CHAPTER I.--THE NILE AND EGYPT

Produced by David Widger

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HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's

College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of

France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt

Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume I., Part A.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

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EDITOR'S PREFACE

Professor Maspero does not need to be introduced to us. His name is

well known in England and America as that of one of the chief masters of

Egyptian science as well as of ancient Oriental history and archaeology.

Alike as a philologist, a historian, and an archaeologist, he occupies

a foremost place in the annals of modern knowledge and research. He

possesses that quick apprehension and fertility of resource without

which the decipherment of ancient texts is impossible, and he also

possesses a sympathy with the past and a power of realizing it which are

indispensable if we would picture it aright. His intimate acquaintance

with Egypt and its literature, and the opportunities of discovery

afforded him by his position for several years as director of the Bulaq

Museum, give him an unique claim to speak with authority on the history

of the valley of the Nile. In the present work he has been prodigal of

his abundant stores of learning and knowledge, and it may therefore be

regarded as the most complete account of ancient Egypt that has ever yet

been published.

In the case of Babylonia and Assyria he no longer, it is true, speaks

at first hand. But he has thoroughly studied the latest and best

authorities on the subject, and has weighed their statements with the

judgment which comes from an exhaustive acquaintance with a similar

department of knowledge.

Naturally, in progressive studies like those of Egyptology and

Assyriology, a good many theories and conclusions must be tentative and

provisional only. Discovery crowds so quickly on discovery, that the

truth of to-day is often apt to be modified or amplified by the truth

of to-morrow. A single fresh fact may throw a wholly new and unexpected

light upon the results we have already gained, and cause them to assume

a somewhat changed aspect. But this is what must happen in all sciences

in which there is a healthy growth, and archaeological science is no

exception to the rule.

The spelling of ancient Egyptian proper names adopted by Professor

Maspero will perhaps seem strange to many. But it must be remembered

that all our attempts to represent the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian

words can be approximate only; we can never ascertain with certainty how

they were actually sounded. All that can be done is to determine what

pronunciation was assigned to them in the Greek period, and to work

backwards from this, so far as it is possible, to more remote ages.

This is what Professor Maspero has done, and it must be no slight

satisfaction to him to find that on the whole his system of

transliteration is confirmed by the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna.

The difficulties attaching to the spelling of Assyrian names are

different from those which beset our attempts to reproduce, even

approximately, the names of ancient Egypt. The cuneiform system of

writing was syllabic, each character denoting a syllable, so that we

know what were the vowels in a proper name as well as the consonants.

Moreover, the pronunciation of the consonants resembled that of the

Hebrew consonants, the transliteration of which has long since become

conventional. When, therefore, an Assyrian or Babylonian name is written

phonetically, its correct transliteration is not often a matter

of question. But, unfortunately, the names are not always written

phonetically. The cuneiform script was an inheritance from the

non-Semitic predecessors of the Semites in Babylonia, and in this script

the characters represented words as well as sounds. Not unfrequently

the Semitic Assyrians continued to write a name in the old Sumerian way

instead of spelling it phonetically, the result being that we do not

know how it was pronounced in their own language. The name of the

Chaldæan Noab, for instance, is written with two characters which

ideographically signify "the sun" or "day of life," and of the first of

which the Sumerian values were _ut, babar, khis, tarn,_ and _par_,

while the second had the value of _zi_. Were it not that the Chaldæan

historian Bêrôssos writes the name Xisuthros, we should have no clue to

its Semitic pronunciation.

Professor Maspero's learning and indefatigable industry are well known

to me, but I confess I was not prepared for the exhaustive acquaintance

he shows with Assyriological literature. Nothing seems to have escaped

his notice. Papers and books just published, and half forgotten articles

in obscure periodicals which appeared years ago, have all alike been

used and quoted by him. Naturally, however, there are some points on

which I should be inclined to differ from the conclusions he draws,

or to which he has been led by other Assyriologists. Without being an

Assyriologist himself, it was impossible for him to be acquainted with

that portion of the evidence on certain disputed questions which is only

to be found in still unpublished or untranslated inscriptions.

There are two points which seem to me of sufficient importance

to justify my expression of dissent from his views. These are the

geographical situation of the land of Magan, and the historical

character of the annals of Sargon of Accad. The evidence about Magan is

very clear. Magan is usually associated with the country of Melukhkha,

"the salt" desert, and in _every_ text in which its geographical

position is indicated it is placed in the immediate vicinity of Egypt.

Thus Assur-bani-pal, after stating that he had "gone to the lands of

Magan and Melukhkha," goes on to say that he "directed his road to

Egypt and Kush," and then describes the first of his Egyptian campaigns.

Similar testimony is borne by Esar-haddon. The latter king tells us that

after quitting Egypt he directed his road to the land of Melukhkha, a

desert region in which there were no rivers, and which extended "to the

city of Rapikh" (the modern Raphia) "at the edge of the wadi of Egypt"

(the present Wadi El-Arîsh). After this he received camels from the king

of the Arabs, and made his way to the land and city of Magan. The Tel

el-Amarna tablets enable us to carry the record back to the fifteenth

century b.c. In certain of the tablets now as Berlin (Winckler and Abel,

42 and 45) the Phoenician governor of the Pharaoh asks that help should

be sent him from Melukhkha and Egypt: "The king should hear the words of

his servant, and send ten men of the country of Melukhkha and twenty men

of the country of Egypt to defend the city [of Gebal] for the king." And

again, "I have sent [to] Pharaoh" (literally, "the great house") "for a

garrison of men from the country of Melukhkha, and... the king has

just despatched a garrison [from] the country of Melukhkha." At a still

earlier date we have indications that Melukhkha and Magan denoted the

same region of the world. In an old Babylonian geographical list which

belongs to the early days of Chaldsean history, Magan is described as

"the country of bronze," and Melukhkha as "the country of the _samdu_,"

or "malachite." It was this list which originally led Oppert, Lenormant,

and myself independently to the conviction that Magan was to be looked

for in the Sinaitic Peninsula. Magan included, however, the Midian of

Scripture, and the city of Magan, called Makkan in Semitic Assyrian, is

probably the Makna of classical geography, now represented by the ruins

of Mukna.

As I have always maintained the historical character of the annals of

Sargon of Accad, long before recent discoveries led Professor Hilprecht

and others to adopt the same view, it is as well to state why I

consider them worthy of credit. In themselves the annals contain

nothing improbable; indeed, what might seem the most unlikely portion

of them--that which describes the extension of Sargon's empire to the

shores of the Mediterranean--has been confirmed by the progress of

research. Ammi-satana, a king of the first dynasty of Babylon (about

2200 B.C.), calls himself "king of the country of the Amorites," and

the Tel el-Amarna tablets have revealed to us how deep and long-lasting

Babylonian influence must have been throughout Western Asia. Moreover,

the vase described by Professor Maspero in the present work proves that

the expedition of Naram-Sin against Magan was an historical reality, and

such an expedition was only possible if "the land of the Amorites," the

Syria and Palestine of later days, had been secured in the rear.

But what chiefly led me to the belief that the annals are a document

contemporaneous with the events narrated in them, are two facts which

do not seem to have been sufficiently considered. On the one side, while

the annals of Sargon are given in full, those of his son Naram-Sin break

off abruptly in the early part of his reign. I see no explanation of

this, except that they were composed while Naram-Sin was still on the

throne. On the other side, the campaigns of the two monarchs are coupled

with the astrological phenomena on which the success of the campaigns

was supposed to depend. We know that the Babylonians were given to the

practice and study of astrology from the earliest days of their history;

we know also that even in the time of the later Assyrian monarchy it was

still customary for the general in the field to be accompanied by

the _asipu_, or "prophet," the ashshâph of Dan. ii. 10, on whose

interpretation of the signs of heaven the movements of the army

depended; and in the infancy of Chaldæn history we should accordingly

expect to find the astrological sign recorded along with the event with

which it was bound up. At a subsequent period the sign and the event

were separated from one another in literature, and had the annals of

Sargon been a later compilation, in their case also the separation would

assuredly have been made. That, on the contrary, the annals have the

form which they could have assumed and ought to have assumed only at

the beginning of contemporaneous Babylonian history, is to me a strong

testimony in favour of their genuineness.

It may be added that Babylonian seal-cylinders have been found in

Cyprus, one of which is of the age of Sargon of Accad, its style and

workmanship being the same as that of the cylinder figured in vol. iii.

p. 96, while the other, though of later date, belonged to a person

who describes himself as "the servant of the deified Naram-Sin." Such

cylinders may, of course, have been brought to the island in later

times; but when we remember that a characteristic object of prehistoric

Cypriote art is an imitation of the seal-cylinder of Chaldsea, their

discovery cannot be wholly an accident.

Professor Maspero has brought his facts up to so recent a date that

there is very little to add to what he has written. Since his

manuscript was in type, however, a few additions have been made to our

Assyriological knowledge. A fresh examination of the Babylonian dynastic

tablet has led Professor Delitzsch to make some alterations in the

published account of what Professor Maspero calls the ninth dynasty.

According to Professor Delitzsch, the number of kings composing the

dynasty is stated on the tablet to be twenty-one, and not thirty-one as

was formerly read, and the number of lost lines exactly corresponds with

this figure. The first of the kings reigned thirty-six years, and he

had a predecessor belonging to the previous dynasty whose name has been

lost. There would consequently have been two Elamite usurpers instead of

one.

I would further draw attention to an interesting text, published by

Mr. Strong in the _Babylonian and Oriental Record_, which I believe to

contain the name of a king who belonged to the legendary dynasties of

Chaldæa. This is Samas-natsir, who is coupled with Sargon of Accad and

other early monarchs in one of the lists. The legend, if I interpret it

rightly, states that "Elam shall be altogether given to Samas-natsir;"

and the same prince is further described as building Nippur and Dur-ilu,

as King of Babylon and as conqueror both of a certain Baldakha and of

Khumba-sitir, "the king of the cedar-forest." It will be remembered that

in the Epic of Gil-games, Khumbaba also is stated to have been the lord

of the "cedar-forest."

But of new discoveries and facts there is a constant supply, and it

is impossible for the historian to keep pace with them. Even while the

sheets of his work are passing through the press, the excavator, the

explorer, and the decipherer are adding to our previous stores of

knowledge. In Egypt, Mr. de Morgan's unwearied energy has raised as it

were out of the ground, at Kom Ombo, a vast and splendidly preserved

temple, of whose existence we had hardly dreamed; has discovered

twelfth-dynasty jewellery at Dahshur of the most exquisite workmanship,

and at Meir and Assiut has found in tombs of the sixth dynasty painted

models of the trades and professions of the day, as well as fighting

battalions of soldiers, which, for freshness and lifelike reality,

contrast favourably with the models which come from India to-day. In

Babylonia, the American Expedition, under Mr. Haines, has at Niffer

unearthed monuments of older date than those of Sargon of Accad. Nor

must I forget to mention the lotiform column found by Mr. de Morgan in

a tomb of the Old Empire at Abusir, or the interesting discovery made by

Mr. Arthur Evans of seals and other objects from the prehistoric sites

of Krete and other parts of the AEgean, inscribed with hieroglyphic

characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at one time

have existed by the side of the Hittite hieroglyphs, and may have had

its origin in the influence exercised by Egypt on the peoples of the

Mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty.

In volumes IV., V., and VI. we find ourselves in the full light of an

advanced culture. The nations of the ancient East are no longer each

pursuing an isolated existence, and separately developing the seeds of

civilization and culture on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile.

Asia and Africa have met in mortal combat. Babylonia has carried its

empire to the frontiers of Egypt, and Egypt itself has been held in

bondage by the Hyksôs strangers from Asia. In return, Egypt has driven

back the wave of invasion to the borders of Mesopotamia, has substituted

an empire of its own in Syria for that of the Babylonians, and has

forced the Babylonian king to treat with its Pharaoh on equal terms.

In the track of war and diplomacy have come trade and commerce; Western

Asia is covered with roads, along which the merchant and the courier

travel incessantly, and the whole civilised world of the Orient is knit

together in a common literary culture and common commercial interests.

The age of isolation has thus been succeeded by an age of intercourse,

partly military and antagonistic, partly literary and peaceful.

Professor Maspero paints for us this age of intercourse, describes

its rise and character, its decline and fall. For the unity of Eastern

civilization was again shattered. The Hittites descended from the ranges

of the Taurus upon the Egyptian province of Northern Syria, and cut off

the Semites of the west from those of the east. The Israelites poured

over the Jordan out of Edom and Moab, and took possession of Canaan,

while Babylonia itself, for so many centuries the ruling power of the

Oriental world, had to make way for its upstart rival Assyria. The old

imperial powers were exhausted and played out, and it needed time before

the new forces which were to take their place could acquire sufficient

strength for their work.

As usual, Professor Maspero has been careful to embody in his history

the very latest discoveries and information. Notice, it will be found,

has been taken even of the _stela_ of Meneptah, recently disinterred by

Professor Pétrie, on which the name of the Israelites is engraved.

At Elephantine, I found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an

inscription of Khufuânkh--whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of

the most beautiful objects in the Gizeh Museum--which carries back the

history of the island to the age of the pyramid-builders of the fourth

dynasty. The boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side

of the city-wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the

sixth dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood, on

one of which mention is made of "this domain" of Pepi II., it would seem

that the town of Elephantine must have been founded between the period

of the fourth dynasty and that of the sixth. Manetho is therefore

justified in making the fifth and sixth dynasties of Elephantine origin.

It is in Babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have

been made. At Tello, M. de Sarzec has found a library of more than

thirty thousand tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the

other, and belonging to the age of Gudea (b.c. 2700). Many more tablets

of an early date have been unearthed at Abu-Habba (Sippara) and Jokha

(Isin) by Dr. Scheil, working for the Turkish government. But the most

important finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern

Babylonia, where the American expedition has brought to a close its long

work of systematic excavation. Here Mr. Haynes has dug down to the very

foundations of the great temple of El-lil, and the chief historical

results of his labours have been published by Professor Hilprecht (in

_The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania_, vol. i.

pl. 2, 1896).

About midway between the summit and the bottom of the mound, Mr. Haynes

laid bare a pavement constructed of huge bricks stamped with the names

of Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin. He found also the ancient wall

of the city, which had been built by Naram-Sin, 13.7 metres wide. The

_débris_ of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of Sargon

is as much as 9.25 metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost

stratum of which brings us down to the Christian era, is only 11 metres

in height. We may form some idea from this of the enormous age to which

the history of Babylonian culture and writing reaches back. In fact,

Professor Hilprecht quotes with approval Mr. Haynes's words: "We must

cease to apply the adjective 'earliest' to the time of Sargon, or to any

age or epoch within a thousand years of his advanced civilization." "The

golden age of Babylonian history seems to include the reign of Sargon

and of Ur-Gur."

Many of the inscriptions which belong to this remote age of human

culture have been published by Professor Hilprecht. Among them is a long

inscription, in 132 lines, engraved on multitudes of large stone

vases presented to the temple of El-lil by a certain Lugal-zaggisi.

Lugal-zaggisi was the son of Ukus, the _patesi_ or high priest of the

"Land of the Bow," as Mesopotamia, with its Bedawin inhabitants, was

called. He not only conquered Babylonia, then known as Kengi, "the land

of canals and reeds," but founded an empire which extended from the

Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. This was centuries before Sargon

of Akkad followed in his footsteps. Erech became the capital of

Lugal-zaggisi's empire, and doubtless received at this time its Sumerian

title of "the city" _par excellence_.

For a long while previously there had been war between Babylonia and the

"Land of the Bow," whose rulers seem to have established themselves

in the city of Kis. At one time we find the Babylonian prince

En-sag(sag)-ana capturing Kis and its king; at another time it is a king

of Kis who makes offerings to the god of Nippur, in gratitude for his

victories. To this period belongs the famous "Stela of the Vultures"

found at Tello, on which is depicted the victory of E-dingir-ana-gin,

the King of Lagas (Tello), over the Semitic hordes of the Land of the

Bow. It may be noted that the recent discoveries have shown how correct

Professor Maspero has been in assigning the kings of Lagas to a period

earlier than that of Sargon of Akkad.

Professor Hilprecht would place E-dingir-ana-gin after Lugal-zaggisi,

and see in the Stela of the Vultures a monument of the revenge taken

by the Sumerian rulers of Lagas for the conquest of the country by the

inhabitants of the north. But it is equally possible that it marks

the successful reaction of Chaldsea against the power established by

Lugal-zaggisi. However this may be, the dynasty of Lagas (to which

Professor Hilprecht has added a new king, En-Khegal) reigned in peace

for some time, and belonged to the same age as the first dynasty of Ur.

This was founded by a certain Lugal-kigubnidudu, whose inscriptions have

been found at Niffer. The dynasty which arose at Ur in later days (cir.

b.c. 2700), under Ur-Gur and Bungi, which has hitherto been known as

"the first dynasty of Ur," is thus dethroned from its position, and

becomes the second. The succeeding dynasty, which also made Ur its

capital, and whose kings, Ine-Sin, Pur-Sin IL, and Gimil-Sin, were

the immediate predecessors of the first dynasty of Babylon (to which

Kharnmurabi belonged), must henceforth be termed the third.

Among the latest acquisitions from Tello are the seals of the _patesi_,

Lugal-usumgal, which finally remove all doubt as to the identity of

"Sargani, king of the city," with the famous Sargon of Akkad. The

historical accuracy of Sargon's annals, moreover, have been fully

vindicated. Not only have the American excavators found the contemporary

monuments of him and his son Naram-Sin, but also tablets dated in the

years of his campaigns against "the land of the Amorites." In short,

Sargon of Akkad, so lately spoken of as "a half-mythical" personage, has

now emerged into the full glare of authentic history.

That the native chronologists had sufficient material for reconstructing

the past history of their country, is also now clear. The early

Babylonian contract-tablets are dated by events which officially

distinguished the several years of a king's reign, and tablets have been

discovered compiled at the close of a reign which give year by year the

events which thus characterised them. One of these tablets, for example,

from the excavations at Niffer, begins with the words: (1) "The year

when Par-Sin (II.) becomes king. (2) The year when Pur-Sin the king

conquers Urbillum," and ends with "the year when Gimil-Sin becomes King

of Ur, and conquers the land of Zabsali" in the Lebanon.

Of special interest to the biblical student are the discoveries made

by Mr. Pinches among some of the Babylonian tablets which have recently

been acquired by the British Museum. Four of them relate to no less a

personage than Kudur-Laghghamar or Chedor-laomer, "King of Elam," as

well as to Eri-Aku or Arioch, King of Larsa, and his son Dur-makh-ilani;

to Tudghula or Tidal, the son of Gazza[ni], and to their war against

Babylon in the time of Khamrnu[rabi]. In one of the texts the question

is asked, "Who is the son of a king's daughter who has sat on the throne

of royalty? Dur-makh-ilani, the son of Eri-Âku, the son of the lady

Kur... has sat on the throne of royalty," from which it may perhaps be

inferred that Eri-Âku was the son of Kudur-Laghghamar's daughter; and in

another we read, "Who is Kudur-Laghghamar, the doer of mischief? He

has gathered together the Umman Manda, has devastated the land of Bel

(Babylonia), and [has marched] at their side." The Umman Manda were the

"Barbarian Hordes" of the Kurdish mountains, on the northern frontier of

Elam, and the name corresponds with that of the Goyyim or "nations" in

the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. We here see Kudur-Laghghamar acting

as their suzerain lord. Unfortunately, all four tablets are in a

shockingly broken condition, and it is therefore difficult to discover

in them a continuous sense, or to determine their precise nature.

They have, however, been supplemented by further discoveries made by

Dr. Scheil at Constantinople. Among the tablets preserved there, he has

found letters from Kharnmurabi to his vassal Sin-idinnam of Larsa,

from which we learn that Sin-idinnam had been dethroned by the Elamites

Kudur-Mabug and Eri-Âku, and had fled for refuge to the court of

Kharnmurabi at Babylon. In the war which subsequently broke out between

Kharnmurabi and Kudur-Laghghamar, the King of Elam (who, it would seem,

exercised suzerainty over Babylonia for seven years), Sin-idinnam

gave material assistance to the Babylonian monarch, and Khammurabi

accordingly bestowed presents upon him as a "recompense for his valour

on the day of the overthrow of Kudur-Laghghamar."

I must also refer to a fine scarab--found in the rubbish-mounds of the

ancient city of Kom Ombos, in Upper Egypt--which bears upon it the

name of Sutkhu-Apopi. It shows us that the author of the story of the

Expulsion of the Hyksôs, in calling the king Ra-Apopi, merely, like an

orthodox Egyptian, substituted the name of the god of Heliopolis for

that of the foreign deity. Equally interesting are the scarabs brought

to light by Professor Flinders Pétrie, on which a hitherto unknown

Ya'aqob-hal or Jacob-el receives the titles of a Pharaoh.

In volumes VII., VIII., and IX., Professor Maspero concludes his

monumental work on the history of the ancient East. The overthrow of the

Persian empire by the Greek soldiers of Alexander marks the beginning of

a new era. Europe at last enters upon the stage of history, and becomes

the heir of the culture and civilisation of the Orient. The culture

which had grown up and developed on the banks of the Euphrates and Nile

passes to the West, and there assumes new features and is inspired with

a new spirit. The East perishes of age and decrepitude; its strength is

outworn, its power to initiate is past. The long ages through which it

had toiled to build up the fabric of civilisation are at an end; fresh

races are needed to carry on the work which it had achieved. Greece

appears upon the scene, and behind Greece looms the colossal figure of

the Roman Empire.

During the past decade, excavation has gone on apace in Egypt and

Babylonia, and discoveries of a startling and unexpected nature have

followed in the wake of excavation. Ages that seemed prehistoric step

suddenly forth into the daydawn of history; personages whom a sceptical

criticism had consigned to the land of myth or fable are clothed once

more with flesh and blood, and events which had been long forgotten

demand to be recorded and described. In Babylonia, for example, the

excavations at Niffer and Tello have shown that Sargon of Akkad, so far

from being a creature of romance, was as much a historical monarch as

Nebuchadrezzar himself; monuments of his reign have been discovered, and

we learn from them that the empire he is said to have founded had a very

real existence. Contracts have been found dated in the years when he was

occupied in conquering Syria and Palestine, and a cadastral survey that

was made for the purposes of taxation mentions a Canaanite who had been

appointed "governor of the land of the Amorites." Even a postal service

had already been established along the high-roads which knit the several

parts of the empire together, and some of the clay seals which franked

the letters are now in the Museum of the Louvre.

At Susa, M. de Morgan, the late director of the Service of Antiquities

in Egypt, has been excavating below the remains of the Achremenian

period, among the ruins of the ancient Elamite capital. Here he

has found numberless historical inscriptions, besides a text in

hieroglyphics which may cast light on the origin of the cuneiform

characters. But the most interesting of his discoveries are two

Babylonian monuments that were carried off by Elamite conquerors from

the cities of Babylonia. One of them is a long inscription of about 1200

lines belonging to Manistusu, one of the early Babylonian kings, whose

name has been met with at Niffer; the other is a monument of Naram-Sin,

the Son of Sargon of Akkad, which it seems was brought as booty to Susa

by Simti-silkhak, the grandfather, perhaps, of Eriaku or Arioch.

In Armenia, also, equally important inscriptions have been found by

Belck and Lehmann. More than two hundred new ones have been added to the

list of Vannic texts. It has been discovered from them that the kingdom

of Biainas or Van was founded by Ispuinis and Menuas, who rebuilt

Yan itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and

destroyed. The older name of the country was Kumussu, and it may be that

the language spoken in it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a

tablet in hieroglyphics of the Hittite type has been unearthed at Toprak

Kaleh. One of the newly-found inscriptions of Sarduris III. shows that

the name of the Assyrian god, hitherto read Ramman or Rimmon, was

really pronounced Hadad. It describes a war of the Vannic king against

Assur-nirari, son of Hadad-nirari (_A-da-di-ni-ra-ri_) of Assyria, thus

revealing not only the true form of the Assyrian name, but also the

parentage of the last king of the older Assyrian dynasty. From another

inscription, belonging to Rusas II., the son of Argistis, we learn that

campaigns were carried on against the Hittites and the Moschi in the

latter years of Sennacherib's reign, and therefore only just before the

irruption of the Kimmerians into the northern regions of Western Asia.

The two German explorers have also discovered the site and even the

ruins of Muzazir, called Ardinis by the people of Van. They lie on the

hill of Shkenna, near Topsanâ, on the road between Kelishin and Sidek.

In the immediate neighbourhood the travellers succeeded in deciphering

a monument of Rusas I., partly in Vannic, partly in Assyrian, from which

it appears that the Vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when

the news of the fall of Muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by

Sargon, but that, on the contrary, he "marched against the mountains

of Assyria" and restored the fallen city itself. Urzana, the King of

Muzazir, had fled to him for shelter, and after the departure of the

Assyrian army he was sent back by Rusas to his ancestral domains. The

whole of the district in which Muzazir was situated was termed Lulu, and

was regarded as the southern province of Ararat. In it was Mount Nizir,

on whose summit the ark of the Chaldsean Noah rested, and which is

therefore rightly described in the Book of Genesis as one of "the

mountains of Ararat." It was probably the Rowandiz of to-day.

The discoveries made by Drs. Belck and Lehmann, however, have not been

confined to Vannic texts. At the sources of the Tigris Dr. Lehmann has

found two Assyrian inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser IL,

one dated in his fifteenth and the other in his thirty-first year, and

relating to his campaigns against Aram of Ararat. He has further found

that the two inscriptions previously known to exist at the same spot,

and believed to belong to Tiglath-Ninip and Assur-nazir-pal, are really

those of Shalmaneser II., and refer to the war of his seventh year.

But it is from Egypt that the most revolutionary revelations have

come. At Abydos and Kom el-Ahmar, opposite El-Kab, monuments have been

disinterred of the kings of the first and second dynasties, if not of

even earlier princes; while at Negada, north of Thebes, M. de Morgan has

found a tomb which seems to have been that of Menés himself. A new world

of art has been opened out before us; even the hieroglyphic system of

writing is as yet immature and strange. But the art is already advanced

in many respects; hard stone was cut into vases and bowls, and even

into statuary of considerable artistic excellence; glazed porcelain was

already made, and bronze, or rather copper, was fashioned into weapons

and tools. The writing material, as in Babylonia, was often clay,

over which seal-cylinders of a Babylonian pattern were rolled. Equally

Babylonian are the strange and composite animals engraved on some of the

objects of this early age, as well as the structure of the tombs, which

were built, not of stone, but of crude brick, with their external

walls panelled and pilastered. Professor Hommel's theory, which brings

Egyptian civilisation from Babylonia along with the ancestors of the

historical Egyptians, has thus been largely verified.

But the historical Egyptians were not the first inhabitants of the

valley of the Nile. Not only have palaeolithic implements been found on

the plateau of the desert; the relics of neolithic man have turned up

in extraordinary abundance. When the historical Egyptians arrived with

their copper weapons and their system of writing, the land was already

occupied by a pastoral people, who had attained a high level of

neolithic culture. Their implements of flint are the most beautiful and

delicately finished that have ever been discovered; they were able to

carve vases of great artistic excellence out of the hardest of stone,

and their pottery was of no mean quality. Long after the country had

come into the possession of the historical dynasties, and had even been

united into a single monarchy, their settlements continued to exist

on the outskirts of the desert, and the neolithic culture that

distinguished them passed only gradually away. By degrees, however,

they intermingled with their conquerors from Asia, and thus formed the

Egyptian race of a later day. But they had already made Egypt what it

has been throughout the historical period. Under the direction of the

Asiatic immigrants and of the eugineering science whose first home had

been in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, they accomplished those great

works of irrigation which confined the Nile to its present channel,

which cleared away the jungle and the swamp that had formerly bordered

the desert, and turned them into fertile fields. Theirs were the hands

which carried out the plans of their more intelligent masters, and

cultivated the valley when once it had been reclaimed. The Egypt

of history was the creation of a twofold race: the Egyptians of the

monuments supplied the controlling and directing power; the Egyptians of

the neolithic graves bestowed upon it their labour and their skill.

The period treated of by Professor Maspero in these volumes is one for

which there is an abundance of materials sucli as do not exist for

the earlier portions of his history. The evidence of the monuments is

supplemented by that of the Hebrew and classical writers. But on this

very account it is in some respects more difficult to deal with, and the

conclusions arrived at by the historian are more open to question and

dispute. In some cases conflicting accounts are given of an event which

seem to rest on equally good authority; in other cases, there is a

sudden failure of materials just where the thread of the story becomes

most complicated. Of this the decline and fall of the Assyrian empire

is a prominent example; for our knowledge of it, we have still to depend

chiefly on the untrustworthy legends of the Greeks. Our views must be

coloured more or less by our estimate of Herodotos; those who, like

myself, place little or no confidence in what he tells us about Oriental

affairs will naturally form a very different idea of the death-struggle,

of Assyria from that formed by writers who still see in him the Father

of Oriental History.

Even where the native monuments have come to our aid, they have not

unfrequently introduced difficulties and doubts where none seemed to

exist before, and have made the task of the critical historian harder

than ever. Cyrus and his forefathers, for instance, turn out to have

been kings of Anzan, and not of Persia, thus explaining why it is that

the Neo-Susian language appears by the side of the Persian and the

Babylonian as one of the three official languages of the Persian empire;

but we still have to learn what was the relation of Anzan to Persia on

the one hand, and to Susa on the other, and when it was that Cyrus of

Anzan became also King of Persia. In the Annalistic Tablet, he is called

"King of Persia" for the first time in the ninth year of Nabonidos.

Similar questions arise as to the position and nationality of Astyages.

He is called in the inscriptions, not a Mede, but a Manda--a name which,

as I showed many years ago, meant for the Babylonian a "barbarian" of

Kurdistan. I have myself little doubt that the Manda over whom Astyages

ruled were the Scythians of classical tradition, who, as may be gathered

from a text published by Mr. Strong, had occupied the ancient kingdom of

Ellipi. It is even possible that in the Madyes of Herodotos, we have a

reminiscence of the Manda of the cuneiform inscriptions. That the Greek

writers should have confounded the Madâ or Medes with the Manda or

Barbarians is not surprising; we find even Berossos describing one of

the early dynasties of Babylonia as "Median" where Manda, and not

Madâ, must plainly be meant.

These and similar problems, however, will doubtless be cleared up by the

progress of excavation and research. Perhaps M. de Morgan's excavations

at Susa may throw some light on them, but it is to the work of the

German expedition, which has recently begun the systematic exploration

of the site of Babylon, that we must chiefly look for help. The Babylon

of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar rose on the ruins of Nineveh, and

the story of downfall of the Assyrian empire must still be lying buried

under its mounds.

A. H. SAYCE.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

In completing the translation of this great work, I have to thank

Professor Maspero for kindly permitting me to appeal to him on various

questions which arose while preparing the translation. His patience and

courtesy have alike been unfailing in every matter submitted for his

decision.

I am indebted to Miss Bradbury for kindly supplying, in the midst of

much other literary work for the Egypt Exploration Fund, the translation

of the chapter on the gods, and also of the earlier parts of some of the

first chapters. She has, moreover, helped me in my own share of the work

with many suggestions and hints, which her intimate connection with the

late Miss Amelia B. Edwards fully qualified her to give.

As in the original there is a lack of uniformity in the transcription

and accentuation of Arabic names, I have ventured to alter them in

several cases to the form most familiar to English readers.

The spelling of the ancient Egyptian words has, at Professor Maspero's

request, been retained throughout, with the exception that the French

_ou_ has been invariably represented by û, e.g. Khnoumou by Khnûmû.

By an act of international courtesy, the director of the _Imprimerie

Nationale_ has allowed the beautifully cut hieroglyphic and cuneiform

type used in the original to be employed in the English edition, and

I take advantage of this opportunity to express to him our thanks and

appreciation of his graceful act.

M. L. McClure.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.--THE NILE AND EGYPT The River and its Influence upon the

Formation of the Country--The Oldest Inhabitants of the Valley and its

First Political Organization

CHAPTER II.--THE GODS OF EGYPT Their Number and their Nature--The Feudal

Gods, Living and Dead--The Triads--Temples and Priests--The Cosmogonies

of the Delta--The Enneads of Heliopolis and of Hermopolis

CHAPTER III.--THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT The Divine Dynasties:

Râ, Shû, Osiris, Sit, Horus-Thot, and the Invention of Sciences and

Writing-Menes, and the Three First Human Dynasties

[Illustration: 001.jpg PAGE ONE]

[Illustration: 002.jpg PAGE TWO]

CHAPTER I.--THE NILE AND EGYPT

_THE RIVER AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF

THE COUNTRY--THE OLDEST INHABITANTS OF THE LAND--THE FIRST POLITICAL

ORGANIZATION OF THE VALLEY._

_The Delta: its gradual formation, its structure, its canals--The valley

of Egypt--The two arms of the river--The Eastern Nile--The appearance

of its hanks--The hills--The gorge of Gehel Silsileh--The cataracts: the

falls of Aswan--Nubia--The rapids of Wady Halfah--The Takazze--The Blue

Nile and the White Nile.

The sources of the Nile--The Egyptian cosmography--The four pillars

and the four upholding mountains--The celestial Nile the source of the

terrestial Nile--the Southern Sea and the islands of Spirits--The tears

of Isis--The rise of the Nile--The Green Nile and the Bed Nile--The

opening of the dykes---The fall of the Nile--The river at its lowest

ebb.

The alluvial deposits and the effects of the inundation upon the soil of

Egypt--Paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus;

the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dôm-palms--The fauna:

the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus

and the crocodile; birds; fish, the fahaka.

The Nile god: his form and its varieties--The goddess Mirit--The

supposed sources of the Nile at Elephantine--The festivals of Gebel

Silsileh-Hymn to the Nile from papyri m the British Museum.

The names of the Nile and Egypt: Bomitu and Qimit--Antiquity of the

Egyptianpeople--Their first horizon--The hypothesis of their Asiatic

origin--The probability of their African origin--The language and its

Semitic affinities--The race and its principal types.

The primitive civilization of Egypt--Its survival into historic

times--The women of Amon--Marriage--Rights of women and

children--Houses--Furniture--Dress--Jewels--Wooden and metal

arms--Primitive life-Fishing and hunting--The lasso and "bolas"--The

domestication of animals--Plants used for food--The lotus--Cereals--The

hoe and the plough.

The conquest of the valley--Dykes--Basins--Irrigation--The princes--The

nomes--The first local principalities--Late organization of the

Delta--Character of its inhabitants--Gradual division of the

principalities and changes of then areas--The god of the city._

[Illustration: 003.jpg CHAPTER ONE]

THE NILE AND EGYPT

_The river and its influence upon the formation of the country--The

oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization._

* The same expression has been attributed to Hecatseus of

Miletus. It has often been observed that this phrase seems

Egyptian on the face of it, and it certainly recalls such

forms of expression as the following, taken from a formula

frequently found on funerary "All things created by heaven,

given by earth, _brought by the Nile--from its mysterious

sources._" Nevertheless, up to the present time, the

hieroglyphic texts have yielded nothing altogether

corresponding to the exact terms of the Greek historians--

_gift_ of the Nile, or its natural _product_.

A long low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of

vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular

plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this,

the Delta of Egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is

as it were the gift of the Nile. The Mediterranean once reached to the

foot of the sandy plateau on which stand the Pyramids, and formed a

wide gulf where now stretches plain beyond plain of the Delta. The

last undulations of the Arabian hills, from Gebel Mokattam to Gebel

Geneffeh, were its boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow

channel running between Africa and Asia united the Mediterranean to

the Red Sea. Westward, the littoral followed closely the contour of the

Libyan plateau; but a long limestone spur broke away from it at about

31° N., and terminated in Cape Abûkîr. The alluvial deposits first

tilled up the depths of the bay, and then, under the influence of the

currents which swept along its eastern coasts, accumulated behind that

rampart of sand-hills whose remains are still to be seen near Benha.

Thus was formed a miniature Delta, whose structure pretty accurately

corresponded with that of the great Delta of to-day. Here the Nile

divided into three divergent streams, roughly coinciding with the

southern courses of the Rosetta and Damietta branches, and with the

modern canal of Abu Meneggeh. The ceaseless accumulation of mud brought

down by the river soon overpassed the first limits, and steadily

encroached upon the sea until it was carried beyond the shelter

furnished by Cape Abûkîr. Thence it was gathered into the great littoral

current flowing from Africa to Asia, and formed an incurvated coast-line

ending in the headland of Casios, on the Syrian frontier. From that time

Egypt made no further increase towards the north, and her coast remains

practically such as it was thousands of years ago:[*] the interior

alone has suffered change, having been dried up, hardened, and gradually

raised. Its inhabitants thought they could measure the exact length of

time in which this work of creation had been accomplished. According

to the Egyptians, Menés, the first of their mortal kings, had found, so

they said, the valley under water. The sea came in almost as far as the

Fayûm, and, excepting the province of Thebes, the whole country was

a pestilential swamp. Hence, the necessary period for the physical

formation of Egypt would cover some centuries after Menés. This is

no longer considered a sufficient length of time, and some modern

geologists declare that the Nile must have worked at the formation of

its own estuary for at least seventy-four thousand years.[**]

* Élie de Beaumont, "The great distinction of the Nile Delta

lies in the almost uniform persistence of its coast-line....

The present sea-coast of Egypt is little altered from that

of three thousand years ago." The latest observations

prove it to be sinking and shrinking near Alexandria to rise

in the neighbourhood of Port Said.

** Others, as for example Schweinfurth, are more moderate

in their views, and think "that it must have taken about

twenty thousand years for that alluvial deposit which now

forms the arable soil of Egypt to have attained to its

present depth and fertility."

This figure is certainly exaggerated, for the alluvium would gain on

the shallows of the ancient gulf far more rapidly than it gains upon the

depths of the Mediterranean. But even though we reduce the period, we

must still admit that the Egyptians little suspected the true age of

their country. Not only did the Delta long precede the coming of Menés,

but its plan was entirely completed before the first arrival of the

Egyptians. The Greeks, full of the mysterious virtues which they

attributed to numbers, discovered that there were seven principal

branches, and seven mouths of the Nile, and that, as compared with

these, the rest were but false mouths.

[Illustration: 006.jpg THE MOUTH OF THE NILE PREVIOUS TO THE FORMATION

OF THE DELTA.]

As a matter of fact, there were only three chief outlets. The Canopic

branch flowed westward, and fell into the Mediterranean near Cape

Abûkîr, at the western extremity of the arc described by the coast-line.

The Pelusiac branch followed the length of the Arabian chain, and flowed

forth at the other extremity; and the Sebennytic stream almost bisected

the triangle contained between the Canopic and Pelusiac channels. Two

thousand years ago, these branches separated from the main river at the

city of Cerkasoros, nearly four miles north of the site where Cairo now

stands. But after the Pelusiac branch had ceased to exist, the fork of

the river gradually wore away the land from age to age, and is now some

nine miles lower down.[*] These three great waterways are united by a

network of artificial rivers and canals, and by ditches--some natural,

others dug by the hand of man, but all ceaselessly shifting. They silt

up, close, open again, replace each other, and ramify in innumerable

branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on

all sides. As the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and

is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and

the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. The Libyan and

Arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and

gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite.

And there the Delta ends, and Egypt proper has begun.

It is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south between

regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the banks of the

river, made by the Nile, and sustained by the Nile. The whole length of

the land is shut in between two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a

mean distance of about twelve miles.[**]

* By the end of the Byzantine period, the fork of the river

lay at some distance south of Shetnûfi, the present

Shatanûf, which is the spot where it now is. The Arab

geographers call the head of the Delta Batn-el-Bagaraji, the

Cow's Belly. Ampère, in his Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie, p.

120, says,--"May it not be that this name, denoting the place

where the most fertile part of Egypt begins, is a

reminiscence of the Cow Goddess, of Isis, the symbol of

fecundity, and the personification of Egypt?"

**De Rozière estimated the mean breadth as being only a

little over nine miles.

During the earlier ages, the river filled all this intermediate space,

and the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very

summits, still bear unmistakable traces of its action. Wasted, and

shrunken within the deeps of its ancient bed, the stream now makes a way

through its own thick deposits of mud. The bulk of its waters keeps

to the east, and constitutes the true Nile, the "Great River" of the

hieroglyphic inscriptions. A second arm flows close to the Libyan

desert, here and there formed into canals, elsewhere left to follow

its own course. From the head of the Delta to the village of Demt it

is called the Bahr-Yûsuf; beyond Derût--up to Gebel Silsileh--it is the

Ibrâhimîyeh, the Sohâgîyeh, the Raiân. But the ancient names are unknown

to us. This Western Nile dries up in winter throughout all its upper

courses: where it continues to flow, it is by scanty accessions from

the main Nile. It also divides north of Henassieh, and by the gorge of

Illahûn sends out a branch which passes beyond the hills into the basin

of the Fayûrn. The true Nile, the Eastern Nile, is less a river than

a sinuous lake encumbered with islets and sandbanks, and its navigable

channel winds capriciously between them, flowing with a strong and

steady current below the steep, black banks cut sheer through the

alluvial earth.

[Illustration: 009.jpg A LINE OF LADEN CAMELS EMERGES FROM A HOLLOW OF

THE UNDULATING ROAD. 1]

1 From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by

Insinger, taken in 1884.

There are light groves of the date-palm, groups of acacia trees and

sycamores, square patches of barley or of wheat, fields of beans or of

bersîm,[*] and here and there a long bank of sand which the least breeze

raises into whirling clouds. And over all there broods a great silence,

scarcely broken by the cry of birds, or the song of rowers in a passing

boat.

* Bersîm is a kind of trefoil, the _Trifolium Alexandrinum_

of LINNÆUS. It is very common in Egypt, and the only plant

of the kind generally cultivated for fodder.

Something of human life may stir on the banks, but it is softened into

poetry by distance. A half-veiled woman, bearing a bundle of herbs upon

her head, is driving her goats before her. An irregular line of asses or

of laden camels emerges from one hollow of the undulating road only to

disappear within another. A group of peasants, crouched upon the shore,

in the ancient posture of knees to chin, patiently awaits the return of

the ferry-boat.

[Illustration: 010.jpg]

1 From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by

Insinger, taken in 1886.

A dainty village looks forth smiling from beneath its palm trees. Near

at hand it is all naked filth and ugliness: a cluster of low grey huts

built of mud and laths; two or three taller houses, whitewashed;

an enclosed square shaded by sycamores; a few old men, each seated

peacefully at his own door; a confusion of fowls, children, goats, and

sheep; half a dozen boats made fast ashore. But, as we pass on, the

wretchedness all fades away; meanness of detail is lost in light, and

long before it disappears at a bend of the river, the village is again

clothed with gaiety and serene beauty. Day by day, the landscape repeats

itself. The same groups of trees alternate with the same fields, growing

green or dusty in the sunlight according to the season of the year. With

the same measured flow, the Nile winds beneath its steep banks and about

its scattered islands.

[Illustration: 011.jpg PART OF GEBEL SHÊKH HERÎDI. 1]

1 From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by Insinger,

taken in 1882.

One village succeeds another, each alike smiling and sordid under its

crown of foliage. The terraces of the Libyan hills, away beyond the

Western Nile, scarcely rise above the horizon, and lie like a white

edging between the green of the plain and the blue of the sky. The

Arabian hills do not form one unbroken line, but a series of mountain

masses with their spurs, now approaching the river, and now withdrawing

to the desert at almost regular intervals. At the entrance to the

valley, rise Gebel Mokattam and Gebel el-Ahmar. Gebel Hemûr-Shemûl and

Gebel Shêkh Embârak next stretch in echelon from north to south, and are

succeeded by Gebel et-Ter, where, according to an old legend, all the

birds of the world are annually assembled.[*]

* In Makrizi's _Description of Egypt_ we read: "Every year,

upon a certain day, all the herons (Boukîr, _Ardea bubulcus_

of Cuvier) assemble at this mountain. One after another,

each puts his beak into a cleft of the hill until the cleft

closes upon one of them. And then forthwith all the others

fly away But the bird which has been caught struggles until

he dies, and there his body remains until it has fallen into

dust." The same tale is told by other Arab writers, of which

a list may be seen in Etienne Quatremère, _Mémoires

historiques et géographiques sur l'Egypte et quelques

contrées voisines_, vol. i. pp. 31-33. It faintly recalls

that ancient tradition of the Cleft at Abydos, whereby souls

must pass, as human-headed birds, in order to reach the

other world.

[Illustration: 12.jpg THE HILL OF KASR ES-SAYYAD. 2]

2 From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by

insinger, taken in 1882.

Then follows Gebel Abûfêda, dreaded by the sailors for its sudden gusts.

Limestone predominates throughout, white or yellowish, broken by veins

of alabaster, or of red and grey sandstones. Its horizontal strata are

so symmetrically laid one above another as to seem more like the walls

of a town than the side of a mountain. But time has often dismantled

their summits and loosened their foundations. Man has broken into their

façades to cut his quarries and his tombs; while the current is secretly

undermining the base, wherein it has made many a breach. As soon as any

margin of mud has collected between cliffs and river, halfah and wild

plants take hold upon it, and date-palms grow there--whence their seed,

no one knows. Presently a hamlet rises at the mouth of the ravine,

among clusters of trees and fields in miniature. Beyond Siût, the light

becomes more glowing, the air drier and more vibrating, and the green of

cultivation loses its brightness. The angular outline of the dom-palni

mingles more and more with that of the common palm and of the heavy

sycamore, and the castor-oil plant increasingly abounds. But all these

changes come about so gradually that they are effected before we notice

them. The plain continues to contract. At Thebes it is still ten miles

wide; at the gorge of Gebelên it has almost disappeared, and at Gebel

Silsileh it has completely vanished. There, it was crossed by a natural

dyke of sandstone, through which the waters have with difficulty scooped

for themselves a passage. From this point, Egypt is nothing but the bed

of the Nile lying between two escarpments of naked rock.

Further on the cultivable land reappears, but narrowed, and changed

almost beyond recognition. Hills, hewn out of solid sandstone, succeed

each other at distances of about two miles, low, crushed, sombre, and

formless. Presently a forest of palm trees, the last on that side,

announces Aswan and Nubia. Five banks of granite, ranged in lines

between latitude 24° and 18° N., cross Nubia from east to west, and from

north-east to south-west, like so many ramparts thrown up between the

Mediterranean and the heart of Africa. The Nile has attacked them from

behind, and made its way over them one after another in rapids which

have been glorified by the name of cataracts.

[Illustration: 014.jpg ENTRANCE TO THE FIRST CATARACT. 1]

1 View taken from the hills opposite Elephantine, by

Insinger, in 1884.

Classic writers were pleased to describe the river as hurled into the

gulfs of Syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood

were deafened by it. Even a colony of Persians, sent thither by

Cambyses, could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek

a quieter situation. The first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous

passage six and a quarter miles in length, descending from the island

of Philae to the port of Aswan, the aspect of its approach relieved and

brightened by the ever green groves of Elephantine. Beyond Elephantine

are cliffs and sandy beaches, chains of blackened "roches moutonnées"

marking out the beds of the currents, and fantastic reefs, sometimes

bare and sometimes veiled by long grasses and climbing plants, in

which thousands of birds have made their nests. There are islets

too, occasionally large enough to have once supported something of a

population, such as Amerade, Salûg, Sehêl. The granite threshold of

Nubia, is broken beyond Sehêl, but its débris, massed m disorder against

the right bank, still seem to dispute the passage of the waters, dashing

turbulently and roaring as they flow along through tortuous channels,

where every streamlet is broken up into small cascades, ihe channel

running by the left bank is always navigable.

[Illustration: 015.jpg ENTRANCE TO NUBIA.]

During the inundation, the rocks and sandbanks of the right side are

completely under water, and their presence is only betrayed by eddies.

But on the river's reaching its lowest point a fall of some six feet is

established, and there big boats, hugging the shore, are hauled up by

means of ropes, or easily drift down with the current.

[Illustration: 016.jpg LEAGUE BEYOND LEAGUE, THE HILLS STKETCH ON IN LOW

IGNOBLE OUTLINE. 1]

1 From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by Insinger,

taken in 1881.

All kinds of granite are found together in this corner of Africa. There

are the pink and red Syenites, porphyritic granite, yellow granite, grey

granite, both black granite and white, and granites veined with black

and veined with white. As soon as these disappear behind us, various

sandstones begin to crop up, allied to the coarsest _calcaire grossier_.

The hill bristle with small split blocks, with peaks half overturned,

with rough and denuded mounds. League beyond league, they stretch in low

ignoble outline. Here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert,

revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon

one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless

caravans. The now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur,

accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the rhythmic

creak of the sâkîeh.[*]

* The sâkîeh is made of a notch-wheel fixed vertically on a

horizontal axle, and is actuated by various cog-wheels set

in continuous motion by oxen or asses. A long chain of

earthenware vessels brings up the water either from the

river itself, or from some little branch canal, and

empties it into a system of troughs and reservoirs.

Thence, it flows forth to be distributed over all the

neighbouring land.

Jetties of rough stone-work, made in unknown times by an unknown people,

run out like breakwaters into midstream.

[Illustration: 018.jpg THE ENTRANCE TO THE FIRST CATARACT]

From time to time waves of sand are borne over, and drown the narrow

fields of durra and of barley. Scraps of close, aromatic pasturage,

acacias, date-palms, and dôm-palms, together with a few shrivelled

sycamores, are scattered along both banks. The ruins of a crumbling

pylon mark the site of some ancient city, and, overhanging the water,

is a vertical wall of rock honeycombed with tombs. Amid these relics of

another age, miserable huts, scattered hamlets, a town or two surrounded

with little gardens are the only evidence that there is yet life in

Nubia. South of Wâdy Halfah, the second granite bank is broken through,

and the second cataract spreads its rapids over a length of four

leagues: the archipelago numbers more than 350 islets, of which some

sixty have houses upon them and yield harvests to their inhabitants. The

main characteristics of the first two cataracts are repeated with slight

variations in the cases of the three which follow,--at Hannek, at

Guerendid, and El-Hu-mar. It is Egypt still, but a joyless Egypt bereft

of its brightness: impoverished, disfigured, and almost desolate.

[Illustration: 020.jpg ENTRANCE TO THE SECOND CATAKACT. 1]

1 View taken from the top of the rocks of Abusîr, after a

photograph by Insinger, in 1881.

There is the same double wall of hills, now closely confining the

valley, and again withdrawing from each other as though to flee into

the desert. Everywhere are moving sheets of sand, steep black banks with

their narrow strips of cultivation, villages which are scarcely visible

on account of the lowness of their huts sycamore ceases at Gebel-Barkal,

date-palms become fewer and finally disappear. The Nile alone has not

changed. And it was at Philse, so it is at Berber. Here, however, on

the right bank, 600 leagues from the sea, is its first affluent, the

Takazze, which intermittently brings to it the waters of Northern

Ethiopia. At Khartum, the single channel in which the river flowed

divides; and two other streams are opened up in a southerly direction,

each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream. Which is

the true Nile? Is it the Blue Nile, which seems to come down from the

distant mountains? Or is it the White Nile, which has traversed the

immense plains of equatorial Africa. The old Egyptians never knew.

The river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it

withheld it from us until a few years ago. Vainly did their victorious

armies follow the Nile for months together as they pursued the

tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide, as full, as

irresistible in its progress as ever. It was a fresh-water sea, and

sea--_iaûmâ, iôma_--was the name by which they called it.

The Egyptians therefore never sought its source. They imagined the whole

universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest

diameter was from south to north, and its least from east to west. The

earth, with its alternate continents and seas, formed the bottom of the

box; it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with Egypt

in its centre. The sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, flat

according to some, vaulted according to others. Its earthward face was

capriciously sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables, and which,

extinguished or unperceived by day, were lighted, or became visible to

our eyes, at night.

[Illustration: 022.jpg AN ATTEMPT TO REPRESENT THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE.2]

2 Section taken at Hermopolis. To the left, is the bark of

the sun on the celestial river.

Since this ceiling could not remain in mid-air without support, four

columns, or rather four forked trunks of trees, similar to those which

maintained the primitive house, were supposed to uphold it. But it was

doubtless feared lest some tempest should overturn them, for they were

superseded by four lofty peaks, rising at the four cardinal points, and

connected by a continuous chain of mountains. The Egyptians knew little

of the northern peak: the Mediterranean, the "Very Green," interposed

between it and Egypt, and prevented their coming near enough to see it.

The southern peak was named Apit the Horn of the Earth; that on the east

was called Bâkhû, the Mountain of Birth; and the western peak was known

as Manu, sometimes as Onkhit, the Region of Life.

[Illustration: 023.jpg FOOTNOTES WITH GRAPHICS]

Bâkhû was not a fictitious mountain, but the highest of those distant

summits seen from the Nile in looking towards the red Sea. In the same

way, Manu answered to some hill of the Libyan desert, whose summit

closed the horizon. When it was discovered that neither Bâkhû nor Manu

were the limits of the world, the notion of upholding the celestial roof

was not on that account given up. It was only necessary to withdraw the

pillars from sight, and imagine fabulous peaks, invested with familiar

names. These were not supposed to form the actual boundary of

the universe; a great river--analogous to the Ocean-stream of the

Greeks--lay between them and its utmost limits. This river circulated

upon a kind of ledge projecting along the sides of the box a little

below the continuous mountain chain upon which the starry heavens were

sustained. On the north of the ellipse, the river was bordered by a

steep and abrupt bank, which took its rise at the peak of Manu on the

west, and soon rose high enough to form a screen between the river and

the earth. The narrow valley which it hid from view was known as

Da'it from remotest times. Eternal night enfolded that valley in thick

darkness, and filled it with dense air such as no living thing could

breathe. Towards the east the steep bank rapidly declined, and ceased

altogether a little beyond Bâkhû, while the river flowed on between low

and almost level shores from east to south, and then from south to west.

The sun was a disc of fire placed upon a boat. At the same equable rate,

the river carried it round the ramparts of the world. Erom evening until

morning it disappeared within the gorges of Daït; its light did not then

reach us, and it was night. From morning until evening its rays, being

no longer intercepted by any obstacle, were freely shed abroad from one

end of the box to the other, and it was day. The Nile branched off from

the celestial river at its southern bend;[*] hence the south was

the chief cardinal point to the Egyptians, and by that they oriented

themselves, placing sunrise to their left, and sunset to their right.

* The classic writers themselves knew that, according to

Egyptian belief, the Nile flowed down from heaven. The

legend of the Nile having its source in the ocean stream was

but a Greek transposition of the Egyptian doctrine, which

represented it as an arm of the celestial river whereon the

sun sailed round the earth.

Before they passed beyond the defiles of Gebel Silsileh, they thought

that the spot whence the celestial waters left the sky was situate

between Elephantine and Philae, and that they descended in an immense

waterfall whose last leaps were at Syene. It may be that the tales about

the first cataract told by classic writers are but a far-off echo of

this tradition of a barbarous age. Conquests carried into the heart of

Africa forced the Egyptians to recognize their error, but did not weaken

their faith in the supernatural origin of the river. They only placed

its source further south, and surrounded it with greater marvels.

They told how, by going up the stream, sailors at length reached an

undetermined country, a kind of borderland between this world and the

next, a "Land of Shades," whose inhabitants were dwarfs, monsters,

or spirits. Thence they passed into a sea sprinkled with mysterious

islands, like those enchanted archipelagoes which Portuguese and Breton

mariners were wont to see at times when on their voyages, and which

vanished at their approach. These islands were inhabited by serpents

with human voices, sometimes friendly and sometimes cruel to the

shipwrecked. He who went forth from the islands could never more

re-enter them: they were resolved into the waters and lost within the

bosom of the waves. A modern geographer can hardly comprehend such

fancies; those of Greek and Roman times were perfectly familiar with

them. They believed that the Nile communicated with the Red Sea near

Suakin, by means of the Astaboras, and this was certainly the route

which the Egyptians of old had imagined for their navigators. The

supposed communication was gradually transferred farther and farther

south; and we have only to glance over certain maps of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, to see clearly drawn what the Egyptians had

imagined--the centre of Africa as a great lake, whence issued the Congo,

the Zambesi, and the Nile. Arab merchants of the Middle Ages believed

that a resolute man could pass from Alexandria or Cairo to the land of

the Zindjes and the Indian Ocean by rising from river to river.[*]

* Joinville has given a special chapter to the description

of the sources and wonders of the Nile, in which he believed

as firmly as in an article of his creed. As late as the

beginning of the seventeenth century, Wendelinus devoted

part of his _Admiranda Nili_ to proving that the river did

not rise in the earthly Paradise. At Gûrnah, forty years

ago, Rhind picked up a legend which stated that the Nile

flows down from the sky.

[Illustration: 027.jpg SOUTH AFRICA AND THE SOURCES OF THE NILE, BY

ODOAKDO LOPEZ. 1]

1 Facsimile of the map published by Kircher in _OEdipus

Ægyptiacus_, vol. i. (_Iconismus II_), p. 53.

Many of the legends relating to this subject are lost, while others

have been collected and embellished with fresh features by Jewish and

Christian theologians. The Nile was said to have its source in Paradise,

to traverse burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall

into a sea whence it made its way to Egypt. Sometimes it carried down

from its celestial sources branches and fruits unlike any to be found

on earth. The sea mentioned in all these tales is perhaps a less

extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. A lake,

nearly as large as the Victoria Nyanza, once covered the marshy plain

where the Bahr el-Abiad unites with the Sobat, and with the Bahr

el-Ghazal. Alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest

depression, which is known as Birket Nû; but, in ages preceding our era,

it must still have been vast enough to suggest to Egyptian soldiers and

boatmen the idea of an actual sea, opening into the Indian Ocean.

The mountains, whose outline was vaguely seen far to southward on the

further shores, doubtless contained within them its mysterious source.

There the inundation was made ready, and there it began upon a fixed

day. The celestial Nile had its periodic rise and fall, on which those

of the earthly Nile depended. Every year, towards the middle of June,

Isis, mourning for Osiris, let fall into it one of the tears which she

shed over her brother, and thereupon the river swelled and descended

upon earth. Isis has had no devotees for centuries, and her very name is

unknown to the descendants of her worshippers; but the tradition of her

fertilizing tears has survived her memory. Even to this day, every one

in Egypt, Mussulman or Christian, knows that a divine drop falls from

heaven during the night between the 17th and 18th of June, and forthwith

brings about the rise of the Nile. Swollen by the rains which fall

in February over the region of the Great Lakes, the White Nile rushes

northward, sweeping before it the stagnant sheets of water left by the

inundation of the previous year. On the left, the Bahr el-Ghazâl brings

it the overflow of the ill-defined basin stretching between Darfûr and

the Congo; and the Sobat pours in on the right a tribute from the rivers

which furrow the southern slopes of the Abyssinian mountains. The first

swell passes Khartum by the end of April, and raises the water-level

there by about a foot, then it slowly makes its way through Nubia, and

dies away in Egypt at the beginning of June. Its waters, infected

by half-putrid organic matter from the equatorial swamps, are not

completely freed from it even in the course of this long journey, but

keep a greenish tint as far as the Delta. They are said to be poisonous,

and to give severe pains in the bladder to any who may drink them. I am

bound to say that every June, for five years, I drank this green water

from the Nile itself, without taking any other precaution than the usual

one of filtering it through a porous jar. Neither I, nor the many people

living with me, ever felt the slightest inconvenience from it. Happily,

this _Green Nile_ does not last long, but generally flows away in three

or four days, and is only the forerunner of the real flood. The melting

of the snows and the excessive spring rains having suddenly swollen the

torrents which rise in the central plateau of Abyssinia, the Blue Nile,

into which they flow, rolls so impetuously towards the plain that, when

its waters reach Khartum in the middle of May, they refuse to mingle

with those of the White Nile, and do not lose their peculiar colour

before reaching the neighbourhood of Abu Hamed, three hundred miles

below. From that time the height of the Nile increases rapidly day

by day. The river, constantly reinforced by floods following one upon

another from the Great Lakes and from Abyssinia, rises in furious

bounds, and would become a devastating torrent were its rage not checked

by the Nubian cataracts. Here six basins, one above another, in which

the water collects, check its course, and permit it to flow thence only

as a partially filtered and moderated stream. It is signalled at Syene

towards the 8th of June, at Cairo by the 17th to the 20th, and there its

birth is officially celebrated during the "Night of the Drop." Two

days later it reaches the Delta, just in time to save the country from

drought and sterility. Egypt, burnt up by the Khamsin, a west wind

blowing continuously for fifty days, seems nothing more than an

extension of the desert. The trees are covered and choked by a layer of

grey dust. About the villages, meagre and laboriously watered patches

of vegetables struggle for life, while some show of green still

lingers along the canals and in hollows whence all moisture has not

yet evaporated. The plain lies panting in the sun--naked, dusty, and

ashen--scored with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. The Nile

is only half its usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of

the volume of water which is borne down in October. It has at first hard

work to recover its former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations

that the rise is scarcely noted. It is, however, continually gaining

ground; here a sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled,

islets are outlined where there was a continuous beach, a new stream

detaches itself and gains the old shore. The first contact is disastrous

to the banks; their steep sides, disintegrated and cracked by the heat,

no longer offer any resistance to the current, and fall with a crash, in

lengths of a hundred yards and more.

[Illustration: 31.jpg DURING THE INUNDATION]

As the successive floods grow stronger and are more heavily charged with

mud, the whole mass of water becomes turbid and changes colour. In eight

or ten days it has turned from greyish blue to dark red, occasionally of

so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood. The "Red Nile" is

not unwholesome like the "Green Nile," and the suspended mud to which

it owes its suspicious appearance deprives the water of none of its

freshness and lightness. It reaches its full height towards the 15th

of July; but the dykes which confine it, and the barriers constructed

across the mouths of canals, still prevent it from overflowing. The Nile

must be considered high enough to submerge the land adequately before

it is set free. The ancient Egyptians measured its height by cubits of

twenty-one and a quarter inches. At fourteen cubits, they pronounced it

an excellent Nile; below thirteen, or above fifteen, it was accounted

insufficient or excessive, and in either case meant famine, and perhaps

pestilence at hand. To this day the natives watch its advance with the

same anxious eagerness; and from the 3rd of July, public criers, walking

the streets of Cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made

since evening. More or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude

to the opening of the canals, in the time of the Pharaohs, was

the solemn casting to the waters of a young girl decked as for her

bridal--the "Bride of the Nile." Even after the Arab conquest, the

irruption of the river into the bosom of the land was still considered

as an actual marriage; the contract was drawn up by a cadi, and

witnesses confirmed its consummation with the most fantastic formalities

of Oriental ceremonial. It is generally between the 1st and 16th of July

that it is decided to break through the dykes. When that proceeding has

been solemnly accomplished in state, the flood still takes several days

to fill the canals, and afterwards spreads over the low lands, advancing

little by little to the very edge of the desert. Egypt is then one sheet

of turbid water spreading between two lines of rock and sand, flecked

with green and black spots where there are towns or where the ground

rises, and divided into irregular compartments by raised roads

connecting the villages. In Nubia the river attains its greatest height

towards the end of August; at Cairo and in the Delta not until three

weeks or a month later. For about eight days it remains stationary, and

then begins to fall imperceptibly. Sometimes there is a new freshet

in October, and the river again increases in height. But the rise is

unsustained; once more it falls as rapidly as it rose, and by December

the river has completely retired to the limits of its bed. One after

another, the streams which fed it fail or dwindle. The Tacazze is

lost among the sands before rejoining it, and the Blue Nile, well-nigh

deprived of tributaries, is but scantily maintained by Abyssinian

snows. The White Nile is indebted to the Great Lakes for the greater

persistence of its waters, which feed the river as far as the

Mediterranean, and save the valley from utter drought in winter. But,

even with this resource, the level of the water falls daily, and its

volume is diminished. Long-hidden sandbanks reappear, and are again

linked into continuous line. Islands expand by the rise of shingly

beaches, which gradually reconnect them with each other and with the

shore. Smaller branches of the river cease to flow, and form a mere

network of stagnant pools and muddy ponds, which fast dry up. The main

channel itself is only intermittently navigable; after March boats run

aground in it, and are forced to await the return of the inundation for

their release. From the middle of April to the middle of June, Egypt is

only half alive, awaiting the new Nile.

[Illustration: 034.jpg ASSIOUT]

Those ruddy and heavily charged waters, rising and retiring with almost

mathematical regularity, bring and leave the spoils of the countries

they have traversed: sand from Nubia, whitish clay from the regions

of the Lakes, ferruginous mud, and the various rock-formations of

Abyssinia. These materials are not uniformly disseminated in the

deposits; their precipitation being regulated both by their specific

gravity and the velocity of the current. Flattened stones and rounded

pebbles are left behind at the cataract between Syene and Keneh, while

coarser particles of sand are suspended in the undercurrents and serve

to raise the bed of the river, or are carried out to sea and form the

sandbanks which are slowly rising at the Damietta and Rosetta mouths of

the Nile. The mud and finer particles rise towards the surface, and are

deposited upon the land after the opening of the dykes. Soil which is

entirely dependent on the deposit of a river, and periodically invaded

by it, necessarily maintains but a scanty flora; and though it is well

known that, as a general rule, a flora is rich in proportion to its

distance from the poles and its approach to the equator, it is also

admitted that Egypt offers an exception to this rule. At the most, she

has not more than a thousand species, while, with equal area, England,

for instance, possesses more than fifteen hundred; and of this thousand,

the greater number are not indigenous. Many of them have been brought

From Central Africa by the river: birds and winds have continued

the work, and man himself has contributed his part in making it more

complete. From Asia he has at different times brought wheat barley

the olive, the apple, the white or pink almond, and some twenty

other species now acclimatized on the banks of the Nile. Marsh plants

predominate in the Delta; but the papyrus, and the three varieties of

blue, white, and pink lotus which once flourished there, being no longer

cultivated, have now almost entirely disappeared, and reverted to their

original habitats.

[Illustration: 036.jpg ENTRANCE OF THE MUDÎRIYEH OF ASYÛT.]

The sycamore and the date-palm, both importations from Central Africa,

have better adapted themselves to their exile, and are now fully

naturalized on Egyptian soil.

[Illustration: 037.jpg FOREST OF DATE PALMS]

The sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as

in the midst of a well-watered country. Its roots go deep in search of

water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they

absorb it freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. The heavy,

squat, gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions,

without ever growing very high. Its rounded masses of compact foliage

are so wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the

impression of several grouped together; and its shade is dense,

and impenetrable to the sun. A striking contrast to the sycamore

is presented by the date-palm. Its round and slender stem rises

uninterruptedly to a height of thirteen to sixteen yards; its head

is crowned with a cluster of flexible leaves arranged in two or three

tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit, that they fail to keep off the

light, and cast but a slight and unrefreshing shadow. Few trees have so

elegant an appearance, yet few are so monotonously elegant. There are

palm trees to be seen on every hand; isolated, clustered by twos and

threes at the mouths of ravines and about the villages, planted

in regular file along the banks of the river like rows of columns,

symmetrically arranged in plantations,--these are the invariable

background against which other trees are grouped, diversifying the

landscape. The feathery tamarisk[*] and the nabk, the moringa, the

carob, or locust tree several varieties of acacia and mimosa-the sont,

the mimosa habbas, the white acacia, the Acacia Parnesxana--and

the pomegranate tree, increase in number with the distance from the

Mediterranean.

* The Egyptian name for the tamarisk, _asari, asri_, is

identical with that given to it in Semitic languages, both

ancient and modern. This would suggest the question

whether the tamarisk did not originally come from Asia. In

that case it must have been brought to Egypt from remote

antiquity, for it figures in the Pyramid texts. Bricks of

Nile mud, and Memphite and Theban tombs have yielded us

leaves, twigs, and even whole branches of the tamarisk.

[Illustration: 40.jpg ACACIAS AT THE ENTRANCE TO A GARDEN OUTSIDE

EKHMÎM. 1]

1 From a drawing by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger,

taken in 1884.

The dry air of the valley is marvellously suited to them, but makes the

tissue of their foliage hard and fibrous, imparting an aerial aspect,

and such faded tints as are unknown to their growth in other climates.

The greater number of these trees do not reproduce themselves

spontaneously, and tend to disappear when neglected. The Acacia Seyal,

formerly abundant by the banks of the river, is now almost entirely

confined to certain valleys of the Theban desert, along with a variety

of the kernelled dôm-palm, of which a poetical description has come

down to us from the Ancient Egyptians. The common dôm-palm bifurcates at

eight or ten yards from the ground; these branches are subdivided, and

terminate in bunches of twenty to thirty palmate and fibrous leaves, six

to eight feet long. At the beginning of this century the tree was

common in Upper Egypt, but it is now becoming scarce, and we are within

measurable distance of the time when its presence will be an exception

north of the first cataract. Willows are decreasing in number, and the

persea, one of the sacred trees of Ancient Egypt, is now only to be

found in gardens. None of the remaining tree species are common enough

to grow in large clusters; and Egypt, reduced to her lofty groves of

date-palms, presents the singular spectacle of a country where there is

no lack of trees, but an almost entire absence of shade.

[Illustration: 41.jpg SHE-ASS AND HER FOAL.]

If Egypt is a land of imported flora, it is also a land of imported

fauna, and all its animal species have been brought from neighbouring

countries. Some of these--as, for example, the horse and the camel--were

only introduced at a comparatively recent period, two thousand to

eighteen hundred years before our era; the camel still later. The

animals--such as the long and short-horned oxen, together with varieties

of goats and dogs--are, like the plants, generally of African origin,

and the ass of Egypt preserves an original purity of form and a vigour

to which the European donkey has long been a stranger. The pig and

the wild boar, the long-eared hare, the hedgehog, the ichneumon, the

moufflon, or maned sheep, innumerable gazelles, including the Egyptian

gazelles, and antelopes with lyre-shaped horns, are as much West Asian

as African, like the carnivors of all sizes, whose prey they are--the

wild cat, the wolf, the jackal, the striped and spotted hyenas, the

leopard, the panther, the hunting leopard, and the lion.

[Illustration: 042.jpg THE URÆUS OF EGYPT. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from pl. iii. of the Reptiles-

Supplement to the _Description de Ægypte_.

On the other hand, most of the serpents, large and small, are

indigenous. Some are harmless, like the colubers; others are venomous,

such as the soy tale, the cerastes, the haje viper, and the asp. The asp

was worshipped by the Egyptians under the name of uræus. It occasionally

attains to a length of six and a half feet, and when approached will

erect its head and inflate its throat in readiness for darting forward.

The bite is fatal, like that of the cerastes; birds are literally struck

down by the strength of the poison, while the great mammals, and man

himself, almost invariably succumb to it after a longer or shorter

death-struggle. The uræus is rarely found except in the desert or in the

fields; the scorpion crawls everywhere, in desert and city alike, and if

its sting is not always followed by death, it invariably causes terrible

pain. Probably there were once several kinds of gigantic serpent in

Egypt, analogous to the pythons of equatorial Africa. They are still to

be seen in representations of funerary scenes, but not elsewhere; for,

like the elephant, the giraffe, and other animals which now only thrive

far south, they had disappeared at the beginning of historic times.

The hippopotamus long maintained its ground before returning to those

equatorial regions whence it had been brought by the Nile. Common under

the first dynasties, but afterwards withdrawing to the marshes of the

Delta, it there continued to flourish up to the thirteenth century of

our era. The crocodile, which came with it, has, like it also, been

compelled to beat a retreat. Lord of the river throughout all ancient

times, worshipped and protected in some provinces, execrated and

proscribed in others, it might still be seen in the neighbourhood of

Cairo towards the beginning of our century. In 1840, it no longer passed

beyond the neighbourhood of Gebel et-Têr, nor beyond that of Manfalût

in Thirty years later, Mariette asserted that it was steadily retreating

before the guns of tourists, and the disturbance which the regular

passing of steamboats produced in the deep waters. To-day, no one knows

of a single crocodile existing below Aswan, but it continues to infest

Nubia, and the rocks of the first cataract: one of them is occasionally

carried down by the current into Egypt where it is speedily despatched

by the fellâhin, or by some traveller in quest of adventure. The

fertility of the soil, and the vastness of the lakes and marshes,

attract many migratory birds; passerinæ and palmipedes flock thither

from all parts of the Mediterranean. Our European swallows, our

quails, our geese and wild ducks, our herons--to mention only the

most familiar--come here to winter, sheltered from cold and inclement

weather.

[Illustration: 044.jpg THE IBIS OF EGYPT.]

Even the non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers

acclimatized by long sojourn. Some of them--the turtledove, the magpie,

the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our

European species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the

brightness of their colours. White and black ibises, red flamingoes,

pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate

the reedy swamps of the Delta in infinite variety. They are to be seen

ranged in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the

sun; suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles

away further off. In hollows of the hills, eagle and falcon, the merlin,

the bald-headed vulture, the kestrel, the golden sparrow-hawk, find

inaccessible retreats, whence they descend upon the plains like so many

pillaging and well-armed barons. A thousand little chattering birds come

at eventide to perch in flocks upon the frail boughs of tamarisk and

acacia.

[Illustration: 045.jpg THE MORMYRUS OXYRHYNCHUS.]

Many sea-fish make their way upstream to swim in fresh waters-shad,

mullet, perch, and labrus--and carry their excursions far into the Saïd.

Those species which are not Mediterranean came originally, still come

annually, from the heart of Ethiopia with the of the Nile, including two

kinds of Alestes, the elled turtle, the Bagrus docmac, and the mormyrus.

Some attain to a gigantic size, the Bagrus bayad and the turtle to about

one yard, the latus to three and a half yards in length, while others,

such as the sihlrus (catfish), are noted for their electric properties.

Nature seems to have made the fahâka (the globe-fish) in a fit of

playfulness. It is a long fish from beyond the cataracts, and it is

carried by the Nile the more easily on account of the faculty it has of

filling itself with air, and inflating its body at will.

[Illustration: 046.jpg AHAKA]

When swelled out immoderately, the fahâka overbalances, and drifts along

upside down, its belly to the wind, covered with spikes so that it looks

like a hedgehog. During the inundation, it floats with the current from

one canal to another, and is cast by the retreating waters upon the

muddy fields, where it becomes the prey of birds or of jackals, or

serves as a plaything for children.

[Illustration: 47.jpg TWO FISHERMEN CARRYING A LATUS. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Medûm painting. Pétrie,

_Medûm_, pl. xii.

Everything is dependent upon the river:--the soil, the produce of the

soil, the species of animals it bears, the birds which it feeds: and

hence it was the Egyptians placed the river among their gods. They

personified it as a man with regular features, and a vigorous and

portly body, such as befits the rich of high lineage. His breasts, fully

developed like those of a woman, though less firm, hang heavily upon a

wide bosom where the fat lies in folds. A narrow girdle, whose ends fall

free about the thighs, supports his spacious abdomen, and his attire

is completed by sandals, and a close-fitting head-dress, generally

surmounted with a crown of water-plants. Sometimes water springs from

his breast; sometimes he presents a frog, or libation vases; or holds a

bundle of the cruces ansato, as symbols of life; or bears a flat tray,

full of offerings--bunches of flowers, ears of corn, heaps of fish,

and geese tied together by the feet. The inscriptions call him, "Hâpi,

father of the gods, lord of sustenance, who maketh food to be, and

covereth the two lands of Egypt with his products; who giveth life,

banisheth want, and filleth the granaries to overflowing." He is evolved

into two personages, one being sometimes coloured red, and the other

blue. The former, who wears a cluster of lotus-flowers upon his head,

presides over the Egypt of the south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus

for his head-dress, and watches over the Delta.[**]

[**] Wilkinson was the first who suggested that this god,

when painted red was the Red (that is High) Nile and when

painted blue, was to be identified with the Low Nile.

This opinion has since been generally adopted; but to me it

does not appear so incontrovertible as it has been

considered. Here, as in other cases, the difference in

colour is only a means of making the distinction between two

personages obvious to sight.

Two goddesses, corresponding to the two Hâpis--Mirit Qimâit for Upper,

and Mirit Mîhit for Lower Egypt--personified the banks of the river.

They are often represented as standing with outstretched arms, as though

begging for the water which should make them fertile. The Nile-god had

his chapel in every province, and priests whose right it was to bury all

bodies of men or beasts cast up by the river; for the god had claimed

them, and to his servants they belonged.

[Illustration: 048.jpg THE NILE GOD. 1]

1 THE NILE GOD: Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a statue in

the British Museum. The dedication of this statue took place

about 880 B.c. The giver was Sheshonqu, high-priest of Amon

in Thebes, afterwards King of Egypt under the name of

Sheshhonqû II., and he is represented as standing behind the

leg of the god.

[Illustration: 049.jpg THE Shrine Of The Nile At Biggeh.1]

1 Reproduced from a bas-relief in the small temple of

Philae, built by Rajan and his successors. The window or

door of this temple opened upon gen, and by comparing the

drawing of the Egyptian artist with the view i the end of

the chamber, it is easy to recognize the original of this

cliff bouette in the piled-up rocks of the island. By a

mistake of the modern copyist's, his drawing faces the wrong

way.

Several towns were dedicated to him: Hâthâpi, Nûit-Hâpi, Nilo-polis.

It was told in the Thebaïd how the god dwelt within a grotto, or shrine

(tophit), in the island of Biggeh, whence he issued at the inundation.

This tradition dates from a time when the cataract was believed to be at

the end of the world, and to bring down the heavenly river upon earth.

Two yawning gulfs (_qorîti_), at the foot of the two granite cliffs

(_monîti_) between which it ran, gave access to this mysterious retreat.

A bas-relief from Philae represents blocks of stone piled one above

another, the vulture of the south and the hawk of the north, each

perched on a summit, wearing a panther skin, with both arms upheld in

adoration. The statue is mutilated: the end of the nose, the beard, and

part of the tray have disappeared, but are restored in the illustration.

The two little birds hanging alongside the geese, together with a bunch

of ears of corn, are fat quails, and the circular chamber wherein Hâpi

crouches concealed, clasping a libation vase in either hand. A single

coil of a serpent outlines the contour of this chamber, and leaves a

narrow passage between its overlapping head and tail through which the

rising waters may overflow at the time appointed, bringing to Egypt "all

things good, and sweet, and pure," whereby gods and men are fed. Towards

the summer solstice, at the very moment when the sacred water from the

gulfs of Syene reached Silsileh, the priests of the place, sometimes the

reigning sovereign, or one of his sons, sacrificed a bull and geese, and

then cast into the waters a sealed roll of papyrus. This was a written

order to do all that might insure to Egypt the benefits of a normal

inundation. When Pharaoh himself deigned to officiate, the memory of

the event was preserved by a stela engraved upon the rocks. Even in his

absence, the festivals of the Nile were among the most solemn and joyous

of the land. According to a tradition transmitted from age to age, the

prosperity or adversity of the year was dependent upon the splendour

and fervour with which they were celebrated. Had the faithful shown the

slightest lukewarmness, the Nile might have refused to obey the command

and failed to spread freely over the surface of the country. Peasants

from a distance, each bringing his own provisions, ate their meals

together for days, and lived in a state of brutal intoxication as long

as this kind of fair lasted. On the great day itself, the priests came

forth in procession from the sanctuary, bearing the statue of the god

along the banks, to the sound of instruments and the chanting of hymns.

[Illustration: 051.jpg NILE GODS FROM THE TEMPLE OF SETI I. AT ABYDOS

BRINGING FOOD TO EVERY NOME OF EGYPT. 1]

1 From a drawing by Faucher-Gudin, after a photograph by

Béato.

"I.--Hail to thee, Hâpi!--who appearest in the land and comest--to give

life to Egypt;--thou who dost hide thy coming in darkness--in this very

day whereon thy coming is sung,--wave, which spreadest over the orchards

created by Ra--to give life to all them that are athirst--who refusest

to give drink unto the desert--of the overflow of the waters of heaven;

as soon as thou descendest,--Sibû, the earth-god, is enamoured of

bread,--Napri, the god of grain, presents his offering,--Phtah maketh

every workshop to prosper.

"II.--Lord of the fish! as soon as he passeth the cataract--the

birds no longer descend upon the fields;--creator of corn, maker of

barley,--he prolongeth the existence of temples.--Do his fingers cease

from their labours, or doth he suffer?--then are all the millions of

beings in misery;--doth he wane in heaven? then the gods--themselves,

and all men perish.

"III.--The cattle are driven mad, and all the world--both great and

small, are in torment!--But if, on the contrary, the prayers of men are

heard at his rising--and (for them) he maketh himself Khnûmû,--when

he ariseth, then the earth shouts for joy,--then are all bellies

joyful,--each back is shaken with laughter,--and every tooth grindeth.

"IV.--Bringing food, rich in sustenance,--creator of all good

things,--lord of all seeds of life, pleasant unto his elect,--if his

friendship is secured--he produceth fodder for the cattle,--and he

provideth for the sacrifices of all the gods,--finer than any other

is the incense which cometh from him;--he taketh possession of the

two lands--and the granaries are filled, the storehouses are

prosperous,--and the goods of the poor are multiplied.

"V.--He is at the service of all prayers to answer them,--withholding

nothing. To make boats to be that is his strength.--Stones are not

sculptured for him--nor statues whereon the double crown is placed;--he

is unseen;--no tribute is paid unto him and no offerings are brought

unto him,--he is not charmed by words of mystery;--the place of his

dwelling is unknown, nor can his shrine be found by virtue of magic

writings.

"VI.--There is no house large enough for thee,--nor any who may

penetrate within thy heart!--Nevertheless, the generations of thy

children rejoice in thee--for thou dost rule as a king--whose decrees

are established for the whole earth,--who is manifest in presence of the

people of the South and of the North,--by whom the tears are washed from

every eye,--and who is lavish of his bounties.

"VII.--Where sorrow was, there doth break forth joy--and every

heart rejoiceth. Sovkû, the crocodile, the child of Nit, leaps for

gladness;[*]--for the Nine gods who accompany thee have ordered all

things,--the overflow giveth drink unto the fields--and maketh all men

valiant; one man taketh to drink of the labour of another,--without

charge being brought against him.[**]

* The goddess Nît, the heifer born from the midst of the

primordial waters, had two crocodiles as her children, which

are sometimes represented on the monuments as hanging from

her bosom. Both the part played by these animals, and the

reason for connecting them with the goddess, are still

imperfectly understood.

** This is an allusion to the quarrels and lawsuits

resulting from the distribution of the water in years when

the Nile was poor or bad. If the inundation is abundant,

disputes are at an end.

"IX.--If thou dost enter in the midst of songs to go forth in the midst

of gladness,--if they dance with joy when thou comest forth out of the

unknown,--it is that thy heaviness is death and corruption.--And when

thou art implored to give the water of the year,--the people of the

Thebai'd and of the North are seen side by side,--each man with the

tools of his trade,--none tarrieth behind his neighbour;--of all

those who clothed themselves, no man clotheth himself (with festive

garments)--the children of Thot, the god of riches, no longer adorn

themselves with jewels,--nor the Nine gods, but they are in the

night!--As soon as thou hast answered by the rising,--each one anointeth

himself with perfumes.

"X.--Establisher of true riches, desire of men,--here are seductive

words in order that thou mayest reply;--if thou dost answer mankind

by waves of the heavenly Ocean,--Napri, the grain-god, presents his

offering,--all the gods adore (thee),--the birds no longer descend upon

the hills;--though that which thy hand formeth were of gold--or in the

shape of a brick of silver,--it is not lapis-lazuli that we eat,--but

wheat is of more worth than precious stones.

"XI.--They have begun to sing unto thee upon the harp,--they sing

unto thee keeping time with their hands,--and the generations of thy

children rejoice in thee, and they have filled thee with salutations of

praise;--for it is the god of Riches who adorneth the earth,--who maketh

barks to prosper in the sight of man--who rejoiceth the heart of women

with child--who loveth the increase of the flocks.

"XII.--When thou art risen in the city of the Prince,--then is the rich

man filled--the small man (the poor) disdaineth the lotus,--all is solid

and of good quality,--all herbage is for his children.--Doth he forget

to give food?--prosperity forsaketh the dwellings,--and earth falleth

into a wasting sickness."

[Illustration: 055.jpg Libyan Mountains]

The word Nile is of uncertain origin. We have it from the Greeks,

and they took it from a people foreign to Egypt, either from the

Phoenicians, the Khîti, the Libyans, or from people of Asia Minor. When

the Egyptians themselves did not care to treat their river as the god

Hâpi, they called it the sea, or the great river. They had twenty terms

or more by which to designate the different phases which it assumed

according to the seasons, but they would not have understood what was

meant had one spoken to them of the Nile. The name Egypt also is part

of the Hellenic tradition; perhaps it was taken from the temple-name of

Memphis, Hâikûphtah, which barbarian coast tribes of the Mediterranean

must long have had ringing in their ears as that of the most important

and wealthiest town to be found upon the shores of their sea. The

Egyptians called themselves Bomitû, Botû, and their country Qîmit, the

black land. Whence came they? How far off in time are we to carry back

the date of their arrival? The oldest monuments hitherto known scarcely

transport us further than six thousand years, yet they are of an art so

fine, so well determined in its main outlines, and reveal so ingeniously

combined a system of administration, government, and religion, that we

infer a long past of accumulated centuries behind them. It must always

be difficult to estimate exactly the length of time needful for a race

as gifted as were the Ancient Egyptians to rise from barbarism into a

high degree of culture. Nevertheless, I do not think that we shall be

misled in granting them forty or fifty centuries wherein to bring so

complicated an achievement to a successful issue, and in placing their

first appearance at eight or ten thousand years before our era.

Their earliest horizon was a very limited one. Their gaze might wander

westward over the ravine-furrowed plains of the Libyan desert without

reaching that fabled land of Manu where the sun set every evening; but

looking eastward from the valley, they could see the peak of Bâkhû,

which marked the limit of regions accessible to man.

Beyond these regions lay the beginnings of To-nûtri, the land of the

gods, and the breezes passing over it were laden with its perfumes, and

sometimes wafted them to mortals lost in the desert.[*]

* The perfumes and the odoriferous woods of the Divine

Land were celebrated in Egypt. A traveller or hunter,

crossing the desert, "could not but be vividly impressed by

suddenly becoming aware, in the very midst of the desert, of

the penetrating scent of the _robul (Puliciaria undulata_,

Schwbine.), which once followed us throughout a day and two

nights, in some places without our being able to distinguish

whence it came; as, for instance, when we were crossing

tracts of country without any traces of vegetation whatever."

(Golenischeff).

Northward, the world came to an end towards the lagoons of the Delta,

whose inaccessible islands were believed to be the sojourning-place

of souls after death. As regards the south, precise knowledge of it

scarcely went beyond the defiles of Gebel Sil-sileh, where the last

remains of the granite threshold had perhaps not altogether disappeared.

The district beyond Gebel Silsileh, the province of Konûsit, was still

a foreign and almost mythic country, directly connected with heaven by

means of the cataract. Long after the Egyptians had broken through this

restricted circle, the names of those places which had as it were marked

out their frontiers, continued to be associated in their minds with the

idea of the four cardinal points. Bâkhû and Manu were still the most

frequent expressions for the extreme East and West. Nekhabit and Bûto,

the most populous towns in the neighbourhoods of Gebel Silsileh and the

ponds of the Delta, were set over against each other to designate South

and North. It was within these narrow limits that Egyptian civilization

struck root and ripened, as in a closed vessel. What were the people by

whom it was developed, the country whence they came, the races to

which they belonged, is to-day unknown. The majority would place their

cradle-land in Asia,[*] but cannot agree in determining the route which

was followed in the emigration to Africa.

* The greater number of contemporary Egyptologists, Brugsch,

Ebers,--Lauth, Lieblein, have rallied to this opinion, in

the train of E. de Rougé; but the most extreme position has

been taken up by Hommel, the Assyriologist, who is inclined

to derive Egyptian civilization entirely from the

Babylonian. After having summarily announced this thesis in

his _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_, p. 12, et seq.,

he has set it forth at length in a special treatise, _Der

Babylonische Ursprung der àgyptischen Kultur_, 1892, wherein

he endeavours to prove that the Heliopolitan myths, and

hence the whole Egyptian religion, are derived from the

cults of Eridû, and would make the name of the Egyptian city

Onû, or Anû, identical with that of _Nûn-H, Nûn_, which is

borne by the Chaldean.