EGYPTIANS.
If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive
Babylonia by the Arabian desert; on the other side, the western
portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive
valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of
Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they
served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two.
Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with
the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less
than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the
reign of Psammetichus (672-618 B. C.); and thus even the merchants of
Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing
as their instruments, as I have already observed, the Arabian
tribes,[573] alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt,
as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekatæus are unfortunately
lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited
Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it
formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian
marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as
well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges
been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his
narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion.
But the hard stone, combined with the dry climate of Upper Egypt
(where a shower of rain counted as a prodigy), have given such
permanence to the monuments in the valley of the Nile, that enough
has remained to bear out the father of Grecian history, and to show
that, in describing what he professes to have seen, he is a guide
perfectly trustworthy. For that which he heard, he appears only in
the character of a reporter, and often an incredulous reporter; but
though this distinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence
is not only obvious, but of the most capital moment,[574]—it has been
too often neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness.
[573] Strabo, xvi, pp. 766, 776, 778; Pliny, H. N. vi,
32. “Arabes, mirum dictu, ex innumeris populis pars æqua
in commerciis aut latrociniis degunt: in universum gentes
ditissimæ, ut apud quas maximæ opes Romanorum Parthorumque
subsistant,—vendentibus quæ a mari aut sylvis capiunt, nihil
invicem redimentibus.”
The latter part of this passage of Pliny presents an enunciation
sufficiently distinct, though by implication only, of what has
been called the _mercantile theory_ in political economy.
[574] To give one example: Herodotus mentions an opinion given to
him by the γραμματιστὴς (comptroller) of the property of Athênê
at Sais, to the effect that the sources of the Nile were at an
immeasurable depth in the interior of the earth, between Syênê
and Elephantinê, and that Psammetichus had vainly tried to sound
them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length (ii, 28). In
mentioning this tale (perfectly deserving of being _recounted_
at least, because it came from a person of considerable station
in the country), Herodotus expressly says: “This comptroller
seemed to me to be only bantering, though he professed to know
accurately,”—οὗτος δ᾽ ἐμοίγε παίζειν ἐδόκεε, φάμενος εἰδέναι
ἀτρεκέως. Now Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to this story,
introduces it just as if Herodotus had told it for a fact,—Πολλὰ
δ᾽ Ἡρόδοτός τε καὶ ἄλλοι φλυαροῦσιν, οἷον, etc.
Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern
writers, of similar carelessness or injustice towards this
admirable author.
The mysterious river Nile, a god[575] in the eyes of ancient
Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its usefulness
undiminished amidst the general degradation of the country, reached
the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, besides
two others artificially dug;—the Pelusiac branch formed the eastern
boundary of Egypt, the Kanôpic branch—one hundred and seventy miles
distant—the western; while the Sebennytic branch was a continuation
of the straight line of the upper river: from this latter branched
off the Saitic and the Mendesian arms.[576] Its overflowings are far
more fertilizing than those of the Euphrates in Assyria,—partly
from their more uniform recurrence both in time and quantity, partly
from the rich silt which it brings down and deposits, whereas the
Euphrates served only as a moisture. The patience of the Egyptians
had excavated, in middle Egypt, the vast reservoir—partly, it seems,
natural and preëxisting—called the lake of Mœris: and in the Delta,
a network of numerous canals; yet on the whole the hand of man
had been less tasked than in Babylonia; whilst the soil annually
enriched, yielded its abundant produce without either plough or spade
to assist the seed cast in by the husbandman.[577] That under these
circumstances a dense and regularly organized population should have
been concentrated in fixed abodes along the valley occupied by this
remarkable river, is no matter of wonder; the marked peculiarities
of the locality seem to have brought about such a result, in the
earliest periods to which human society can be traced. Along the
five hundred and fifty miles of its undivided course from Syênê
to Memphis, where for the most part the mountains leave only a
comparatively narrow strip on each bank, as well as in the broad
expanse between Memphis and the Mediterranean, there prevailed a
peculiar form of theocratic civilization, from a date which even in
the time of Herodotus was immemorially ancient. But when we seek for
some measure of this antiquity (earlier than the time when Greeks
were first admitted into Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus), we
find only the computations of the priests, reaching back for many
thousand years, first, of government by immediate and present gods,
next, of human kings. Such computations have been transmitted to
us by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,[578]—agreeing in their
essential conception of the foretime, with gods in the first part
of the series, and men in the second, but differing materially in
events, names, and epochs: probably, if we possessed lists from other
Egyptian temples, besides those which Manetho drew up at Heliopolis,
or which Herodotus learned at Memphis, we should find discrepancies
from both these two. To compare these lists, and to reconcile them as
far as they admit of being reconciled, is interesting, as enabling
us to understand the Egyptian mind, but conducts to no trustworthy
chronological results, and forms no part of the task of an historian
of Greece.
[575] Οἱ ἱρέες τοῦ Νείλου, Herod. ii, 90.
[576] The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in antiquity,
are not conformable to the modern geography of the country: see
Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und Röm. x, 1, p. 539.
The breadth of the base of the Delta, between Pelusium and
Kanôpus, is overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand
six hundred stadia; Diodorus (i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen
hundred stadia, which is near the truth, though the text of
Strabo in various passages is not uniform on this matter, and
requires correction. See Grosskurd’s note on Strabo, ii, p. 64
(note 3, p. 101), and xvii, p. 186 (note 9, p. 332). Pliny gives
the distance at one hundred and seventy miles (H. N. v, 9).
[577] Herod, i, 193. Παραγίνεται ὁ σῖτος (in Babylonia) οὐ,
κατάπερ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς
ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε καὶ κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος· ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη
χώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη, κατατέτμηται ἐς διώρυχας, etc.
Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by
the labor of that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris
brought home from his conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt
served the purpose partly of communication between the different
cities, partly of a constant supply of water to those towns which
were not immediately on the Nile: “that vast river, so constantly
at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus—ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε
ποτάμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικοῦ, ii, 11), spared the Egyptians all
the toil of irrigation which the Assyrian cultivator underwent
(ii, 14).
Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was
unfit either for horse or car, from the number of intersecting
canals,—ἄνιππος καὶ ἀναμάξευτος (ii, 108). But lower Egypt,
as Volney saw it, was among the countries in the world best
suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pronounces the
native population of the country to have no chance of contending
against the Mamelukes (Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol.
i, ch. 12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has reverted to the
state in which it was (ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη πᾶσα) before the
canals were made,—one of the many striking illustrations of the
difference between the Egypt which a modern traveller visits, and
that which Herodotus and even Strabo saw,—ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων
ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηθεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p. 788).
Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the
geological character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated
mud by the Nile, appear to me most remarkable (ii, 8-14). Having
no fixed number of years included in his religious belief as
measuring the past existence of the earth, he carries his mind
back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this
river in ten or twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of
time elapsed before I was born,” (ii, 11).
About the lake of Mœris, see a note a little farther on.
[578] See note in Appendix to this chapter.
To the Greeks, Egypt was a closed world before the reign of
Psammetichus, though after that time it gradually became an important
part of their field both of observation and action. The astonishment
which the country created in the mind of the earliest Grecian
visitors may be learned even from the narrative of Herodotus, who
doubtless knew it by report long before he went there. Both the
physical and moral features of Egypt stood in strong contrast with
Grecian experience: “not only (says Herodotus) does the climate
differ from all other climates, and the river from all other rivers,
but Egyptian laws and customs are opposed on almost all points to
those of other men.”[579] The delta was at that time full of large
and populous cities,[580] built on artificial elevations of ground,
and seemingly not much inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated
on the left bank of the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern
Cairo), a little higher up than the spot where the delta begins.
From the time when the Greeks first became cognizant of Egypt, to
the building of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis
was the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always
so,—there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of
Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than middle
Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have contained
the largest number of cities and the widest surface of productive
territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this honor from Thebes,
and the predominance of lower Egypt was still farther confirmed when
Psammetichus introduced Ionian and Karian troops as his auxiliaries
in the government of the country. But the stupendous magnitude of
the temples and palaces, the profusion of ornamental sculpture and
painting, the immeasurable range of sculptures hewn in the rocks
still remaining as attestations of the grandeur of Thebes,—not to
mention Ombi, Edfu, and Elephantinê,—show that upper Egypt was once
the place to which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid,
and where the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been
even contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants
from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet found
along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and in grandeur,
to those in Thebais.[581] What is remarkable is, that both the one
and the other are strikingly distinguished from the Pyramids, which
alone remain to illustrate the site of the ancient Memphis. There are
no pyramids either in upper Egypt or in Nubia; but on the Nile, above
Nubia, near the Ethiopian Meroê, pyramids in great number, though of
inferior dimensions, are again found. From whence, or in what manner,
Egyptian institutions first took their rise, we have no means of
determining: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of
Heeren,[582] and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted
down the Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroê. Herodotus certainly
conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly occupied
the border island of Elephantinê, which he had himself visited) as
completely distinct from each other, in race and customs not less
than in language,—the latter being generally of the rudest habits, of
great stature, and still greater physical strength,—the chief part of
them subsisting on meat and milk, and blest with unusual longevity.
He knew of Meroê, as the Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable
city, fifty-two days’ journey higher up the river than Elephantinê,
but his informants had given him no idea of analogy between its
institutions and those of Egypt;[583] it was the migration of a
large number of the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of
Psammetichus, into Ethiopia, which first communicated civilized
customs, in his judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be
really any connection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those
of Meroê, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative
from the former.[584]
[579] Herodot. ii, 35. Αἰγύπτιοι ἅμα τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατὰ σφέας
ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ, καὶ τῷ ποτάμῳ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ
ἄλλοι πόταμοι, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι
ἐστήσαντο ἤθεα καὶ νόμους.
[580] Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy
Philadelphus king of Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand
three hundred and thirty-three cities: the manner in which he
strings these figures into three hexameter verses is somewhat
ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled
prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under
Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that
there were then twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177).
Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and
considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian ἀναγραφαὶ
(i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty thousand were
numbered under the Ptolemies.
[581] Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the
summary of O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and
a still better account and appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase,
Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Alten, Düsseldorf, 1843,
vol. i, book ii, chs. 1 and 2.
In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history
anterior to Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr.
Kenrick, in the preface to his work, “The Egypt of Herodotus,”
(the second book of Herodotus, with notes.) About the recent
discoveries derived from the hieroglyphics, he says: “We know
that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings to inscribe the
temples and obelisks which they raised with their own names or
with distinguishing hieroglyphics; but in no one instance do
these names, as read by the modern decipherers of hieroglyphics
on monuments said to have been raised by kings before
Psammetichus, correspond with the names given by Herodotus.”
(Preface, p. xliv.) He farther adds in a note, “A name which has
been read phonetically _Mena_, has been found at Thebes, and Mr.
Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is remarkable, however,
that the names which follow are not phonetically written, so that
it is probable that this is not to be read _Mena_. Besides, the
cartouche, which immediately follows, is that of a king of the
eighteenth dynasty; so that, at all events, it cannot have been
engraved till many centuries after the supposed age of Menes;
and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question
of historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian
Chronicle.”
[582] Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1,
p. 403. The opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis Insulâ,
p. 100, Berlin, 1830), may perhaps be just: “Antiquissimâ ætate
eundem populum, dicamus Ægyptiacum, Nili ripas inde a Meroë
insulâ usque ad Ægyptum inferiorem occupâsse, e monumentorum
congruentiâ apparet: posteriore tempore, tabulis et annalibus
nostris longe superiore, alia stirps Æthiopica interiora terræ
usque ad cataractam Syenensem obtinuit. Ex quâ ætate certa rerum
notitia ad nos pervenit, Ægyptiorum et Æthiopum segregatio jam
facta est. Herodotus cæterique scriptores Græci populos acute
discernunt.”
At this moment, Syênê and its cataract mark the boundary of
two people and two languages,—Egyptians and Arabic language to
the north, Nubians and Berber language to the south. (Parthey,
_ibid._)
[583] Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi,
p. 818. Herodotus gives the description of their armor and
appearance as part of the army of Xerxês (vii, 69); they painted
their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. How little Ethiopia
was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor of his
statements: according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited
it earlier than the expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphus,—οὕτως
ἄξενα ἦν τὰ περὶ τοὺς τόπους τούτους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐπικίνδυνα.
Diodorus, however, is incorrect in saying that no Greek had
ever gone as far southward as the frontier of Egypt: Herodotus
certainly visited Elephantinê, probably other Greeks also.
The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroê and its
superior civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo
(xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N. vi, 29-33), much later than
Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older informants before
him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidês and Artemidôrus, both in
the second century B. C. (Diod. iii, 10.)
[584] Wesseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.
The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or
hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly defined,
and is represented differently by different authors. The priests
stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most powerful, and
most venerated,—distributed all over the country, and possessing
exclusively the means of reading and writing,[585] besides a vast
amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole
stock of medical and physical knowledge then attainable, and those
rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, which were so often
called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god, and to
each temple, throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged,
whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained:
it seems, too, that a farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was
set apart for them in individual property, though on this point no
certainty is attainable. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect,
over the minds of the people, was immense; they prescribed that
minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting
the king himself,[586] was passed, and which was for themselves more
full of harassing particularities than for any one else.[587] Every
day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests
alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though
Isis and Osiris were common to all,—and the priests of each god
constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the
comparative celebrity of the temple: the high priests of Hephæstos,
whose dignity was said to have been transmitted from father to son
through a series of three hundred and forty-one generations[588]
(commemorated by the like number of colossal statues, which Herodotus
himself saw), were second in importance only to the king. The
property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who
were stamped with “holy marks,”[589] and who must have been numerous
in order to suffice for the large buildings and their constant
visitors.
[585] Herodot. ii, 37. Θεοσεβέες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα
πάντων ἀνθρώπων, etc. He is astonished at the retentiveness of
their memory; some of them had more stories to tell than any one
whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; Diodor. i, 73).
The word _priest_ conveys to a modern reader an idea very
different from that of the Egyptian ἱερεῖς, who were not a
profession, but an order comprising many occupations and
professions,—Josephus the Jew was in like manner an ἱερεὺς κατὰ
γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3).
[586] Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the
monastic strictness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian
king were measured out by the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid.
et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Hekatæus (probably Hekatæus of
Abdêra) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that Psammetichus
was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon
limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare Strabo, xvii, p,
790.
The Ethiopian kings at Meroê are said to have been kept in
the like pupillage by the priestly order, until a king named
Ergamenês, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt,
emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death (Diodor.
iii, 6).
[587] Herodot. ii, 82-83.
[588] Herodot. ii, 143.
[589] Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά.
Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste
or order, whose native name[590] indicated that they stood on the
left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They
were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied lands
in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in lower
Egypt. The kalasiries had once amounted to one hundred and sixty
thousand men, the hermotybii to two hundred and fifty thousand, when
at the maximum of their population; but the highest point had long
been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier
caste was assigned a portion of land equal to about six and a half
English acres, free from any tax; what measures were taken to keep
the lots of land in suitable harmony with a fluctuating number of
holders, we know not. The statement of Herodotus relates to a time
long past and gone, and describes what was believed, by the priests
with whom he talked, to have been the primitive constitution of
their country anterior to the Persian conquest: the like is still
more true respecting the statement of Diodorus.[591] The latter says
that the territory of Egypt was divided into three parts,—one part
belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the remainder
to the soldiers;[592] his language seems to intimate that every
nome was so divided, and even that the three portions were equal,
though he does not expressly say so. The result of these statements,
combined with the history of Joseph in the book of Genesis, seems to
be, that the lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as
privileged property and exempt from all burdens, while the remaining
soil was considered as the property of the king, who, however,
received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of the total produce,
leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators.[593] We are told
that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (or Hephæstos) at Memphis, and
afterwards named king, oppressed the military caste and deprived
them of their lands, in revenge for which they withheld from him
their aid when Egypt was invaded by Sennacherib,—and also that, in
the reign of Psammetichus, a large number (two hundred and forty
thousand) of these soldiers migrated into Ethiopia from a feeling of
discontent, leaving their wives and children behind them.[594] It
was Psammetichus who first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries
into the country, and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian
constitution; so that the disaffection towards him, on the part
of the native soldiers, no longer permitted to serve as exclusive
guards to the king, is not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and
hermotybii were interdicted from every description of art or trade.
There can be little doubt that under the Persians their lands were
made subject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent
revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery,
against the Persian kings.
[590] Herodot. ii, 30.
[591] Herodot. i, 165-166; Diodor. i, 73.
[592] Diodor. i, 73.
[593] Besides this general rent or land-tax received by
the Egyptian kings, there seem, also, to have been special
crown-lands. Strabo mentions an island in the Nile (in the
Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellence of its
date-palms; the whole of this island belonged to the kings,
without any other proprietor: it yielded a large revenue, and
passed into the hands of the Roman government in Strabo’s time
(xvii, p. 818).
[594] Herodot. ii, 30-141.
Herodotus enumerates five other _races_ (so he calls them), or
castes, besides priests and soldiers,[595]—herdsmen, swineherds,
tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots; an enumeration which perplexes
us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, who must
always have constituted the majority of the population. It is,
perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in the
list,—not standing out specially marked or congregated together,
like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to constitute
a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who specifies (over and
above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, and artificers,
embraces much more completely the whole population.[596] It seems
more the statement of a reflecting man, pushing out the principle of
hereditary occupations to its consequences; (and the comments which
the historian so abundantly interweaves with his narrative show that
such was the character of the authorities which he followed);—while
the list given by Herodotus comprises that which struck his
observation. It seems that a certain proportion of the soil of the
delta consisted of marsh land, including pieces of habitable ground,
but impenetrable to an invading enemy, and favorable only to the
growth of papyrus and other aquatic plants: other portions of the
delta, as well as the upper valley, in parts where it widened to the
eastward, were too wet for the culture of grain, though producing
the richest herbage, and eminently suitable to the race of Egyptian
herdsmen, who thus divided the soil with the husbandmen.[597]
Herdsmen generally were held reputable, but the race of swineherds
were hated and despised, from the extreme antipathy of all other
Egyptians to the pig,—which animal yet could not be altogether
proscribed, because there were certain peculiar occasions on which
it was imperative to offer him in sacrifice to Selênê or Dionysus.
Herodotus acquaints us that the swineherds were interdicted from all
the temples, and that they always intermarried among themselves,
other Egyptians disdaining such an alliance,—a statement which
indirectly intimates that there was no standing objection against
intermarriage of the remaining castes with each other. The caste or
race of interpreters began only with the reign of Psammetichus, from
the admission of Greek settlers, then for the first time tolerated
in the country. Though they were half Greeks, the historian does not
note them as of inferior account, except as compared with the two
ascendant castes of soldiers and priests; moreover, the creation of a
new caste shows that there was no consecrated or unchangeable total
number.
[595] Herodot. ii, 164.
[596] Diodor. i, 74. About the Egyptian castes generally, see
Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 2, pp.
572-595.
[597] See the citation from Maillet’s Travels in Egypt, in
Heeren, Ideen, p. 590; also Volney’s Travels, vol. i, ch. 6, p.
77.
The expression of Herodotus—οἱ περὶ τὴν ~σπειρομένην~ Αἴγυπτον
οἰκέουσι—indicates that the portion of the soil used as pasture
was not inconsiderable.
The inhabitants of the marsh land were the most warlike part of
the population (Thucyd. i, 110).
Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (καπήλοι) are doubtless
identical with the artisans (τεχνῖται) specified by Diodorus,—the
town population generally as distinguished from that of the country.
During the three months of the year when Egypt was covered with
water, festival days were numerous,—the people thronging by hundreds
of thousands, in vast barges, to one or other of the many holy
places, combining worship and enjoyment.[598] In Egypt, weaving was a
trade, whereas in Greece it was the domestic occupation of females;
and Herodotus treats it as one of those reversals of the order of
nature which were seen only in Egypt,[599] that the weaver stayed at
home plying his web while his wife went to market. The process of
embalming bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to
a large special class of men: the profusion of edifices, obelisks,
sculpture and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a
large body of trained sculptors,[600] who in the mechanical branch
of their business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals
in Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them were
identified in the closest manner with particular gods. The order of
priests included a large number of hereditary feeders and tenders of
these sacred animals.[601] Among the sacerdotal order were also found
the computers of genealogies, the infinitely subdivided practitioners
in the art of healing, etc.,[602] who enjoyed good reputation, and
were sent for as surgeons to Cyrus and Darius. The Egyptian city
population was thus exceedingly numerous, so that king Sethon, when
called upon to resist an invasion without the aid of the military
caste, might well be supposed to have formed an army out of “the
tradesmen, the artisans, and the market-people:”[603] and Alexandria,
at the commencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, acquired its
numerous and active inhabitants at the expense of Memphis and the
ancient towns of lower Egypt.
[598] Herodot. ii, 59-60.
[599] Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Œdip. Colon. 332: where the
passage cited by the Scholiast out of Nymphodôrus is a remarkable
example of the habit of ingenious Greeks to represent all customs
which they thought worthy of notice, as having emanated from
the design of some great sovereign: here Nymphodôrus introduces
Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that
the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate.
[600] The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii,
85-90); the word which he uses for it is the same as that for
salting meat and fish,—ταρίχευσις: compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764.
Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone,
and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are
general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen
in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having
three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics; so
certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision
(Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Künste, i, p. 428).
All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their
feelings respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped
in some nomes which in other nomes were objects even of
antipathy, especially the crocodile (Herod. ii, 69; Strabo, xvii,
p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal).
[601] Herodot. ii, 65-72; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarch, Isid. et
Osir. p. 380.
Hasselquist identified all the birds carved on the obelisk near
Matarea (Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.)
[602] Herodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points
of distinction between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the
latter had no surgeons or ἰατροί: they brought out the sick into
the market-place, to profit by the sympathy and advice of the
passers-by (Herodot. i, 197).
[603] Herodot. ii, 141.
The mechanical obedience and fixed habits of the mass of the Egyptian
population (not priests or soldiers) was a point which made much
impression upon Grecian observers; so that Solon is said to have
introduced at Athens a custom prevalent in Egypt, whereby the nomarch
or chief of each nome was required to investigate every man’s means
of living, and to punish with death those who did not furnish
evidence of some recognized occupation.[604] It does not seem that
the institution of caste in Egypt, though insuring unapproachable
ascendency to the priests and much consideration to the soldiers,
was attended with any such profound debasement to the rest as that
which falls upon the lowest caste or sudras in India,—no such gulf
between them as that between the twice-born and the once-born in
the religion of Brahma. Yet those stupendous works, which form the
permanent memorials of the country, remain at the same time as
proofs of the oppressive exactions of the kings, and of the reckless
caprice with which the lives as well as the contributions of the
people were lavished. One hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians
were said to have perished in the digging of the canal, which king
Nekôs began but did not finish, between the Pelusian arm of the
Nile and the Red sea;[605] while the construction of the two great
pyramids, attributed to the kings Cheops and Chephrên, was described
to Herodotus by the priests as a period of exhausting labor and
extreme suffering to the whole Egyptian people,—and yet the great
Labyrinth,[606] said to have been built by the dodekarchs, appeared
to him a more stupendous work than the Pyramids, so that the toil
employed upon it cannot have been less destructive. The moving of
such vast masses of stone as were seen in the ancient edifices both
of upper and lower Egypt, with the imperfect mechanical resources
then existing, must have tasked the efforts of the people yet more
severely than the excavation of the half-finished canal of Nekôs.
Indeed, the associations with which the Pyramids were connected, in
the minds of those with whom Herodotus conversed, were of the most
odious character. Such vast works, Aristotle observes, are suitable
to princes who desire to consume the strength and break the spirit
of their people. With Greek despots, perhaps, such an intention
may have been sometimes deliberately conceived; but the Egyptian
kings may be presumed to have followed chiefly caprice, or love of
pomp,—sometimes views of a permanent benefit to be achieved,—as
in the canal of Nekôs and the vast reservoir of Mœris,[607] with
its channel joining the river,—when they thus expended the physical
strength and even the lives of their subjects.
[604] Herodot. iii, 177.
[605] Herodot. ii, 158. Read the account of the foundation of
Petersburg by Peter the Great: “Au milieu de ces réformes,
grandes et petites, qui faisaient les amusemens du czar, et de
la guerre terrible qui l’occupoit contre Charles XII, il jeta
les fondemens de l’importante ville et du port de Pétersbourg,
en 1714, dans un marais où il n’y avait pas une cabane. Pierre
travailla de ses mains à la première maison: rien ne le rebuta:
des ouvriers furent forcés de venir sur ce bord de la mer
Baltique, des frontières d’Astrachan, des bords de la Mer Noire
et de la Mer Caspienne. Il périt plus de cent mille hommes dans
les travaux qu’il fallut faire, et dans les fatigues et la
disette qu’on essuya: mais enfin la ville existe.” (Voltaire,
Anecdotes sur Pierre le Grand, en Œuvres Complètes, ed. Paris,
1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.)
[606] Herodot. ii, 124-129. τὸν λέων τετρυμένον ἐς τὸ ἔσχατον
κακοῦ. (Diodor. i, 63-64.)
Περὶ τῶν Πυραμίδων (Diodorus observes) οὐδὲν ὅλως οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς
ἐγχωρίοις, οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν, συμφωνεῖται. He then
alludes to some of the discrepant stories about the date of the
Pyramids, and the names of their constructors. This confession,
of the complete want of trustworthy information respecting
the most remarkable edifices of lower Egypt, forms a striking
contrast with the statement which Diodorus had given (c. 44),
that the priests possessed records, “continually handed down
from reign to reign respecting four hundred and seventy Egyptian
kings.”
[607] It appears that the lake of Mœris is, at least in great
part, a natural reservoir, though improved by art for the
purposes wanted, and connected with the river by an artificial
canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Herodot. ii, 149.)
“The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about
sixty miles in circumference, but the communication with the Nile
has ceased.” Herodotus gives the circumference as three thousand
six hundred stadia, = between four hundred and four hundred and
fifty miles.
I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it
than Mr. Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was
natural.
Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular
animals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds
from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of Egyptian
life, and served preëminently to impress upon the country that air
of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus remarked in it. The
two specially marked bulls, called apis at Memphis, and mnevis at
Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort of national worship:[608]
the ibis, the cat, and the dog were throughout most of the nomes
venerated during life, embalmed like men after death, and if killed,
avenged by the severest punishment of the offending party: but the
veneration of the crocodile was confined to the neighborhood of
Thebes and the lake of Mœris. Such veins of religious sentiment,
which distinguished Egypt from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than
from Greece, were explained by the native priests after their manner
to Herodotus, though he declines from pious scruples to communicate
what was told to him.[609] They seem remnants continued from a very
early stage of Fetichism,—and the attempts of different persons,
noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, partly
by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction to any
one.[610]
[608] Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65-72; iii, 27-30: Diodor. i, 83-90.
It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes
a plain mention of the monstrous circumstances connected with
the worship of the goat in the Mendesian nome (Pindar, Fragm.
Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar had also dwelt, in one of his
Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having disguised themselves
as animals, when seeking to escape Typhon; which was one of the
tales told as an explanation of the consecration of animals in
Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61, ed. Bergk; Porphyr. de
Abstinent. iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer.
[609] Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorus does not feel the same reluctance
to mention these ἀπόῤῥητα (i, 86).
[610] Diodor. i, 86-87; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377,
_seq._
Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubtedly the
principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Manetho are at
all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the Egyptian kings
were not taken uniformly either from one or the other. Manetho
enumerates on the whole twenty-six different dynasties or families
of kings, anterior to the conquest of the country by Kambysês,—the
Persian kings between Kambysês and the revolt of the Egyptian
Amyrtæus, in 405 B. C. constituting his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of
these twenty-six dynasties, beginning with the year 5702 B. C.,
the first two are Thinites,—the third and fourth, Memphites,—the
fifth, from the island of Elephantinê,—the sixth, seventh, and
eighth, again Memphites,—the ninth and tenth, Herakleopolites,—the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans,—the
fourteenth, Choïtes,—the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or
shepherd kings,—the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and
succeeded by Diospolites,—the eighteenth (B. C. 1655-1327, in which
is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identified
by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. C.), nineteenth, and
twentieth, Diospolites,—the twenty-first, Tanites,—the twenty-second,
Bubastites,—the twenty-third, again Tanites,—the twenty-fourth,
Saïtes,—the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning with Sabakôn,
whom Herodotus also mentions,—the twenty-sixth, Saïtes, including
Psammetichus, Nekôs, Apries or Uaphris, and Amasis or Amosis. We
see by these lists, that, according to the manner in which Manetho
construed the antiquities of his country, several other cities of
Egypt, besides Thebes and Memphis, furnished kings to the whole
territory; but we cannot trace any correspondence between the nomes
which furnished kings, and those which Herodotus mentions to have
been exclusively occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate
nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked
local character each to itself, religious as well as political;
though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantinê to Pelasium and Kanôpus,
is said to have always constituted one kingdom, from the earliest
times which the native priests could conceive.
We are to consider this kingdom as engaged, long before the time when
Greeks were admitted into it,[611] in a standing caravan-commerce
with Phenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Assyria. Ancient Egypt having
neither vines nor olives, imported both wine and oil,[612] while
it also needed especially the frankincense and aromatic products
peculiar to Arabia, for its elaborate religious ceremonies. Towards
the last quarter of the eighth century B. C. (a little before the
time when the dynasty of the Mermnadæ in Lydia was commencing
in the person of Gygês), we trace events tending to alter the
relation which previously subsisted between these countries, by
continued aggressions on the part of the Assyrian monarchs of
Nineveh,—Salmaneser and Sennacherib. The former having conquered
and led into captivity the ten tribes of Israel, also attacked the
Phenician towns on the adjoining coast: Sidon, Palæ-Tyrus, and Akê
yielded to him, but Tyre itself resisted, and having endured for five
years the hardships of a blockade with partial obstruction of its
continental aqueducts, was enabled by means of its insular position
to maintain independence. It was just at this period that the Grecian
establishments in Sicily were forming, and I have already remarked
that the pressure of the Assyrians upon Phenicia, probably had some
effect in determining that contraction of the Phenician occupations
in Sicily, which really took place (B. C. 730-720). Respecting
Sennacherib, we are informed by the Old Testament, that he invaded
Judæa, and by Herodotus (who calls him king of the Assyrians and
Arabians), that he assailed the pious king Sethos in Egypt: in both
cases his army experienced a miraculous repulse and destruction.
After this, the Assyrians of Nineveh, either torn by intestine
dissension, or shaken by the attacks of the Medes, appear no longer
active; but about the year 630 B. C. the Assyrians or Chaldæans of
Babylon manifest a formidable and increasing power. It is, moreover,
during this century that the old routine of the Egyptian kings was
broken through, and a new policy displayed towards foreigners by
Psammetichus,—which, while it rendered Egypt more formidable to Judæa
and Phenicia, opened to Grecian ships and settlers the hitherto
inaccessible Nile.
[611] On this early trade between Egypt, Phenicia, and Palestine,
anterior to any acquaintance with the Greeks, see Josephus cont.
Apion. i, 12.
[612] Herodotus notices the large importation of wine into Egypt
in his day, from all Greece as well as from Phenicia, as well as
the employment of the earthen vessels in which it was brought for
the transport of water, in the journeys across the desert (iii,
6).
In later times, Alexandria was supplied with wine chiefly from
Laodikeia, in Syria, near the mouth of the Orontes (Strabo, xvi,
p. 751).
Herodotus draws a marked distinction between the history of Egypt
before Psammetichus and the following period: the former he gives as
the narration of the priests, without professing to guarantee it,—the
latter he evidently believes to be well ascertained.[613] And we
find that, from Psammetichus downward, Herodotus and Manetho are in
tolerable harmony, whereas even for the sovereigns occupying the last
fifty years before Psammetichus, there are many and irreconcilable
discrepancies between them;[614] but they both agree in stating that
Psammetichus reigned fifty-four years. So important an event as the
first admission of the Greeks into Egypt, was made, by the informants
of Herodotus, to turn upon two prophecies. After the death of Sethos,
king and priest of Hephæstos, who left no son, Egypt became divided
among twelve kings, of whom Psammetichus was one: it was under this
dodekarchy, according to Herodotus, that the marvellous labyrinth
near the lake of Mœris was constructed. The twelve lived and reigned
for some time in perfect harmony, but a prophecy had been made known
to them, that the one who should make libations in the temple of
Hephæstos out of a brazen goblet would reign over all Egypt. Now it
happened that one day, when they all appeared armed in that temple to
offer sacrifice, the high priest brought out by mistake only eleven
golden goblets instead of twelve, and Psammetichus, left without a
goblet, made use of his brass helmet as a substitute. Being thus
considered, though unintentionally, to have fulfilled the condition
of the prophecy, by making libations in a brazen goblet, he became an
object of terror to his eleven colleagues, who united to despoil him
of his dignity, and drove him into the inaccessible marshes. In this
extremity, he sent to seek counsel from the oracle of Lêtô at Butô,
and received for answer an assurance, that “vengeance would come to
him by the hands of brazen men showing themselves from the seaward.”
His faith was for the moment shaken by so startling a conception as
that of brazen men for his allies: but the prophetic veracity of
the priest at Butô was speedily shown, when an astonished attendant
came to acquaint him, in his lurking-place, that brazen men were
ravaging the sea-coast of the delta. It was a body of Ionian and
Karian soldiers, who had landed for pillage, and the messenger who
came to inform Psammetichus had never before seen men in an entire
suit of brazen armor. That prince, satisfied that these were the
allies whom the oracle had marked out for him, immediately entered
into negotiation with the Ionians and Karians, enlisted them in his
service, and by their aid in conjunction with his other partisans
overpowered the other eleven kings,—thus making himself the one ruler
of Egypt.[615]
[613] Herodot. ii, 147-154. ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου,—πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον
ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως.
[614] See these differences stated and considered in Boeckh,
Manetho und die Hundssternperiode. pp. 326—336, of which some
account is given in the Appendix to this chapter.
[615] Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however
little satisfactory in an historical point of view, bears evident
marks of being the genuine tale which he heard from the priests
of Hephæstos. Diodorus gives an account more historically
plausible, but he could not well have had any positive
authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas
of Greek authors of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he
tells us), as one of the twelve kings, ruled at Saïs and in the
neighboring part of the delta: he opened a trade, previously
unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and Phenicians, so profitable that
his eleven colleagues became jealous of his riches and combined
to attack him. He raised an army of foreign mercenaries and
defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67). Polyænus gives a different
story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries (vii 3).
Such was the tale by which the original alliance of an Egyptian
king with Grecian mercenaries, and the first introduction of Greeks
into Egypt, was accounted for and dignified. What followed is more
authentic and more important. Psammetichus provided a settlement
and lands for his new allies, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of
the Nile, a little below Bubastis. The Ionians were planted on one
side of the river, the Karians on the other; and the place was
made to serve as a military position, not only for the defence of
the eastern border, but also for the support of the king himself
against malcontents at home: it was called the Stratopěda, or the
Camps.[616] He took pains, moreover, to facilitate the intercourse
between them and the neighboring inhabitants, by causing a number of
Egyptian children to be domiciled with them, in order to learn the
Greek language; and hence sprung the interpreters; who, in the time
of Herodotus, constituted a permanent hereditary caste or breed.
[616] Herodot. ii, 154.
Though the chief purpose of this first foreign settlement in Egypt,
between Pelusium and Bubastis, was to create an independent military
force, and with it a fleet for the king, yet it was of course an
opening both for communication and traffic to all Greeks and to all
Phenicians, such as had never before been available. And it was
speedily followed by the throwing open of the Kanôpic or westernmost
branch of the river for the purposes of trade specially. According to
a statement of Strabo, it was in the reign of Psammetichus that the
Milesians with a fleet of thirty ships made a descent on that part of
the coast, first built a fort in the immediate neighborhood, and then
presently founded the town of Naukratis, on the right bank of the
Kanôpic Nile. There is much that is perplexing in this affirmation
of Strabo; but on the whole I am inclined to think that the
establishment of the Greek factories and merchants at Naukratis may
be considered as dating in the reign of Psammetichus,[617]—Naukratis
being a city of Egyptian origin, in which these foreigners were
permitted to take up their abode,—not a Greek colony, as Strabo would
have us believe. The language of Herodotus seems rather to imply that
it was king Amasis—between whom and the death of Psammetichus there
intervened nearly half a century—who first allowed Greeks to settle
at Naukratis; but on comparing what the historian tells us respecting
the courtezan Rhodôpis and the brother of Sapphô the Poetess, it
is evident that there must have been both Greek trade and Greek
establishments in that town long before Amasis came to the throne.
We may consider, then, that both the eastern and western mouths of
the Nile became open to the Greeks in the days of Psammetichus; the
former as leading to the head-quarters of the mercenary Greek troops
in Egyptian pay,—the latter for purposes of trade.
[617] Strabo, xvii, p. 801. καὶ τὸ Μιλησίων τεῖχος· πλεύσαντες
γὰρ ἐπὶ Ψαμμητίχου τριάκοντα ναυσὶν Μιλήσιοι ~κατὰ Κυαξάρη~
(~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~) κάτεσχον εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ Βολβίτινον· εἶτ᾽
ἐκβάντες ἐτείχισαν τὸ λεχθὲν κτίσμα· χρόνῳ δ᾽ ἀναπλεύσαντες εἰς
τὸν Σαϊτικὸν νομὸν, καταναυμαχήσαντες Ἴναρον, πόλιν ἔκτισαν
Ναύκρατιν οὐ πολὺ τῆς Σχεδίας ὕπερθεν.
What is meant by the allusion to Kyaxarês, or to Inarus, in this
passage, I do not understand. We know nothing of any relations
either between Kyaxarês and Psammetichus, or between Kyaxarês
and the Milesians. moreover, if by κατὰ Κυαξάρη be meant _in
the time of Kyaxarês_, as the translators render it, we have in
immediate succession ~ἐπὶ~ Ψαμμητίχου—~κατὰ~ Κυαξάρη, with the
same meaning, which is, to say the least of it, a very awkward
sentence. The words ~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~ look not unlike a
comment added by some early reader of Strabo, who could not
understand why Kyaxarês should be here mentioned, and who noted
his difficulty in words which have subsequently found their way
into the text. Then again, _Inarus_ belongs to the period between
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars: at least we know no other
person of that name than the chief of the Egyptian revolt against
Persia (Thucyd. i, 114) who is spoken of as a “Libyan, the son of
Psammetichus.” The mention of Kyaxarês, therefore, here appears
unmeaning, while that of Inarus is an anachronism: possibly, the
story that the Milesians founded Naukratis “after having worsted
Inarus in a sea-flight,” may have grown out of the etymology
of the name Naukratis, in the mind of one who found Inarus the
son of Psammetichus mentioned two centuries afterwards, and
identified the two Psammetichuses with each other.
The statement of Strabo has been copied by Steph. Byz. v.
Ναύκρατις. Eusebius also announces (Chron. i, p. 168) the
Milesians as the founders of Naukratis, but puts the event at 753
B. C., during what he calls the Milesian thalassokraty: see Mr.
Fynes Clinton ad ann. 732 B. C. in the Fasti Hellenici.
While this event afforded to the Greeks a valuable enlargement
both of their traffic and of their field of observation, it seems
to have occasioned an internal revolution in Egypt. The nome of
Bubastis, in which the new military settlement of foreigners was
planted, is numbered among those occupied by the Egyptian military
caste:[618] whether their lands were in part taken away from them,
we do not know; but the mere introduction of such foreigners must
have appeared an abomination, to the strong conservative feeling of
ancient Egypt. And Psammetichus treated the native soldiers in a
manner which showed of how much less account they had become since
the “brazen helmets” had got footing in the land. It had hitherto
been the practice to distribute such portions of the military as were
on actual service in three different posts: at Daphnê, near Pelusium,
on the north-eastern frontier,—at Marea, on the north-western
frontier, near the spot where Alexandria was afterwards built,—and
at Elephantinê, on the southern or Ethiopian boundary. Psammetichus,
having no longer occasion for their services on the eastern frontier,
since the formation of the mercenary camp, accumulated them in
greater number and detained them for an unusual time at the two other
stations, especially at Elephantinê. Here, as Herodotus tells us,
they remained for three years unrelieved, and Diodorus adds that
Psammetichus assigned to those native troops who fought conjointly
with the mercenaries, the least honorable post in the line; until
at length discontent impelled them to emigrate in a body of two
hundred and forty thousand men into Ethiopia, leaving their wives and
children behind in Egypt,—nor could they be induced by any instances
on the part of Psammetichus to return. This memorable incident,[619]
which is said to have given rise to a settlement in the southernmost
regions of Ethiopia, called by the Greeks the Automoli (though the
emigrant soldiers still called themselves by their old Egyptian
name), attests the effect produced by the introduction of the foreign
mercenaries in lowering the position of the native military. The
number of the emigrants, however, is a point noway to be relied upon:
we shall presently see that there were enough of them left behind to
renew effectively the struggle for their lost dignity.
[618] Herodot. ii, 166
[619] Herodot. ii, 30: Diodor. i, 67.
It was probably with his Ionian and Karian troops that Psammetichus
carried on those warlike operations in Syria which filled so large a
proportion of his long and prosperous reign of fifty-four years.[620]
He besieged the city of Azôtus in Syria for twenty-nine years, until
he took it,—the longest blockade which the historian had ever heard
of: moreover, he was in that country when the destroying Scythian
nomads, who had defeated the Median king Kyaxarês and possessed
themselves of Upper Asia, advanced to invade Egypt,—an undertaking
which Psammetichus, by large presents, induced them to abandon.[621]
[620] Ἀπρίης—ὃς μετὰ Ψαμμήτιχον τὸν ἑωϋτοῦ προπάτορα ἐγένετο
εὐδαιμονέστατος τῶν πρότερον βασιλέων (Herodot. ii, 161).
[621] Herodot. i, 105; ii, 157.
There were, however, more powerful enemies than the Scythians,
against whom he and his son Nekôs—who succeeded him, seemingly about
604 B. C.[622]—had to contend in Syria and the lands adjoining. It
is just at this period, during the reigns of Nabopolassar and his
son Nebuchadnezzar (B. C. 625-561) that the Chaldæans or Assyrians
of Babylon appear at the maximum of their power and aggressive
disposition, while the Assyrians of Ninus or Nineveh lose their
substantive position through the taking of that town by Kyaxarês
(about B. C. 600),—the greatest height which the Median power ever
reached. Between the Egyptian Nekôs and his grandson Apriês—Pharaoh
Necho and Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament—on the one side, and
the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judæa and Phenicia form
the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political independence
of the Phenician towns is extinguished never again to be recovered.
At the commencement of his reign, it appears, Nekôs was chiefly
anxious to extend the Egyptian commerce, for which purpose he
undertook two measures, both of astonishing boldness for that age,—a
canal between the lower part of the eastern or Pelusiac Nile, and the
inmost corner of the Red sea,—and the circumnavigation of Africa;
his great object being to procure a water-communication between
the Mediterranean and the Red sea. He began the canal—much about
the same time as Nebuchadnezzar executed his canal from Babylon
to Terêdon—with such reckless determination, that one hundred and
twenty thousand Egyptians are said to have perished in the work;
but either from this disastrous proof of the difficulty, or, as
Herodotus represents, from the terrors of a menacing prophecy which
reached him, he was compelled to desist. Next, he accomplished the
circumnavigation of Africa, already above alluded to; but in this way
too he found it impracticable to procure any available communication
such as he wished.[623] It is plain that in both these enterprises he
was acting under Phenician and Greek instigation; and we may remark
that the point of the Nile from whence the canal took its departure,
was close upon the mercenary camps or stratopeda. Being unable to
connect the two seas together, he built and equipped an armed naval
force both upon the one and the other, and entered upon aggressive
enterprises, naval as well as military. His army, on marching into
Syria, was met at Megiddo—Herodotus says Magdolum—by Josiah king
of Judah, who was himself slain and so completely worsted, that
Jerusalem fell into the power of the conqueror, and became tributary
to Egypt. It deserves to be noted that Nekôs sent the raiment which
he had worn on the day of his victory, as an offering to the holy
temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Milêtus,[624]—the first recorded
instance of a donation from an Egyptian king to a Grecian temple, and
a proof that Hellenic affinities were beginning to take effect upon
him: probably we may conclude that a large proportion of his troops
were Milesians.
[622] The chronology of the Egyptian kings from Psammetichus to
Amasis is given in some points differently by Herodotus and by
Manetho:—
According to Herodotus, | According to Manetho ap. African.
|
Psammetichus reigned 54 years. | Psammetichus reigned 54 years.
Nekôs „ 16 „ | Nechao II „ 6 „
Psammis „ 6 „ | Psammathis „ 6 „
Apriês „ 25 „ | Uaphris „ 19 „
Amasis „ 44 „ | Amosis „ 44 „
Diodorus gives 22 years for Apriês and 55 years for Amasis (i,
68).
Now the end of the reign of Amasis stands fixed for 526 B. C.,
and, therefore, the beginning of his reign (according to both
Herodotus and Manetho) to 570 B. C. or 569 B. C. According to
the chronology of the Old Testament, the battles of Megiddo and
Carchemisch, fought by Nekôs, fall from 609-605 B. C., and this
coincides with the reign of Nekôs as dated by Herodotus, but
not as dated by Manetho. On the other hand, it appears from the
evidence of certain Egyptian inscriptions recently discovered,
that the real interval from the beginning of Nechao to the end
of Uaphris is only forty years, and not forty-seven years, as
the dates of Herodotus would make it (Boeckh, Manetho und die
Hundsternperiode, pp. 341-348), which would place the accession
of Nekôs in 610 or 609 B. C. Boeckh discusses at some length
this discrepancy of dates, and inclines to the supposition that
Nekôs reigned nine or ten years jointly with his father, and
that Herodotus has counted these nine or ten years twice, once
in the reign of Psammetichus, once in that of Nekôs. Certainly,
Psammetichus can hardly have been very young when his reign
began, and if he reigned fifty-four years, he must have reached
an extreme old age, and may have been prominently aided by his
son. Adopting the suppositions, therefore, that the last ten
years of the reign of Psammetichus may be reckoned both for him
and for Nekôs,—that for Nekôs separately only six years are to
be reckoned,—and that the number of years from the beginning of
Nekôs’s separate reign to the end of Uaphris is forty,—Boeckh
places the beginning of Psammetichus in 654 B. C., and not in 670
B. C., as the data of Herodotus would make it (_ib._ pp. 342-350).
Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B. C. 616, follows Herodotus.
[623] Herodot. ii, 158. Respecting the canal of Nekôs, see the
explanation of Mr. Kenrick on this chapter of Herodotus. From
Bubastis to Suez the length would be about ninety miles.
[624] Herodot. ii, 159. Diodorus makes no mention of Nekôs.
The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history
of the Old Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great
city of Syria which he calls Κάδυτις seems to be Jerusalem,
though Wesseling (ad Herodot. iii, 5) and other able critics
dispute the identity. See Volney, Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc.
vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 239: “Les Arabes ont conservé l’habitude
d’appeler Jerusalem la Sainte par excellence, _el Qods_. Sans
doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnèrent le même nom,
qui dans leur dialecte est _Qadouta_, dont Hérodote rend bien
l’orthographie quand il écrit Κάδυτις.”
But the victorious career of Nekôs was completely checked by the
defeat which he experienced at Carchemisch, or Circesium, on the
Euphrates, from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, who not only
drove him out of Judæa and Syria, but also took Jerusalem, and
carried away the king and the principal Jews into captivity.[625]
Nebuchadnezzar farther attacked the Phenician cities, and the siege
of Tyre alone cost him severe toil for thirteen years. After this
long and gallant resistance, the Tyrians were forced to submit, and
underwent the same fate as the Jews: their princes and chiefs were
dragged captive into the Babylonian territory, and the Phenician
cities became numbered among the tributaries of Nebuchadnezzar. So
they seemed to have remained, until the overthrow of Babylon by
Cyrus: for we find among those extracts, unhappily, very brief, which
Josephus has preserved out of the Tyrian annals, that during this
interval there were disputes and irregularities in the government
of Tyre,[626]—judges being for a time substituted in the place of
kings; while Merbal and Hirom, two princes of the regal Tyrian line,
detained captive in Babylonia, were successively sent down on the
special petition of the Tyrians, and reigned at Tyre; the former
four years, the latter twenty years, until the conquest of Babylon
by Cyrus. The Egyptian king Apriês, indeed, the son of Psammis, and
grandson of Nekôs, attacked Sidon and Tyre both by land and sea, but
seemingly without any result.[627] To the Persian empire, as soon
as Cyrus had conquered Babylon, they cheerfully and spontaneously
submitted,[628] whereby the restoration of the captive Tyrians to
their home was probably conceded to them, like that of the captive
Jews.
[625] Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2d book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv;
Josephus, Ant. J. x, 5, 1; x, 6, 1.
About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph.
cont. Apion. i, 19-20, and Antiqq. J. x, 11, 1, and Berosi
Fragment. ed. Ritcher pp. 65-67.
[626] Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ
βασιλέως ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια.
That this siege of thirteen years ended in the storming,
capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes
beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent emportés
_d’assaut_ par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire
Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king,
is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the
Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg
(De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most
of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the
passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What
is _not_ true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by
Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that king
conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so
far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of
Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The
defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping
him of his foreign possessions in Judæa and Syria, have been
exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.
[627] Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in
the text; while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king
took Sidon by assault, terrified the other Phenician towns into
submission, and defeated the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great
naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil.
What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the
measured statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of credit.
[628] Herodot. iii, 19.
Nekôs in Egypt was succeeded by his son Psammis, and he again,
after a reign of six years, by his son Apriês; of whose power and
prosperity Herodotus speaks in very high general terms, though the
few particulars which he recounts are of a contrary tenor. It was
not till after a reign of twenty-five years, that Apriês undertook
that expedition against the Greek colonies in Libya,—Kyrênê and
Barka,—which proved his ruin. The native Libyan tribes near those
cities, having sent to surrender themselves to him, and entreat
his aid against the Greek settlers, Apriês despatched to them a
large force composed of native Egyptians; who, as has been before
mentioned, were stationed on the north-western frontier of Egypt, and
were, therefore, most available for the march against Kyrênê. The
Kyrenean citizens advanced to oppose them, and a battle ensued in
which the Egyptians were completely routed with severe loss. It is
affirmed that they were thrown into disorder from want of practical
knowledge of Grecian warfare,[629]—a remarkable proof of the entire
isolation of the Grecian mercenaries (who had now been long in the
service of Psammetichus and his successors) from the native Egyptians.
[629] Herodot. ii, 161; iv, 159.
This disastrous reverse provoked a mutiny in Egypt against Apriês,
the soldiers contending that he had despatched them on the enterprise
with a deliberate view to their destruction, in order to assure
his rule over the remaining Egyptians. The malcontents found so
much sympathy among the general population, that Amasis, a Saïtic
Egyptian of low birth, but of considerable intelligence, whom Apriês
had sent to conciliate them, was either persuaded or constrained
to become their leader, and prepared to march immediately against
the king at Saïs. Unbounded and reverential submission to the royal
authority was a habit so deeply rooted in the Egyptian mind, that
Apriês could not believe the resistance to be serious. He sent an
officer of consideration named Patarbêmis to bring Amasis before him,
and when the former returned, bringing back from the rebel nothing
better than a contemptuous refusal to appear except at the head of
an army, the exasperated king ordered his nose and ears to be cut
off. This act of atrocity caused such indignation among the Egyptians
round him, that most of them deserted and joined the revolters, who
thus became irresistibly formidable in point of numbers. There yet
remained to Apriês the foreign mercenaries,—thirty thousand Ionians
and Karians,—whom he summoned from their stratopeda on the Pelusiac
Nile to his residence at Saïs; and this force, the creation of his
ancestor Psammetichus, and the main reliance of his family, still
inspired him with such unabated confidence, that he marched to attack
the far superior numbers under Amasis at Momemphis. Though his troops
behaved with bravery, the disparity of numbers, combined with the
excited feeling of the insurgents, overpowered him: he was defeated
and carried prisoner to Saïs, where at first Amasis not only spared
his life, but treated him with generosity.[630] Such, however, was
the antipathy of the Egyptians, that they forced Amasis to surrender
his prisoner into their hands, and immediately strangled him.
[630] Herodot. ii, 162-169; Diodor. i, 68.
It is not difficult to trace in these proceedings the outbreak of
a long-suppressed hatred on the part of the Egyptian soldier-caste
towards the dynasty of Psammetichus, to whom they owed their
comparative degradation, and by whom that stream of Hellenism had
been let in upon Egypt, which doubtless was not witnessed without
great repugnance. It might seem, also, that this dynasty had too
little of pure Egyptianism in them to find favor with the priests.
At least Herodotus does not mention any religious edifices erected
either by Nekôs or Psammis or Apriês, though he describes much of
such outlay on the part of Psammetichus,—who built magnificent
propylæa to the temple of Hephæstos at Memphis,[631] and a splendid
new chamber or stable for the sacred bull Apis,—and more still on the
part of Amasis.
[631] Herodot. ii, 153.
Nevertheless, Amasis, though he had acquired the crown by this
explosion of native antipathy, found the foreign adjuncts
both already existing and eminently advantageous. He not only
countenanced, but extended them; and Egypt enjoyed under him a degree
of power and consideration such as it neither before possessed,
nor afterwards retained,—for his long reign of forty-four years
(570-526 B. C.) closed just six months before the Persian conquest
of the country. He was eminently phil-Hellenic, and the Greek
merchants at Naukratis,—the permanent settlers, as well as the
occasional visitors,—obtained from him valuable enlargement of
their privileges. Besides granting permission to various Grecian
towns, to erect religious establishments for such of their citizens
as visited the place, he also sanctioned the constitution of a
formal and organized emporium or factory, invested with commercial
privileges, and armed with authority exercised by presiding officers
regularly chosen. This factory was connected with, and probably
grew out of, a large religious edifice and precinct, built at the
joint cost of nine Grecian cities: four of them Ionic,—Chios, Teôs,
Phôkæa, and Klazomenæ; four Doric,—Rhodes, Knidus, Halikarnassus,
and Phasêlis; and one Æolic,—Mitylênê. By these nine cities the
joint temple and factory was kept up and its presiding magistrates
chosen; but its destination, for the convenience of Grecian commerce
generally, seems revealed by the imposing title of _The Hellênion_.
Samos, Milêtus, and Ægina had each founded a separate temple at
Naukratis, for the worship of such of their citizens as went
there; probably connected—as the Hellênion was—with protection and
facilities for commercial purposes. But though these three powerful
cities had thus constituted each a factory for itself, as guarantee
to the merchandise, and as responsible for the conduct, of its own
citizens separately,—the corporation of the Hellênion served both as
protection and control to all other Greek merchants. And such was
the usefulness, the celebrity, and probably the pecuniary profit, of
the corporation, that other Grecian cities set up claims to a share
in it, and falsely pretended to have contributed to the original
foundation.[632]
[632] Herodot. ii, 178. The few words of the historian about
these Greek establishments at Naukratis are highly valuable,
and we can only wish that he had told us more: he speaks of
them in the present tense, from personal knowledge—τὸ μὲν νῦν
μέγιστον αὐτέων τέμενος καὶ οὐνομαστότατον ἐὸν καὶ χρησιμώτατον,
καλεύμενον δὲ Ἑλλήνιον, αἵδε πόλις ~εἰσὶν~ αἱ ἱδρυμέναι—Τουτέων
μέν ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ τέμενος, καὶ προστάτας τοῦ ἐμπορίου αὗται αἱ
πόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι. Ὅσαι δὲ ἄλλαι πόλις ~μεταποιεῦνται~,
οὐδέν σφι μετεὸν μεταποιεῦνται.
We are here let into a vein of commercial jealousy between the
Greek cities about which we should have been glad to be farther
informed.
Naukratis was for a long time the privileged port for Grecian
commerce with Egypt. No Greek merchant was permitted to deliver
goods in any other part, or to enter any other of the mouths of
the Nile except the Kanôpic. If forced into any of them by stress
of weather, he was compelled to make oath that his arrival was a
matter of necessity, and to convey his goods round by sea into the
Kanôpic branch to Naukratis; and if the weather still forbade such a
proceeding, the merchandise was put into barges and conveyed round to
Naukratis by the internal canals of the delta. Such a monopoly, which
made Naukratis in Egypt, something like Canton in China, or Nangasaki
in Japan, no longer subsisted in the time of Herodotus.[633] But the
factory of the Hellênion was in full operation and dignity, and very
probably he himself, as a native of one of the contributing cities,
Halikarnassus, may have profited by its advantages. At what precise
time Naukratis first became licensed for Grecian trade, we cannot
directly make out; but there seems reason to believe that it was the
port to which the Greek merchants first went, so soon as the general
liberty of trading with the country was conceded to them; and this
would put it at least as far back as the foundation of Kyrênê, and
the voyage of the fortunate Kôlæus, who was on his way with a cargo
to Egypt, when the storms overtook him,—about 630 B. C., during the
reign of Psammetichus. And in the time of the poetess Sapphô, and her
brother Charaxus, it seems evident that Greeks had been some time
established at Naukratis.[634] But Amasis, though his predecessors
had permitted such establishment, may doubtless be regarded as having
given organization to the factories, and as having placed the Greeks
on a more comfortable footing of security than they had ever enjoyed
before.
[633] Herodot. ii, 179. ~Ἦν δὲ τοπαλαιὸν~ μούνη ἡ Ναύκρατις
ἐμπόριον, καὶ ἄλλο οὐδὲν Αἰγύπτου.... Οὕτω δὴ Ναύκρατις
~ἐτετίμητο~.
[634] The beautiful Thracian courtezan, Rhodôpis, was purchased
by a Samian merchant named Xanthês, and conveyed to Naukratis,
in order that he might make money by her (κατ᾽ ἐργασίην). The
speculation proved a successful one, for Charaxus, brother of
Sappho, going to Naukratis with a cargo of wine, became so
captivated with Rhodôpis, that he purchased her for a very large
sum of money, and gave her her freedom. She then carried on her
profession at Naukratis on her own account, realized a handsome
fortune, the tithe of which she employed in a votive offering
at Delphi, and acquired so much renown, that the Egyptian
Greeks ascribed to her the building of one of the pyramids,—a
supposition, on the absurdity of which Herodotus makes proper
comments, but which proves the great celebrity of the name of
Rhodôpis (Herodot. ii, 134). Athenæus calls her Dôrichê, and
distinguishes her from Rhodôpis (xiii. p. 596, compare Suidas,
v. Ῥοδωπίδος ἀνάθημα). When Charaxus returned to Mitylênê, his
sister Sappho composed a song, in which she greatly derided him
for this proceeding,—a song which doubtless Herodotus knew, and
which gives to the whole anecdote a complete authenticity.
Now we can hardly put the age of Sappho lower than 600-580 B. C.
(see Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellen ad ann. 595 B. C., and Ulrici,
Geschichte der Griech. Lyrik, ch. xxiii, p. 360): Alkæus, too,
her contemporary, had himself visited Egypt. (Alcæi Fragm. 103,
ed. Bergk; Strabo, i, p. 63). The Greek settlement at Naukratis,
therefore, must be decidedly older than Amasis, who began to
reign in 570 B. C., and the residence of Rhodôpis in that town
must have begun earlier than Amasis, though Herodotus calls her
κατ᾽ Ἄμασιν ἀκμάζουσα (ii, 134). Nor can we construe the language
of Herodotus strictly, when he says that it was Amasis who
_permitted_ the residence of Greeks at Naukratis (ii, 173).
This Egyptian king manifested several other evidences of his
phil-Hellenic disposition, by donations to Delphi and other Grecian
temples, and he even married a Grecian wife from the city of
Kyrênê.[635] Moreover, he was in intimate alliance and relations
of hospitality both with Polykratês despot of Samos, and with
Crœsus king of Lydia.[636] He conquered the island of Cyprus, and
rendered it tributary to the Egyptian throne: his fleet and army
were maintained in good condition, and the foreign mercenaries,
the great strength of the dynasty which he had supplanted, were
not only preserved, but even removed from their camp near Pelusium
to the chief town Memphis, where they served as the special guards
of Amasis.[637] Egypt enjoyed under him a degree of power abroad,
and prosperity at home—the river having been abundant in its
overflowing—which was the more tenaciously remembered on account of
the period of disaster and subjugation immediately following his
death. And his contributions, in architecture and sculpture, to
the temples of Saïs[638] and Memphis, were on a scale of vastness
surpassing everything before known in lower Egypt.
[635] Herodot. ii, 181.
[636] Herodot. i, 77; iii, 39.
[637] Herodot. ii, 182, 154. κατοίκισε ἐς Μέμφιν, φυλακὴν ἑωϋτοῦ
ποιεύμενος πρὸς Αἰγυπτίων.
[638] Herodot. ii, 175-177.
APPENDIX.
The archæology of Egypt, as given in the first book of Diodorus,
is so much blended with Grecian mythes, and so much colored over
with Grecian motive, philosophy, and sentiment, as to serve little
purpose in illustrating the native Egyptian turn of thought. Even in
Herodotus, though his stories are in the main genuine Egyptian, we
find a certain infusion of Hellenism which the priests themselves
had in his day acquired, and which probably would not have been
found in their communications with Solon, or with the poet Alkæus,
a century and a half earlier. Still, his stories (for the tenor of
which Diodorus unduly censures him, i, 69) are really illustrative of
the national mind; but the narratives coined by Grecian fancy out of
Egyptian materials, and idealizing Egyptian kings and priests so as
to form a pleasing picture for the Grecian reader, are mere romance,
which has rarely even the merit of amusing. Most of the intellectual
Greeks had some tendency thus to dress up Egyptian history, and Plato
manifests it considerably; but the Greeks who crowded into Egypt
under the Ptolemies carried it still further. Hekatæus of Abdêra,
from whom Diodorus greatly copied (i, 46), is to be numbered among
them, and from him, perhaps, come the eponymous kings Ægyptus (i,
51) and Neileus (i, 63), the latter of whom was said to have given
to the river its name of _Nile_, whereas it had before been called
_Ægyptus_ (this to save the credit of Homer, who calls it Αἴγυπτος
ποταμὸς, Odyss. xiv, 258): also Macedon, Prometheus, Triptolemus,
etc., largely blended with Egyptian antiquities, in Diodorus, (i, 18,
19, etc.). It appears that the name of king Neilos occurred in the
list of Egyptian kings in Dikæarchus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv,
272; Dikæarch. Fragment, p. 100, ed. Fuhr).
That the ἀναγραφαὶ in the temples of Egypt reached to a vast
antiquity and contained a list of names, human, semi-divine, and
divine, very long indeed,—there is no reason to doubt. Herodotus,
in giving the number of years between Dionysus and Amasis as 1500,
expressly says that “the priests told him they knew this accurately,
since they always kept an account, and always wrote down the number
of years,”—καὶ ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι, αἰεί τε
λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα (ii. 145): compare Diodor.
i, 44. He tells us that the priests read to him out of a manuscript
of papyrus (ἔκ βύβλου, ii, 100) the names of the 330 successive
kings from father to son, between Mên or Menês and Mœris; and the
341 colossal statues of chief priests, each succeeding his father,
down to Sethos priest of Hephæstos and king (ii, 142), which were
shown to him in the temple of Hephæstos at Memphis, afford a sort of
monumental evidence analogous in its nature to a written list. So
also the long period of 23,000 years given by Diodorus, from the rule
of Hêlios down to the expedition of Alexander against Asia, 18,000 of
which were occupied by the government of gods and demigods (i, 26,
24, 44,—his numbers do not all agree with one another), may probably
be drawn from an ἀναγραφή. Many temples in Egypt probably had such
tablets or inscriptions, some differing from others. But this only
shows us that such ἀναγραφαὶ or other temple monuments do not of
themselves carry any authority, unless in cases where there is fair
reason to presume them nearly contemporary with the facts or persons
which they are produced to avouch. It is plain that the temple
inscriptions represent the ideas of Egyptian priests (of some unknown
date anterior to Herodotus) respecting the entire range of Egyptian
past history and chronology.
What the proportion of historical items may be, included in this
aggregate, we have no means of testing, nor are the monuments in
Egyptian temples in themselves a proof of the reality of the persons
or events which they are placed to commemorate, any more than the
Centauromachia or Amazonomachia on the frieze of a Grecian temple
proves that there really existed Centaurs or Amazons. But it is
interesting to penetrate, so far as we are enabled, into the scheme
upon which the Egyptians themselves conceived and constructed their
own past history, of which the gods form quite as essential an
element as the human kings; for we depart from the Egyptian point of
view when we treat the gods as belonging to Egyptian religion and the
human kings to Egyptian history,—both are parts of the same series.
It is difficult to trace the information which Herodotus received
from the Egyptian priests to any intelligible scheme of chronology;
but this may be done in regard to Manetho with much plausibility, as
the recent valuable and elaborate analysis of Boeckh (Manetho und
die Hundssternperiode, Berlin, 1845) has shown. He gives good reason
for believing that the dynasties of Manetho have been so arranged
as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cycles (or periods of the
star Sirius, each comprehending 1460 Julian years = 1461 Egyptian
years). The Egyptian calender recognized a year of 365 days exactly,
taking no note of the six hours additional which go to make up
the solar year: they had twelve months of thirty days, with five
epagomens or additional days, and their year always began with the
first of the month Thoth (Soth, Sothis). Their year being thus six
hours shorter (or one day for every four years) than the Julian year
with its recurrent leap-year, the first of the Egyptian month Thoth
fell back every four years one day in the Julian calender, and in
the course of 1460 years it fell successively on every day of the
Julian year, coming back again to the same day from which it had
started. This period of 1460 years was called a Sothiac period, and
was reckoned from the year in which the first of the Egyptian month
Thoth coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt; that
is, (for an interval from 2700 B. C. down to the Christian era) on
the 20th July of the Julian year. We know from Censorinus that the
particular revolution of the Sothiac period, in which both Herodotus
and Manetho were included, ended in the year 139 after the Christian
era, in which year the first of the Egyptian month Thoth fell on the
20th July, or coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt:
knowing in what year this period ended, we also know that it must
have begun in 1322 B. C., and that the period immediately preceding
it must have begun in 2782 B. C. (Censorinus, De Die Natali, c. 21;
Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Abschn. 1, pp. 125-138.)
The name Sothis, or Thoth, was the Egyptian name for Sirius or the
Dog-star, the heliacal rising of which was an important phenomenon
in that country, as coinciding nearly with the commencement of the
overflowing of the Nile.
Boeckh has analyzed, with great care and ability, the fragmentary,
partial, and in many particulars conflicting, versions of the
dynasties of Manetho which have come down to us: after all, we know
them very imperfectly, and it is clear that they have been much
falsified and interpolated. He prefers, for the most part, the
version reported as that of Africanus. The number of years included
in the Egyptian chronology has been always a difficulty with critics,
some of whom have eluded it by the supposition that the dynasties
mentioned as successive were really simultaneous,—while others have
supposed that the years enumerated were not full years, but years of
one month or three months; nor have there been wanting other efforts
of ingenuity to reconcile Manetho with the biblical chronology.
Manetho constructs his history of the past upon views purely
Egyptian, applying to past time the measure of the Sothiac period
or 1460 Julian years (= 1461 Egyptian years), and beginning both
the divine history of Egypt, and the human history which succeeds
it, each at the beginning of one of these Sothiac periods. Knowing
as we do from Censorinus that a Sothiac period ended in 139 A. D.,
and, of course, began in 1322 B. C.—we also know that the third
preceding Sothiac period must have begun in 5702 B. C. (1322 + 1460 +
1460 + 1460 = 5702). Now the year 5702 B. C. coincides with that in
which Manetho places Menês, the first human king of Egypt; for his
thirty-one dynasties end with the first year of Alexander the Great,
332 B. C., and include 5366 years in the aggregate, giving for the
beginning of the series of dynasties, or accession of Menês, the date
5702 B. C. Prior to Menês he gives a long series of years as the time
of the government of gods and demigods; this long time comprehends
24,837 years, or seventeen Sothiac periods of 1461 Egyptian years
each. We see, therefore, that Manetho (or perhaps the sacerdotal
ἀναγραφαὶ which he followed) constructed a system of Egyptian history
and chronology out of twenty full Sothiac periods, in addition to
that fraction of the twenty-first which had elapsed down to the time
of Alexander,—about three-quarters of a century anterior to Manetho
himself, if we suppose him to have lived during the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, which, though not certain, is yet probable (Boeckh, p.
11). These results have not been brought out without some corrections
of Manetho’s figures,—corrections which are, for the most part,
justified on reasonable grounds, and, where not so justified, are
unimportant in amount; so that the approximation is quite sufficient
to give a high degree of plausibility to Boeckh’s hypothesis: see pp.
142-145.
Though there is no doubt that in the time of Manetho the Sothiac
period was familiar to the Egyptian priests, yet as to the time
at which it first became known we have no certain information: we
do not know the time at which they first began to take notice of
the fact that their year of 365 days was six hours too short.
According to the statement of Herodotus (ii, 4), the priests of
Heliopolis represented the year of 365 days (which they said that the
Egyptians had first discovered) as if it were an exact recurrence
of the seasons, without any reference to the remaining six hours.
This passage of Herodotus, our oldest informant, is perplexing.
Geminus (Isagogê in Arati Phænomena, c. 6) says that the Egyptians
intentionally refrained from putting in the six hours by any
intercalation, because they preferred that their months, and the
religious ceremonies connected with them, should from time to time
come round at different seasons,—which has much more the air of an
ingenious after-thought, than of a determining reason.
Respecting the principle on which the Egyptian chronology of
Herodotus is put together, see the remarks of M. Bunsen, Ægyptens
Stellung in der Welt-geschichte, vol. i, p. 145.