Several bloody combats, which took place between Oxyrrhynchos and

Heracleopolis Magna, were the means of driving them finally out of the

Nile Valley; they rallied for the last time in the eastern provinces

of the Delta, were beaten at Zalû, and giving up all hope of success on

land, they embarked at the head of the Gulf of Suez, in order to return

to the Nubian Desert, their habitual refuge in times of distress.

The sea was the special element of Typhon, and upon it they believed

themselves secure. Horus, however, followed them, overtook them near

Shas-hirît, routed them, and on his return to Edfu, celebrated his

victory by a solemn festival. By degrees, as he made himself master

of those localities which owed allegiance to Sit, he took energetic

measures to establish in them the authority of Osiris and of the solar

cycle. In all of them he built, side by side with the sanctuary of the

Typhonian divinities, a temple to himself, in which he was enthroned

under the particular form he was obliged to assume in order to vanquish

his enemies. Metamorphosed into a hawk at the battle of Hibonû, we

next see him springing on to the back of Sit under the guise of a

hippopotamus; in his shrine at Hibonû he is represented as a hawk

perching on the back of a gazelle, emblem of the nome where the struggle

took place. Near to Zalû he became incarnate as a human-headed lion,

crowned with the triple diadem, and having feet armed with claws which

cut like a knife; it was under the form, too, of a lion that he was

worshipped in the temple at Zalû. The correlation of Sit and the

celestial Horus was not, therefore, for these Egyptians of more recent

times a primitive religious fact; it was the consequence, and so to

speak the sanction, of the old hostility between the two gods.

[Illustration: 289.jpg]

Horus had treated his enemy in the same fashion that a victorious

Pharaoh treated the barbarians conquered by his arms: he had constructed

a fortress to keep his foe in check, and his priests formed a sort of

garrison as a precaution against the revolt of the rival priesthood and

the followers of the rival deity. In this manner the battles of the gods

were changed into human struggles, in which, more than once, Egypt was

deluged with blood. The hatred of the followers of Osiris to those of

Typhon was perpetuated with such implacability, that the nomes which had

persisted in adhering to the worship of Sit, became odious to the

rest of the population: the image of their master on the monuments was

mutilated, their names were effaced from the geographical lists, they

were assailed with insulting epithets, and to pursue and slay their

sacred animals was reckoned a pious act. Thus originated those

skirmishes which developed into actual civil wars, and were continued

down to Roman times. The adherents of Typhon only became more confirmed

in their veneration for the accursed god; Christianity alone overcame

their obstinate fidelity to him.[*]

* This incident in the wars of Horus and Sit is drawn by

Faucher-Gudin from a bas-relief of the temple of Edfû. On

the right, Har-Hûdîti, standing up in the solar bark,

pierces with his lance the head of a crocodile, a partisan

of Sît, lying in the water below; Harmâkhis, standing behind

him, is present at the execution. Facing this divine pair,

is the young Horus, who kills a man, another partisan of

Sît, while Isis and Har-Hûdîti hold his chains; behind

Horus, Isis and Thot are leading four other captives bound

and ready to be sacrificed before Harmâkhis.

The history of the world for Egypt was therefore only the history of the

struggle between the adherents of Osiris and the followers of Sît; an

interminable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of

the rival parties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a

decisive victory till the end of time. The divine kings of the second

and third Ennead devoted most of the years of their earthly reign

to this end; they were portrayed under the form of the great warrior

Pharaohs, who, from the eighteenth to the twelfth century before our

era, extended their rule from the plains of the Euphrates to the marshes

of Ethiopia. A few peaceful sovereigns are met with here and there in

this line of conquerors--a few sages or legislators, of whom the most

famous was styled Thot, the doubly great, ruler of Hermopolis and of

the Hermopolitan Ennead. A legend of recent origin made him the prime

minister of Horus, son of Isis; a still more ancient tradition would

identify him with the second king of the second dynasty, the immediate

successor of the divine Horuses, and attributes to him a reign of 3226

years. He brought to the throne that inventive spirit and that creative

power which had characterized him from the time when he was only

a feudal deity. Astronomy, divination, magic, medicine, writing,

drawing--in fine, all the arts and sciences emanated from him as from

their first source. He had taught mankind the methodical observation

of the heavens and of the changes that took place in them, the slow

revolutions of the sun, the rapid phases of the moon, the intersecting

movements of the five planets, and the shapes and limits of the

constellations which each night were lit up in the sky. Most of the

latter either remained, or appeared to remain immovable, and seemed

never to pass out of the regions accessible to the human eye. Those

which were situate on the extreme margin of the firmament accomplished

movements there analogous to those of the planets.

[Illustration: 293.jpg ONE OF THE ASTRONOMICAL TABLES OF THE TOMB OF

RAMSES IV. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a copy by Lepsius, _Denkm._,

iii. 227, 3.

Every year at fixed times they were seen to sink one after another below

the horizon, to disappear, and rising again after an eclipse of greater

or less duration, to regain insensibly their original positions. The

constellations were reckoned to be thirty-six in number, the thirty-six

_decani_ to whom were attributed mysterious powers, and of whom Sothis

was queen--Sothis transformed into the star of Isis, when Orion (Sâhû),

became the star of Osiris. The nights are so clear and the atmosphere so

transparent in Egypt, that the eye can readily penetrate the depths of

space, and distinctly see points of light which would be invisible

in our foggy climate. The Egyptians did not therefore need special

instruments to ascertain the existence of a considerable number of stars

which we could not see without the help of our telescopes; they could

perceive with the naked eye stars of the fifth magnitude, and note them

upon their catalogues.[*] It entailed, it is true, a long training and

uninterrupted practice to bring their sight up to its maximum keenness;

but from very early times it was a function of the priestly colleges

to found and maintain schools of astronomy. The first observatories

established on the banks of the Nile seem to have belonged to the

temples of the sun; the high priests of Râ--who, to judge from their

title, were alone worthy to behold the sun face to face--were actively

employed from the earliest times in studying the configuration and

preparing maps of the heavens. The priests of other gods were quick to

follow their example: at the opening of the historic period, there was

not a single temple, from one end of the valley to the other, that did

not possess its official astronomers, or, as they were called, "watchers

of the night."[**]

* Biot, however, states that stars of the third and fourth

magnitude "are the smallest which can be seen with the

naked eye." I believe I am right in affirming that several

of the fellahîn and Bedawîn attached to the "service des

Antiquités" can see stars which are usually classed with

those of the fifth magnitude.

** _Urshu_: this word is also used for the soldiers on

watch during the day upon the walls of a fortress. Birch

believed he had discovered in the British Museum a catalogue

of observations made at Thebes by several astronomers upon a

constellation which answered to the Hyades or the Pleiades;

it was merely a question in this text of the quantity of

water supplied regularly to the astronomers of a Theban

temple for their domestic purposes.

In the evening they went up on to the high terraces above the shrine, or

on to the narrow platforms which terminated the pylons, and fixing

their eyes continuously on the celestial vault above them, followed the

movements of the constellations and carefully noted down the slightest

phenomena which they observed. A portion of the chart of the heavens,

as known to Theban Egypt between the eighteenth and twelfth centuries

before our era, has survived to the present time; parts of it were

carved by the decorators on the ceilings of temples, and especially on

royal tombs. The deceased Pharaohs were identified with Osiris in a more

intimate fashion than their subjects. They represented the god even in

the most trivial details; on earth--where, after having played the part

of the beneficent Onnophris of primitive ages, they underwent the most

complete and elaborate embalming, like Osiris of the lower world; in

Hades--where they embarked side by side with the Sun-Osiris to cross the

night and to be born again at daybreak; in heaven--where they shone with

Orion-Sâhu under the guardianship of Sothis, and, year by year, led the

procession of the stars. The maps of the firmament recalled to them, or

if necessary taught them, this part of their duties: they there saw

the planets and the _decani_ sail past in their boats, and the

constellations follow one another in continuous succession. The lists

annexed to the charts indicated the positions occupied each month by the

principal heavenly bodies--their risings, their culminations, and their

settings. Unfortunately, the workmen employed to execute these pictures

either did not understand much about the subject in hand, or did not

trouble themselves to copy the originals exactly: they omitted many

passages, transposed others, and made endless mistakes, which made it

impossible for us to transfer accurately to a modern map the information

possessed by the ancients.

In directing their eyes to the celestial sphere, Thot had at the same

time revealed to men the art of measuring time, and the knowledge of the

future. As he was the moon-god _par excellence_, he watched with jealous

care over the divine eye which had been entrusted to him by Horus, and

the thirty days during which he was engaged in conducting it through all

the phases of its nocturnal life, were reckoned as a month. Twelve of

these months formed the year, a year of three hundred and sixty days,

during which the earth witnessed the gradual beginning and ending of the

circle of the seasons. The Nile rose, spread over the fields, sank again

into its channel; to the vicissitudes of the inundation succeeded the

work of cultivation; the harvest followed the seedtime: these formed

three distinct divisions of the year, each of nearly equal duration.

Thot made of them the three seasons,--that of the waters, Shaît; that

of vegetation, Pirûît; that of the harvest, Shômû--each comprising

four months, numbered one to four; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of

Shaît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Pirûît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd,

and 4th months of Shômû. The twelve months completed, a new year began,

whose birth was heralded by the rising of Sothis in the early days of

August. The first month of the Egyptian year thus coincided with the

eighth of ours. Thot became its patron, and gave it his name, relegating

each of the others to a special protecting divinity; in this manner

the third month of Shaît fell to Hathor, and was called after her; the

fourth of Pirûît belonged to Ranûît or Ramûît, the lady of harvests, and

derived from her its appellation of Pharmûti. Official documents always

designated the months by the ordinal number attached to them in each

season, but the people gave them by preference the names of their

tutelary deities, and these names, transcribed into Greek, and then into

Arabic, are still used by the Christian inhabitants of Egypt, side by

side with the Mussulman appellations. One patron for each month was,

however, not deemed sufficient: each month was subdivided into three

decades, over which presided as many _decani_, and the days themselves

were assigned to genii appointed to protect them. A number of festivals

were set apart at irregular intervals during the course of the year:

festivals for the new year, festivals for the beginning of the seasons,

months and decades, festivals for the dead, for the supreme gods, and

for local divinities. Every act of civil life was so closely allied to

the religious life, that it could not be performed without a sacrifice

or a festival. A festival celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another

the opening of the canals, a third the reaping of the first sheaf, or

the carrying of the grain; a crop gathered or stored without a festival

to implore the blessing of the gods, would have been an act of sacrilege

and fraught with disaster. The first year of three hundred and sixty

days, regulated by the revolutions of the moon, did not long meet the

needs of the Egyptian people; it did not correspond with the length of

the solar year, for it fell short of it by five and a quarter days, and

this deficit, accumulating from twelvemonth to twelvemonth, caused such

a serious difference between the calendar reckoning and the natural

seasons, that it soon had to be corrected. They intercalated, therefore,

after the twelfth month of each year and before the first day of the

ensuing year, five epagomenal days, which they termed the "five days

over and above the year."[*]

* There appears to be a tendency among Egyptologists now to

doubt the existence, under the Ancient Empire, of the five

epagomenal days, and as a fact they are nowhere to be found

expressly mentioned; but we know that the five gods of the

Osirian cycle were born during the epagomenal day (cf. p.

247 of this History), and the allusions to the Osirian

legend which are met with in the Pyramid texts, prove that

the days were added long before the time when those

inscriptions were cut. As the wording of the texts often

comes down from prehistoric times, it is most likely that

the invention of the epagomenal days is anterior to the

first Thinite and Memphite dynasties.

The legend of Osiris relates that Thot created them in order to permit

Nûît to give birth to all her children. These days constituted, at the

end of the "great year," a "little month," which considerably lessened

the difference between the solar and lunar computation, but did not

entirely do away with it, and the six hours and a few minutes of which

the Egyptians had not taken count gradually became the source of fresh

perplexities. They at length amounted to a whole day, which needed to

be added every four years to the regular three hundred and sixty days,

a fact which was unfortunately overlooked. The difficulty, at first only

slight, which this caused in public life, increased with time, and ended

by disturbing the harmony between the order of the calendar and that of

natural phenomena: at the end of a hundred and twenty years, the legal

year had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the 1st of Thot

anticipated the heliacal rising of Sothis by thirty days, instead of

coinciding with it as it ought. The astronomers of the Græco-Roman

period, after a retrospective examination of all the past history of

their country, discovered a very ingenious theory for obviating this

unfortunate discrepancy. If the omission of six hours annually entailed

the loss of one day every four years, the time would come, after three

hundred and sixty-five times four years, when the deficit would amount

to an entire year, and when, in consequence, fourteen hundred and

sixty whole years would exactly equal fourteen hundred and sixty-one

incomplete years. The agreement of the two years, which had been

disturbed by the force of circumstances, was re-established of itself

after rather more than fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the

civil year became identical with the beginning of the astronomical

year, and this again coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and

therefore with the official date of the inundation. To the Egyptians of

Pharaonic times, this simple and eminently practical method was unknown:

by means of it hundreds of generations, who suffered endless troubles

from the recurring difference between an uncertain and a fixed year,

might have consoled themselves with the satisfaction of knowing that

a day would come when one of their descendants would, for once in

his life, see both years coincide with mathematical accuracy, and

the seasons appear at their normal times. The Egyptian year might be

compared to a watch which loses a definite number of minutes daily. The

owner does not take the trouble to calculate a cycle in which the total

of minutes lost will bring the watch round to the correct time: he bears

with the irregularity as long as his affairs do not suffer by it; but

when it causes him inconvenience, he alters the hands to the right hour,

and repeats this operation each time he finds it necessary, without

being guided by a fixed rule. In like manner the Egyptian year fell

into hopeless confusion with regard to the seasons, the discrepancy

continually increasing, until the difference became so great, that the

king or the priests had to adjust the two by a process similar to that

employed in the case of the watch.

The days, moreover, had each their special virtues, which it was

necessary for man to know if he wished to profit by the advantages, or

to escape the perils which they possessed for him. There was not one

among them that did not recall some incident of the divine wars, and had

not witnessed a battle between the partisans of Sit and those of Osiris

or Râ; the victories or the disasters which they had chronicled had as

it were stamped them with good or bad luck, and for that reason they

remained for ever auspicious or the reverse. It was on the 17th of Athyr

that Typhon had enticed his brother to come to him, and had murdered him

in the middle of a banquet. Every year, on this day, the tragedy that

had taken place in the earthly abode of the god seemed to be repeated

afresh in the heights of heaven. Just as at the moment of the death of

Osiris, the powers of good were at their weakest, and the sovereignty

of evil everywhere prevailed, so the whole of Nature, abandoned to the

powers of darkness, became inimical to man. Whatever he undertook on

that day issued in failure. If he went out to walk by the river-side,

a crocodile would attack him, as the crocodile sent by Sît had attacked

Osiris. If he set out on a journey, it was a last farewell which he bade

to his family and friends: death would meet him by the way. To escape

this fatality, he must shut himself up at home, and wait in inaction

until the hours of danger had passed and the sun of the ensuing day had

put the evil one to flight.[*]

* On the 20th of Thot no work was to be done, no oxen

killed, no stranger received. On the 22nd no fish might be

eaten, no oil lamp was to be lighted. On the 23rd "put no

incense on the fire, nor kill big cattle, nor goats, nor

ducks; eat of no goose, nor of that which has lived." On the

26th "do absolutely nothing on this day," and the same

advice is found on the 7th of Paophi, on the 18th, on the

26th, on the 27th, and more than thirty times in the

remainder of the Sallier Calendar. On the 30th of Mechir it

is forbidden to speak aloud to any one.

It was to his interest to know these adverse influences; and who would

have known them all, had not Thot pointed them out and marked them in

his calendars? One of these, long fragments of which have come down to

us, indicated briefly the character of each day, the gods who presided

over it, the perils which accompanied their patronage, or the good

fortune which might be expected of them. The details of it are not

always intelligible to us, as we are still ignorant of many of the

episodes in the life of Osiris. The Egyptians were acquainted with the

matter from childhood, and were guided with sufficient exactitude by

these indications. The hours of the night were all inauspicious; those

of the day were divided into three "seasons" of four hours each, of

which some were lucky, while others were invariably of ill omen. "The

4th of Tybi: _good, good, good_. Whatsoever thou seest on this day will

be fortunate. Whosoever is born on this day, will die more advanced in

years than any of his family; he will attain to a greater age than his

father. The 5th of Tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. This is the day

on which the goddess Sokhîfc, mistress of the double white Palace, burnt

the chiefs when they raised an insurrection, came forth, and manifested

themselves. Offerings of bread to Shû, Phtah, Thot: burn incense to Râ,

and to the gods who are his followers, to Phtah, Thot, Hû-Sû, on this

day. Whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. The 6th of

Tybi: _good, good, good_. Whatsoever thou seest on this day will be

fortunate. The 7th of Tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. Do not

join thyself to a woman in the presence of the Eye of Horus. Beware of

letting the fire go out which is in thy house. The 8th of Tybi: _good,

good, good_. Whatsoever thou seest with thine eye this day, the Ennead

of the gods will grant to thee: the sick will recover. The 9th of Tybi:

_good, good, good_. The gods cry out for joy at noon this day. Bring

offerings of festal cakes and of fresh bread, which rejoice the heart

of the gods and of the manes. The 10th of Tybi: _inimical, inimical,

mimical_. Do not set fire to weeds on this day: it is the day on

which the god Sap-hôû set fire to the land of Btito. The 11th of Tybi:

_inimical, inimical, inimical_. Do not draw nigh to any flame on this

day, for Râ entered the flames to strike all his enemies, and whosoever

draws nigh to them on this day, it shall not be well with him during his

whole life. The 12th of Tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. See that

thou beholdest not a rat on this day, nor approachest any rat within thy

house: it is the day wherein Sokhît gave forth the decrees." In these

cases a little watchfulness or exercise of memory sufficed to put a

man on his guard against evil omens; but in many circumstances all the

vigilance in the world would not protect him, and the fatality of the

day would overtake him, without his being able to do ought to avert it.

No man can at will place the day of his birth at a favourable time; he

must accept it as it occurs, and yet it exercises a decisive influence

on the manner of his death. According as he enters the world on the 4th,

5th, or 6th of Paophi, he either dies of marsh fever, of love, or of

drunkenness. The child of the 23rd perishes by the jaws of a crocodile:

that of the 27th is bitten and dies by a serpent. On the other hand, the

fortunate man whose birthday falls on the 9th or the 29th lives to an

extreme old age, and passes away peacefully, respected by all.

[Illustration: 304.jpg THE GODS FIGHTING FOE THE MAGICIAN WHO HAS

INVOKED THEM. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the tracing by Golbnischeff,

_Die Metternich-Stele_, pi, iii. 14.

Thot, having pointed out the evil to men, gave to them at the same time

the remedy. The magical arts of which he was the repository, made him

virtual master of the other gods. He knew their mystic names, their

secret weaknesses, the kind of peril they most feared, the ceremonies

which subdued them to his will, the prayers which they could not refuse

to grant under pain of misfortune or death. His wisdom, transmitted to

his worshippers, assured to them the same authority which he exercised

upon those in heaven, on earth, or in the nether world. The magicians

instructed in his school had, like the god, control of the words and

sounds which, emitted at the favourable moment with the "correct voice,"

would evoke the most formidable deities from beyond the confines of the

universe: they could bind and loose at will Osiris, Sit, Anubis, even

Thot himself; they could send them forth, and recall them, or constrain

them to work and fight for them. The extent of their power exposed the

magicians to terrible temptations; they were often led to use it to the

detriment of others, to satisfy their spite, or to gratify their grosser

appetites. Many, moreover, made a gain of their knowledge, putting it at

the service of the ignorant who would pay for it. When they were asked

to plague or get rid of an enemy, they had a hundred different ways of

suddenly surrounding him without his suspecting it: they tormented him

with deceptive or terrifying dreams; they harassed him with apparitions

and mysterious voices; they gave him as a prey to sicknesses, to

wandering spectres, who entered into him and slowly consumed him. They

constrained, even at a distance, the wills of men; they caused women to

be the victims of infatuations, to forsake those they had loved, and

to love those they had previously detested. In order to compose an

irresistible charm, they merely required a little blood from a person, a

few nail-parings, some hair, or a scrap of linen which he had worn,

and which, from contact with his skin, had become impregnated with his

personality. Portions of these were incorporated with the wax of a doll

which they modelled, and clothed to resemble their victim; thenceforward

all the inflictions to which the image was subjected were experienced by

the original; he was consumed with fever when his effigy was exposed

to the fire, he was wounded when the figure was pierced by a knife. The

Pharaohs themselves had no immunity from these spells.[*]

* Spells were employed against Ramses III., and the evidence

in the criminal charge brought against the magicians

explicitly mentions the wax figures and the philters used on

this occasion.

These machinations were wont to be met by others of the same kind, and

magic, if invoked at the right moment, was often able to annul the ills

which magic had begun. It was not indeed all-powerful against fate: the

man born on the 27th of Paophi would die of a snake-bite, whatever

charm he might use to protect himself. But if the day of his death

were foreordained, at all events the year in which it would occur was

uncertain, and it was easy for the magician to arrange that it should

not take place prematurely. A formula recited opportunely, a sentence

of prayer traced on a papyrus, a little statuette worn about the person,

the smallest amulet blessed and consecrated, put to flight the serpents

who were the instruments of fate. Those curious stelae on which we see

Horus half naked, standing on two crocodiles and brandishing in his

fists creatures which had reputed powers of fascination, were so many

protecting talismans; set up at the entrance to a room or a house, they

kept off the animals represented and brought the evil fate to nought.

[Illustration: 306.jpg THE CHILD HORUS ON THE CROCODILES. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Alexandrian stele in the

Gîzeh Museum. The reason for the appearance of so many

different animals in this stele and in others of the

same nature, has been given by Maspero, _Études de

Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 417-

419; they were all supposed to possess the evil eye and to

be able to fascinate their victim before striking him.

Sooner or later destiny would doubtless prevail, and the moment would

come when the fated serpent, eluding all precautions, would succeed in

carrying out the sentence of death. At all events the man would have

lived, perhaps to the verge of old age, perhaps to the years of a

hundred and ten, to which the wisest of the Egyptians hoped to attain,

and which period no man born of mortal mother might exceed. If the

arts of magic could thus suspend the law of destiny, how much more

efficacious were they when combating the influences of secondary

deities, the evil eye, and the spells of man? Thot, who was the patron

of sortilege, presided also over exorcisms, and the criminal acts which

some committed in his name could have reparation made for them by others

in his name. To malicious genii, genii still stronger were opposed; to

harmful amulets, those which were protective; to destructive measures,

vitalizing remedies; and this was not even the most troublesome part

of the magicians' task. Nobody, in fact, among those delivered by

their intervention escaped unhurt from the trials to which, he had

been subjected. The possessing spirits when they quitted their victim

generally left behind them traces of their occupation, in the brain,

heart, lungs, intestines--in fact, in the whole body. The illnesses

to which the human race is prone, were not indeed all brought about by

enchanters relentlessly persecuting their enemies, but they were all

attributed to the presence of an invisible being, whether spectre

or demon, who by some supernatural means had been made to enter the

patient, or who, unbidden, had by malice or necessity taken up his

abode within him. It was needful, after expelling the intruder, to

re-establish the health of the sufferer by means of fresh remedies. The

study of simples and other _materiæ medicæ_ would furnish these; Thot

had revealed himself to man as the first magician, he became in like

manner for them the first physician and the first surgeon.

Egypt is naturally a very salubrious country, and the Egyptians boasted

that they were "the healthiest of all mortals;" but they did not neglect

any precautions to maintain their health. "Every month, for three

successive days, they purged the system by means of emetics or clysters.

The study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each

physician attending to one kind of illness only. Every place possessed

several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head,

or the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases." But the

subdivision was not carried to the extent that Herodotus would make

us believe. It was the custom to make a distinction only between the

physician trained in the priestly schools, and further instructed by

daily practice and the study of books,--the bone-setter attached to

the worship of Sokhit who treated fractures by the intercession of the

goddess,--and the exorcist who professed to cure by the sole virtue of

amulets and magic phrases. The professional doctor treated all kinds

of maladies, but, as with us, there were specialists for certain

affections, who were consulted in preference to general practitioners.

If the number of these specialists was so considerable as to attract

the attention of strangers, it was because the climatic character of

the country necessitated it. Where ophthalmia and affections of the

intestines raged violently, we necessarily find many oculists[*] as well

as doctors for internal maladies. The best instructed, however, knew but

little of anatomy. As with the Christian physicians of the Middle

Ages, religious scruples prevented the Egyptians from cutting open

or dissecting, in the cause of pure science, the dead body which was

identified with that of Osiris. The processes of embalming, which would

have instructed them in anatomy, were not intrusted to doctors; the

horror was so great with which any one was regarded who mutilated the

human form, that the "paraschite," on whom devolved the duty of making

the necessary incisions in the dead, became the object of universal

execration: as soon as he had finished his task, the assistants

assaulted him, throwing stones at him with such violence that he had to

take to his heels to escape with his life.[**]

* Affections of the eyes occupy one-fourth of the _Ebers

Papyrus_.

** Diodorus Siculus, i. 91.

The knowledge of what went on within the body was therefore but vague.

Life seemed to be a little air, a breath which was conveyed by the veins

from member to member. "The head contains twenty-two vessels, which draw

the spirits into it and send them thence to all parts of the body. There

are two vessels for the breasts, which communicate heat to the lower

parts. There are two vessels for the thighs, two for the neck, two for

the arms, two for the back of the head, two for the forehead, two for

the eyes, two for the eyelids, two for the right ear by which enter the

breaths of life, and two for the left ear which in like manner admit the

breaths of death."

[Illustration: 310.jpg A DEAD MAN RECEIVING THE BREATH OF LIFE. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Naville, in the

_Ægyptische Todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. lxix. The deceased

carries in this hand a sail inflated by the wind,

symbolizing the air, and holds it to his nostrils that he

may inhale the breaths which will fill anew his arteries,

and bring life to his limbs.

The "breaths" entering by the right ear, are "the good airs, the

delicious airs of the north;" the sea-breeze which tempers the burning

of summer and renews the strength of man, continually weakened by the

heat and threatened with exhaustion. These vital spirits, entering the

veins and arteries by the ear or nose, mingled with the blood, which

carried them to all parts of the body; they sustained the animal, and

were, so to speak, the cause of its movement. The heart, the perpetual

mover--_hâîti_--collected them and redistributed them throughout

the body: it was regarded as "the beginning of all the members," and

whatever part of the living body the physician touched, "whether the

head, the nape of the neck, the hands, the breast, the arms, the legs,

his hand lit upon the heart," and he felt it beating under his fingers.

Under the influence of the good breaths, the vessels were inflated and

worked regularly; under that of the evil, they became inflamed, were

obstructed, were hardened, or gave way, and the physician had to remove

the obstruction, allay the inflammation, and re-establish their vigour

and elasticity. At the moment of death, the vital spirits "withdrew with

the soul; the blood," deprived of air, "became coagulated, the veins

and arteries emptied themselves, and the creature perished" for want of

breaths.

The majority of the diseases from which the ancient Egyptians suffered,

are those which still attack their successors; ophthalmia, affections

of the stomach, abdomen, and bladder, intestinal worms, varicose veins,

ulcers in the leg, the Nile pimple, and finally the "divine mortal

malady," the _divinus morbus_ of the Latins, epilepsy. Anaemia, from

which at least one-fourth of the present population suffers, was not

less prevalent than at present, if we may judge from the number of

remedies which were used against hematuria, the principal cause of it.

The fertility of the women entailed a number of infirmities or local

affections which the doctors attempted to relieve, not always with

success.[*]

* With regard to the diseases of women, cf. _Ebers Papyrus_,

pis. xciii., xcviii., etc. Several of the recipes are

devoted to the solution of a problem which appears to have

greatly exercised the mind of the ancients, viz. the

determination of the sex of a child before its birth.

The science of those days treated externals only, and occupied itself

merely with symptoms easily determined by sight or touch; it never

suspected that troubles which showed themselves in two widely remote

parts of the body might only be different effects of the same illness,

and they classed as distinct maladies those indications which we now

know to be the symptoms of one disease. They were able, however,

to determine fairly well the specific characteristics of ordinary

affections, and sometimes described them in a precise and graphic

fashion. "The abdomen is heavy, the pit of the stomach painful, the

heart burns and palpitates violently. The clothing oppresses the sick

man and he can barely support it. Nocturnal thirsts. His heart is sick,

as that of a man who has eaten of the sycamore gum. The flesh loses

its sensitiveness as that of a man seized with illness. If he seek to

satisfy a want of nature he finds no relief. Say to this, 'There is an

accumulation of humours in the abdomen, which makes the heart sick. I

will act.'" This is the beginning of gastric fever so common in Egypt,

and a modern physician could not better diagnose such a case; the

phraseology would be less flowery, but the analysis of the symptoms

would not differ from that given us by the ancient practitioner. The

medicaments recommended comprise nearly everything which can in some way

or other be swallowed, whether in solid, mucilaginous, or liquid form.

Vegetable remedies are reckoned by the score, from the most modest herb

to the largest tree, such as the sycamore, palm, acacia, and cedar, of

which the sawdust and shavings were supposed to possess both antiseptic

and emollient properties. Among the mineral substances are to be noted

sea-salt, alum, nitre, sulphate of copper, and a score of different

kinds of stones--among the latter the "memphite stone" was distinguished

for its virtues; if applied to parts of the body which were lacerated

or unhealthy, it acted as an anaesthetic and facilitated the success of

surgical operations. Flesh taken from the living subject, the heart, the

liver, the gall, the blood--either dried or liquid--of animals, the hair

and horn of stags, were all customarily used in many cases where the

motive determining their preference above other _materiæ medicæ_ is

unknown to us. Many recipes puzzle us by their originality and by the

barbaric character of the ingredients recommended: "the milk of a woman

who has given birth to a boy," the dung of a lion, a tortoise's brains,

an old book boiled in oil.[*]

* Ebers Papyrus, pl. lxxviii. 1. 22--lxxix. 1. 1: "To

relieve a child who is constipated.--An old book. Boil it in

oil, and apply half to the stomach, to provoke evacuation."

It must not be forgotten that, the writings being on

papyrus, the old book in question, once boiled, would have

an effect analogous to that of our linseed-meal poultices.

If the physician recommended taking an old one, it was for

economical reasons merely; the Egyptians of the middle

classes would always have in their possession a number of

letters, copy-books, and other worthless waste papers, of

which they would gladly rid themselves in such a profitable

manner.

The medicaments compounded of these incongruous substances were often

very complicated. It was thought that the healing power was increased by

multiplying the curative elements; each ingredient acted upon a specific

region of the body, and after absorption, separated itself from the rest

to bring its influence to bear upon that region. The physician made use

of all the means which we employ to-day to introduce remedies into

the human system, whether pills or potions, poultices, or ointments,

draughts or clysters. Not only did he give the prescriptions, but he

made them up, thus combining the art of the physician with that of the

dispenser. He prescribed the ingredients, pounded them either separately

or together, he macerated them in the proper way, boiled them, reduced

them by heating, and filtered them through linen. Fat served him as the

ordinary vehicle for ointments, and pure water for potions; but he

did not despise other liquids, such as wine, beer (fermented or

un-fermented), vinegar, milk, olive oil, "ben" oil either crude or

refined, even the urine of men and animals: the whole, sweetened with

honey, was taken hot, night and morning. The use of more than one of

these remedies became worldwide; the Greeks borrowed them from the

Egyptians; we have piously accepted them from the Greeks; and our

contemporaries still swallow with resignation many of the abominable

mixtures invented on the banks of the Nile, long before the building of

the Pyramids.

It was Thot who had taught men arithmetic; Thot had revealed to them the

mysteries of geometry and mensuration; Thot had constructed instruments

and promulgated the laws of music; Thot had instituted the art of

drawing, and had codified its unchanging rules. He had been the inventor

or patron of all that was useful or beautiful in the Nile valley,

and the climax of his beneficence was reached by his invention of the

principles of writing, without which humanity would have been liable to

forget his teaching, and to lose the advantage of his discoveries. It

has been sometimes questioned whether writing, instead of having been

a benefit to the Egyptians, did not rather injure them. An old legend

relates that when the god unfolded his discovery to King Thamos, whose

minister he was, the monarch immediately raised an objection to it.

[Illustration: 315.jpg TH0T RECORDS THE YEARS OF THE LIFE OF RAMSES. 1]

1 Bas-relief of the temple of Seti I. at Abydos, drawn by

Boudier; from a photograph by Beato. The god is marking with

his reed-pen upon the notches of a long frond of palm, the

duration in millions of years of the reign of Pharaoh upon

this earth, in accordance with the decree of the gods.

Children and young people, who had hitherto been forced to apply

themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them, now

that they possessed a means of storing up knowledge without trouble,

would cease to apply themselves, and would neglect to exercise their

memories. Whether Thamos was right or not, the criticism came too late:

"the ingenious art of painting words and of speaking to the eyes" had

once for all been acquired by the Egyptians, and through them by the

greater part of mankind. It was a very complex system, in which were

united most of the methods fitted for giving expression to thought,

namely: those which were limited to the presentment of the idea, and

those which were intended to suggest sounds.

[Illustration: 316.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

At the outset the use was confined to signs intended to awaken the idea

of the object in the mind of the reader by the more or less faithful

picture of the object itself; for example, they depicted the sun by a

centred disc, the moon by a crescent, a lion by a lion in the act of

walking, a man by a small figure in a squatting attitude. As by this

method it was possible to convey only a very restricted number of

entirely materialistic concepts, it became necessary to have recourse

to various artifices in order to make up for the shortcomings of the

ideograms properly so-called. The part was put for the whole, the pupil

in place of the whole eye, the head of the ox instead of the complete

ox. The Egyptians substituted cause for effect and effect for cause, the

instrument for the work accomplished, and the disc of the sun signified

the day; a smoking brazier the fire: the brush, inkpot, and palette of

the scribe denoted writing or written documents. They conceived the

idea of employing some object which presented an actual or supposed

resemblance to the notion to be conveyed; thus, the foreparts of a lion

denoted priority, supremacy, command; the wasp symbolized royalty, and

a tadpole stood for hundreds of thousands. They ventured finally to use

conventionalisms, as for instance when they drew the axe for a god,

or the ostrich-feather for justice; the sign in these cases had only a

conventional connection with the concept assigned to it. At times two or

three of these symbols were associated in order to express conjointly an

idea which would have been inadequately rendered by one of them alone:

a five-pointed star placed under an inverted crescent moon denoted a

month, a calf running before the sign for water indicated thirst.

[Illustration: 317.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

All these artifices combined furnished, however, but a very incomplete

means of seizing and transmitting thought. When the writer had written

out twenty or thirty of these signs and the ideas which they were

supposed to embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence,

from which the flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of

the words were wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number,

person, and inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech

and determine the varying relations between them. Besides this, in order

to understand for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the

reader was obliged to translate the symbols which he deciphered,

by means of words which represented in the spoken language the

pronunciation of each symbol. Whenever he looked at them, they suggested

to him both the idea and the word for the idea, and consequently a sound

or group of sounds; when each of them had thus acquired three or four

invariable associations of sound, he forgot their purely ideographic

value and accustomed himself to consider them merely as notations of

sound.

The first experiment in phonetics was a species of rebus, where each of

the signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent

several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken

language. The same group of articulations, _Naûfir, Nofir_, conveyed in

Egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty;

the sign expressed at once the lute and beauty.

[Illustration: 318.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

The beetle was called Khopirru, and the verb "to be" was pronounced

_khopirû_: the figure of the beetle & consequently signified both the

insect and the verb, and by further combining with it other signs, the

articulation of each corresponding syllable was given in detail. The

sieve _Miaû_, the mat _pu, pi_, the mouth _ra, rû_, gave the formula

_khaû-pi-rû_, which was equivalent to the sound of _khopirû_, the verb

"to be:" grouped together, they denoted in writing the concept of "to

be" by means of a triple rebus. In this system, each syllable of a

word could be represented by one of several signs, all sounding alike.

One-half of these "syllables" stood for open, the other half for closed

syllables, and the use of the former soon brought about the formation of

a true alphabet. The final vowel in them became detached, and left only

the remaining consonant--for example, _r in rû, h in ha, n in ni, b in

bû_--so that rû, ha, bû, eventually stood for r, h, n, and b only. This

process in the course of time having been applied to a certain number of

syllables, furnished a fairly large alphabet, in which several letters

represented each of the twenty-two chief articulations, which

the scribes considered sufficient for their purposes. The signs

corresponding to one and the same letter were homophones or "equivalents

in sound"--[ ] are homophones, just as [ ] and [ ], because each of

them, in the group to which it belongs, may be indifferently used to

translate to the eye the articulations m or n. One would have thought

that when the Egyptians had arrived thus far, they would have been led,

as a matter of course, to reject the various characters which they had

used each in its turn, in order to retain an alphabet only.

[Illustration: 319.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

But the true spirit of invention, of which they had given proof,

abandoned them here as elsewhere: if the merit of a discovery was often

their due, they were rarely able to bring their invention to perfection.

They kept the ideographic and syllabic signs which they had used at the

outset, and, with the residue of their successive notations, made for

themselves a most complicated system, in which syllables and ideograms

were mingled with letters properly so called. There is a little of

everything in an Egyptian phrase, sometimes even in a word; as, for

instance, in [ ] maszirû, the ear, or [ ] kherôû, the voice; there are

the syllables [ ] kher, the ordinary letters [ ], which complete the

phonetic pronunciation, and finally the ideograms, namely, [ ], which

gives the picture of the ear by the side of the written word for it, and

[ ] which proves that the letters represent a term designating an action

of the mouth. This medley had its advantages; it enabled the Egyptians

to make clear, by the picture of the object, the sense of words which

letters alone might sometimes insufficiently explain. The system

demanded a serious effort of memory and long years of study; indeed,

many people never completely mastered it. The picturesque appearance

of the sentences, in which we see representations of men, animals,

furniture, weapons, and tools grouped together in successive little

pictures, rendered hieroglyphic writing specially suitable for the

decoration of the temples of the gods or the palaces of kings. Mingled

with scenes of worship, sacrifice, battle, or private life, the

inscriptions frame or separate groups of personages, and occupy the

vacant spaces which the sculptor or painter was at a loss to fill;

hieroglyphic writing is pre-eminently a monumental script. For the

ordinary purposes of life it was traced in black or red ink on fragments

of limestone or pottery, or on wooden tablets covered with stucco, and

specially on the fibres of papyrus. The exigencies of haste and the

unskilfulness of scribes soon changed both its appearance and its

elements; the characters when contracted, superimposed and united to

one another with connecting strokes, preserved only the most distant

resemblance to the persons or things which they had originally

represented. This cursive writing, which was somewhat incorrectly

termed hieratic, was used only for public or private documents, for

administrative correspondence, or for the propagation of literary,

scientific, and religious works.

It was thus that tradition was pleased to ascribe to the gods, and

among them to Thot--the doubly great--the invention of all the arts and

sciences which gave to Egypt its glory and prosperity. It was clear,

not only to the vulgar, but to the wisest of the nation, that, had their

ancestors been left merely to their own resources, they would never have

succeeded in raising themselves much above the level of the brutes. The

idea that a discovery of importance to the country could have risen in a

human brain, and, once made known, could have been spread and developed

by the efforts of successive generations, appeared to them impossible

to accept. They believed that every art, every trade, had remained

unaltered from the outset, and if some novelty in its aspect tended to

show them their error, they preferred to imagine a divine intervention,

rather than be undeceived. The mystic writing, inserted as chapter

sixty-four in the _Book of the Dead_, and which subsequently was

supposed to be of decisive moment to the future life of man, was, as

they knew, posterior in date to the other formulas of which this book

was composed; they did not, however, regard it any the less as being of

divine origin. It had been found one day, without any one knowing whence

it came, traced in blue characters on a plaque of alabaster, at the

foot of the statue of Thot, in the sanctuary of Hermopolis. A prince,

Hardiduf, had discovered it in his travels, and regarding it as a

miraculous object, had brought it to his sovereign. This king, according

to some, was Hûsaphaîti of the first dynasty, but by others was believed

to be the pious Mykerinos. In the same way, the book on medicine,

dealing with the diseases of women, was held not to be the work of

a practitioner; it had revealed itself to a priest watching at night

before the Holy of Holies in the temple of Isis at Coptos. "Although the

earth was plunged into darkness, the moon shone upon it and enveloped

it with light. It was sent as a great wonder to the holiness of King

Kheops, the just of speech." The gods had thus exercised a direct

influence upon men until they became entirely civilized, and this work

of culture was apportioned among the three divine dynasties according

to the strength of each. The first, which comprised the most vigorous

divinities, had accomplished the more difficult task of establishing the

world on a solid basis; the second had carried on the education of

the Egyptians; and the third had regulated, in all its minutiae, the

religious constitution of the country. When there was nothing more

demanding supernatural strength or intelligence to establish it, the

gods returned to heaven, and were succeeded on the throne by mortal men.

One tradition maintained dogmatically that the first human king whose

memory it preserved, followed immediately after the last of the gods,

who, in quitting the palace, had made over the crown to man as his heir,

and that the change of nature had not entailed any interruption in the

line of sovereigns. Another tradition would not allow that the contact

between the human and divine series had been so close. Between the

Ennead and Menés, it intercalated one or more lines of Theban or Thinite

kings; but these were of so formless, shadowy, and undefined an aspect,

that they were called Manes, and there was attributed to them at most

only a passive existence, as of persons who had always been in the

condition of the dead, and had never been subjected to the trouble of

passing through life. Menés was the first in order of those who were

actually living. From his time, the Egyptians claimed to possess an

uninterrupted list of the Pharaohs who had ruled over the Nile valley.

As far back as the XVIIIth dynasty this list was written upon papyrus,

and furnished the number of years that each prince occupied the throne,

or the length of his life.[*]

* The only one of these lists which we possess, the "Turin

Royal Papyrus," was bought, nearly intact, at Thebes, by

Drovetti, about 1818, but was accidentally injured by him in

bringing home. The fragments of it were acquired, together

with the rest of the collection, by the Piedmontese

Government in 1820, and placed in the Turin Museum, where

Champollion saw and drew attention to them in 1824.

Seyffarth carefully collected and arranged them in the order

in which they now are; subsequently Lepsius gave a facsimile

of them in 1840, in his _Auswahl der wichtigsten Urhunden_,

pls. i.-vi., but this did not include the verso;

Champollion-Figeac edited in 1847, in the _Revue

Archéologique_, 1st series, vol. vi., the tracings taken by

the younger Champollion before Seyffarth's arrangement;

lastly, Wilkinson published the whole in detail in 1851.

Since then, the document has been the subject of continuous

investigation: E. de Rougé has reconstructed, in an almost

conclusive manner, the pages containing the first six

dynasties, and Lauth, with less certainty, those which deal

with the eight following dynasties.

Extracts from it were inscribed in the temples, or even in the tombs

of private persons; and three of these abridged catalogues are still

extant, two coming from the temples of Seti I. and Ramses II. at

Abydos,[*] while the other was discovered in the tomb of a person

of rank named Tunari, at Saqqâra.[**] They divided this interminable

succession of often problematical personages into dynasties, following

in this division, rules of which we are ignorant, and which varied in

the course of ages. In the time of the Ramessides, names in the list

which subsequently under the Lagides formed five groups were made to

constitute one single dynasty.[***]

* The first table of Abydos, unfortunately incomplete, was

discovered in the temple of Ramses II. by Banks, in 1818;

the copy published by Caillaud and by Salt served as a

foundation for Champollion's first investigations on the

history of Egypt. The original, brought to France by Mimaut,

was acquired by England, and is now in the British Museum.

The second table, which is complete, all but a few signs,

was brought to light by Mariette in 1864, in the excavations

at Abydos, and was immediately noticed and published by

Dùmichen. The text of it is to be found in Mariette, _La

Nouvelle Table d'Abydos (Revue Archéologique_, 2nd series,

vol. xiii.), and _Abydos_, vol. i. pl. 43.

** The table of Saqqâra, discovered in 1863, has been

published by Mariette, _La Table de Saqqâra (Revue

Archéologique_, 2nd series, vol. x. p. 169, et seq.), and

reproduced in the _Monuments Divers_, pl. 58.

*** The Royal Canon of Turin, which dates from the

Ramesside period, gives, indeed, the names of these early

kings without a break, until the list reaches Unas; at this

point it sums up the number of Pharaohs and the aggregate

years of their reigns, thus indicating the end of a dynasty.

In the intervals between the dynasties rubrics are placed,

pointing out the changes which took place in the order of

direct succession. The division of the same group of

sovereigns into five dynasties has been preserved to us by

Manetho.

Manetho of Sebennytos, who wrote a history of Europe for the use of

Alexandrine Greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division

of thirty-one dynasties from Menés to the Macedonian Conquest, and his

system has prevailed--not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but

because it is the only complete one which has come down to us.[*] All

the families inscribed in his lists ruled in succession.[**]

* The best restoration of the system of Manetho is that by

Lepsius, _Das Konigsbuch der Alten Ægypter_, which should be

completed and corrected from the memoirs of Lauth, Lieblein,

Krall, and Unger. A common fault attaches to all these

memoirs, so remarkable in many respects. They regard the

work of Manetho, not as representing a more or less

ingenious system applied to Egyptian history, but as

furnishing an authentic scheme of this history, in which it

is necessary to enclose all the royal names which the

monuments have revealed, and are still daily revealing to

us.

** E. de Rougé triumphantly demonstrated, in opposition to

Bunsen, now nearly fifty years ago, that all Manetho's

dynasties are successive, and the monuments discovered from

year to year in Egypt have confirmed his demonstration in

every detail.

The country was no doubt frequently broken up into a dozen or more

independent states, each possessing its own kings during several

generations; but the annalists had from the outset discarded these

collateral lines, and recognized only one legitimate dynasty, of which

the rest were but vassals. Their theory of legitimacy does not always

agree with actual history, and the particular line of princes which they

rejected as usurpers represented at times the only family possessing

true rights to the crown.[*]

* It is enough to give two striking examples of this. The

royal lists of the time of the Ramessides suppress, at the

end of the XVIIIth dynasty, Amenôthes IV. and several of his

successors, and give the following sequence--Amenôthes

III., Harmhabît, Ramses I., without any apparent hiatus;

Manetho, on the contrary, replaces the kings who were

omitted, and keeps approximately to the real order between

Horos (Amenôthes III.) and Armais (Harmhabît). Again, the

official tradition of the XXth dynasty gives, between Ramses

II. and Ramses III., the sequence--Mînephtah, Seti IL,

Nakht-Seti; Manetho, on the other hand, gives Amenemes

followed by Thûôris, who appear to correspond to the

Amenmeses and Siphtah of contemporary monuments, but, after

Mînephtah, he omits Seti II. and Nakhîtou-Seti, the father

of Ramses III.

In Egypt, as elsewhere, the official chroniclers were often obliged to

accommodate the past to the exigencies of the present, and to manipulate

the annals to suit the reigning party; while obeying their orders the

chroniclers deceived posterity, and it is only by a rare chance that

we can succeed in detecting them in the act of falsification, and can

re-establish the truth.

[Illustration: 325.jpg TABLE OF THE KINGS]

The system of Manetho, in the state in which it has been handed down

to us by epitomizers, has rendered, and continues to render, service to

science; if it is not the actual history of Egypt, it is a sufficiently

faithful substitute to warrant our not neglecting it when we wish to

understand and reconstruct the sequence of events. His dynasties furnish

the necessary framework for most of the events and revolutions, of which

the monuments have preserved us a record. At the outset, the centre to

which the affairs of the country gravitated was in the extreme north

of the valley. The principality which extended from the entrance of the

Fayûm to the apex of the Delta, and subsequently the town of Memphis

itself, imposed their sovereigns upon the remaining nomes, served as an

emporium for commerce and national industries, and received homage and

tribute from neighbouring peoples. About the time of the VIth dynasty

this centre of gravity was displaced, and tended towards the interior;

it was arrested for a short time at Heracleo-polis (IXth and Xth

dynasties), and ended by fixing itself at Thebes (XIth dynasty). From

henceforth Thebes became the capital, and furnished Egypt with her

rulers. With the exception of the XIVth Xoïte dynasty, all the families

occupying the throne from the XIth to the XXth dynasty were Theban. When

the barbarian shepherds invaded Africa from Asia, the Thebaïd became the

last refuge and bulwark of Egyptian nationality; its chiefs struggled

for many centuries against the conquerors before they were able to

deliver the rest of the valley. It was a Theban dynasty, the XVIIIth,

which inaugurated the era of foreign conquest; but after the XIXth, a

movement, the reverse of that which had taken place towards the end of

the first period, brought back the centre of gravity, little by little,

towards the north of the country. From the time of the XXIst dynasty,

Thebes ceased to hold the position of capital: Tanis, Bubastis, Mendes,

Sebennytos, and above all, Sais, disputed the supremacy with each other,

and political life was concentrated in the maritime provinces. Those

of the interior, ruined by Ethiopian and Assyrian invasions, lost their

influence and gradually dwindled away. Thebes became impoverished and

depopulated; it fell into ruins, and soon was nothing more than a resort

for devotees or travellers. The history of Egypt is, therefore, divided

into three periods, each corresponding to the suzerainty of a town or a

principality:--

I.--Memphite Period, usually called the "Ancient Empire," from the Ist

to the Xth dynasty: kings of Memphite origin ruled over the whole of

Egypt during the greater part of this epoch.

II.--Theban Period, from the XIth to the XXth dynasty. It is divided

into two parts by the invasion of the Shepherds (XVIth dynasty):

a. The first Theban Empire (Middle Empire), from the XIth to the XIVth

dynasty.

b. The new Theban Empire, from the XVIIth to the XXth dynasty.

III.--Saïte Period, from the XXIst to the XXXth dynasty, divided into

two unequal parts by the Persian Conquest:

a. The first Saïte period, from the XXIst to the XXVIth dynasty.

b. The second Saïte period, from the XXVIIIth to the XXXth dynasty.

The Memphites had created the monarchy. The Thebans extended the rule of

Egypt far and wide, and made of her a conquering state: for nearly six

centuries she ruled over the Upper Nile and over Western Asia. Under

the Saïtes she retired gradually within her natural frontiers, and

from having been aggressive became assailed, and suffered herself to be

crushed in turn by all the nations she had once oppressed.[*]

* The division into Ancient, Middle, and New Empire,

proposed by Lepsius, has the disadvantage of not taking into

account the influence which the removal of the seat of the

dynasties exercised on the history of the country. The

arrangement which I have here adopted was first put forward

in the _Revue critique_, 1873, vol. i. pp. 82, 83.

The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended

to unite the country under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that

the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two

groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the

chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the

rich plains and the marshes of the Delta. Its colleges of priests had

collected, condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local

religions; the Ennead to which it gave conception would never have

obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes

had not exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over

the neighbouring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the kingdom of

Lower Egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of Heliopolitan

theories--the protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from Râ, and

the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. The Delta, owing

to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from

one centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching

like a thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so

complete a unity. It, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed

and the lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely

united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed

city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained

schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the

development of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was

never widely felt. In the south, Siût disputed their supremacy, and

Heracleopolis stopped their road to the north. These three cities

thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded

in obtaining a lasting authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two

kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government,

which gave to it a particular character, and stamped it, as it were,

with a distinct personality down to its latest days. The kingdom

of Upper Egypt was more powerful, richer, better populated, and was

governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. It is to

one of the latter, Mini or Menés of Thinis, that tradition ascribes

the honour of having fused the two Egypts into a single empire, and of

having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. Thinis figured in

the historic period as one of the least of Egyptian cities. It barely

maintained an existence on the left bank of the Nile, if not on the

exact spot now occupied by Girgeh, at least only a short distance from

it.[*]

* The site of Thinis is not yet satisfactorily identified.

It is neither at Kom-es-Sultân, as Mariette thought, nor,

according to the hypothesis of A. Schmidt, at El-Kherbeh.

Brugsch has proposed to fix the site at the village of

Tineh, near Berdis, and is followed in this by Dumichen. The

present tendency is to identify it either with Girgeh

itself, or with one of the small neighbouring towns--for

example, Birbeh--where there are some ancient ruins; this

was also the opinion of Champollion and of Nester L'hôte. I

may mention that, in a frequently quoted passage of

Hellanicos, Zoèga corrects the reading [Greek phrase], which

would once more give us the name of Thinis: the mention of

this town as being "situated on the river," would be a fresh

reason for its identification with Girgeh.

[Illustration: 332.jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF ABYDOS, MADE BY MARIETTE IN

1865 AND 1875.]

The principality of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it was the

metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain range to the other,

and gradually extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban

Oasis. Its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhûri, or rather two twin

gods, Anhûri-Shû, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities

and became a warlike personification of Râ. Anhûri-Shû, like all the

other solar manifestations, came to be associated with a goddess having

the form or head of a lioness--a Sokhît, who took for the occasion the

epithet of Mîhît, the northern one. Some of the dead from this city

are buried on the other side of the Nile, near the modern village of

Mesheikh, at the foot of the Arabian chain, whose steep cliffs here

approach somewhat near the river: the principal necropolis was at some

distance to the east, near the sacred town of Abydos. It would appear

that, at the outset, Abydos was the capital of the country, for the

entire nome bore the same name as the city, and had adopted for its

symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed. In

very early times Abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political rank

to Thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired. The city

occupied a long and narrow strip of land between the canal and the first

slopes of the Libyan mountains. A brick fortress defended it from the

incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the

dead reared its naked walls. Here, Anhûri, having passed from life to

death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentît, the chief of

that western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth. It is

impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what political

combinations this Sun of the Night came to be identified with Osiris of

Mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity; it had

become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books

were compiled. Osiris Khontamentît grew rapidly in popular favour, and

his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. The

Great Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious

paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. It was

called Uîfc, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become

an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose

survived in the minds of the people, so that the "cleft," or gorge

in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed towards it, never

ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world. At the

time of the New Year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts

of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order

to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of Khontamentît.

Abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god

the only god, whose worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them

all with an equal devotion. The excavations of the last few years have

brought to light some, at all events, of the oldest Pharaohs known to

the Egyptian annalists, namely, those whom they placed in their first

human dynasties; and the locality where the monuments of these

princes were discovered, shows us that these writers were correct in

representing Thinis as playing an important part in the history of the

early ages of their country. If the tomb of Menés--that sovereign

whom we are inclined to look upon as the first king of the official

lists--lies near the village of Nagadeh, not far from Thebes,[*] those

of his immediate successors are close to Thinis, in the cemeteries of

Abydos.[**] They stand at the very foot of the Libyan hills, near the

entrance to the ravine--the "Cleft"--through which the mysterious oasis

was reached, and thither the souls flocked in order that they might

enter by a safe way the land beyond the grave.[***]

* The objects found during these excavations are now in the

Gîzeh Museum.

** The credit of having discovered this important

necropolis, and of having brought to light the earliest

known monuments of the first dynasties, is entirely due to

Amélineau. He carried on important work there during four

years, from 1895 to 1899: unfortunately its success was

impaired by the theories which he elaborated with regard to

the new monuments, and by the delay in publishing an account

of the objects which remained in his possession.

*** For the "Cleft," cf. supra, pp. 281, 282, 334.

The mass of pottery, whole and broken, which has accumulated on this

site from the offerings of centuries has obtained for it among the

Fellahin the name of Omm-el-G-aâb--"the mother of pots." The tombs there

lie in serried ranks. They present for the most part a rough model of

the pyramids of the Memphite period--rectangular structures of bricks

without mortar rising slightly above the level of the plain. The funeral

chamber occupies the centre of each, and is partly hollowed out of the

soil, like a shallow well, the sides being bricked. It had a flat timber

roof, covered by a layer of about three feet of sand; the floor also was

of wood, and in several cases the remains of the beams of both ceiling

and pavement have been brought to light. The body of the royal inmate

was laid in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by its funeral

furniture and by a part of the offerings. The remainder was placed in

the little rooms which opened out of the principal vault, sometimes

on the same level, sometimes on one higher than itself; after their

contents had been laid within them, the entrance to these rooms was

generally walled up. Human bodies have been found inside them, probably

those of slaves killed at the funeral that they might wait upon the dead

in his life beyond the grave.[*] The objects placed in these chambers

were mostly offerings, but besides these were coarse stelae bearing the

name of a person, and dictated to "the double of his luminary."[**]

Some of them mention a dwarf[***] or a favourite dog of the sovereign,

who accompanied his master into the tomb. Tablets of ivory or bone

skilfully incised furnish us with scenes representing some of the

ceremonies of the deification of the king in his lifetime and the

sacrifices offered at the time of his burial;[****] in rarer instances

they record his exploits.

* El. Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, part i.

p. 14.

** The "luminous double" or the "double of his luminary" is

doubtless that luminous spectre which haunted the tombs and

even the houses of the living during the night, and which I

have mentioned, supra, p. 160.

*** Petrie found the skeletons of two dwarfs, probably the

very two to whom the two stelae (Nos. 36, 37) in the tomb of

Semempses were raised. Was one of these dwarfs one of the

_Danga_ of Puanît who were sought after by the Pharaohs of

the Memphite dynasties?

**** This was the ceremony called by the Egyptians "The

Festival of the Foundation "--_habu sadu_.

The offerings themselves were such as we meet with in burials of

a subsequent age--bread, cakes, meat, and poultry of various

sorts--indeed, everything we find mentioned in the lists inscribed in

the tombs of the later dynasties, particularly the jars of wine and

liquors, on the clay bungs of which are still legible the impression

of the signet bearing the name of the sovereign for whose use they were

sealed. Besides stuffs and mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds,

stools, an enormous number of vases, some in coarse pottery for common

use, others in choice stone such as diorite, granite, or rock crystal

very finely worked, on the fragments of all of which may be read cut

in outline the names and preamble of the Pharaoh to whom the object

belonged. The ceremonial of the funerary offering and its significance

was already fully developed at this early period; this can be gathered

by the very nature of the objects buried with the deceased, by their

number, quantity, and by the manner in which they were arranged. Like

their successors in the Egypt of later times, these ancient kings

expected to continue their material existence within the tomb, and

they took precautions that life there should be as comfortable as

circumstances should permit. Access to the tomb was sometimes gained

by a sloping passage or staircase; this made it possible to see if

everything within was in a satisfactory condition. After the dead had

been enclosed in his chamber, and five or six feet of sand had been

spread over the beams which formed its roof, the position of the tomb

was shown merely by a scarcely perceptible rise in the soil of the

necropolis, and its site would soon have been forgotten, if its

easternmost limits had not been marked by two large stelae on which

were carefully engraved one of the appellations of the king--that of his

double, or his Horus name.[*]

* For the Horus name of the Pharaohs, see vol. ïi., pp. 23-

25.

It was on this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelæ, that

the commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed

on certain days fixed by the religious law. Groups of private tombs

were scattered around,--the resting-places of the chief officers of the

sovereign, the departed Pharaoh being thus surrounded in death by

the same courtiers as those who had attended him during his earthly

existence.

The princes, whose names and titles have been revealed to us by the

inscriptions on these tombs, have not by any means been all classified

as yet, the prevailing custom at that period having been to designate

them by their Horus names, but rarely by their proper names, which

latter is the only one which figures in the official lists which we

possess of the Egyptian kings. A few texts, more explicit than the rest,

enable us to identify three of them with the Usaphais, the Miebis, and

the Semempses of Manetho--the fifth, sixth, and seventh kings of

the Ist dynasty.[*] The fact that they are buried in the necropolis of

Abydos apparently justifies the opinion of the Egyptian chroniclers that

they were natives of Thinis. Is the Menés who usually figures at their

head[**] also a Thinite prince?

* The credit is due to Sethe of having attributed their

ordinary names to several of the kings of the Ist dynasty

with Horus names only which were found by Amélineau, and

these identifications have been accepted by all

Egyptologists. Pétrie discovered quite recently on some

fragments of vases the Horus names of these same princes,

together with their ordinary names. The Usaphais, the

Miebis, and the Semempses of Manetho are now satisfactorily

identified with three of the Pharaohs discovered by

Amélineau and by Pétrie.

** In the time of Seti I. and Ramses II. he heads the list

of the Table of Abydos. Under Ramses II. his statue was

carried in procession, preceding all the other royal

statues. Finally, the "Royal Papyrus" of Turin,

written in the time of Ramses I., begins the entire series

of the human Pharaohs with his name.

Several scholars believe that his ordinary name, Mini, is to be read on

an ivory tablet engraved for a sovereign whose Horus name--Ahauîti, the

warlike--is known to us from several documents, and whose tomb also has

been discovered, but at Nagadeh. It is a great rectangular structure

of bricks 165 feet long and 84 broad, the external walls of which were

originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which

score the façade of Chaldæan buildings, but the Nagadeh tomjb has a

second brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one,

and thus hides the primitive decoration of the monument. The building

contains twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently

constituted the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped

around these, serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his

provisions at will. Did the king buried within indeed bear the name

of Menés,[*] and if such was the case, how are we to reconcile the

tradition of his Thinite origin with the existence of his far-off tomb

in the neighbourhood of Thebes?

* The sign _Manu_, which appears on the ivory tablet found

in this tomb, has been interpreted as a king's name, and

consequently inferred to be Menés. This reading has been

disputed on various sides, and the point remains, therefore,

a contested one until further discovery.

Objects bearing his Horus name have been found at Omm-el-Gaâb, and it is

evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in

this necropolis. If, indeed, Menés was really his personal name, there

is no reason against his being the Menés of tradition, he whom the

Pharaohs of the glorious Theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of

their purely human ancestors. Whether he was really the first king who

reigned over the whole of Egypt, or whether he had been preceded

by other sovereigns whose monuments we may find in some site still

unexplored, is a matter for conjecture. That princes had exercised

authority in various parts of the country is still uncertain, but that

the Egyptian historians did not know them, seems to prove that they had

left no written records of their names. At any rate, a Menés lived who

reigned at the outset of history, and doubtless before long the Nile

valley, when more carefully explored, will yield us monuments recording

his actions and determining his date. The civilization of the Egypt of

his time was ruder than that with which we have hitherto been familiar

on its soil, but even at that early period it was almost as complete.

It had its industries and its arts, of which the cemeteries furnish

us daily with the most varied examples: weaving, modelling in clay,

wood-carving, the incising of ivory, gold, and the hardest stone were

all carried on; the ground was cultivated with hoe and plough; tombs

were built showing us the model of what the houses and palaces must have

been; the country had its army, its administrators, its priests, its

nobles, its writing, and its system of epigraphy differs so little from

that to which we are accustomed in later ages, that we can decipher it

with no great difficulty. Frankly speaking, all that we know at present

of the first of the Pharaohs beyond the mere fact of his existence is

practically _nil_, and the stories related of him by the writers of

classical times are mere legends arranged to suit the fancy of the

compiler. "This Menés, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with

dykes. For the river formerly followed the sandhills for some distance

on the Libyan side. Menés, having dammed up the reach about a hundred

stadia to the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and

conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the

two mountain ranges. Then Menés, the first who was king, having enclosed

a firm space of ground with dykes, there founded that town which is

still called Memphis; he then made a lake round it, to the north and

west, fed by the river, the city being bounded on the east by the

Nile."[*]

* The dyke supposed to have been made by Menés is evidently

that of Qosheîsh, which now protects the province of Gîzeh,

and regulates the inundation in its neighbourhood.

The history of Memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments,

differs considerably from the tradition current in Egypt at the time of

Herodotus. It appears, indeed, that at the outset, the site on which

it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbû-hazû--the

white wall--which was dependent on Heliopolis, and in which Phtah

possessed a sanctuary. After the "white wall" was separated from the

Heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself, it assumed a certain

importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded

the Thinite. Its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when

the sovereigns of the Vth and VIth dynasties fixed on it for their

residence; one of them, Papi L, there founded for himself and for his

"double" after him, a new town, which he called Minnofîrû, from his

tomb. Minnofîrû, which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of

Memphis, probably signified "the good refuge," the haven of the good,

the burying-place where the blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris. The

people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall

in with their taste for romantic tales. They were rather disposed, as a

rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the

countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names:

if no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any

scruple in inventing one. The Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies,

who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation

in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a

Princess Memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous Uchoreus;

those of preceding ages before the name had become altered, thought

to find in Minnofîrû a "Mini Nofir," or "Menés the Good," the reputed

founder of the capital of the Delta. Menés the Good, divested of his

epithet, is none other than Menés, the first king, and he owes this

episode in his life to a popular attempt at etymology. The legend which

identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of

the city, must have originated at the time when Memphis was still the

residence of the kings and the seat of government, at latest about the

end of the Memphite period. It must have been an old tradition in the

time of the Theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the

authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so

marked a superiority over their own country.

[Illustration: 343.jpg NECKLACE, BEARING NAME OF MENES. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin after Prisse d'Avenues. The gold

medallions engraved with the name of Menés are ancient, and

perhaps go back to the XXth dynasty; the setting is entirely

modern, with the exception of the three oblong pendants of

cornelian.

When once this half-mythical Menés was firmly established in his

position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story which would

portray him as an ideal sovereign. He was represented as architect,

warrior, and statesman; he had begun the temple of Phtah, written laws

and regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of Hâpis, and

he had conducted expeditions against the Libyans. When he lost his only

son in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning

to console him--the "Maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were

handed down from generation to generation. He did not, moreover, disdain

the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner,

and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. One day, while

hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to

devour him. He escaped with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to

the shore of Lake Moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the

point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and

carried him across to the other side.[*] In gratitude he built a new

town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the

crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous

labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. Other traditions show him in a

less favourable light. They accuse him of having, by horrible crimes,

excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign

of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a hippopotamus which came

forth from the Nile.[**]

* This is an episode from the legend of Osiris: at Phihe,

in the little building of the Antonines, may be seen a

representation of a crocodile crossing the Nile, carrying on

his back the mummy of the god. The same episode is also

found in the tale of Onus el Ujûd and of Uard f'il-Ikmâm,

where the crocodile leads the hero to his beautiful prisoner

in the Island of Philæ. Ebers, _Ægypte_, French trans., vol.

ii. pp. 415, 416, has shown how this episode in the Arab

story must have been inspired by the bas-relief at Philæ and

by the scene which it portrays: the temple is still called

"Kasr," and the island "Geziret Onus el-Ujûd."

** In popular romances, this was the usual end of criminals

of every kind; we shall see that another king, Akhthoes the

founder of the IXth dynasty, after committing horrible

misdeeds, was killed, in the same way as Menés, by a

hippopotamus.

They also related that the Saïte Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition

against the Arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp

and luxuries of royal life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his

imprecations to be inscribed upon a stele set up in the temple of Amon

at Thebes. Nevertheless, in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first

Pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. He was worshipped in Memphis side

by side with Phtah and Ramses II.; his name figured at the head of the

royal lists, and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies.

His immediate successors had an actual existence, and their tombs are

there in proof of it. We know where Usaphais, Miebis, and Semempses[*]

were laid to rest, besides more than a dozen other princes whose real

names and whose position in the official lists are still uncertain. The

order of their succession was often a matter of doubt to the Egyptians

themselves, but perhaps the discoveries of the next few years will

enable us to clear up and settle definitely matters which were shrouded

in mystery in the time of the Theban Pharaohs. As a fact, the forms of

such of their names as have been handed down to us by later tradition,

are curt and rugged, indicative of an early state of society, and

harmonizing with the more primitive civilization to which they belong:

Ati the Wrestler, Teti the Runner, Qenqoni the Crusher, are suitable

rulers for a people, the first duty of whose chief was to lead his

followers into battle, and to strike harder than any other man in the

thickest of the fight.[**]

* Flinders Pétrie, _The 'Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty_,

vol. i. p. 56.

** The Egyptians were accustomed to explain the meaning of

the names of their kings to strangers, and the Canon of

Eratosthenes has preserved several of their derivations, of

which a certain number, as, for instance, that of Menés from

aùovioç, the "lasting," are tolerably correct. M. Krall is,

to my knowledge, the only Egyptologist who has attempted to

glean from the meaning of these names indications of the

methods by which the national historians of Egypt

endeavoured to make up the lists of the earliest dynasties.

Some of the monuments they have left us, seem to show that their reigns

were as much devoted to war as those of the later Pharaohs. The king

whose Horus name was Nârumîr, is seen on a contemporary object which has

come down to us, standing before a heap of beheaded foes; the bodies

are all stretched out on the ground, each with his head placed neatly

between his legs: the king had overcome, apparently in some important

engagement, several thousands of his enemies, and was inspecting the

execution of their leaders. That the foes with whom these early kings

contended were in most cases Egyptian princes of the nomes, is proved by

the list of city names which are inscribed on the fragments of another

document of the same nature, and we gather from them that Dobu (Edfu),

Hasutonu (Cynopolis), Habonu (Hipponon), Hakau (Memphis) and others were

successively taken and dismantled.[*]

* Palette resembling the preceding one, and with it

deposited in the Gîzeh Museum; reproduced by Steindokff, and

by J. de Morgan. The names of the towns were enclosed within

the embattled line which was used later on to designate

foreign countries. The animals which surmount them represent

the gods of Egypt, the king's protectors; and the king

himself, identified with these gods, is making a breach in

the wall with a pick-axe. The names of the towns have not

been satisfactorily identified: Hat-kau, for instance, may

not be Memphis, but it appears that there is no doubt with

regard to Habonu. Cf. Sayce, The Beginnings of the Egyptian

Monarchy in the Proceedings of the Biblical Archæological

Society, 1898, vol. xx. pp, 99-101.

On this fragment King Den is represented standing over a prostrate chief

of the Bedouin, striking him with his mace. Sondi, who is classed in the

IInd dynasty, received a continuous worship towards the end of the IIIrd

dynasty. But did all those whose names preceded or followed his on the

lists, really exist as he did? and if they existed, to what extent do

the order and the relation assigned to them agree with the actual truth?

The different lists do not contain the same names in the same positions;

certain Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason.

Where Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables of the time

of Seti I. gave us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons nine kings to the IInd

dynasty, while they register only five.[*]

* The impossibility of reconciling the names of the Greek

with those of the Pharaonic lists has been admitted by most

of the savants who have discussed the matter, viz. Mariette,

E. de Rouge, Lieblein, Wiedemann; most of them explain the

differences by the supposition that, in many cases, one of

the lists gives the cartouche name, and the other the

cartouche prenomen of the same king.

The monuments, indeed, show us that Egypt in the past obeyed princes

whom her annalists were unable to classify: for instance, they associate

with Sondi a Pirsenû, who is not mentioned in the annals. We must,

therefore, take the record of all this opening period of history for

what it is--namely, a system invented at a much later date, by means of

various artifices and combinations--to be partially accepted in default

of a better, but without according to it that excessive confidence which

it has hitherto received. The two Thinite dynasties, in direct descent

from the first human king Menés, furnish, like this hero himself, only a

tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history.

A double-headed stork, which had appeared in the first year of Teti,

son of Menés, had foreshadowed to Egypt a long prosperity, but a famine

under Ouenephes, and a terrible plague under Semempses, had depopulated

the country: the laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed,

and revolts had broken out. During the reign of Boêthos, a gulf had

opened near Bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the Nile had

flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, and

Sesochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature. A few details

about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodigies. Teti had laid

the foundation of the great palace of Memphis, Ouenephes had built the

pyramids of Ko-komè near Saqqara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had

published books on theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and

medicine; several had made laws which lasted down to the beginning of

the Christian era. One of them was called Kakôû, the male of males, or

the bull of bulls. They explained his name by the statement that he had

concerned himself about the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods,

Hâpis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, and the goat of Mendes. After

him, Binôthris had conferred the right of succession upon all the women

of the blood-royal. The accession of the IIIrd dynasty, a Memphite one

according to Manetho, did not at first change the miraculous character

of this history. The Libyans had revolted against Necherophes, and the

two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the disk of

the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the rebels,

who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven, and

yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the successor of Necherophes,

brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. He

composed, as Teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to

be identified with the healing god Imhotpu. The priests related these

things seriously, and the Greek writers took them down from their lips

with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the

wise men of Egypt.

What they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see,

than their accounts of the gods. Whether the legends dealt with deities

or kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination,

but in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they

dealt with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a

method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the

monuments. Towards the middle of the third century before our era, the

Greek troops stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the

first cataract, developed a particular veneration for Isis of Philæ.

Their devotion spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them,

then to the whole population of the Thebàid, and finally reached the

court of the Macedonian kings. The latter, carried away by force

of example, gave every encouragement to a movement which attracted

worshippers to a common sanctuary, and united in one cult the two races

over which they ruled. They pulled down the meagre building of the

Sa'ite period which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of Isis,

constructed at great cost the temple which still remains almost intact,

and assigned to it considerable possessions in Nubia, which, in

addition to gifts from private individuals, made the goddess the richest

landowner in Southern Egypt. Khnûmû and his two wives, Anûkit and Satît,

who, before Isis, had been the undisputed suzerains of the cataract,

perceived with jealousy their neighbour's prosperity: the civil wars

and invasions of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their

temples, and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the

new-comer.

[Illustration: 350.jpg SATÎT PRESENTS THE PHARAOH AMENÔTHES III. TO

KHNÔMÛ.1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the

temple of Khnûmû, at Elephantine. This bas-relief is now

destroyed.

The priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before King

Ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had rendered and

still continued to render to Egypt, and above all to remind him of the

generosity of the ancient Pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty

of the times, the recent Pharaohs had been unable to follow.

[Illustration: 351.jpg ANÛKIT]

Doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support

their pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island

of Sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the

IIIrd dynasty. This sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for

greatness. As early as the XIIth dynasty Usirtasen III. had claimed

him as "his father"--his ancestor--and had erected a statue to him; the

priests knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a

hearing. The inscription which they fabricated, set forth that in

the eighteenth year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madîr, lord of

Elephantine, a message couched in these terms: "I am overcome with

sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my

heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in

my time, for the space of eight years. Corn is scarce, there is a lack

of herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his

neighbours for help, they take pains not to go. The child weeps, the

young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their

limbs are bent."

Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce

from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the

domains and dues which they declared had been his right? The stele shows

us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents, when

the exigencies of they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the

courtiers have no further resources; the shops formerly furnished

with rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was in them has

disappeared.

"My spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks to call upon

the Saviour who was here where I am, during the centuries of the gods,

upon Thot-Ibis, that great wise one, upon Imhotpû, son of Phtah of

Memphis. Where is the place in which the Nile is born? Who is the god or

goddess concealed there? What is his likeness?"

[Illustration: 353.jpg THE STEP PYRAMID OF SAUARA. 1]

1 Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Dévèria (1864); in

the foreground, the tomb of Ti.

The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He described to the

king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and

the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who

presided over it, and who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous

plight. Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered

the prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted and

cried aloud, "I am Khnûmû who created thee!" and promised him a speedy

return of a high Nile and the cessation of the famine. Pharaoh was

touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown him; he

forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his rights

of suzerainty over the neighbouring nomes within a radius of twenty

miles. Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers,

fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their incomes to the

priests; the quarries could not be worked without the consent of Khnûmû,

and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers, and finally,

all metals and precious woods shipped thence for Egypt had to submit to

a toll on behalf of the temple. Did the daily life forced the necessity

upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle

was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical

writers. Every prodigy, every fact related by Manetho, was taken from

some document analogous to the supposed inscription of Zosiri.[*]

* The legend of the yawning gulf at Bubastis must be

connected with the gifts supposed to have been offered by

King Boêthos to the temple of that town, to repair the

losses sustained by the goddess on that occasion; the legend

of the pestilence and famine is traceable to some relief

given by a local god, and for which Semempses and Ùenephes

might have shown their gratitude in the same way as Zosiri.

The tradition of the successive restorations of Denderah

accounts for the constructions attributed to Teti I. and to

Tosorthros; finally, the prête tided discoveries of sacred

books, dealt with elsewhere, show how Manetho was enabled to

attribute to his Pharaohs the authorship of works on

medicine or theology.

The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our

researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes

which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single

kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful

and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people;

these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into

dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected

with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced

to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. The

monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely

disappeared: they exist in places where we have not as yet thought of

applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly

bring them to light. The few which we do possess barely go back beyond

the IIIrd dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and

Pirsenû; possibly the tomb of Khûîthotpû at Saqqâra; the Great Sphinx

of Gîzeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the Wady Maghâra, which

represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnûmû in the

Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of

Sinai; and finally the Step-Pyramid where this same Pharaoh rests.[*]

* The stele of Sehêl has enabled us to verify the fact that

the preamble [a string of titles] to the inscription of the

king, buried in the Step-Pyramid, is identical with that of

King Zosiri: it was, therefore, Zosiri who constructed, or

arranged for the construction of this monument as his tomb.

The Step-Pyramid of Saqqâra was opened in 1819, at the

expense of the Prussian General Minutoli, who was the first

to give a brief description of the interior, illustrated by

plans and drawings.

It forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly orientated, with a variation

from the true north of 4° 35', 393 ft. 8 in. long from east to west,

and 352 ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. It is composed of six

cubes, with sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than

the one below it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in

height, and the uppermost one 29 ft. 9 in. It was entirely constructed

of limestone from the neighbouring mountains. The blocks are small, and

badly cut, the stone courses being concave to offer a better resistance

to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake. When breaches in the

masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of

the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being

carefully dressed. The body of the pyramid is solid, the chambers

being cut in the rock beneath. These chambers have been often enlarged,

restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages

which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous

to venture without a guide. The columned porch, the galleries and

halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the

architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain

the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until the beginning

of this century, the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed

pottery. Three quarters of the wall surface were covered with green

tiles, oblong and slightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the

inner: a square projection pierced with a hole, served to fix them at

the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods.

[Illustration: 356. jpg ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE STEP-PYRAMID, WITH

ITS WALL-COVERING OF GLAZED TILES.1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the coloured sketch by

Sogato. M. Stern attributes the decoration of glazed pottery

to the XXVI '' dynasty, which opinion is shared by

Borchardt. The yellow and green glazed tiles hearing the

cartouche of Papi I., show that the Egyptians of the

Memphite dynasties used glazed facings at that early date;

we may, therefore, believe, if the tiles of the vault of

Zosiri are really of the Saïte period, that they replaced a

decoration of the same kind, which belonged to the time of

its construction, and of which some fragments still exist

among the tiles of more recent date.

The three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the

titles of the Pharaoh: the hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red,

green, or yellow, on a fawn-coloured ground. Other kings had built

temples, palaces, and towns,--as, for instance, King Khâsakhimu, of

whose constructions some traces exist at Hieracônpolis, opposite to

El-Kab, or King Khâsakhmui, who preceded by a few years the Pharaohs of

the IVth dynasty--but the monuments which they raised to be witnesses of

their power or piety to future generations, have, in the course of ages,

disappeared under the tramplings and before the triumphal blasts of many

invading hosts: the pyramid alone has survived, and the most ancient of

the historic monuments of Egypt is a tomb.

[Illustration: 357.jpg TAILPIECE]

END OF VOL. I.