of Suez, others give them longer peregrinations and a more complicated
itinerary. They would have them cross the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb,
and then the Abyssinian mountains, and, spreading northward and keeping
along the Nile, finally settle in the Egypt of to-day. A more minute
examination compels us to recognize that the hypothesis of an Asiatic
origin, however attractive it may seem, is somewhat difficult
to maintain. The bulk of the Egyptian population presents the
characteristics of those white races which have been found established
from all antiquity on the Mediterranean slope of the Libyan continent;
this population is of African origin, and came to Egypt from the West
or South-West. In the valley, perhaps, it may have met with a black race
which it drove back or destroyed; and there, perhaps, too, it afterwards
received an accretion of Asiatic elements, introduced by way of the
isthmus and the marshes of the Delta. But whatever may be the origin
of the ancestors of the Egyptians, they were scarcely settled upon the
banks of the Nile before the country conquered, and assimilated them to
itself, as it has never ceased to do in the case of strangers who have
occupied it. At the time when their history begins for us, all the
inhabitants had long formed but one people, with but one language.
This language seems to be connected with the Semitic tongues by many
of its roots. It forms its personal pronouns, whether isolated or
suffixed, in a similar way. One of the tenses of the conjugation, and
that the simplest and most archaic, is formed with identical affixes.
Without insisting upon resemblances which are open to doubt, it may be
almost affirmed that most of the grammatical processes used in Semitic
languages are to be found in a rudimentary condition in Egyptian. One
would say that the language of the people of Egypt and the languages of
the Semitic races, having once belonged to the same group, had separated
very early, at a time when the vocabulary and the grammatical system
of the group had not as yet taken definite shape. Subject to different
influences, the two families would treat in diverse fashion the elements
common to both. The Semitic dialects continued to develop for centuries,
while the Egyptian language, although earlier cultivated, stopped short
in its growth. "If it is obvious that there was an original connexion
between the language of Egypt and that of Asia, this connexion is
nevertheless sufficiently remote to leave to the Egyptian race a
distinct physiognomy." We recognize it in sculptured and painted
portraits, as well as in thousands of mummied bodies out of subterranean
tombs. The highest type of Egyptian was tall and slender, with a proud
and imperious air in the carriage of his head and in his whole bearing.
He had wide and full shoulders, well-marked and vigorous pectoral
muscles, muscular arms, a long, fine hand, slightly developed hips, and
sinewy legs. The detail of the knee-joint and the muscles of the calf
are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin, and low-arched
feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the custom of going
barefoot. The head is rather short, the face oval, the forehead somewhat
retreating. The eyes are wide and fully opened, the cheekbones not too
marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight or aquiline. The
mouth is long, the lips full, and lightly ridged along their outline;
the teeth small, even, well-set, and remarkably sound; the ears are set
high on the head. At birth the skin is white, but darkens in proportion
to its exposure to the sun. Men are generally painted red in the
pictures, though, as a matter of fact, there must already have been
all the shades which we see among the present population^ from a most
delicate, rose-tinted complexion to that of a smoke-coloured bronze.
Women, who were less exposed to the sun, are generally painted yellow,
the tint paler in proportion as they rise in the social scale. The hair
was inclined to be wavy, and even to curl into little ringlets, but
without ever turning into the wool of the negro.
[Illustration: 059.jpg THE NOBLE TYPE OF EGYPTIAN. 1]
1 Statue of Rânofir in the Gîzeh Museum (Vth dynasty), after
a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
[Illustration: 060.jpg HEAD OF A TILEBAN MUMMY.]
The beard was scanty, thick only upon the chin. Such was the highest
type; the commoner was squat, dumpy, and heavy. Chest and shoulders seem
to be enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and the hips, to such an
extent as to make the want of proportion between the upper and lower
parts of the body startling and ungraceful. The skull is long, somewhat
retreating, and slightly flattened on the top; the features are coarse,
and as though carved in flesh by great strokes of the blocking-out
chisel. Small frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended
nostrils, round cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips--this
unattractive and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an
expression of cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old French
peasant, is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy
good-nature. The external characteristics of these two principal types
in the ancient monuments, in all varieties of modifications, may still
be seen among the living. The profile copied from a Theban mummy taken
at hazard from a necropolis of the XVIIIth dynasty, and compared with
the likeness of a modern Luxor peasant, would almost pass for a family
portrait. Wandering Bisharîn have inherited the type of face of a great
noble, the contemporary of Kheops; and any peasant woman of the Delta
may bear upon her shoulders che head of a twelfth-dynasty king. A
citizen of Cairo, gazing with wonder at the statues of Khafra or of Seti
I. in the Gîzeh Museum, is himself, feature for feature, the very image
of those ancient Pharaohs, though removed from them by fifty centuries.
[Illustration: 062.jpg A FELLAH WOMAN WITH THE FEATURES OF AN ANCIENT
KING. 1]
1 The face of the woman here given was taken separately,
and was subsequently attached to the figure of an Egyptian
woman whom Naville had photographed sitting beside a
colossal head. The nose of the statue has been restored.
Until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered
which could be attributed to the primitive races of Egypt: even the
flint weapons and implements which had been found in various places
could not be ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the
Egyptians continued to use stone long after metal was known to them.
They made stone arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of
the Pharaohs, but under the Romans, and during the whole period of
the Middle Ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died
out.[**]
** An entire collection of flint tools--axes, adzes,
knives, and sickles--mostly with wooden handles, were found
by Prof. Pétrie in the ruins of Kahun, at the entrance to
the Fayûm: these go back to the time of the twelfth dynasty,
more than three thousand years before our era. Mariette had
previously pointed out to the learned world the fact that a
Coptic _Reis_, Salîb of Abydos, in charge of the
excavations, shaved his head with a flint knife, according
to the custom of his youth (1820-35). I knew the man, who
died at over eighty years of age in 1887; he was still
faithful to his flint implement, while his sons and the
whole population of El Kharbeh were using nothing but steel
razors. As his scalp was scraped nearly raw by the
operation, he used to cover his head with fresh leaves to
cool the inflamed skin.
These objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore
be less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. But if
so far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages,
we met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony
with the general civilization of the period. A comparison of these
customs with analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon
the former, completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the
successive stages through which the Egyptian people had to pass before
reaching their highest civilization. We knew, for example, that even
as late as the Cæsars, girls belonging to noble families at Thebes were
consecrated to the service of Amon, and were thus licensed to a life
of immorality, which, however, did not prevent them from making rich
marriages when age obliged them to retire from office. Theban women were
not the only people in the world to whom such licence was granted or
imposed upon them by law; wherever in a civilized country we see a
similar practice, we may recognize in it an ancient custom which in the
course of centuries has degenerated into a religious observance. The
institution of the women of Amon is a legacy from a time when the
practice of polyandry obtained, and marriage did not yet exist. Age and
maternity relieved them from this obligation, and preserved them from
those incestuous connections of which we find examples in other races.
A union of father and daughter, however, was perhaps not wholly
forbidden,[*] and that of brother and sister seems to have been regarded
as perfectly right and natural; the words brother and sister possessing
in Egyptian love-songs the same significance as lover and mistress with
us.
* E. de Rouge held that Rameses II. married at least two of
his daughters, Bint Anati and Honittui; Wiedemann admits
that Psammetichus I. had in the same way taken to wife
Nitocris, who had been born to him by the Theban princess
Shapenuapit. The Achæmenidan kings did the same: Artaxerxes
married two of his own daughters.
Paternity was necessarily doubtful in a community of this kind, and
hence the tie between fathers and children was slight; there being
no family, in the sense in which we understand the word, except as it
centred around the mother.
Maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and
the affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother
alone. When the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to
one husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many
wives as he wished, or as he was able to keep, beginning with his own
sisters. All wives did not enjoy identical rights: those born of the
same parents as the man, or those of equal rank with himself, preserved
their independence. If the law pronounced him the master, _nibû_, to
whom they owed obedience and fidelity, they were mistresses of the
house, _nîbît pirû_, as well as wives, _himitû_, and the two words of
the title express their condition. Each of them occupied, in fact, her
own house, _pirû_, which she had from her parents or her husband, and of
which she was absolute mistress, _nîbît_. She lived in it and performed
in it without constraint all a woman's duties; feeding the fire,
grinding the corn, occupying herself in cooking and weaving, making
clothing and perfumes, nursing and teaching her children. When her
husband visited her, he was a guest whom she received on an equal
footing. It appears that at the outset these various wives were placed
under the authority of an older woman, whom they looked on as their
mother, and who defended their rights and interests against the master;
but this custom gradually disappeared, and in historic times we read
of it as existing only in the families of the gods. The female singers
consecrated to Amon and other deities, owed obedience to several
superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow of a king or high
priest) was called _chief-superior of the ladies of the harem of Amon_.
Besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves purchased or born in
the house, prisoners of war, Egyptians of inferior class, who were the
chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he wished. All the
children of one father were legitimate, whether their mother were a wife
or merely a concubine, but they did not all enjoy the same advantages;
those among them who were born of a brother or sister united in
legitimate marriage, took precedence of those whose mother was a wife of
inferior rank or a slave. In the family thus constituted, the woman,
to all appearances, played the principal part. Children recognized the
parental relationship in the mother alone. The husband appears to have
entered the house of his wives, rather than the wives to have entered
his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks
were deceived by it. They affirmed that the woman was supreme in Egypt;
the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her and entered
into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands.
We had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first Egyptians
were semi-savages, like those still living in Africa and America, having
an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools. A few lived
in the desert, in the oasis of Libya, or in the deep valleys of the Red
Land--Doshirit, To Doshiru--between the Nile and the sea; the poverty
of the country fostering their native savagery. Others, settled on
the Black Land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late
considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior
to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the
earliest kings of the first historical dynasty.
[Illustration: 066.jpg NEGRO PRISONERS WEARING THE PANTHER'S SKIST AS A
LOIN-CLOTH.]
Their houses were like those of the fellahs of to-day, low huts of
wattle daubed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun. They
contained one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only
aperture. Those of the richer class only were large enough to make it
needful to support the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees,
which did duty for columns. Earthen pots, turned by hand, flint knives
and other implements, mats of reeds or plaited straw, two flat stones
for grinding corn, a few pieces of wooden furniture, stools, and
head-rests for use at night, comprised all the contents. Their ordinary
pottery is heavy and almost devoid of ornament, but some of the finer
kinds have been moulded and baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left
a quaint trellis-like impression on the surface of the clay. In many
cases the vases are bicolour, the body being of a fine smooth red,
polished with a stone, while the neck and base are of an intense black,
the surface of which is even more shining than that of the red part.
Sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in white of flowers,
palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with undulated or broken lines, or
geometrical figures of a very simple nature. More often the ground is
coloured a fine yellow, and the decoration has been traced in red lines.
Jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large cups, supports for
amphorae, trays raised on a foot--in short, every kind of form is found
in use at that remote period. The men went about nearly naked, except
the nobles, who wore a panther's skin, sometimes thrown over the
shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering the lower part
of the body, the animal's tail touching the heels behind, as we see
later in several representations of the negroes of the Upper Nile. They
smeared their limbs with grease or oil, and they tattooed their faces
and bodies, at least in part; but in later times this practice was
retained by the lower classes only. On the other hand, the custom of
painting the face was never given up. To complete their toilet, it was
necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of kohl
(antimony powder). A similar black line surrounded and prolonged the
oval of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green coloured
the under lid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks
and lips. The hair, plaited, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease,
formed an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in
that of the woman.
[Illustration: 068.jpg NOTABLE WEARING THE LARGE CLOAK OVER THE LEFT
SHOULDER. 1; AND PRIEST WEARING THE PANTHER'S SKIN ACROSS THE BREAST. 2]
1 Wooden statue in the Gîzeh Museum (IVth dynasty), drawn by
Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Béchard.
2 Statue of the second prophet of Amon, Aa-nen, in the Turin
Museum (XVIIIth dynasty).
Should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much
skill, was substituted for it; ostrich feathers waved on the heads
of warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear,
distinguished the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates.
When the art of weaving became common, a belt and loin-cloth of white
linen replaced the leathern garment. Fastened round the waist, but so
low as to leave the navel uncovered, the loin-cloth frequently reached
to the knee; the hinder part was frequently drawn between the legs and
attached in front to the belt, thus forming a kind of drawers. Tails
of animals and wild beast's skin were henceforth only the insignia of
authority with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great
days and at religious ceremonies. The skin was sometimes carelessly
thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body;
sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the
other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. The head
of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel,
rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the
paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs; the spots of
the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed stars. On going
out-of-doors, a large wrap was thrown over all; this covering was either
smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the Nubians and Abyssinians of
the present day envelop themselves. It could be draped in various
ways; transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed shawl of the
Chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a mantle.[**]
** This costume, to which Egyptologists have not given
sufficient attention, is frequently represented on the
monuments. Besides the two statues reproduced above, I may
cite those of Uahibri and of Thoth-nofir in the Louvre, and
the Lady Nofrit in the Gîzeh Museum. Thothotpû in his tomb
wears this mantle. Khnumhotpû and several of his workmen are
represented in it at Beni-Hasan, as also one of the princes
of Elephantine in the recently discovered tombs, besides
many Egyptians of all classes in the tombs of Thebes (a
good example is in the tomb of Harmhabi). The reason
why it does not figure more often is, in the first place,
that the Egyptian artists experienced actual difficulty in
representing the folds of its drapery, although these were
simple compared with the complicated arrangement of the
Roman toga; finally, the wall-paintings mostly portray
either interior scenes, or agricultural labour, or the work
of various trades, or episodes of war, or religious
ceremonies, in all of which the mantle plays no part. Every
Egyptian peasant, however, possessed his own, and it was in
constant use in his daily life.
In fact, it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun
or from the rain, from the heat or from the cold. They never sought to
transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later
times with the Roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of
carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around
the body with studied grace. The Egyptian mantle when not required was
thrown aside and folded up. The material being fine and soft it occupied
but a small space and was reduced to a long thin roll; the ends being
then fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the
body like a cavalry cloak.[*]
* Many draughtsmen, ignorant of what they had to represent,
have made incorrect copies of the manner in which this cloak
was worn; but examples of it are numerous, although until
now attention has not been called to them. The following are
a few instances taken at random of the way in which it was
used: Pepi I., fighting against the nomads of Sinai, has the
cloak, but with the two ends passed through the belt of his
loin-cloth; at Zawyet el-Maiyitîn, Khunas, killing birds
with the boomerang from his boat, wears it, but simply
thrown over the left shoulder, with the two extremities
hanging free. Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan, the Khrihdbi, the
overseers, or the peasants, all have it rolled and slung
round them; the Prince of el-Bersheh wears it like a mantle
in folds over the two shoulders. If it is objected that the
material could not be reduced to such small dimensions as
those represented in these drawings of what I believe to be
the Egyptian cloak, I way cite our cavalry capes, when
rolled and slung, as an instance of what good packing will
do in reducing volume.
[Illustration: 070.jpg a dignitary wrapped in his large cloak. 1]
1 Statue of Khiti in the Gîzeh Museum (XIIth and XIIIth
dynasties), drawn by Faucher-Gudin.
Travellers, shepherds, all those whose occupations called them to the
fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks; once arrived
at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their
provisions until they required it. The women were at first contented
with a loin-cloth like that of the men; it was enlarged and lengthened
till it reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a
tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces,
to keep it in place. The feet were not always covered; on certain
occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split
reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which,
to suit our taste, should be a little shorter.
[Illustration: 072.jpg COSTUME OF EGYPTIAN WOMAN, SPINNING. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the spinning-women at
the Paris Exhibition of 1889. It was restored from the
paintings in the tomb of Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan.
Both men and women loved ornaments, and covered their necks, breasts,
arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets. The
bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother-of-pearl, or even flint,
very cleverly perforated. The necklaces were composed of strings of
pierced shells,[**] interspersed with seeds and little pebbles,
either sparkling or of unusual shapes.[***] Subsequently imitations
in terra-cotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were
substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round,
pear-shaped, or cylindrical: the necklaces were terminated and a uniform
distance maintained between the rows of beads, by several slips of wood,
bone, ivory, porcelain, or terra-cotta, pierced with holes, through
which ran the threads.
** The burying-places of Abydos, especially the most
ancient, have furnished us with millions of shells, pierced
and threaded as necklaces; they all belong to the species of
cowries used as money in Africa at the present day.
*** Necklaces of seeds have been found in the tombs of
Abydos, Thebes, and Gebelên. Of these Schweinfurth
has identified, among others, the _Cassia absus_, "a
weed of the Soudan whose seeds are sold in the drug bazaar
at Cairo and Alexandria under the name of _shishn_, as a
remedy, which is in great request among the natives, for
ophthalmia." For the necklaces of pebbles, cf. Maspeeo,
Guide du visiteur, pp. 270, 271, No. 4129. A considerable
number of these pebbles, particularly those of strange
shape, or presenting a curious combination of colours, must
have been regarded as amulets or fetishes by their Egyptian
owners; analogous cases, among other peoples, have been
pointed out by E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p.
189.
[Illustration: 073.jpg MAN WEARING WIG AND NECKLACES.1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a portrait of Pharaoh Seti I.
of the XIXth dynasty: the lower part of the necklace has
been completed.
Weapons, at least among the nobility, were an indispensable part of
costume. Most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting: sticks, clubs,
lances furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers
of flint,[*] sabres and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed
or rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades,--inoffensive enough
to look at, but, wielded by a vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm,
crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision.[**]
The plain or triple curved bow was the favourite weapon for attack at
a distance,[***] but in addition to this there were the sling, the
javelin, and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang, we have
no proof however, that the Egyptians handled the boomerang[****] with
the skill of the Australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to
bring it back to its point of departure.[v]
* In several museums, notably at Leyden, we find Egyptian
axes of stone, particularly of serpentine, both rough and
polished.
** In primitive times the bone of an animal served as a
club. This is proved by the shape of the object held in
the hand in the sign and the hieroglyph which is the
determinative in writing for all ideas of violence or
brute force, comes down to us from a time when the principal
weapon was the club, or a bone serving as a club.
*** For the two principal shapes of the bow, see Lepsius,
Der Bogen in der Hieroglypliik (Zeitschrift, 1872, pp. 79-
88). From the earliest times the sign m£ portrays the
soldier equipped with the bow and bundle of arrows; the
quiver was of Asiatic origin, and was not adopted until much
later. In the contemporary texts of the first dynasties, the
idea of weapons is conveyed by the bow, arrow, and club or
axe.
**** The boomerang is still used by certain tribes of the
Nile valley. It is portrayed in the most ancient tombs,
and every museum possesses examples, varying in shape.
Besides the ordinary boomerang, the Egyptians used one which
ended in a knob, and another of semicircular shape: this
latter, reproduced in miniature in cornelian or in red
jasper, served as an amulet, and was placed on the mummy to
furnish the deceased in the other world with a fighting or
hunting weapon.
v The Australian boomerang is much larger than the Egyptian
one; it is about a yard in length, two inches in width, and
three sixteenths of an inch in thickness. For the manner of
handling it, and what can be done with it, see Lubbock,
Prehistoric Man, pp. 402, 403.
[Illustration: 074.jpg the boomerang and FIGHTING bow. 2 ]
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in the tomb of
Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan.
[Illustration: 075.jpg VOTIVE AXE. 3]
3 The blade is of bronze, and is attached to the wooden
handle by interlacing thongs of leather (Gizeh Museum).
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
Bey.
Such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can
ascertain; but at a very early date copper and iron were known in
Egypt.[**] Long before historic times, the majority of the weapons in
wood were replaced by those of metal,--daggers, sabres, hatchets, which
preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments.
** Metals were introduced into Egypt in very ancient times,
since the class of blacksmiths is associated with the
worship of Horus of Edfû, and appears in the account of the
mythical wars of that God. The earliest tools we possess, in
copper or bronze, date from the IVth dynasty: pieces of iron
have been found from time to time in the masonry of the
Great Pyramid. Mons Montélius has again and again contested
the authenticity of these discoveries, and he thinks that
iron was not known in Egypt till a much later period.
Those wooden weapons which were retained, were used for hunting, or were
only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected.
The war-baton became the commander's wand of authority, and at last
degenerated into the walking-stick of the rich or noble.
[Illustration: 076.jpg KING HOLDING THE BATON. 3]
3 Bas-relief in the temple of Luxor, from a photograph
taken by Insinger in 1886.
The club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain,[*] while
the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, diorite,
granite, or white stone, the favourite weapons of princes, continued to
the last the most revered insignia of royalty.[**]
Life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure. Of the ponds left in
the open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less
quickly during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity
of fish, the possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with
man.[***]
* The wooden club most commonly represented is the usual
insignia of a nobleman. Several kinds of clubs, somewhat
difficult for us moderns to distinguish, yet bearing
different names, formed a part of funereal furniture.
** The crook is the sceptre of a prince, a Pharaoh, or a
god; the white mace has still the value apparently of a
weapon in the hands of the king who brandishes it over a
group of prisoners or over an ox which he is sacrificing to
a divinity. Most museums possess specimens of the stone
heads of these maces, but until lately their use was not
known. I had several placed in the Boulak Museum. It already
possessed a model of one entirely of wood.
*** Cf. the description of these pools given by Geoffroy-
Saint-Hilaire in speaking of the fahaka. Even at the present
day the jackals come down from the mountains in the night,
and regale themselves with the fish left on the ground by
the gradual drying up of these ponds.
[Illustration: 077.jpg FISHING IN THE MARSHES]
Other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many
_vivaria_ in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks.
Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the
line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and
used by the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the
neighbouring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing
in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds
bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger
arising from the ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up
the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the
boomerang the birds which found covert there.
[Illustration: 078.jpg HUNTING IN THE MARSHES: ENCOUNTERING AND SPEARING
A HIPPOPOTAMUS. 1]
1 Tomb of Ti. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Dûmichen,
Besultate, vol. ii. pl. x.
The fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted,
or smoked, and kept for a rainy day. Like the river, the desert had its
perils and its resources. Only too frequently, the lion, the leopard,
the panther, and other large felidse were met with there.
[Illustration: 079.jpg HUNTING IN THE DESERT: BULL, LION, AND ORYX
PIERCED WITH ARROWS. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting by Beni-Hasan,
Lepsius, Denhm., ii. 136.
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Ptahhotpû.
The dogs on the upper level are of hyenoid type, those on
the lower are Abyssinian greyhounds.
The nobles, like the Pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their
privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even
to their dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the
oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did
not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare:
nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side
with the wolf-dog and the lithe Abyssinian greyhound, scented and
retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his
arrows. At times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother,
would be followed by one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly
wounded, would be taken to the village and healed of its hurt.
[Illustration: 080.jpg CATCHING ANIMALS WITH THE BOLA. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Ptahhotpû.
Above are seen two porcupines, the foremost of which,
emerging from his hole, has seized a grasshopper.
Such animals by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and
formed about his dwelling a motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure
and mostly for his profit, and becoming in case of necessity a ready
stock of provisions.[**]
** In the same way, before the advent of Europeans, the
half-civilized tribes of North America used to keep about
their huts whole flocks of different animals, which were
tame, but not domesticated.
Efforts were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to
procure animals without seriously injuring them, caused the Egyptians
to use the net for birds and the lasso and the _bola_ for
quadrupeds,[*]--weapons less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. The
_bola_ was made by them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap
about five yards in length. The stone once thrown, the cord twisted
round the legs, muzzle, or neck of the animal pursued, and by the
attachment thus made the pursuer, using all his strength, was enabled to
bring the beast down half strangled. The lasso has no stone attached
to it, but a noose prepared beforehand, and the skill of the hunter
consists in throwing it round the neck of his victim while running.
They caught indifferently, without distinction of size or kind, all
that chance brought within their reach. The daily chase kept up these
half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats, water-bucks, stocks, and
ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by hundreds on the monuments
of the ancient empire.[**]
* Hunting with the bola is constantly represented in the
paintings both of the Memphite and Theban periods. Wilkinson
has confounded it with lasso-hunting, and his mistake has
been reproduced by other Egyptologists. Lasso-hunting is
seen in Lepsius, Denhn., ii. 96, in Dùmichen, _resultate_,
vol. i. pl. viii., and particularly in the numerous
sacrificial scenes where the king is supposed to be
capturing the bull of the north or south, previous to
offering it to the god.
** As the tombs of the ancient empire show us numerous
flocks of gazelles, antelopes, and storks, feeding under the
care of shepherds, Fr. Lenormant concluded that the
Egyptians of early times had succeeded in domesticating some
species, nowadays rebels to restraint. It is my belief that
the animals represented were tamed, but not domesticated,
and were the result of great hunting expeditions in the
desert. The facts which Lenormant brought forward to support
his theory may be used against him. For instance, the fawn
of the gazelle nourished by its mother does not prove that
it was bred in captivity; the gazelle may have been caught
before calving, or just after the birth of its young. The
fashion of keeping flocks of animals taken from the desert
died out between the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties. At the
time of the new empire, they had only one or two solitary
animals as pets for women or children, the mummies of which
were sometimes buried by the side of their mistresses.
Experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species
from which he could draw profit, and others whose wildness made them
impossible to domesticate. The subjection of the most useful kinds had
not been finished when the historic period opened.
[Illustration: 082.jpg A SWINEHERD AND HIS PIGS. 2]
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in a Theban tomb
of the XVIIIth dynasty.
The ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig
was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of
special herdsmen,[*] and the religious rites preserved the remembrance
of the times in which the ox was so little tamed, that in order to
capture while grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter,
it was necessary to use the lasso.[***]
* The hatred of the Egyptians for the pig (Herodotus, ii.
47) is attributed to mythological motives. Lippert thinks
this antipathy did not exist in Egypt in primitive times. At
the outset the pig would have been the principal food of the
people; then, like the dog in other regions, it must have
been replaced at the table by animals of a higher order--
gazelles, sheep, goats, oxen--and would have thus fallen
into contempt. To the excellent reasons given by Lippert
could be added others drawn from the study of the Egyptian
myths, to prove that the pig has often been highly esteemed.
Thus, Isis is represented, down to late times, under the
form of a sow, and a sow, whether followed or not by her
young is one of the amulets placed in the tomb with the
deceased, to secure for him the protection of the goddess.
*** Mariette, Abydos (vol. i. pl. 48 b, 53). To prevent
the animal from evading the lasso and escaping during the
sacrifice, its right hind foot was fastened to its left
horn.
Europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use
of herbs and plants whose flavour and properties are nauseating to
us: these are mostly so many legacies from a remote past; for example,
castor-oil, with which the Berbers rub their limbs, and with which the
fellahîn of the Saïd flavour their bread and vegetables, was preferred
before all others by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic age for
anointing the body and for culinary use.[*] They had begun by eating
indiscriminately every kind of fruit which the country produced. Many
of these, when their therapeutic virtues had been learned by experience,
were gradually banished as articles of food, and their use restricted to
medicine; others fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or
at funeral feasts; several varieties continue to be eaten to the
present time--the acid fruits of the nabeca and of the carob tree,
the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dam-palm,
besides those which are pleasant to our Western palates, such as the
common fig and the date. The vine flourished, at least in Middle and
Lower Egypt; from time immemorial the art of making wine from it was
known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half a dozen famous
brands, red or white.[**]
* I have often been obliged, from politeness, when dining
with the native agents appointed by the European powers at
Port Saïd, to eat salads and mayonnaise sauces flavoured
with castor-oil; the taste was not so disagreeable as might
be at first imagined.
** The four kinds of canonical wine, brought respectively
from the north, south, east, and west of the country, formed
part of the official repast and of the wine-cellar of the
deceased from remote antiquity.
Vetches, lupins, beans, chick-peas, lentils, onions, fenugreek,[*] the
bamiâ,[**] the meloukhia,[***] the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the
fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants.
* All these species have been found in the tombs and
identified by savants in archaeological botany--Kunth,
Unger, Schweinfurth (Loret, _La Flore Pharaonique_, pp. 17,
40, 42, 43, Nos. 33, 97, 102, 104, 105, 106).
** The bamiâ, _Hibiscus esculentus_, L., is a plant of the
family of the Malvaceae, having a fruit of five divisions,
covered with prickly hairs, and pontaining round, white,
soft seeds, slightly sweet, but astringent in taste, and
very mucilaginous. It figures on the monuments of
Pharaonic times.
*** The meloukhia, _Corchorus Olitorius_, L., is a plant
belonging to the Tilliacese, which is chopped up and cooked
much the same as endive is with us, but which few Europeans
can eat with pleasure, owing to the mucilage it contains.
Theophrastus says it was celebrated for its bitterness; it
was used as food, however, in the Greek town of Alexandria.
[Illustration: 084.jpg THE EGYPTIAN LOTUS. 4]
4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from the _Description de
l'Egypte_, Histoire Naturelle, pl. 61.
Two of the species of lotus which grew in the Nile, the white and the
blue, have seed-vessels similar to those of the poppy: the capsules
contain small grains of the size of millet-seed. The fruit of the pink
lotus "grows on a different stalk from that of the flower, and springs
directly from the root; it resembles a honeycomb in form," or, to take
a more prosaic simile, the rose of a watering-pot. The upper part has
twenty or thirty cavities, "each containing a seed as big as an olive
stone, and pleasant to eat either fresh or dried." This is what the
ancients called the bean of Egypt. "The yearly shoots of the papyrus are
also gathered. After pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut
off and rejected, the part remaining being about a cubit in length. It
is eaten as a delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are
fastidious partake of it only after baking." Twenty different kinds of
grain and fruits, prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded
and baked to furnish cakes or bread; these are often mentioned in the
texts as cakes of nabeca, date cakes, and cakes of figs. Lily loaves,
made from the roots and seeds of the lotus, were the delight of the
gourmand, and appear on the tables of the kings of the XIXth dynasty.[*]
* _Tiû_, which is the most ancient word for bread, appears
in early times to have been used for every kind of paste,
whether made with fruits or grain; the more modern word âqû
applies specially to bread made from cereals. The lily
loaves are mentioned in the Papyrus Anastasi, No. 4, p. 14.
1. 1.
Bread and cakes made of cereals formed the habitual food of the people.
Durrah is of African origin; it is the "grain of the South" of the
inscriptions. On the other hand, it is supposed that wheat and six-rowed
barley came from the region of the Euphrates. Egypt was among the first
to procure and cultivate them.[*] The soil there is so kind to man, that
in many places no agricultural toil is required.
* The position which wheat and barley occupy in the lists
of offerings, proves the antiquity of their existence in
Egypt. Mariette found specimens of barley in the tombs of
the Ancient Empire at Saqqarah.
[Illustration: 086.jpg THE EGYPTIAN HOE.2]
2 Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti; drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
As soon as the water of the Nile retires, the ground is sown without
previous preparation, and the grain, falling straight into the mud,
grows as vigorously as in the best-ploughed furrows. Where the earth is
hard it is necessary to break it up, but the extreme simplicity of the
instruments with which this was done shows what a feeble resistance it
offered. For a long time the hoe sufficed. It was composed either of a
large stone tied to a wooden handle, or was made of two pieces of wood
of unequal length, united at one of their extremities, and held together
towards the middle by a slack cord: the plough, when first invented was
but a slightly enlarged hoe, drawn by oxen. The cultivation of cereals,
once established on the banks of the Nile, developed, from earliest
times, to such a degree as to supplant all else: hunting, fishing,
the rearing of cattle, occupied but a secondary place compared with
agriculture, and Egypt became, that which she still remains, a vast
granary of wheat. The part of the valley first cultivated was from Gebel
Silsileh to the apex of the Delta.[*]
* This was the tradition of all the ancients. Herodotus
related that, according to the Egyptians, the whole of
Egypt, with the exception of the Theban nome, was a vast
swamp previous to the time of Menés. Aristotle adds that the
Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the area now occupied by the
Delta, formed one sea. Cf. pp. 3-5 of this volume, on the
formation of the Delta.
[Illustration: 087.jpg PLOUGHING. 2]
2 Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti; drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
Between the Libyan and Arabian ranges it presents a slightly convex
surface, furrowed lengthways by a depression, in the bottom of which
the Nile is gathered and enclosed when the inundation is over. In the
summer, as soon as the river had risen higher than the top of its
banks, the water rushed by the force of gravity towards the lower lands,
hollowing in its course long channels, some of which never completely
dried up, even when the Nile reached its lowest level.[*] Cultivation
was easy in the neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but
everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than
advantageous to man. The inundation scarcely ever covered the higher
ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive; it flowed
rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in
the hollows that they became weedy and stagnant pools.[**]
* The whole description of the damage which can be done by
the Nile in places where the inundation is not regulated, is
borrowed from Linant de Bellefonds, _Mémoire sur les
principaux travaux d'utilité publique_, p. 3.
** This physical configuration of the country explains the
existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents
which I have already mentioned.
[Illustration: 089.jpg AN EGYPTIAN SAKIÂ (WELL) SHOWING METHOD OF
PROCURING WATER FOR IRRIGATION.]
In any year the portion not watered by the river was invaded by the
sand: from the lush vegetation of a hot country, there was but one
step to absolute aridity. At the present day an ingeniously established
system of irrigation allows the agriculturist to direct and distribute
the overflow according to his needs. From Gebel Ain to the sea, the Nile
and its principal branches are bordered by long dykes, which closely
follow the windings of the river and furnish sufficiently stable
embankments. Numerous canals lead off to right and left, directed more
or less obliquely towards the confines of the valley; they are divided
at intervals by fresh dykes, starting at the one side from the river,
and ending on the other either at the Bahr Yusuf or at the rising of
the desert. Some of these dykes protect one district only, and consist
merely of a bank of earth; others command a large extent of territory,
and a breach in them would entail the ruin of an entire province. These
latter are sometimes like real ramparts, made of crude brick carefully
cemented; a few, as at Qosheish, have a core of hewn stones, which later
generations have covered with masses of brickwork, and strengthened with
constantly renewed buttresses of earth. They wind across the plain with
many unexpected and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination,
however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed
to ignorance or caprice. Experience had taught the Egyptians the art
of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the
easiest lines to use against the inundation: of these they have followed
carefully the sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears
singular, it is to be ascribed to the natural configuration of the
ground. Subsidiary embankments thrown up between the principal ones,
and parallel to the Nile, separate the higher ground bordering the river
from the low lands on the confines of the valley; they divide the larger
basins into smaller divisions of varying area, in which the irrigation
is regulated by means of special trenches. As long as the Nile
is falling, the dwellers on its banks leave their canals in free
communication with it; but they dam them up towards the end of the
winter, just before the return of the inundation, and do not reopen them
till early in August, when the new flood is at its height. The waters
then flowing in by the trenches are arrested by the nearest transverse
dyke and spread over the fields. When they have stood there long enough
to saturate the ground, the dyke is pierced, and they pour into the next
basin until they are stopped by a second dyke, which in its turn forces
them again to spread out on either side. This operation is renewed from
dyke to dyke, till the valley soon becomes a series of artificial ponds,
ranged one above another, and flowing one into another from Grebel
Silsileh to the apex of the Delta. In autumn, the mouth of each ditch is
dammed up anew, in order to prevent the mass of water from flowing back
into the stream. The transverse dykes, which have been cut in various
places, are also repaired, and the basins become completely landlocked,
separated by narrow causeways. In some places, the water thus imprisoned
is so shallow that it is soon absorbed by the soil; in others, it is so
deep, that after it has been kept in for several weeks, it is necessary
to let it run off into a neighbouring depression, or straight into the
river itself.
[Illustration: 091.jpg BOATMEN FIGHTING ON A CANAL COMMUNICATING WITH
THE NILE. 1]
1 Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti; drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by E. Brugsch-Bey.
History has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggle in
which the Egyptians were engaged with the Nile, nor of the time expended
in bringing it to a successful issue. Legend attributes the idea of the
system and its partial working out to the god Osiris: then Menés, the
first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of Qosheish, on which
depends the prosperity of the Delta and Middle Egypt, and the fabulous
Mceris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to
the Fayûm. In reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making
of cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled
the valley. The kings of the historic period had only to maintain and
develop certain points of what had already been done, and Upper Egypt
is to this day chequered by the network of waterways with which its
earliest inhabitants covered it. The work must have begun simultaneously
at several points, without previous agreement, and, as it were,
instinctively. A dyke protecting a village, a canal draining or watering
some small province, demanded the efforts of but few individuals; then
the dykes would join one another, the canals would be prolonged till
they met others, and the work undertaken by chance would be improved,
and would spread with the concurrence of an ever-increasing population.
What happened at the end of last century, shows us that the system grew
and was developed at the expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed.
The inhabitants of each district carried out the part of the work most
conducive to their own interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping
it and discharging it at pleasure, without considering whether they
were injuring their neighbours by depriving them of their supply or
by flooding them; hence arose perpetual strife and fighting. It became
imperative that the rights of the weaker should be respected, and that
the system of distribution should be co-ordinated, for the country to
accept a beginning at least of social organization analogous to that
which it acquired later: the Nile thus determined the political as well
as the physical constitution of Egypt.
[Illustration: 092.jpg A GREAT EGYPTIAN LORD, TI, AND HIS WIFE. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dûmichen,
_Resultate_, vol. ii. pl. vit
The country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed
to be descended from the same seed (_paît_) and to belong to the
same family (_pâîtû_): the chiefs of them were called _ropâîtû_, the
guardians, or pastors of the family, and in later times their name
became a title applicable to the nobility in general. Families combined
and formed groups of various importance under the authority of a head
chief--_ropâîtû-hâ_. They were, in fact, hereditary lords, dispensing
justice, levying taxes in kind on their subordinates, reserving to
themselves the redistribution of land, leading their men to, battle, and
sacrificing to the gods.[*] The territories over which they exercised
authority formed small states, whose boundaries even now, in some
places, can be pointed out with certainty. The principality of the
Terebinth[**] occupied the very heart of Egypt, where the valley is
widest, and the course of the Nile most advantageously disposed
by nature--a country well suited to be the cradle of an infant
civilization. Siaût (Siût), the capital, is built almost at the foot
of the Libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which
separates the river from the hills. A canal surrounds it on three sides,
and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls; during
the inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow
causeways--shaded with mimosas--and looking like a raft of verdure
aground in the current.[***]
* These prerogatives were still exercised by the princes of
the nomes under the Middle and New Empires; they only
enjoyed them then by the good will of the reigning
sovereign.
** The Egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to
this principality is _atf, iatf, iôtf_: it is only by a
process of elimination that I have come to identify it with
the _Pistacia Terebinthus_, L., which furnished the
Egyptians with the scented resin _snûtir_.
*** Boudier's drawing, reproduced on p. 31, and taken from
a photograph by Beato, gives most faithfully the aspect
presented by the plain and the modern town of Siout during
the inundation.
[Illustration: 094.jpg NOMES OF MIDDLE EGYPT]
The site is as happy as it is picturesque; not only does the town
command the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at
will, but from time immemorial the most frequented of the routes into
Central Africa has terminated at its gates, bringing to it the commerce
of the Soudan. It held sway, at the outset, over both banks, from range
to range, northward as far as Deyrût, where the true Bahr Yusuf leaves
the Nile, and southward to the neighbourhood of Gebel Sheikh Haridi. The
extent and original number of the other principalities is not so easily
determined.
The most important, to the north of Siût, were those of the Hare and the
Oleander. The principality of the Hare never reached the dimensions
of that of its neighbour the Terebinth, but its chief town was Khmûnû,
whose antiquity was so remote, that a universally accepted tradition
made it the scene of the most important acts of creation.[*] That of the
Oleander, on the contrary, was even larger than that of the Terebinth,
and from Hininsû, its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the
Fayûm and the plains of Beni-Suef.[**] To the south, Apû on the right
bank governed a district so closely shut in between a bend of the Nile
and two spurs of the range, that its limits have never varied much since
ancient times. Its inhabitants were divided in their employment between
weaving and the culture of cereals. From early times they possessed the
privilege of furnishing clothing to a large part of Egypt, and their
looms, at the present day, still make those checked or striped
"melayahs" which the fellah women wear over their long blue tunics.[***]
* Khmûnû, the present Ashmûneîn, is the Hermopolis of the
Greeks, the town of the god Thot.
** Hininsû is the _Heraecleopolis Magna_ of the Greeks, the
present Henassieh, called also Ahnas-el-Medineh. The
Egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to this
principality, is Nârît. Loret has shown that this tree,
_Nârît_, is the oleander.
*** Apû was the Panopolis or Chemmis of the Greeks, the
town of the god Mîn or ithyphallic Khimû. Its manufactures
of linen are mentioned by Strabo; the majority of the
beautiful Coptic woven fabrics and embroideries which have
been brought to Europe lately, come from the necropolis of
the Arab period at Apû.
Beyond Apû, Thinis, the Girgeh of the Arabs, situate on both banks of
the river, rivalled Khmûnû in antiquity and Siût in wealth: its plains
still produce the richest harvests and feed the most numerous herds of
sheep and oxen in the Said.
[Illustration: 096.jpg NOMES OF UPPER EGYPT]
As we approach the cataract, information becomes scarcer. Qûbti and Aûnû
of the South, the Coptos and Hermonthis of the Greeks, shared peaceably
the plain occupied later on by Thebes and its temples, and Nekhabît and
Zobû watched over the safety of Egypt. Nekhabît soon lost its position
as a frontier town, and that portion of Nubia lying between Gebel
Silsileh and the rapids of Syene formed a kind of border province, of
which Nubît-Ombos was the principal sanctuary and Abu-Elephantine
the fortress: beyond this were the barbarians, and those inaccessible
regions whence the Nile descended upon our earth.
The organization of the Delta, it would appear, was more slowly brought
about. It must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of Equatorial
Africa, towards the confluence of the Bahr el Abiad and the Bahr el
Ghazâl. Great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or
liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with
papyrus reeds, water-lilies, and enormous plants through which the arms
of the Nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying
wastes intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation
and scarcely available for pasturing cattle. The population of such
districts, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved
relatively ruder manners, and a more rugged and savage character,
impatient of all authority. The conquest of this region began from the
outer edge only. A few principalities were established at the apex of
the Delta in localities where the soil had earliest been won from the
river. It appears that one of these divisions embraced the country
south of and between the bifurcation of the Nile: Aûnû of the North,
the Heliopolis of the Greeks, was its capital. In very early times the
principality was divided, and formed three new states, independent of
each other. Those of Aûnû and the Haunch were opposite to each other,
the first on the Arabian, the latter on the Libyan bank of the Nile. The
district of the White Wall marched with that of the Haunch on the north,
and on the south touched the territory of the Oleander. Further down the
river, between the more important branches, the governors of Sai's and
of Bubastis, of Athribis and of Busiris, shared among themselves the
primitive Delta. Two frontier provinces of unequal size, the Arabian on
the east in the Wady Tumilat, and the Libyan on the west to the south of
Lake Mareotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks
of Asiatic Bedâwins and of African nomads. The marshes of the interior
and the dunes of the littoral, were not conducive to the development of
any great industry or civilization. They only comprised tracts of thinly
populated country, like the principalities of the Harpoon and of the
Cow, and others whose limits varied from century to century with
the changing course of the river. The work of rendering the marshes
salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the
Nile Valley, was less efficacious in the Delta, and proceeded more
slowly. Here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain:
they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to
admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. The waters left
their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh
course for themselves across country. If the inundation were delayed,
the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it last
but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations was
for a long time undone. The Delta of one epoch rarely presented the same
aspect as that of previous periods, and Northern Egypt never became as
fully mistress of her soil as the Egypt of the south.
[Illustration: 099.jpg NOMES OF LOWER EGYPT]
These first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet
too large to remain undivided. In those times of slow communication, the
strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its
authority did not extend over a wide radius. That part of the population
of the Terebinth, living sufficiently near to Siût to come into the town
for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages
when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the
rule of the prince who governed there. On the other hand, those who
lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some
places of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice
in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the
fields and of local manufactures. Those towns which had the good fortune
to become such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to
the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so
to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the
prince. When they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the
new state thus created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition
of an epithet. The primitive territory of Siût was in this way divided
into three distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old
emblem of the tree--the Upper Terebinth, with Siût itself in the centre,
and the Lower Terebinth, with Kûsit to the north; the third, in the
south and east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in
their mountains, and called themselves the Serpent Mountain, whose
chief town was that of the Sparrow Hawk. The territory of the Oleander
produced by its dismemberment the principality of the Upper Oleander,
that of the Lower Oleander, and that of the Knife. The territory of
the Harpoon in the Delta divided itself into the Western and Eastern
Harpoon. The fission in most cases could not have been accomplished
without struggles; but it did take place, and all the principalities
having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however
they may have striven to avoid it. This parcelling out was continued as
circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of Egypt, except the
half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of
petty states nearly equal in power and population.[*]
* Examples of the subdivision of ancient nomes and the
creation of fresh nomes are met with long after primitive
times. We find, for example, the nome of the Western Harpoon
divided under the Greeks and Romans into two districts--that
of the Harpoon proper, of which the chief town was Sonti-
nofir; and that of Ranûnr, with the Onûphis of classical
geographers for its capital.
The Greeks called them nomes, and we have borrowed the word from them;
the natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term
being "nûît," which may be translated _domain_, and the most common
appellation in recent times being "hospû," which signifies _district_.
The number of the nomes varied considerably in the course of centuries:
the hieroglyphic monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at
thirty-six, sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty.
The little that we know of their history, up to the present time,
explains the reason of this variation. Ceaselessly quarrelled over by
the princely families who possessed them, the nomes were alternately
humbled and exalted by civil wars, marriages, and conquest, which caused
them continually to pass into fresh hands, either entire or divided. The
Egyptians, whom we are accustomed to consider as a people respecting
the established order of things, and conservative of ancient tradition,
showed themselves as restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work
of the past, as the most inconstant of our modern nations. The distance
of time which separates them from us, and the almost complete absence
of documents, gives them an appearance of immobility, by which we are
liable to be unconsciously deceived; when the monuments still existing
shall have been unearthed, their history will present the same
complexity of incidents, the same agitations, the same instability,
which we suspect or know to have been characteristic of most other
Oriental nations. One thing alone remained stable among them in the
midst of so many revolutions, and which prevented them from losing their
individuality and from coalescing in a common unity. This was the belief
in and the worship of one particular deity. If the little capitals
of the petty states whose origin is lost in a remote past--Edfû and
Denderah, Nekhabît and Bûto, Siûfc, Thinis, Khmûnû, Sais, Bubastis,
Athribis--had only possessed that importance which resulted from the
presence of an ambitious petty prince, or from the wealth of their
inhabitants, they would never have passed safe and sound through the
long centuries of existence which they enjoyed from the opening to the
close of Egyptian history. Fortune raised their chiefs, some even to the
rank of rulers of the world, and in turn abased them: side by side with
the earthly ruler, whose glory was but too often eclipsed, there was
enthroned in each nome a divine ruler, a deity, a god of the domain,
"nûtir nûiti," whose greatness never perished. The princely families
might be exiled or become extinct, the extent of the territory might
diminish or increase, the town might be doubled in size and population
or fall in ruins: the god lived on through all these vicissitudes, and
his presence alone preserved intact the rights of the state over which
he reigned as sovereign. If any disaster befell his worshippers, his
temple was the spot where the survivors of the catastrophe rallied
around him, their religion preventing them from mixing with the
inhabitants of neighbouring towns and from becoming lost among them.
The survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is the
characteristic of the Egyptian fellah, and a few years of peace sufficed
to repair losses which apparently were irreparable. Local religion
was the tie which bound together those divers elements of which each
principality was composed, and as long as it remained, the nomes
remained; when it vanished, they disappeared with it.
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[Illustration: 106.jpg PAGE IMAGE]