers, but merely a narrow
staircase which leads to the top of the doorway, and thence to the
summit of the towers. Four long angular grooves run up the façade of the
towers to a height of about twenty feet from the ground, and are in
the same line with a similar number of square holes which pierce the
thickness of the building higher up. In these grooves were placed
Venetian masts, made of poles spliced together and held in their place
by means of hooks and wooden stays which projected from the four holes;
these masts were to carry at their tops pennons of various colours.
Such was the temple of Khonsû, and the majority of the great Theban
buildings--at Luxor, Qurneh, and Bamesseum, or Medinet-Uabu--were
constructed on similar lines. Even in their half-ruined condition there
is something oppressive and uncanny in their appearance. The gods
loved to shroud themselves in mystery, and, therefore, the plan of
the building was so arranged as to render the transition almost
imperceptible from the blinding sunlight outside to the darkness of
their retreat within. In the courtyard, we are still surrounded by vast
spaces to which air and light have free access. The hypostyle hall,
however, is pervaded by an appropriate twilight, the sanctuary is veiled
in still deeper darkness, while in the chambers beyond reigns an almost
perpetual night. The effect produced by this gradation of obscurity
was intensified by constructional artifices. The different parts of the
building are not all on the same ground-level, the pavement rising as
the sanctuary is approached, and the rise is concealed by a few steps
placed at intervals. The difference of level in the temple of Khonsû is
not more than five feet three inches, but it is combined with a still
more considerable lowering of the height of the roof. From the pylon
to the wall at the further end the height decreases as we go on; the
peristyle is more lofty than the hypostyle hall, this again is higher
than the sanctuary and the hall of columns, and the chamber beyond it
drops still further in altitude.*
* This is the law of progressive diminution of heights of
Perrot-Chipiez.
Karnak is an exception to this rule; this temple had in the course of
centuries undergone so many restorations and additions, that it formed a
collection of buildings rather than a single edifice. It might have
been regarded, as early as the close of the Theban empire, as a kind of
museum, in which every century and every period of art, from the XIIth
dynasty downwards, had left its distinctive mark.*
* A on the plan denotes the XIIth dynasty temple; B is the
great hypostyle hall of Seti I. and Ramses II.; C the temple
of Ramses III.
[Illustration: 081.jpg THE TEMPLE OF AMON AT KARNAK]
All the resources of architecture had been brought into requisition
during this period to vary, at the will of each sovereign, the
arrangement and the general effect of the component parts. Columns with
sixteen sides stand in the vicinity of square pillars, and lotiform
capitals alternate with those of the bell-shape; attempts were even made
to introduce new types altogether. The architect who built at the back
of the sanctuary what is now known as the colonnade of Thûtmosis
III., attempted to invert the bell-shaped capital; the bell was turned
downwards, and the neck attached to the plinth, while the mouth rested
on the top of the shaft. This awkward arrangement did not meet with
favour, for we find it nowhere repeated; other artists, however, with
better taste, sought at this time to apply the flowers symbolical of
Upper and Lower Egypt to the decorations of the shafts. In front of the
sanctuary of Karnak two pillars are still standing which have on them
in relief representations respectively of the fullblown lotus and the
papyrus. A building composed of so many incongruous elements required
frequent restoration--a wall which had been undermined by water needed
strengthening, a pylon displaying cracks claimed attention, some
unsafe colonnade, or a colossus which had been injured by the fall of
a cornice, required shoring up--so that no sooner had the corvée for
repairs completed their work in one part, than they had to begin again
elsewhere.
[Illustration: 082.jpg THE TWO STELE-PILLARS AT KARNAK]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The revenues of Amon must, indeed, have been enormous to have borne the
continual drain occasioned by restoration, and the resources of the god
would soon have been exhausted had not foreign wars continued to furnish
him during several centuries with all or more than he needed.
The gods had suffered severely in the troublous times which had followed
the reign of Seti II., and it required all the generosity of Ramses III.
to compensate them for the losses they had sustained during the anarchy
under Arisû. The spoil taken from the Libyans, from the Peoples of the
Sea, and from the Hittites had flowed into the sacred treasuries, while
the able administration of the sovereign had done the rest, so that on
the accession of Ramses IV. the temples were in a more prosperous state
than ever.* They held as their own property 169 towns, nine of which
were in Syria and Ethiopia; they possessed 113,433 slaves of both sexes,
493,386 head of cattle, 1,071,780 arurse of land, 514 vineyards and
orchards, 88 barks and sea-going vessels, 336 kilograms of gold both in
ingots and wrought, 2,993,964 grammes of silver, besides quantities of
copper and precious stones, and hundreds of storehouses in which they
kept corn, oil, wine, honey, and preserved meats--the produce of their
domains. Two examples will suffice to show the extent of this latter
item: the live geese reached the number of 680,714, and the salt or
smoked fish that of 494,800.** Amon claimed the giant share of this
enormous total, and three-fourths of it or more were reserved for his
use, namely---86,486 slaves, 421,362 head of cattle, 898,168 _arurse_
of cornland, 433 vineyards and orchards, and 56 Egyptian towns. The nine
foreign towns all belonged to him, and one of them contained the temple
in which he was worshipped by the Syrians whenever they came to pay
their tribute to the kings representatives: it was but just that his
patrimony should surpass that of his compeers, since the conquering
Pharaohs owed their success to him, who, without the co-operation of the
other feudal deities, had lavished victories upon them.
* The donations of Ramses III., or rather the total of the
donations made to the gods by the predecessors of that
Pharaoh, and confirmed and augmented by him, are enumerated
at length in the _Great Harris Papyrus_.
** An abridgement of these donations occupies seven large
plates in the _Great Harris Papyrus_.
His domain was at least five times more considerable than that of Râ of
Heliopolis, and ten times greater than that of the Memphite Phtah, and
yet of old, in the earlier times of history, Râ and Phtah were reckoned
the wealthiest of the Egyptian gods. It is easy to understand the
influence which a god thus endowed with the goods of this world
exercised over men in an age when the national wars had the same
consequences for the immortals as for their worshippers, and when the
defeat of a people was regarded as a proof of the inferiority of
its patron gods. The most victorious divinity became necessarily the
wealthiest, before whom all other deities bowed, and whom they, as well
as their subjects, were obliged to serve.
So powerful a god as Amon had but few obstacles to surmount before
becoming the national deity; indeed, he was practically the foremost of
the gods during the Ramesside period, and was generally acknowledged
as Egypts representative by all foreign nations.* His priests shared in
the prestige he enjoyed, and their influence in state affairs increased
proportionately with his power.
* From the XVIIIth dynasty, at least, the first prophet of
Amon had taken the precedence of the high priests of
Heliopolis and Memphis, as is proved by the position he
occupies in the Egyptian hierarchy in the _Hood Papyrus_.
The chief of their hierarchy, however, did not bear the high titles
which in ancient times distinguished those of Memphis and Heliopolis; he
was content with the humble appellation of first prophet of Amon. He
had for several generations been nominated by the sovereign, but he was
generally chosen from the families attached hereditarily or otherwise
to the temple of Karnak, and must previously have passed through every
grade of the priestly hierarchy. Those who aspired to this honour had to
graduate as divine fathers; this was the first step in the initiation,
and one at which many were content to remain, but the more ambitious or
favoured advanced by successive stages to the dignity of third, and then
of second, prophet before attaining to the highest rank.*
* What we know on this subject has been brought to light
mainly by the inscriptions on the statue of Baûkûni-Khonsû
at Munich, published and commented on by Dévéria, and by
Lauth. The cursus honorum of Ramâ shows us that he was first
third, then second prophet of Amon, before being raised to
the pontificate in the reign of Mînephtah.
The Pharaohs of the XIXth dynasty jealously supervised the promotions
made in the Theban temples, and saw that none was elected except him who
was devoted to their interests--such as, for example, Baûkûni-khonsû
and Unnofri under Ramses II. Baûkûni-khonsû distinguished himself by his
administrative qualities; if he did not actually make the plans for the
hypostyle hall at Karnak, he appears at least to have superintended
its execution and decoration. He finished the great pylon, erected the
obelisks and gateways, built the _bari_ or vessel of the god, and found
a further field for his activity on the opposite bank of the Nile, where
he helped to complete both the chapel at Qurneh and also the Ramesseum.
Ramses II. had always been able to make his authority felt by the high
priests who succeeded Baûkûni-khonsû, but the Pharaohs who followed him
did not hold the reins with such a strong hand. As early as the reigns
of Mînephtah and Seti II. the first prophets, Raî and Ramâ, claimed the
right of building at Karnak for their own purposes, and inscribed on the
walls long inscriptions in which their own panegyrics took precedence
of that of the sovereign; they even aspired to a religious hegemony, and
declared themselves to be the chief of all the prophets of the gods
of the South and North. We do not know what became of them during the
usurpation of Arisû, but Nakhtû-ramses, son of Miribastît, who filled
the office during the reign of Ramses III., revived these ambitious
projects as soon as the state of Egypt appeared to favour them. The
king, however pious he might be, was not inclined to yield up any of his
authority, even though it were to the earthly delegate of the divinity
whom he reverenced before all others; the sons of the Pharaoh were,
however, more accommodating, and Nakhtû-ramses played his part so well
that he succeeded in obtaining from them the reversion of the high
priesthood for his son Amenôthes. The priestly office, from having been
elective, was by this stroke suddenly made hereditary in the family.
The kings preserved, it is true, the privilege of confirming the new
appointment, and the nominee was not considered properly qualified until
he had received his investiture from the sovereign.*
* This is proved by the Maunier stele, now in the Louvre; it
is there related how the high priest Manakh-pirrî received
his investiture from the Tanite king.
Practically the Pharaohs lost the power of choosing one among the sons
of the deceased pontiff; they were forced to enthrone the eldest of his
survivors, and legalise his accession by their approbation, even when
they would have preferred another. It was thus that a dynasty of vassal
High Priests came to be established at Thebes side by side with the
royal dynasty of the Pharaohs.
The new priestly dynasty was not long in making its power felt in
Thebes. Nakhtû-ramses and Amenôthes lived to a great age--from the reign
of Ramses III. to that of Ramses X., at the least; they witnessed the
accession of nine successive Pharaohs, and the unusual length of their
pontificates no doubt increased the already extraordinary prestige which
they enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of Egypt. It seemed as if
the god delighted to prolong the lives of his representatives beyond the
ordinary limits, while shortening those of the temporal sovereigns. When
the reigns of the Pharaohs began once more to reach their normal length,
the authority of Amenôthes had become so firmly established that no
human power could withstand it, and the later Ramessides were merely a
set of puppet kings who were ruled by him and his successors. Not only
was there a cessation of foreign expeditions, but the Delta, Memphis,
and Ethiopia were alike neglected, and the only activity displayed
by these Pharaohs, as far as we can gather from their monuments, was
confined to the service of Amon and Khonsû at Thebes. The lack of energy
and independence in these sovereigns may not, however, be altogether
attributable to their feebleness of character; it is possible that they
would gladly have entered on a career of conquest had they possessed
the means. It is always a perilous matter to allow the resources of
a country to fall into the hands of a priesthood, and to place its
military forces at the same time in the hands of the chief religious
authority. The warrior Pharaohs had always had at their disposal the
spoils obtained from foreign nations to make up the deficit which their
constant gifts to the temples were making in the treasury. The sons
of Ramses III., on the other hand, had suspended all military efforts,
without, however, lessening their lavish gifts to the gods, and they
must, in the absence of the spoils of war, have drawn to a considerable
extent upon the ordinary resources of the country; their successors
therefore found the treasury impoverished, and they would have been
entirely at a loss for money had they attempted to renew the campaigns
or continue the architectural work of their forefathers. The priests of
Amon had not as yet suffered materially from this diminution of revenue,
for they possessed property throughout the length and breadth of Egypt,
but they were obliged to restrict their expenditure, and employ the sums
formerly used for the enlarging of the temples on the maintenance
of their own body. Meanwhile public works had been almost everywhere
suspended; administrative discipline became relaxed, and disturbances,
with which the police were unable to cope, were increasing in all the
important towns. Nothing is more indicative of the state to which Egypt
was reduced, under the combined influence of the priesthood and the
Ramessides, than the thefts and pillaging of which the Theban necropolis
was then the daily scene. The robbers no longer confined themselves
to plundering the tombs of private persons; they attacked the royal
burying-places, and their depredations were carried on for years before
they were discovered. In the reign of Ramses IX., an inquiry, set on
foot by Amenôthes, revealed the fact that the tomb of Sovkûmsaûf I. and
his wife, Queen Nûbk-hâs, had been rifled, that those of Amenôthes I.
and of Antuf IV. had been entered by tunnelling, and that some dozen
other royal tombs in the cemetery of Drah abul Neggah were threatened.*
* The principal part of this inquiry constitutes the _Abbott
Papyrus_, acquired and published by the British Museum,
first examined and made the subject of study by Birch,
translated simultaneously into French by Maspero and by
Chabas, into German by Lauth and by Erman. Other papyri
relate to the same or similar occurrences, such as the Salt
and Amherst Papyri published by Chabas, and also the
Liverpool Papyri, of which we possess merely scattered
notices in the writings of Goodwin, and particularly in
those of Spiegelberg.
The severe means taken to suppress the evil were not, however,
successful; the pillagings soon began afresh, and the reigns of the last
three Ramessides between the robbers and the authorities, were marked by
a struggle in which the latter did not always come off triumphant.
[Illustration: 089.jpg RAMSES IX.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.
A system of repeated inspections secured the valley of Biban el-Moluk
from marauders,* but elsewhere the measures of defence employed were
unavailing, and the necropolis was given over to pillage, although both
Amenôthes and Hrihor had used every effort to protect it.
* Graffiti which are evidences of these inspections have
been drawn on the walls of several royal tombs by the
inspectors. Others have been found on several of the coffins
discovered at Deîr el-Baharî, e.g. on those of Seti I. and
Ramses II.; the most ancient belong to the pontificate of
Hrihor, others belong to the XXIst dynasty.
Hrihor appears to have succeeded immediately after Amenôthes, and
his accession to the pontificate gave his family a still more exalted
position in the country. As his wife Nozmit was of royal blood, he
assumed titles and functions to which his father and grandfather
had made no claim. He became the Royal Son of Ethiopia and
commander-in-chief of the national and foreign troops; he engraved his
name upon the monuments he decorated, side by side with that of Ramses
XII.; in short, he possessed all the characteristics of a Pharaoh except
the crown and the royal protocol. A century scarcely had elapsed since
the abdication of Ramses III., and now Thebes and the whole of Egypt
owned two masters: one the embodiment of the ancient line, but a mere
nominal king; the other the representative of Amon, and the actual ruler
of the country.
What then happened when the last Ramses who bore the kingly title was
gathered to his fathers? The royal lists record the accession after his
death of a new dynasty of Tanitic origin, whose founder was Nsbindidi
or Smendes; but, on the other hand, we gather from the Theban monuments
that the crown was seized by Hrihor, who reigned over the southern
provinces contemporaneously with Smendes. Hrihor boldly assumed as
prenomen his title of First Prophet of Amon, and his authority was
acknowledged by Ethiopia, over which he was viceroy, as well as by the
nomes forming the temporal domain of the high priests. The latter had
acquired gradually, either by marriage or inheritance, fresh territory
for the god, in the lands of the princes of Nekhabît, Kop-tos, Akhmîm,
and Abydos, besides the domains of some half-dozen feudal houses
who, from force of circumstances, had become sacerdotal families; the
extinction of the direct line of Ramessides now secured the High
Priests the possession of Thebes itself, and of all the lands within the
southern provinces which were the appanage of the crown.
[Illustration: 091.jpg HRIHOR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
They thus, in one way or another, became the exclusive masters of the
southern half of the Nile valley, from Elephantine to Siut; beyond Siut
also they had managed to acquire suzerainty over the town of Khobît, and
the territory belonging to it formed an isolated border province in the
midst of the independent baronies.*
* The extent of the principality of Thebes under the high
priests has been determined by means of the sacerdotal
titles of the Theban princesses.
The representative of the dynasty reigning at Tanis held the remainder
of Egypt from Shit to the Mediterranean--the half belonging to the
Memphite Phtah and the Helio-politan Râ, as opposed to that assigned to
Anion. The origin of this Tanite sovereign is uncertain, but it would
appear that he was of more exalted rank than his rival in the south. The
official chronicling of events was marked by the years of his reign, and
the chief acts of the government were carried out in his name even in
the Thebaid.* Repeated inundations had caused the ruin of part of the
temple of Karnak, and it was by the order and under the auspices of this
prince that all the resources of the country were employed to accomplish
the much-needed restoration.**
* I have pointed out that the years of the reign mentioned
in the inscriptions of the high priests and the kings of the
sacerdotal line must be attributed to their suzerains, the
kings of Tanis. Hrihor alone seems to have been an
exception, since to him are attributed the dates inscribed
in the name of the King Siamon: M. Daressy, however, will
not admit this, and asserts that this Siamon was a Tanite
sovereign who must not be identified with Hrihor, and must
be placed at least two or three generations later than the
last of the Ramessides.
* The real name Nsbindidi and the first monument of the
Manethonian Smendes were discovered in the quarries of
Dababîeh, opposite Gebelên.
It would have been impossible for him to have exercised any authority
over so rich and powerful a personage as Hrihor had he not possessed
rights to the crown, before which even the high priests of Amon were
obliged to bow, and hence it has been supposed that he was a descendant
of Ramses II. The descendants of this sovereign were doubtless divided
into at least two branches, one of which had just become extinct,
leaving no nearer heir than Hrihor, while another, of which there were
many ramifications, had settled in the Delta. The majority of these
descendants had become mingled with the general population, and had sunk
to the condition of private individuals; they had, however, carefully
preserved the tradition of their origin, and added proudly to their name
the qualification of royal son of Ramses. They were degenerate scions
of the Ramessides, and had neither the features nor the energy of their
ancestor. One of them, Zodphta-haûfônkhi, whose mummy was found at Deîr
el-Baharî, appears to have been tall and vigorous, but the head lacks
the haughty refinement which characterizes those of Seti I. and Ramses
II., and the features are heavy and coarse, having a vulgar, commonplace
expression.
[Illustration: 093.jpg ZODPHTAHAUFONKHI, ROYAL SON OF RAMSES]
Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Insinger.
It seems probable that one branch of the family, endowed with greater
capability than the rest, was settled at Tanis, where Sesostris had,
as we have seen, resided for many years; Smendes was the first of this
branch to ascend the throne. The remembrance of his remote ancestor,
Ramses IL, which was still treasured up in the city he had completely
rebuilt, as well as in the Delta into which he had infused new life, was
doubtless of no small service in securing the crown for his descendant,
when, the line of the Theban kings having come to an end, the Tanites
put in their claim to the succession. We are unable to discover if
war broke out between the two competitors, or if they arrived at an
agreement without a struggle; but, at all events, we may assume that,
having divided Egypt between them, neither of them felt himself strong
enough to overcome his rival, and contented himself with the possession
of half the empire, since he could not possess it in its entirety. We
may fairly believe that Smendes had the greater right to the throne,
and, above all, the more efficient army of the two, since, had it been
otherwise, Hrihor would never have consented to yield him the priority.
The unity of Egypt was, to outward appearances, preserved, through the
nominal possession by Smendes of the suzerainty; but, as a matter of
fact, it had ceased to exist, and the fiction of the two kingdoms
had become a reality for the first time within the range of history.
Henceforward there were two Egypts, governed by different constitutions
and from widely remote centres. Theban Egypt was, before all things,
a community recognizing a theocratic government, in which the kingly
office was merged in that of the high priest. Separated from Asia by the
length of the Delta, it turned its attention, like the Pharaohs of the
VIth and XIIth dynasties, to Ethiopia, and owing to its distance from
the Mediterranean, and from the new civilization developed on its
shores, it became more and more isolated, till at length it was reduced
to a purely African state. Northern Egypt, on the contrary, maintained
contact with European and Asiatic nations; it took an interest in their
future, it borrowed from them to a certain extent whatever struck it as
being useful or beautiful, and when the occasion presented itself, it
acted in concert with Mediterranean powers. There was an almost constant
struggle between these two divisions of the empire, at times
breaking out into an open rupture, to end as often in a temporary
re-establishment of unity. At one time Ethiopia would succeed in
annexing Egypt, and again Egypt would seize some part of Ethiopia; but
the settlement of affairs was never final, and the conflicting elements,
brought with difficulty into harmony, relapsed into their usual
condition at the end of a few years. A kingdom thus divided against
itself could never succeed in maintaining its authority over those
provinces which, even in the heyday of its power, had proved impatient
of its yoke.
Asia was associated henceforward in the minds of the Egyptians with
painful memories of thwarted ambitions, rather than as offering a field
for present conquest. They were pursued by the memories of their former
triumphs, and the very monuments of their cities recalled what they
were anxious to forget. Wherever they looked within their towns they
encountered the representation of some Asiatic scene; they read the
names of the cities of Syria on the walls of their temples; they saw
depicted on them its princes and its armies, whose defeat was recorded
by the inscriptions as well as the tribute which they had been forced
to pay. The sense of their own weakness prevented the Egyptians from
passing from useless regrets to action; when, however, one or other of
the Pharaohs felt sufficiently secure on the throne to carry his troops
far afield, he was always attracted to Syria, and crossed her frontiers,
often, alas! merely to encounter defeat.
[Illustration: 095.jpg Tailpiece]