_The XIXth dynasty: Harmhabî--The Hittite empire in Syria and in Asia
Minor--Seti I. and Ramses II.--The people of the sea: Minephtah and the
Israelite Exodus._
While none of these ephemeral Pharaohs left behind them a, either
legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of
which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after
her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. By such a
chance alliance Harmhabî, who was himself descended from Thûtmosis III.,
was raised to the kingly office.* His mother, Mûtnozmît, was of the
royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the Gîzeh Museum
probably represents her. The body is mutilated, but the head is charming
in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and
somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. The material of the statue
is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the
malign character of her look and smile. It is possible that Mûtnozmît
was the daughter of Amenôthes III. by his marriage with one of
his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his
great-grandfather, that Harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to
royalty.**
* A fragment of an inscription at Karnak calls Thûtmosis
III. the father of his fathers. Champollion called him
Hornemnob, Rosellini, Hôr-hemheb, Hôr-em-hbai, and both
identified him with the Hôros of Manetho, hence the custom
among Egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the
name Horus. Dévéria was the first to show that the name
corresponded with the Armais of the lists of Manetho, and,
in fact, Armais is the Greek transcription of the group
Harmhabî in the bilingual texts of the Ptolemaic period.
** Mûtnozmît was at first considered the daughter and
successor of Harmhabî, or his wife. Birch showed that the
monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was
inclined to think that she was Harmhabîs mother. As far as
I can see for the present, it is the only solution which
agrees with the evidence on the principal monument which has
made known her existence.
He was born, probably, in the last years of Amenôthes, when Tîi was the
exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when
Harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that Amon, destining him for the
throne, had condescended to become his father by Mûtnozmît--a customary
procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become
debased.* It was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and,
while Harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had
spread over the childs skin the freshness and brilliance which are the
peculiar privilege of the immortals. While still in the nursery, the
great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before Harmhabî,
making him liberal offerings. Every one recognised in him, even when
still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion
of a god, and Horus of Cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps,
knowing that the time of his advancement was near. After having called
the attention of the Egyptians to Harmhabî, Amon was anxious, in fact,
to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme
rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning Pharaoh
towards him. Aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.**
* All that we know of the youth of Harmhabî is contained in
the texts on a group preserved in the Turin Museum, and
pointed out by Champollion, translated and published
subsequently by Birch and by Brugsch. The first lines of the
inscription seem to me to contain an account of the union of
Amon with the queen, analogous to those at Deîr el-Baharî
treating of the birth of Hâtshopsîtû, and to those at Luxor
bearing upon Amenôthes III. (cf. vol. iv. pp. 342, 343; and
p. 51 of the present volume), and to prove for certain that
Harmhabîs mother was a princess of the royal line by right.
** The king is not named in the inscription. It cannot have
been Amenôthes IV., for an individual of the importance of
Harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have
had a tomb begun for him at. Tel el-Amarna. We may hesitate
between Aï and Tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say
definitely that Harmhabî succeeded directly to the king
under whom he had held important offices for many years, and
this compels us to fix upon Aï, who, as we have said at p.
108, et seq., of the present volume, was, to all
appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns.
He never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and
when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit
terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus
gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his
plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by Thot the
Ibis himself. For many years he held a place of confidence with the
sovereign. The nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the
palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north
or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and
gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. His favourite
residence was Memphis, his preference for it arising from his having
possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for
his abode. Here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the
bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in
his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does
not as yet contain his name.*
* This part of the account is based upon, a study of a
certain number of texts and representations all coming from
Harmhabîs tomb at Saqqârah, and now scattered among the
various museums--at Gîzeh, Leyden, London, and Alexandria.
Birch was the first to assign those monuments to the Pharaoh
Harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been
dethroned by Ramses I., and had lived at Memphis in an
intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a
private individual; this opinion was adopted by Ed. Meyer,
rejected by Wiedemann and by myself. After full examination,
I think the Harmhabî of the tomb at Saqqârah and the Pharaoh
Harmhabî are one and the same person; Harmhabî, sufficiently
high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high
enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have
had his tomb constructed at Saqqârah, as Aï and possibly
Ramses I. had theirs built for them at Tel el-Amarna.
He was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general
of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of
Asia and Ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the
field of battle,* at the time when Horus of Cynopolis resolved to
seat him upon his eternal throne. Aï no longer occupied it. Horus took
Harmhabî with him to Thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of
general joy, and led him to Amon in order that the god might bestow upon
him the right to reign. The reception took place in the temple of
Luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of
Amenôthes. Amon rejoiced to see Harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds;
he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the
apartments of his august daughter, Mûtnozmît; then, after she had
recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods
broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.**
* The fragments of the tomb preserved at Leyden show him
leading to the Pharaoh Asiatics and Ethiopians, burthened
with tribute. The expressions and titles given above are
borrowed from the fragments at Gîzeh.
** Owing to a gap, the text cannot be accurately translated
at this point. The reading can be made out that Amon betook
himself to the palace, placing the prince before him, as far
as the sanctuary of his (Amons) daughter, the very
august...; she poured water on his hands, she embraced the
beauties (of the prince), she placed herself before him. It
will be seen that the name of the daughter of Amon is
wanting, and Birch thought that a terrestrial princess whom
Harmhabî had married was in question, Miifcnozmît, according
to Brugsch. If the reference is not to a goddess, who along
with Amon took part in the ceremonies, but to Mûtnozmît, we
must come to the conclusion that she, as heir and queen by
birth, must have ceded her rights by some ritual to her son
before he could be crowned.
Behold, Amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order
to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life!
We install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of
Eâ, we pray Amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as
king have the festivals of Eâ and the years of Horus; may he accomplish
his good pleasure in Thebes, in Heliopolis, in Memphis, and may he
add to the veneration with which these cities are invested. And
they immediately decided that the new Pharaoh should be called
Horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the Vulture and of
the very marvellous Urseus in Thebes, the conquering Horus who takes
pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the
south and north, Sozir Khopîrûrî chosen of Eâ, the offspring of the Sun,
Harmhabî Mîamûn, giver of life. The _cortege_ came afterwards to the
palace, the king walking before Amon: there the god embraced his son,
placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole
world, over foreign populations as well as those of Egypt, inasmuch as
he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe.
This is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. Pharaoh is
the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might
have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of Horus; and as he
became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the
moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless
respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. In this case,
however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional
formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the
circumstances of the moment. Amon, who had been insulted and proscribed
by Khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of
the immediate successors of his enemy.
[Illustration: 123.jpg THE FIRST PYLON OF HARMHABÎ AT KARNAK]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Beato.
They had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become
reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this
was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion:
they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal
system, and the temple of the hateful Disk still dishonoured by its
vicinity the sanctuary of Karnak. Harmhabî, on the other hand, was
devoted to Amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from
his birth to worship none but him. Harmhabîs triumph marked the end
of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which Amon saw
himself again master of Thebes and of the world. Immediately after his
enthronement Harmhabî rivalled the first Amen-ôthes in his zeal for the
interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonû and
the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might
remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he
set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of Thûtmosis III. They
remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year
27 B.C. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. We find
everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at
the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached
from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers
addressed to the Disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of Amenôfches
IV., Aï, and Tûtankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabî at Thebes
was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole
river-valley. He restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of Athû even
to Nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than
before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the
eyes of Râ. That which he had found injured he put into its original
condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable
stone, for every one which was lacking. He inspected the ruined towns of
the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time
of the first Ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings
for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and
silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers,
and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to
make prayers to Râ every morning. These measures were inspired by
consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others,
which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of
the government. Up to this time the officials and the Egyptian soldiers
had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into
consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity.
Constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even
the best-served Pharaohs, Thûtmosis, and Amenôthes III. themselves, were
obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the
scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.*
* Harmhabî refers to the edicts of Thûtmosis III.
The religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the
authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these
oppressors. The scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact
contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or
not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had
laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. The poor
fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his
wits end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various
wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. No sooner had the
Court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood,
confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence
that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal
ends in view. Soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the
object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or
of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury
made its claim for leather, none was to be found. It was hardly
possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men
of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to
have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the
criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent
victims also to purchase their protection. Harmhabî, who was continually
looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit,
at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the
magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found
to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to
be sent into perpetual exile to Zalu, on the eastern frontier. His
commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and
as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions
were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the State.
On the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every
one.
[Illustration: 127.jpg AMENOTHES IV. FROM A FRAGMENT USED AGAIN BY
HARMHABI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Prisse dAvennes.
Any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour,
where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was
awaiting an audience. The king all the while was seated in the sight
of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends
necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after
another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and
dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had
their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.*
* All these details are taken from a stele discovered in
1882. The text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give
a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is
sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with
considerable certainty.
The portraits of Harmhabî which have come down to us give us the
impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable. The most
beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a
black granite statue. Its mournful expression is not pleasing to the
spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy. The face, which
is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which
is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period: the thin and
straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat
heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners
of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour,
and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the
false beard depending from it. Every detail is treated with such freedom
that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to
work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel;
the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is
forgotten in the perfection of the result. The dreamy expression of his
face, however, did not prevent Harmhabî from displaying beyond Egypt, as
within it, singular activity.
[Illustration: 128.jpg HARMHABI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Autograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
Although Egypt had never given up its claims to dominion over the whole
river-valley, as far as the plains of Sennar, yet since the time of
Amenôthes III. no sovereign had condescended, it would I appear, to
conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the
Upper Nile. Harmhabî was anxious to revive the custom which imposed
upon the Pharaohs the obligation to make their first essay in arms in
Ethiopia, as Horus, son of Isis, had done of yore, and he seized the
pretext of the occurrence of certain raids there to lead a body of
troops himself into the heart of the negro country.
[Illustration: 129.jpg THE VAULTED PASSAGE OF THE ROCK-TOMB AT GEBEL
SILSILEH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He had just ordered at this time the construction of the two southern
pylons at Karnak, and there was great activity in the quarries of
Silsileh. A commemorative chapel also was in course of excavation here
in the sandstone rock, and he had dedicated it to his father, Amon-Ba of
Thebes, coupling with him the local divinities, Hapî the Nile, and Sobkû
the patron of Ombos. The sanctuary is excavated somewhat deeply into
the hillside, and the dark rooms within it are decorated with the usual
scenes of worship, but the vaulted approach to them displays upon its
western wall the victory of the king. We see here a figure receiving
from Amon the assurance of a long and happy life, and another letting
fly his arrows at a host of fleeing enemies; Ethiopians raise their
heads to him in suppliant gesture; soldiers march past with their
captives; above one of the doors we see twelve military leaders marching
and carrying the king aloft upon their shoulders, while a group of
priests and nobles salute him, offering incense.*
* The significance of the monument was pointed out first by
Champollion. The series of races conquered was represented
at Karnak on the internal face of one of the pylons built by
Harmhabi; it appears to have been usurped by Ramses II.
At this period Egyptian ships were ploughing the Red Sea, and their
captains were renewing official relations with Pûanît. Somali chiefs
were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of Thûtmosis III. The
wars of Amon had, in fact, begun again. The god, having suffered neglect
for half a century, had a greater need than ever of gold and silver
to fill his coffers; he required masons for his buildings, slaves and
cattle for his farms, perfumed essences and incense for his daily rites.
His resources had gradually become exhausted, and his treasury would
soon be empty if he did not employ the usual means to replenish it. He
incited Harmhabi to proceed against the countries from which, in olden
times he had enriched himself--to the south in the first place, and
then, having decreed victory there, and having naturally taken for
himself the greater part of the spoils, he turned his attention to Asia.
[Illustration: 131.jpg THE TRIUMPH OP HARMHABÎ IN THE SANCTUARY OF GEBEL
SILSILEH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Daniel Heron.
The black spots are due to the torches of the fellahîn of
the neighbourhood who have visited the rock tomb in bygone
years.
In the latter campaign the Egyptian troops took once more the route
through Coele-Syria, and if the expedition experienced here more
difficulties than on the banks of the Upper Nile, it was, nevertheless,
brought to an equally triumphant conclusion. Those of their adversaries
who had offered an obstinate resistance were transported into other
lands, and the rebel cities were either razed to the ground or given to
the flames: the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains, where
they were in danger of perishing from hunger, made supplications for
peace, which was granted to them on the usual conditions of doing homage
and paying tribute.*
* These details are taken from the fragment of an
inscription now in the museum at Vienna; Bergmann, and also
Erman, think that we have in this text the indication of an
immigration into Egypt of a tribe of the Monâtiu.
We do not exactly know how far he penetrated into the country; the
list of the towns and nations over which he boasts of having triumphed
contains, along with names unknown to us, some already famous or soon to
become so--Arvad, Pibukhu, the Khâti, and possibly Alasia. The Haui-Nibu
themselves must have felt the effects of the campaign, for several of
their chiefs associated, doubtless, with the Phoenicians, presented
themselves before the Pharaoh at Thebes. Egypt was maintaining,
therefore, its ascendency, or at least appearing to maintain it in
those regions where the kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had ruled after
the campaigns of Thûtmosis I., Thûtmosis III., and Amenothes II. Its
influence, nevertheless, was not so undisputed as in former days; not
that the Egyptian soldiers were less valiant, but owing to the fact
that another power had risen up alongside them whose armies were strong
enough to encounter them on the field of battle and to obtain a victory
over them.
Beyond Naharaim, in the deep recesses of the Amanus and Taurus, there
had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike
tribes of the Khâti, related not so, much to the Semites of the Syrian
plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied
the upper basins of the Halys and Euphrates.* The Chaldæan conquest
had barely touched them; the Egyptian campaign had not more effect, and
Thûtmosis III. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked
several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among
his subjects. Their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to
use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of
writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of
scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we
find to have accompanied the sovereigns of Assyria and Babylon.**
These chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the
Pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or
they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the
king at Thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to
maintain good faith with their son-in-law.
* Halévy asserts that the Khâti were Semites, and bases his
assertion on materials of the Assyrian period. Thés Khâti,
absorbed in Syria by the Semites, with whom they were
blended, appear to have been by origin a non-Semitic people.
** A letter from the King of the Khâti to the Pharaoh
Amenothes IV. is written in cuneiform writing and in a
Semitic language. It has been thought that other documents,
drawn up in a non-Semitic language and coming from Mitanni
and Arzapi, contain a dialect of the Hittite speech or that
language itself. A writer of books, attached to the person
of the Hittite King Khatusaru, is named amongst the dead
found on the field of battle at Qodshû.
*** It is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of
tribute from the Khâti in the _Annals of Thûtmosis III._, 1.
26, in the year XXXIII., also in the year XL. One of the Tel
el-Amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the
King of Khâti addresses to Amenôthes IV. to celebrate his
enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the
traditional good relations of their two families.
They had, moreover, commercial relations with Egypt, and furnished it
with cattle, chariots, and those splendid Cappadocian horses whose breed
was celebrated down to the Greek period.* They were already, indeed,
people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the
contemporaries of Thutmosis III. called them the Greater Khâti; and the
epithet vile, which the chancellors of the Pharaohs added to their
name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced
upon the mind of their adversaries.**
* The horses of the Khâti were called _abarî_, strong,
vigorous, as also their bulls. The King of Alasia, while
offering to Amenôthes III. a profitable speculation, advises
him to have nothing to do with the King of the Khâti or with
the King of Sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the
Egyptians held constant commercial relations with the Khâti.
** M. de Rougé suggested that Khâti the Little was the
name of the Hittites of Hebron. The expression, Khâti the
Great, has been compared with that of Khanirabbat, Khani
the Great, which in the Assyrian texts would seem to
designate a part of Cappadocia, in which the province of
Miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found
an ardent defender in W. Max Millier. Until further light is
thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not
Khani-_ra_bat, but Khani-_gal_bat. The name Khani-Galbat is
possibly preserved in Julbat, which the Arab geographers
applied in the Middle Ages to a province situated in Lesser
Armenia.
Their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations
conterminous with them on the south. The Egyptian draughtsmen
represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous,
strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as
inclined frequently to obesity in old age. The head is long and heavy,
the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent,
the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and
deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles;
the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that
of the Phoenicians or the Amurru.
[Illustration: 135.jpg THREE HEADS OF HITTITE SOLDIERS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
Their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short
sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according
to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by
a belt. To these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like
that of the Chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and
brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. They
wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and
they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm.
* This characteristic is found on the majority of the
monuments which the peoples of Asia Minor have left to us,
and it is one of the most striking indications of the
northern origin of the Khâti. The Egyptian artists and
modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority
of them have represented the Khâti without shoes.
They shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their
hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to
fall upon their backs and breasts. The kings head-dress, which was
distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some
extent the white crown of the Pharaohs. The dress of the people, taken
all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the
Syrians or Egyptians. The mountains and elevated plateaus which they
inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold.
If the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an
extreme rigour, and dragged on for months: clothing and footgear had
to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of December were to be
resisted. The character of their towns, and the domestic life of their
nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at. Some, at least,
of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half
underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this
region. The town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the
Chaldæan or Egyptian manners and customs in use among the Semites of
Syria. As to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary
deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the
rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests. Above this crowd
there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air,
sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called Khâti, and was
considered to be the father of the nation. They ascribed to all their
deities a warlike and savage character. The Egyptians pictured some of
them as a kind of Râ,* others as representing Sit, or rather Sûtkhû,
that patron of the Hyksôs which was identified by them with Sit: every
town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as
if of its Sûtkhû--Sûtkhû of Paliqa, Sûtkhû of Khissapa, Sûtkhû of Sarsu,
Sûtkhû of Salpina. The goddesses in their eyes also became Astartés, and
this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their Phoenician
and Canaanite sisters, of a double nature--in one aspect chaste, fierce,
and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific. One god was called
Mauru, another Targu, others Qaui and Khepa.**
* The Cilician inscriptions of the Græco-Roman period reveal
the existence in this region of a god, Rho, Rhos. Did this
god exist among the Khâti, and did the similarity of the
pronunciation of it to that of the god Râ suggest to the
Egyptians the existence of a similar god among these people,
or did they simply translate into their language the name of
the Hittite god representing the sun?
** The names Mauru and Qaui are deduced from the forms
Maurusaru and Qauisaru, which were borne by the Khâti: Qaui
was probably the eponymous hero of the Qui people, as Khâti
was of the Khâti. Tarku and Tisubu appear to me to be
contained in the names Targanunasa, Targazatas, and
Tartisubu; Tisubu is probably the Têssupas mentioned in the
letter from Dushratta written in Mitannian, and identical
with the Tushupu of another letter from the same king, and
in a despatch from Tarkondaraush. Targu, Targa, Targanu,
resemble the god Tarkhu, which is known to us from the
proper names of these regions preserved in attributes
covered by each of these divine names, and as to the forms
with which they were invested.
[Illustration: 138.jpg A HITTITE KING.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture in Lepsius.
Khatusaru, King of the Khâti, who was for thirty years a
contemporary of Ramses II.
Tishubu, the Rammân of the Assyrians, was doubtless lord of the tempest
and of the atmosphere; Shausbe answered to Shala and to Ishtar the queen
of love;* but we are frequently in ignorance as to the Assyrian and
Greek inscriptions. Kheba, Khepa, Khîpa, is said to be a denomination
of Rammân; we find it in the names of the princesses Tadu-khîpa,
Gilu-khîpa, Puu-khîpa.
The majority of them, both male and female, were of gigantic stature,
and were arrayed in the vesture of earthly kings and queens: they
brandished their arms, displayed the insignia of their authority, such
as a flower or bunch of grapes, and while receiving the offerings of
the people were seated on a chair before an altar, or stood each on
the animal representing him--such as a lion, a stag, or wild goat. The
temples of their towns have disappeared, but they could never have been,
it would seem, either-large or magnificent: the favourite places of
worship were the tops of mountains, in the vicinity of springs, or the
depths of mysterious grottoes, where the deity revealed himself to his
priests, and received the faithful at the solemn festivals celebrated
several times a year.*
* The association of Tushupu, Tessupas, Tisubu, with Rammânu
is made out from an Assyrian tablet published by Bezold: it
was reserved for Say ce and Jensen to determine the nature
of the god. Shausbe has been identified with Ishtar or Shala
by Jensen.
We know as little about their political organisation as about their
religion.* We may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and
that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the
clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective
authority depended upon his character and age.**
* The religious cities and the festivals of the Greek epoch
are described by Strabo; these festivals were very ancient,
and their institution, if not the method of celebrating
them, may go back to the time of the Hittite empire.
** The description of the battle of Qodshû in the time of
Ramses II. shows us the King of the Khâti surrounded by his
vassals. The evidence of the existence of a similar feudal
organisation from the time of the XVIIIth dynasty is
furnished by a letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, where
he relates to Amenôthes IV. the revolt of his brother
Artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the
neighbouring chiefs, Pirkhi, and all the Khâti had given to
the rebel.
The various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and
lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against
the well-officered and veteran troops of Egypt. Still they were not to
be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior
both in quality and quantity to any which Syria had ever been able
to put into the field. The infantry consisted of a limited number of
archers or slingers. They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but
merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented
with a tuft. The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed
choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat
two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point.
[Illustration: 140.jpg A HITTITE CHARIOT WITH ITS THREE OCCUPANTS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
Their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have
been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least
recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the Taurus.
The chariotry comprised the nobles and the _élite_ of the army, but it
was differently constituted from that of the Egyptians, and employed
other tactics.
The Hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a
mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being
sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. It was bound
together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips
of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold.
There were no quiver-cases as in Egyptian chariots, for the Hittite
charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. The occupants of
a chariot were three in number--the driver; the shield-bearer, whose
office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes
of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes
square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. The Hittite
princes whom fortune had brought into relations with Thûtmosîs III. and
Amenôthes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent
forces around them. It was owing probably to the feebleness of their
character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the
poor part they played in the revolutions of the Eastern world at this
time. The establishment of a strong military power on their southern
frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if
they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle
with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too
much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way
against them to their own profit. Pharaohs generals were accustomed
to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the
sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those
of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in
restraining the Hittites. They continued, in spite of them, to march
southward, and the letters from the Egyptian governors record their
progress year after year. They had a hand in all the plots which were
being hatched among the Syrians, and all the disaffected who wished
to be free from foreign oppression--such as Abdashirti and his son
Azîru--addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and
men.*
* Azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the
accusation of having received four messengers from the King
of the Khâti, while he refused to receive those from Egypt.
The complicity of Aziru with the Khâti is denounced in an
appeal from the inhabitants of Tunipa. In a mutilated
letter, an unknown person calls attention to the
negotiations which a petty-Syrian prince had entered into
with the King of the Khâti.
Even inthe time of Amenôfches III. they had endeavoured to reap profit
from the discords of Mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it.
Dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. Repulsed on
this side, they fell back upon that part of Naharaim lying between the
Euphrates and Orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after
another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the
Theban king. From the accession of Khûniatonû, they set to work to annex
the countries of Nukhassi, Nîi, Tunipa, and Zinzauru: they looked with
covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria. The
religious confusion in Egypt under Tûtankhamon and Aî left them a free
field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabî ventured to cross to the
east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region
stretching from the Mediterranean and the Lebanon to the Euphrates.
Their then reigning prince, Sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder
of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body,
and was within a little of making a single state out of all Northern
Syria.*
* Sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the
country of Patin, in the time of Salmanasar III., viz. Sapalulme. It is
known to us only from a treaty with the Khâti, which makes him coeval
with Ramses I.: it was with him probably that Harmhabî had to deal
in his Syrian campaigns. The limit of his empire towards the south is
gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of Seti I. with the
Khâti.
All Naharaim had submitted to him: Zahi, Alasia, and the Amurru had
passed under his government from that of the Pharaohs; Carchemish,
Tunipa, Nîi, Hamath, figured among his royal cities, and Qodshû was the
defence of his southern frontier. His progress towards the east was
not less considerable. Mitanni, Arzapi, and the principalities of the
Euphrates as far as the Balikh, possibly even to the Khabur,* paid him
homage: beyond this, Assyria and Chaldæa barred his way. Here, as on
his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most
formidable powers of the Asiatic world.
* The text of the poem of Pentaûîrît mentions, among the
countries confederate with the Khâti, all Naharaim; that is
to say, the country on either side of the Euphrates,
embracing Mitanni and the principalities named in the Amarna
correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites
have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed
without much risk of error to the north of the Taurus.
The latter prince was obliged to capture Qodshû, and to conquer the
people of the Lebanon. Had he sufficient forces at his disposal to
triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? Both hypotheses
could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great
powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately.
The Amorites, the people of Zahi, Alasia, and Naharaim, together with
recruits from Hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position
to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final
struggle. But an alliance between Assyria or Babylon and Thebes was
always possible. There had been such things before, in the time of
Thut-mosis IV. and in that of Amenôthes III., but they were lukewarm
agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two
parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their
mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action.
The circumstances were very different now. The rapid growth of a nascent
kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in
which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,--did
not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than
military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an
offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how
could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend
himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources
to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more
especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the
lords only of Northern Syria, and their power be measured merely by the
extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the Taurus and
on the two banks of the Middle Euphrates. But this does not by any means
represent the real facts. This was but the half of their empire; the
rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into
that region, known afterwards as Asia Minor, in which Egyptian tradition
had from ancient times confused some twenty nations under the common
vague epithet of Haûî-nîbû. Official language still employed it as a
convenient and comprehensive term, but the voyages of the Phoenicians
and the travels of the Royal Messengers, as well as, probably, the
maritime commerce of the merchants of the Delta, had taught the scribes
for more than a century and a half to make distinctions among these
nations which they had previously summed up in one. The Lufeu* were to
be found there, as well as the Danauna,** the Shardana,*** and others
besides, who lay behind one another on the coast. Of the second line of
populations behind the region of the coast tribes, we have up to
the present no means of knowing anything with certainty. Asia Minor,
furthermore, is divided into two regions, so distinctly separated by
nature as well as by races that one would be almost inclined to regard
them as two countries foreign to each other.
* The Luku, Luka, are mentioned in the Amarna correspondence
under the form Lukki as pirates and highway robbers. The
identity of these people with the Lycians I hold as well
established.
** The Danauna are mentioned along with the Luku in the
Amarna correspondence. The termination, _-auna, -ana_ of
this word appears to be the ending in -aon found in Asiatic
names like Lykaôn by the side of Lykos, Kataôn by the side
of Kêtis and Kat-patuka; while the form of the name Danaos
is preserved in Greek legend, Danaôn is found only on
Oriental monuments. The Danauna came from their islands,
that is to say, from the coasts of Asia Minor, or from
Greece, the term not being pressed too literally, as the
Egyptians were inclined to call all distant lands situated
to the north beyond the Mediterranean Sea islands.
*** E. de Rougé and Chabas were inclined to identify the
Shardana with the Sardes and the island of Sardinia. Unger
made them out to be the Khartanoi of Libya, and was followed
by Brugsch. W. Max Müller revived the hypotheses of De Rougé
and Chabas, and saw in them bands from the Italian island. I
am still persuaded, as I was twenty-five years ago, that
they were Asiatics--the Mæonian tribe which gave its name
to Sardis. The Serdani or Shardana are mentioned as serving
in the Egyptian Army in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
In its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a
gentle slope towards the Black Sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex
trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of Pontus,
and on the south by the tortuous chain of the Taurus. A line of low
hills fringes the country on the west, from the Olympus of Mysia to the
Taurus of Pisidia. Towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of
mountains of unequal height, to which the name Anti-Taurus is not very
appropriately applied. An immense volcanic cone, Mount Argseus, looks
down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which
connects the country with the lands of the Euphrates. This volcano
is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its
languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred
forests which clothed its slopes. The rivers having their sources in the
region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles
which separate them from the sea, but the Pyramus and the Sarus find
their way into the Mediterranean and the Iris, Halys and Sangarios into
the Euxine. The others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes,
and lakes of fluctuating extent. The largest of these lakes, called
Tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. In
brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the
highlands of Central Asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and
climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the
same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. The maritime
portions are of an entirely different aspect.
[Illustration: 146.jpg Map]
The western coast which stretches into the Ægean is furrowed by deep
valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers--the Caicus,
the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander--which flow through them are
effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a
continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes
the land to encroach there upon the sea. The littoral is penetrated here
and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands--Lesbos,
Chios, Samos, Cos, Rhodes--of which the majority are near enough to the
continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of
the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects
of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland. The
Cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard
between Asia and Europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the
piers of a broken bridge. The passage from one to the other is an easy
matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the
two continents than to divide them. Two groups of heights, imperfectly
connected with the central plateau, tower above the Ægean slope--wooded
Ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon
its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the
volcanic bastions of Lycia, where tradition was wont to place the
fire-breathing Chimaera. A rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches
to the west of Lycia, in a line almost parallel with the Taurus, through
which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way
into the sea. At the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the
angle where the Cilician littoral meets that of Syria, the Pyramus and
the Sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an
alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name
of the Level Cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the
interior, Gilicia Trachea.
The populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races.
On the south and south-west certain Semites had found an abode--the
mysterious inhabitants of Solyma, and especially the Phoenicians in
their scattered trading-stations. On the north-east, beside the Khâti,
distributed throughout the valleys of the Anti-Taurus, between
the Euphrates and Mount Argseus, there were tribes allied to the
Khâti*--possibly at this time the Tabal and the Mushkâ--and, on the
shores of the Black Sea, those workers in metal, which, following the
Greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the Chalybes.
* A certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to
be found in the list contained in the treaty of Ramses II.
with the Khâti.
We are at a loss to know the distribution of tribes in the centre and
in the north-west, but the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, we may rest
assured, never formed an ethnographical frontier. The continents on
either side of them appear at this point to form the banks of a river,
or the two slopes of a single valley, whose bottom lies buried beneath
the waters. The barbarians of the Balkans had forced their way across at
several points. Dardanians were to be encountered in the neighbourhood
of Mount Ida, as well as on the banks of the Axios, from early times,
and the Kebrenes of Macedonia had colonised a district of the Troad near
Ilion, while the great nation of the Mysians had issued, like them,
from the European populations of the Hebrus and the Strymon. The hero
Dardanos, according to legend, had at first founded, under the auspices
of the Idasan Zeus, the town of Dardania; and afterwards a portion
of his progeny followed the course of the Scamander, and entrenched
themselves upon a precipitous hill, from the top of which they could
look far and wide over the plain and sea. The most ancient Ilion, at
first a village, abandoned on more than one occasion in the course of
centuries, was rebuilt and transformed, earlier than the XVth century
before Christ, into an important citadel, the capital of a warlike
and prosperous kingdom. The ruins on the spot prove the existence of
a primitive civilization analogous to that of the islands of the
Archipelago before the arrival of the Phoenician navigators. We find
that among both, at the outset, flint and bone, clay, baked and unbaked,
formed the only materials for their utensils and furniture; metals were
afterwards introduced, and we can trace their progressive employment
to the gradual exclusion of the older implements. These ancient Trojans
used copper, and we encounter only rarely a kind of bronze, in which the
proportion of tin was too slight to give the requisite hardness to the
alloy, and we find still fewer examples of iron and lead. They were
fairly adroit workers in silver, electrum, and especially in gold. The
amulets, cups, necklaces, and jewellery discovered in their tombs or in
the ruins of their houses, are sometimes of a not ungraceful form. Their
pottery was made by hand, and was not painted or varnished, but they
often gave to it a fine lustre by means of a stone-polisher. Other
peoples of uncertain origin, but who had attained a civilization as
advanced as that of the Trojans, were the Maeonians, the Leleges, and
the Carians who had their abode to the south of Troy and of the Mysians.
The Maeonians held sway in the fertile valleys of the Hermos, Cayster,
and Maaander. They were divided into several branches, such as the
Lydians, the Tyrseni, the Torrhebi, and the Shardana, but their most
ancient traditions looked back with pride to a flourishing state to
which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of
Mount Sipylos, between the valley of the Hermos and the Gulf of Smyrna.
The traditional capital of this kingdom was Magnesia, the most ancient
of cities, the residence of Tantalus, the father of Niobe and the
Pelopidae. The Leleges rise up before us from many points at the same
time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of Greece and
Asia. The majority of the strongholds on the Trojan coast belonged to
them--such as Antandros and Gargara--and Pedasos on the Satniois boasted
of having been one of their colonies, while several other towns of the
same name, but very distant from each other, enable us to form some idea
of the extent of their migrations.*
* According to the scholiast on Nicander, the word Pedasos
signified mountain, probably in the language of the
Leleges. We know up to the present of four Pedasi, or
Pedasa: the first in Messenia, which later on took the name
of Methône; the second in the Troad, on the banks of the
Satniois; the third in the neighbourhood of Cyzicus; and the
fourth in Caria.
In the time of Strabo, ruined tombs and deserted sites of cities were
shown in Caria which the natives regarded as Lelegia--that is, abode
of the Leleges. The Carians were dominant in the southern angle of the
peninsula and in the Ægean Islands; and the Lycians lay next them on the
east, and were sometimes confounded with them. One of the most powerful
tribes of the Carians, the Tremilse, were in the eyes of the Greeks
hardly to be separated from the mountainous district which they knew
as Lycia proper; while other tribes extended as far as the Halys. A
district of the Troad, to the south of Mount Ida, was called Lycia, and
there was a Lycaonia on both sides of the Middle Taurus; while Attica
had its Lycia, and Crete its Lycians. These three nations--the Lycians,
Carians, and Leleges--were so entangled together from their origin, that
no one would venture now to trace the lines of demarcation between
them, and we are often obliged to apply to them collectively what can be
appropriately ascribed to only one.
How far the Hittite power extended in the first years of its expansion
we have now hardly the means of knowing. It would appear that it
took within its scope, on the south-west, the Cilician plain, and the
undulating region bordering on it--that of Qodi: the prince of the
latter district, if not his vassal, was at least the colleague of the
King of the Khâti, and he acted in concert with him in peace as well as
in war.*
* The country of Qidi, Qadi, Qodi, has been connected by
Chabas with Galilee, and Brugsch adopted the identification.
W. Max Müller identified it with Phoenicia. I think the
name served to designate the Cilician coast and plain from
the mouth of the Orontes, and the country which was known in
the Græco-Roman period by the name Kêtis and Kataonia.
It embraced also the upper basin of the Pyramos and its affluents, as
well as the regions situated between the Euphrates and the Halys, but
its frontier in this direction was continually fluctuating, and our
researches fail to follow it. It is somewhat probable that it extended
considerably towards the west and north-west in the direction of the
Ægean Sea. The forests and escarpments of Lycaonia, and the desolate
steppes of the central plateau, have always presented a barrier
difficult to surmount by any invader from the east. If the Khâti at that
period attacked it in front, or by a flank movement, the assault must
rather have been of the nature of a hurried reconnaissance, or of a
raid, than of a methodically conducted campaign.*
* The idea of a Hittite empire extending over almost all
Asia Minor was advanced by Sayce.
They must have preferred to obtain possession of the valleys of the
Thermodon and the Iris, which were rich in mineral wealth, and from
which they could have secured an inexhaustible revenue. The extraction
and working of metals in this region had attracted thither from time
immemorial merchants from neighbouring and distant countries--at first
from the south to supply the needs of Syria, Chaldæa, and Egypt, then
from the west for the necessities of the countries on the Ægean. The
roads, which, starting from the archipelago on the one hand, or the
Euphrates on the other, met at this point, fell naturally into one, and
thus formed a continuous route, along which the caravans of commerce, as
well as warlike expeditions, might henceforward pass. Starting from the
cultivated regions of Mæonia, the road proceeded up the valley of the
Hermos from west to east; then, scaling the heights of the central
plateau and taking a direction more and more to the north-east, it
reached the fords of the Halys. Crossing this river twice--for the first
time at a point about two-thirds the length of its course, and for
the second at a short distance from its source--it made an abrupt turn
towards the Taurus, and joined, at Melitene, the routes leading to the
Upper Tigris, to Nisibis, to Singara, and to Old Assur, and connecting
further down beyond the mountainous region, under the walls of
Carchemish, with the roads which led to the Nile and to the river-side
cities on the Persian Gulf.*
* The very early existence of this road, which partly
coincides with the royal route of the Persian Achemenids,
was proved by Kiepert.
There were other and shorter routes, if we think only of the number of
miles, from the Hermos in Pisidia or Lycaonia, across the central
steppe and through the Cilician Gates, to the meeting of the ways at
Carchemish; but they led through wretched regions, without industries,
almost without tillage, and inhospitable alike to man and beast, and
they were ventured on only by those who aimed at trafficking among the
populations who lived in their neighbourhood. The Khâti, from the time
even when they were enclosed among the fastnesses of the Taurus, had
within their control the most important section of the great land route
which served to maintain regular relations between the ancient kingdoms
of the east and the rising states of the Ægean, and whosoever would pass
through their country had to pay them toll. The conquest of Naharaim, in
giving them control of a new section, placed almost at their discretion
the whole traffic between Chaldæa and Egypt. From the time of Thûtmosis
III. caravans employed in this traffic accomplished the greater part
of their journey in territories depending upon Babylon, Assyria, or
Memphis, and enjoyed thus a relative security; the terror of the Pharaoh
protected the travellers even when they were no longer in his domains,
and he saved them from the flagrant exactions made upon them by princes
who called themselves his brothers, or were actually his vassals. But
the time had now come when merchants had to encounter, between Qodshu
and the banks of the Khabur, a sovereign owing no allegiance to any one,
and who would tolerate no foreign interference in his territory. From
the outbreak of hostilities with the Khâti, Egypt could communicate
with the cities of the Lower Euphrates only by the Wadys of the Arabian
Desert, which were always dangerous and difficult for large convoys; and
its commercial relations with Chaldæa were practically brought thus to a
standstill, and, as a consequence, the manufactures which fed this trade
being reduced to a limited production, the fiscal receipts arising from
it experienced a sensible diminution. When peace was restored, matters
fell again into their old groove, with certain reservations to the Khâti
of some common privileges: Egypt, which had formerly possessed these to
her own advantage, now bore the burden of them, and the indirect tribute
which she paid in this manner to her rivals furnished them with arms
to fight her in case she should endeavour to free herself from the
imposition. All the semi-barbaric peoples of the peninsula of Asia Minor
were of an adventurous and warlike temperament. They were always willing
to set out on an expedition, under the leadership of some chief of noble
family or renowned for valour; sometimes by sea in their light craft,
which would bring them unexpectedly to the nearest point of the Syrian
coast, sometimes by land in companies of foot-soldiers and charioteers.
They were frequently fortunate enough to secure plenty of booty, and
return with it to their homes safe and sound; but as frequently they
would meet with reverses by falling into some ambuscade: in such a case
their conqueror would not put them to the sword or sell them as slaves,
but would promptly incorporate them into his army, thus making his
captives into his soldiers. The King of the Khâti was able to make use
of them without difficulty, for his empire was conterminous on the
west and north with some of their native lands, and he had often whole
regiments of them in his army--Mysians, Lycians, people of Augarît,* of
Ilion,** and of Pedasos.***
* The country of Augarît, Ugarît, is mentioned on several
occasions in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. The name has
been wrongly associated with Caria; it has been placed by W.
Max Miiller well within Naharaim, to the east of the
Orontes, between Khalybôn (Aleppo) and Apamoea, the writer
confusing it with Akaiti, named in the campaign of Amenôthes
II. I am not sure about the site, but its association in the
Amarna letters with Gugu and Khanigalbat inclines me to
place it beyond the northern slopes of the Taurus, possibly
on the banks of the Halys or of the Upper Euphrates.
** The name of this people was read Eiûna by Champollion,
who identified it with the Ionians; this reading and
identification were adopted by Lenormant and by W. Max
Müller. Chabas hesitates between Eiûna and Maiûna, Ionia and
Moonia and Brugsch read it Malunna. The reading Iriûna,
Iliûna, seems to me the only possible one, and the
identification with Ilion as well.
*** Owing to its association with the Dardanians, Mysians,
and Ilion, I think it answers to the Pedasos on the Satniois
near Troy.
The revenue of the provinces taken from Egypt, and the products of his
tolls, furnished him with abundance of means for obtaining recruits from
among them.*
All these things contributed to make the power of the Khâti so
considerable, that Harmhabî, when he had once tested it, judged it
prudent not to join issues with them. He concluded with Sapalulu
a treaty of peace and friendship, which, leaving the two powers in
possession respectively of the territory each then occupied, gave legal
sanction to the extension of the sphere of the Khâti at the expense
of Egypt.** Syria continued to consist of two almost equal parts,
stretching from Byblos to the sources of the Jordan and Damascus:
the northern portion, formerly tributary to Egypt, became a Hittite
possession; while the southern, consisting of Phoenicia and Canaan,***
which the Pharaoh had held for a long time with a more effective
authority, and had more fully occupied, was retained for Egypt.
* E. de Rougé and the Egyptologists who followed him thought
at first that the troops designated in the Egyptian texts as
Lycians, Mysians, Dardanians, were the national armies of
these nations, each one commanded by its king, who had
hastened from Asia Minor to succour their ally the King of
the Khâti. I now think that those were bands of adventurers,
consisting of soldiers belonging to these nations, who came
to put themselves at the service of civilized monarchs, as
the Oarians, Ionians, and the Greeks of various cities did
later on: the individuals whom the texts mention as their
princes were not the kings of these nations, but the warrior
chiefs to which each band gave obedience.
** It is not certain that Harmhabî was the Pharaoh with whom
Sapalulu entered into treaty, and it might be insisted with
some reason that Ramses I. was the party to it on the side
of Egypt; but this hypothesis is rendered less probable by
the fact of the extremely short reign of the latter Pharaoh.
I am inclined to think, as W. Max Miiller has supposed, that
the passage in the _Treaty of Ramses II. with the Prince of
the Khâti,_ which speaks of a treaty concluded with
Sapalulu, looks back to the time of Ramses II.s
predecessor, Harmhabî.
*** This follows from the situation of the two empires, as
indicated in the account of the campaign of Seti I. in his
first year. The king, after having defeated the nomads of
the Arabian desert, passed on without further fighting into
the country of the Amûrrû and the regions of the Lebanon,
which fact seems to imply the submission of Kharû. W. Max
Miiller was the first to* discern clearly this part of the
history of Egyptian conquest; he appears, however, to have
circumscribed somewhat too strictly the dominion of Harmhabî
in assigning Carmel as its limit. The list of the nations of
the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded,
submission to Harmhabî, were traced on the first pylon of
this monarch at Karnak, and on its adjoining walls. Among
others, the names of the Khâti and of Arvad are to be read
there.
This could have been but a provisional arrangement: if Thebes had
not altogether renounced the hope of repossessing some day the lost
conquests of Thûtmosis III., the Khâti, drawn by the same instinct which
had urged them to cross their frontiers towards the south, were not
likely to be content with less than the expulsion of the Egyptians
from Syria, and the absorption of the whole country into the Hittite
dominion. Peace was maintained during Harmhabîs lifetime. We know
nothing of Egyptian affairs during the last years of his reign. His rule
may have come to an end owing to some court intrigue, or he may have had
no male heir to follow him.* Ramses, who succeeded him, did not belong
to the royal line, or was only remotely connected with it.**
* It would appear, from an Ostracon in the British Museum,
that the year XXI. follows after the year VII. of Harmhabîs
reign; it is possible that the year XXI. may belong to one
of Harmhabîs successors, Seti I. or Ramses II., for
example.
** The efforts to connect Ramses I. with a family of Semitic
origin, possibly the Shepherd-kings themselves, have not
been successful. Everything goes to prove that the Ramses
family was, and considered itself to be, of Egyptian origin.
Brugsch and Ed. Meyer were inclined to see in Ramses I. a
younger brother of Harmhabî. This hypothesis has nothing
either for Or against it up to the present.
He was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought
perhaps to identify him with one or other of the Ramses who flourished
under the last Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, perhaps the one who
governed Thebes under Khûniatonû, or another, who began but never
finished his tomb in the hillside above Tel el-Amarna, in the
burying-place of the worshippers of the Disk.
[Illustration: 160.jpg RAMSES I.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Rosellini.
He had held important offices under Harmhabî,* and had obtained in
marriage for his son Seti the hand of Tuîa, who, of all the royal
family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.**
* This Tel el-Amarna Ramses is, perhaps, identical with the
Theban one: he may have followed his master to his new
capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he
subsequently abandoned, on the death of Khûniatonû, in order
to return to Thebes with Tûtankhamon and Aï.
** The fact that the marriage was celebrated under the
auspices of Harmhabî, and that, consequently, Ramses must
have occupied an important position at the court of that
prince, is proved by the appearance of Ramses II., son of
Tuîa, as early as the first year of Seti, among the ranks of
the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against
the Tihonû; even granting that he was then ten years old, we
are forced to admit that he must have been born before his
grandfather came to the throne. There is in the Vatican a
statue of Tuîa; other statues have been discovered at San.
Ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated Seti with himself
in the government from his second year. He undertook a short military
expedition into Ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into Syria; and we find
remains of his monuments in Nubia, at Bohani near Wady Haifa, and at
Thebes, in the temple of Amon.*
* He began the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak; E. de Rougé
thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived
under the XVIIIth dynasty.
He displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from
entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless
marks an important date in the history of Egypt. Although Harmhabî was
distantly connected with the line of the Ahmessides, it is difficult
at the present day to know what position to assign him in the Pharaonic
lists: while some regard him as the last of the XVIIIth dynasty, others
prefer to place him at the head of the XIXth. No such hesitation,
however, exists with regard to Ramses I., who was undoubtedly the
founder of a new family. The old familiar names of Thûtmosis and
Amenôthes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced
by others, such as Seti, Mînephtah, and, especially, Ramses, which now
figure in them for the first time. The princes who bore these names
showed themselves worthy successors of those who had raised Egypt to the
zenith of her power; like them they were successful on the battle-field,
and like them they devoted the best of the spoil to building innumerable
monuments. No sooner had Seti celebrated his fathers obsequies, than he
assembled his army and set out for war.
It would appear that Southern Syria was then in open revolt. Word had
been brought to His Majesty: The vile Shaûsû have plotted rebellion;
the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of
Kharû, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence;
every one cutteth his neighbours throat. * It was imperative to send
succour to the few tribes who remained faithful, to prevent them from
succumbing to the repeated attacks of the insurgents. Seti crossed the
frontier at Zalu, but instead of pursuing his way along the coast, he
marched due east in order to attack the Shaûsû in the very heart of the
desert. The road ran through wide wadys, tolerably well supplied
with water, and the length of the stages necessarily depended on the
distances between the wells. This route was one frequented in early
times, and its security was ensured by a number of fortresses and
isolated towers built along it, such as The House of the Lion --_ta
ait pa maû_--near the pool of the same name, the Migdol of the springs
of Huzîna, the fortress of Uazît, the Tower of the Brave, and the Migdol
of Seti at the pools of Absakaba. The Bedawîn, disconcerted by the
rapidity of this movement, offered no serious resistance. Their flocks
were carried off, their trees cut down, their harvests destroyed, and
they surrendered their strongholds at discretion. Pushing on from
one halting-place to another, the conqueror soon reached Babbîti, and
finally Pakanâna.**
* The pictures of this campaign and the inscriptions which
explain them were engraved by Seti I., on the outside of the
north wall of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak.
** The site of Pakanâna has, with much probability, been
fixed at El-Kenân or Khurbet-Kanâan, to the south of Hebron.
Brugsch had previously taken this name to indicate the
country of Canaan, but Chabas rightly contested this view.
W. Max Millier took up the matter afresh: he perceived that
we have here an allusion to the first town encountered by
Seti I. in the country of Canaan to the south-west of
Raphia, the name of which is not mentioned by the Egyptian
sculptor; it seems to me that this name should be Pakanâna,
and that the town bore the same name as the country.
The latter town occupied a splendid position on the slope of a rocky
hill, close to a small lake, and defended the approaches to the vale
of Hebron. It surrendered at the first attack, and by its fall the
Egyptians became possessed of one of the richest provinces in the
southern part of Kharû. This result having been achieved, Seti took
the caravan road to his left, on the further side of Gaza, and pushed
forward at full speed towards the Hittite frontier.
[Illustration: 163.jpg THE RETURN OF THE NORTH WALL OF THE HYPOSTYLE
HALL AT KARNAK, WHERE SETI I. REPRESENTS SOME EPISODES IN HIS FIRST
CAMPAIGN]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
It was probably unprotected by any troops, and the Hittite king was
absent in some other part of his empire. Seti pillaged the Amurru,
seized Ianuâmu and Qodshû by a sudden attack, marched in an oblique
direction towards the Mediterranean, forcing the inhabitants of the
Lebanon to cut timber from their mountains for the additions which he
was premeditating in the temple of the Theban Amon, and finally returned
by the coast road, receiving, as he passed through their territory, the
homage of the Phoenicians. His entry into Egypt was celebrated by solemn
festivities. The nobles, priests, and princes of both south and north
hastened to meet him at the bridge of Zalû, and welcomed, with their
chants, both the king and the troops of captives whom he was bringing
back for the service of his father Amon at Karnak. The delight of his
subjects was but natural, since for many years the Egyptians bad not
witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous
era of Thûtmosis III. was about to return, and that the wealth of
Naharaim would once more flow into Thebes as of old. Their illusion
was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other.
Maurusaru, King of the Khâti, and subsequently his son Mautallu,
withstood the Pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to treat
with them. A new alliance was concluded on the same conditions as the
old one, and the boundaries of the two kingdoms remained the same as
under Harmhabî, a proof that neither sovereign had gained any advantage
over his rival. Hence the campaign did not in any way restore Egyptian
supremacy, as had been hoped at the moment; it merely served to
strengthen her authority in those provinces which the Khâti had failed
to take from Egypt. The Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon had too many
commercial interests on the banks of the Nile to dream of breaking
the slender tie which held them to the Pharaoh, since independence,
or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade. The
Kharû and the Bedawîn, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose
the Pharaohs troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the
Egyptian yoke. Syria fell back into its former state. The local princes
once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by
appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour. The Royal Messengers
appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots
to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals,
or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a
governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the
empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century. The peoples
of Kûsh meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in Syria, and
on the western frontier the Tihonû had suffered so severe a defeat that
they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* The bands of
pirates, Shardana and others, who infested the Delta, were hunted down,
and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal
guard.**
* This war is represented at Karnak, and Ramses II. figures
there among the children of Seti I.
** We gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the
year V. onwards, in which Ramses II. boasts that he has a
number of Shardana prisoners in his guard; Rouge was,
perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a
war of invasion.
[Illustration: 166.jpg REPRESENTATION OF SETI I. VANQUISHING THE LIBYANS
AND ASIATICS ON THE WALLS, KARNAK]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Ernil Brugsch-Bey.
Seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war.
He showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his
soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the
necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further
attempt at conquest. By his own choice he was the jackal who prowls
about the country to protect it, rather than the wizard lion marauding
abroad by hidden paths, * and Egypt enjoyed a profound peace in
consequence of his ceaseless vigilance.
* These phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of
Seti I.
A peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount
of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his
predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without
overburdening their subjects with taxes. Seti was, therefore, the more
anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the
country. The mining colonies of the Sinaitic Peninsula had never ceased
working since operations had been resumed there under Hâtshopsîtû and
Thûtmosis III., but the output had lessened during the troubles under
the heretic kings. Seti sent inspectors thither, and endeavoured to
stimulate the workmen to their former activity, but apparently with no
great success. We are not able to ascertain if he continued the revival
of trade with Pûanît inaugurated by Harmhabî; but at any rate he
concentrated his attention on the regions bordering the Red Sea and the
gold-mines which they contained. Those of Btbaï, which had been worked
as early as the XIIth dynasty, did not yield as much as they had done
formerly; not that they were exhausted, but owing to the lack of water
in their neighbourhood and along the routes leading to them, they were
nearly deserted. It was well known that they contained great wealth,
but operations could not be carried on, as the workmen were in danger
of dying of thirst. Seti despatched engineers to the spot to explore the
surrounding wadys, to clear the ancient cisterns or cut others, and
to establish victualling stations at regular intervals for the use of
merchants supplying the gangs of miners with commodities. These stations
generally consisted of square or rectangular enclosures, built of
stones without mortar, and capable of resisting a prolonged attack. The
entrance was by a narrow doorway of stone slabs, and in the interior
were a few huts and one or two reservoirs for catching rain or storing
the water of neighbouring springs. Sometimes a chapel was built close at
hand, consecrated to the divinities of the desert, or to their compeers,
Mînû of Coptos, Horus, Maut, or Isis. One of these, founded by Seti,
still exists near the modern town of Redesieh, at the entrance to one of
the valleys which furrow this gold region.
[Illustration: 168.jpg A FORTIFIED STATION ON THE ROUTE BETWEEN THE NILE
AND THE RED SEA.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Bock
It is built against, and partly excavated in, a wall of rock, the
face of which has been roughly squared, and it is entered through a
four-columned portico, giving access to two dark chambers, whose walls
are covered with scenes of adoration and a lengthy inscription. In this
latter the sovereign relates how, in the IXth year of his reign, he
was moved to inspect the roads of the desert; he completed the work in
honour of Amon-Râ, of Phtah of Memphis, and of Harmakhis, and he states
that travellers were at a loss to express their gratitude and thanks for
what he had done. They repeated from mouth to mouth: May Amon give him
an endless existence, and may he prolong for him the length of eternity!
O ye gods of fountains, attribute to him your life, for he has rendered
back to us accessible roads, and he has opened that which was closed to
us. Henceforth we can take our way in peace, and reach our destination
alive; now that the difficult paths are open and the road has become
good, gold can be brought back, as our lord and master has commanded.
Plans were drawn on papyrus of the configuration of the district, of the
beds of precious metal, and of the position of the stations.
[Illustration: 169.jpg THE TEMPLE OF SETI I. AT REDESIEH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Golénischeff.
One of these plans has come down to us, in which the districts are
coloured bright red, the mountains dull ochre, the roads dotted
over with footmarks to show the direction to be taken, while the
superscriptions give the local names, and inform us that the map
represents the Bukhni mountain and a fortress and stele of Seti. The
whole thing is executed in a rough and naive manner, with an almost
childish minuteness which provokes a smile; we should, however, not
despise it, for it is the oldest map in the world.
[Illustration: 170.jpg FRAGMENT OF THE MAP OF THE GOLD-MINES]
Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin of coloured chalk-drawing by Chabas.
The gold extracted from these regions, together with that brought
from Ethiopia, and, better still, the regular payment of taxes and
custom-house duties, went to make up for the lack of foreign spoil all
the more opportunely, for, although the sovereign did not share the
military enthusiasm of Thûtmosis III., he had inherited from him the
passion for expensive temple-building.
[Illustration: 171.jpg THE THREE STANDING COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF
SESEBI]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.
He did not neglect Nubia in this respect, but repaired several of
the monuments at which the XVIIIth dynasty had worked--among others,
Kalabsheh, Dakkeh, and Amada, besides founding a temple at Sesebi, of
which three columns are still standing.*
* In Lepsiuss time there were still four columns standing;
Insinger shows us only three.
The outline of these columns is not graceful, and the decoration of them
is very poor, for art degenerated rapidly in these distant provinces of
the empire, and only succeeded in maintaining its vigour and spirit in
the immediate neighbourhood of the Pharaoh, as at Abydos, Memphis, and
above all at Thebes. Setis predecessor Ramses, desirous of obliterating
all traces of the misfortunes lately brought about by the changes
effected by the heretic kings, had contemplated building at Karnak,
in front of the pylon of Amenôthes III., an enormous hall for the
ceremonies connected with the cult of Amon, where the immense numbers of
priests and worshippers at festival times could be accommodated without
inconvenience. It devolved on Seti to carry out what had been merely an
ambitious dream of his fathers.*
* The great hypostyle hall was cleared and the columns were
strengthened in the winter of 1895-6, as far, at least, as
it was possible to carry out the work of restoration without
imperilling the stability of the whole.
We long to know who was the architect possessed of such confidence in
his powers that he ventured to design, and was able to carry out, this
almost superhuman undertaking. His name would be held up to almost
universal admiration beside those of the greatest masters that we are
familiar with, for no one in Greece or Italy has left us any work which
surpasses it, or which with such simple means could produce a similar
impression of boldness and immensity. It is almost impossible to convey
by words to those who have not seen it, the impression which it makes on
the spectator. Failing description, the dimensions speak for themselves.
The hall measures one hundred and sixty-two feet in length, by three
hundred and twenty-five in breadth. A row of twelve columns, the largest
ever placed inside a building, runs up the centre, having capitals in
the form of inverted bells.
[Illustration: 173 AN AVENUE OF ONE OF THE AISLES OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL
AT KARNAK]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
One hundred and twenty-two columns with lotiform capitals fill
the aisles, in rows of nine each. The roof of the central bay is
seventy-four feet above the ground, and the cornice of the two towers
rises sixty-three feet higher. The building was dimly lighted from the
roof of the central colonnade by means of stone gratings, through
which the air and the suns rays entered sparingly. The daylight, as it
penetrated into the hall, was rendered more and more obscure by the rows
of columns; indeed, at the further end a perpetual twilight must have
reigned, pierced by narrow shafts of light falling from the ventilation
holes which were placed at intervals in the roof.
[Illustration: 174.jpg THE GRATINGS OF THE CENTRAL COLONNADE IN THE
HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato. In the
background, on the right, may be seen a column which for
several centuries has been retained in a half-fallen
position by the weight of its architrave.
The whole building now lies open to the sky, and the sunshine which
floods it, pitilessly reveals the mutilations which it has suffered in
the course of ages; but the general effect, though less mysterious, is
none the less overwhelming. It is the only monument in which the first
_coup doil_ surpasses the expectations of the spectator instead of
disappointing him. The size is immense, and we realise its immensity the
more fully as we search our memory in vain to find anything with which
to compare it. Seti may have entertained the project of building a
_replica_ of this hall in Southern Thebes. Amenôthes III. had left his
temple at Luxor unfinished. The sanctuary and its surrounding buildings
were used for purposes of worship, but the court of the customary pylon
was wanting, and merely a thin wall concealed the mysteries from the
sight of the vulgar. Seti resolved to extend the building in a northerly
direction, without interfering with the thin screen which had satisfied
his predecessors. Starting from the entrance in this wall, he planned an
avenue of giant columns rivalling those of Karnak, which he destined to
become the central colonnade of a hypostyle hall as vast as that of
the sister temple. Either money or time was lacking to carry out his
intention. He died before the aisles on either side were even begun. At
Abydos, however, he was more successful. We do not know the reason
of Setis particular affection for this town; it is possible that his
family held some fief there, or it may be that he desired to show the
peculiar estimation in which he held its local god, and intended, by the
homage that he lavished on him, to cause the fact to be forgotten that
he bore the name of Sit the accursed.
[Illustration: 176.jpg ONE OF THE COLONNADES OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL IN
THE TEMPLE OF SETI I. AT ABYDOS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The king selected a favourable site for his temple to the south of the
town, on the slope of a sandhill bordering the canal, and he marked
out in the hardened soil a ground plan of considerable originality. The
building was approached through two pylons, the remains of which are now
hidden under the houses of Aarabat el-Madfuneh.
[Illustration: 176b.jpg THE FACADE OF THE TEMPLE OF SETI]
A fairly large courtyard, bordered by two crumbling walls, lies between
the second pylon and the temple façade, which was composed of a portico
resting on square pillars. Passing between these, we reach two halls
supported by-columns of graceful outline, beyond which are eight chapels
arranged in a line, side by side, in front of two chambers built in
to the hillside, and destined for the reception of Osiris. The holy
of holies in ordinary temples is surrounded by chambers of lesser
importance, but here it is concealed behind them. The building-material
mainly employed here was the white limestone of Tûrah, but of a most
beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs
of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in ancient Egypt. The artists who
carved and painted them belonged to the Theban school, and while their
subjects betray a remarkable similarity to those of the monuments
dedicated by Amenôthes III., the execution surpasses them in freedom and
perfection of modelling; we can, in fact, trace in them the influence of
the artists who furnished the drawings for the scenes at Tel el-Amarna.
They have represented the gods and goddesses with the same type
of profile as that of the king--a type of face of much purity and
gentleness, with its aquiline nose, its decided mouth, almond-shaped
eyes, and melancholy smile. When the decoration of the temple was
completed, Seti regarded the building as too small for its divine
inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along
the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish
it completely. Several parts of it are lined with religious
representations, but in others the subjects have been merely sketched
out in black ink with corrections in red, while elsewhere the walls
are bare, except for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an
interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers
into a convent. This new wing was connected with the second hypostyle
hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which
is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the
sovereign traced back to Mini. The whole temple must be regarded as a
vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of Egypt
can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. Abydos was the place where the
dead assembled before passing into the other world. It was here, at the
mouth of the Cleft, that they received the provisions and offerings
of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. As the dead
flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the
tomb of Osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the
Boat of the Sun. Seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of
the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself,
as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of Hades. After having
dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul
could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding
within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need.
Thebes possessed this kings actual tomb. The chapel was at Qurnah, a
little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the Pharaohs of
the XIth dynasty lay side by side with those of the XIIIth and XVIIth.
Ramses had begun to build it, and Seti continued the work, dedicating
it to the cult of his father and of himself. Its pylon has altogether
disappeared, but the façade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect,
together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. The
decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as
that in the work at Abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two
examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings.
[Illustration: 181.jpg THE TEMPLE OF QURNAH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not
in the same ravine as that in which Amenôthes III., Aï, and probably
Tûtankhamon and Harmhabî, are buried.*
* There are, in fact, close to those of Aï and Amenôthes
III., three other tombs, two at least of which have been
decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and
which may have served as the burying-places of Tûtankhamon
and Harmhabî: the earlier Egyptologists believed them to
have been dug by the first kings of the XVIIIth dynasty.
There then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of Deîr el-Baharî, a
kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by
dangerous paths above the temple of Hâtshopsîtû. This basin is divided
into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly direction,
while the other trends to the south-west, and is subdivided into minor
branches. To the east rises a barren peak, the outline of which is not
unlike that of the step-pyramid of Saqqâra, reproduced on a colossal
scale. No spot could be more appropriate to serve as a cemetery for a
family of kings. The difficulty of reaching it and of conveying thither
the heavy accessories and of providing for the endless processions of
the Pharaonic funerals, prevented any attempt being made to cut tombs
in it during the Ancient and Middle Empires. About the beginning of the
XIXth dynasty, however, some engineers, in search of suitable burial
sites, at length noticed that this basin was only separated from the
wady issuing to the north of Qurnah by a rocky barrier barely five
hundred cubits in width. This presented no formidable obstacle to such
skilful engineers as the Egyptians. They cut a trench into the living
rock some fifty or sixty cubits in depth, at the bottom of which they
tunnelled a narrow passage giving access to the valley.*
* French scholars recognised from the beginning of this
century that the passage in question had been made by human
agency. I attribute the execution of this work to Ramses I.,
as I believe Harmhabî to have been buried in the eastern
valley, near Amenôthes III.
It is not known whether this herculean work was accomplished during the
reign of Harnhabî or in that of Ramses I. The latter was the first of
the Pharaohs to honour the spot by his presence. His tomb is simple,
almost coarse in its workmanship, and comprises a gentle inclined
passage, a vault and a sarcophagus of rough stone. That of Seti, on the
contrary, is a veritable palace, extending to a distance of 325 feet
into the mountain-side. It is entered by a wide and lofty door, which
opens on to a staircase of twenty-seven steps, leading to an inclined
corridor; other staircases of shallow steps follow with their landings;
then come successively a hypostyle hall, and, at the extreme end, a
vaulted chamber, all of which are decorated with mysterious scenes
and covered with inscriptions. This is, however, but the first storey,
containing the antechambers of the dead, but not their living-rooms. A
passage and steps, concealed under a slab to the left of the hall, lead
to the real vault, which held the mummy and its funerary furniture.
As we penetrate further and further by the light of torches into this
subterranean abode, we see that the walls are covered with pictures and
formulae, setting forth the voyages of the soul through the twelve hours
of the night, its trials, its judgment, its reception by the departed,
and its apotheosis--all depicted on the rock with the same perfection
as that which characterises the bas-reliefs on the finest slabs of Tûrah
stone at Qurnah and Abydos. A gallery leading out of the last of
these chambers extends a few feet further and then stops abruptly; the
engineers had contemplated the excavation of a third storey to the tomb,
when the death of their master obliged them to suspend their task.
The kings sarcophagus consists of a block of alabaster, hollowed
out, polished, and carved with figures and hieroglyphs, with all the
minuteness which we associate with the cutting of a gem.
[Illustration: 184.jpg ONE OF THE PILLARS OF THE TOMB OF SETI I.]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in
1884.
It contained a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted
white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in
a mounting of bronze. The mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well
preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with
pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly
head was exposed to view. It was a masterpiece of the art of the
embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only
a few hours previously breathed his last. Death had slightly drawn
the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had
flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but
a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-opened
eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an
apparently moist and glistening line,--the reflection from the white
porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial.
Seti had had several children by his wife Tuîa, and the eldest had
already reached manhood when his father ascended the throne, for he had
accompanied him on his Syrian campaign. The young prince died, however,
soon after his return, and his right to the crown devolved on his
younger brother, who, like his grandfather, bore the name of Ramses.
The prince was still very young,* but Seti did not on that account delay
enthroning with great pomp this son who had a better right to the throne
than himself.
* The history of the youth and the accession of Ramses II.
is known to us from the narrative given by himself in the
temple of Seti I. at Abydos. The bulk of the narrative is
confirmed by the evidence of the Kubân inscription,
especially as to the extreme youth of Ramses at the time
when he was first associated with the crown.
From the time that I was in the egg, Ramses writes later on, the
great ones sniffed the earth before me; when I attained to the rank of
eldest son and heir upon the throne of Sibû, I dealt with affairs, I
commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and the chariots. My father having
appeared before the people, when I was but a very little boy in his
arms, said to me: I shall have him crowned king, that I may see him
in all his splendour while I am still on this earth! The nobles of the
court having drawn near to place the pschent upon my head: Place the
diadem upon his forehead! said he. As Ramses increased in years,
Seti delighted to confer upon him, one after the other, the principal
attributes of power; while he was still upon this earth, regulating
everything in the land, defending its frontiers, and watching over the
welfare of its inhabitants, he cried: Let him reign! because of the
love he had for me. Seti also chose for him wives, beautiful as are
those of his palace, and he gave him in marriage his sisters Nofrîtari
II. Mîmût and Isîtnofrît, who, like Ramses himself, had claims to the
throne. Ramses was allowed to attend the State councils at the age
of ten; he commanded armies, and he administered justice under the
direction of his father and his viziers. Seti, however, although making
use of his sons youth and activity, did not in any sense retire in his
favour; if he permitted Ramses to adopt the insignia of royalty--the
cartouches, the pschent, the bulbous-shaped helmet, and the various
sceptres--he still remained to the day of his death the principal State
official, and he reckoned all the years of this dual sovereignty as
those of his sole reign.*
* Brugsoh is wrong in reckoning the reign of Ramses II. from
the time of his association in the crown; the great
inscription of Abydos, which has been translated by Brugsch
himself, dates events which immediately followed the death
of Seti I. as belonging to the first year of Ramses II.
Ramses repulsed the incursions of the Tihonû, and put to the sword
such of their hordes as had ventured to invade Egyptian territory.
He exercised the functions of viceroy of Ethiopia, and had on several
occasions to chastise the pillaging negroes. We see him at Beît-Wally
and at Abu Simbel charging them in his chariot: in vain they flee in
confusion before him; their flight, however swift, cannot save them from
captivity and destruction.
[Illustration: 187.jpg RAMSES II. PUTS THE NEGROES TO FLIGHT]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He was engaged in Ethiopia when the death of Seti recalled him to
Thebes.*
* We do not know how long Seti I. reigned; the last date is
that of his IXth year at Redesieh and at Aswan, and that of
the year XXVII. sometimes attributed to him belongs to one
of the later Ramessides. I had at first supposed his reign
to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by
Manethos lists, but the presence of Ramses II. as a
stripling, in the campaign of Setis 1st year, forces us to
limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most,
possibly to only twelve or fifteen.
He at once returned to the capital, celebrated the kings funeral
obsequies with suitable pomp, and after keeping the festival of Amon,
set out for the north in order to make his authority felt in that part
of his domains. He stopped on his way at Abydos to give the necessary
orders for completing the decoration of the principal chambers of the
resting-place built by his father, and chose a site some 320 feet to
the north-west of it for a similar Memnonium for himself. He granted
cultivated fields and meadows in the Thinite name for the maintenance
of these two mausolea, founded a college of priests and soothsayers in
connexion with them, for which he provided endowments, and also assigned
them considerable fiefs in all parts of the valley of the Nile. The
Delta next occupied his attention. The increasing importance of the
Syrian provinces in the eyes of Egypt, the growth of the Hittite
monarchy, and the migrations of the peoples of the Mediterranean,
had obliged the last princes of the preceding dynasty to reside more
frequently at Memphis than Amenôthes I. or Thûtmosis III. had done.
Amenôthes III. had set to work to restore certain cities which had been
abandoned since the days of the Shepherds, and Bubastis, Athribis, and
perhaps Tanis, had, thanks to his efforts, revived from their decayed
condition. The Pharaohs, indeed, felt that at Thebes they were too far
removed from the battle-fields of Asia; distance made it difficult for
them to counteract the intrigues in which their vassals in Kharû and the
lords of Naharaim were perpetually implicated, and a revolt which might
have been easily anticipated or crushed had they been advised of
it within a few days, gained time to increase and extend during the
interval occupied by the couriers in travelling to and from the capital.
Ramses felt the importance of possessing a town close to the Isthmus
where he could reside in security, and he therefore built close to Zalû,
in a fertile and healthy locality, a stronghold to which he gave his own
name,* and of which the poets of the time have left us an enthusiastic
description. It extends, they say, between Zahi and Egypt--and is
filled with provisions and victuals.--It resembles Hermonthis,--it is
strong like Memphis,--and the sun rises--and sets in it--so that men
quit their villages and establish themselves in its territory.--The
dwellers on the coasts bring conger eels and fish in homage,--they
pay it the tribute of their marshes.--The inhabitants don their festal
garments every day,--perfumed oil is on their heads and new wigs;--they
stand at their doors, their hands full of bunches of flowers,--green
branches from the village of Pihâthor,--garlands of Pahûrû,--on the day
when Pharaoh makes his entry.--Joy then reigns and spreads, and nothing
can stay it,--O Usirmarî-sotpûnirî, thou who art Montû in the two
lands,--Ramses-Mîamûn, the god. The town acted as an advance post,
from whence the king could keep watch against all intriguing
adversaries,--whether on the banks of the Orontes or the coast of the
Mediterranean.
* An allusion to the foundation of this residence occurs in
an inscription at Abu Simbel, dated in his XXVth year.
Nothing appeared for the moment to threaten the peace of the empire.
The Asiatic vassals had raised no disturbance on hearing of the kings
accession, and Mautallu continued to observe the conditions of
the treaty which he had signed with Seti. Two military expeditions
undertaken beyond the isthmus in the IInd and IVth years of the new
sovereign were accomplished almost without fighting. He repressed by the
way the marauding Shaûsû, and on reaching the Nahr el-Kelb, which then
formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn
of the road, on the rocks which overhang the mouth of the river, two
triumphal stelæ in which he related his successes.* Towards the end
of his IVth year a rebellion broke out among the Khâti, which caused a
rupture of relations between the two kingdoms and led to some irregular
fighting. Khâtusaru, a younger brother of Maurusaru, murdered the latter
and made himself king in his stead.** It is not certain whether the
Egyptians took up arms against him, or whether he judged it wise to
oppose them in order to divert the attention of his subjects from his
crime.
* The stelæ are all in a very bad condition; in the last of
them the date is no longer legible.
** In the _Treaty of Harrises II. with the Prince of Khâti_,
the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and
states that Mautallu succumbed to his destiny. The name of
the Prince of the Khâti is found later on under the form
Khatusharu, in that of a chief defeated by Tiglath-pileser
I. in the country of Kummukh, though this name has generally
been read Khatukhi.
At all events, he convoked his Syrian vassals and collected his
mercenaries; the whole of Naharaim, Khalupu, Carchemish, and Arvad sent
their quota, while bands of Dardanians, Mysians, Trojans, and Lycians,
together with the people of Pedasos and Girgasha,* furnished further
contingents, drawn from an area extending from the most distant coasts
of the Mediterranean to the mountains of Cilicia. Ramses, informed of
the enemys movement by his generals and the governors of places on the
frontier, resolved to anticipate the attack. He assembled an army almost
as incongruous in its component elements as that of his adversary:
besides Egyptians of unmixed race, divided into four corps bearing
the names of Amon, Phtah, Harmakhis and Sûtkhû, it contained Ethiopian
auxiliaries, Libyans, Mazaiu, and Shardana.**
* The name of this nation is written Karkisha, Kalkisha, or
Kashkisha, by one of those changes of _sh_ into _r-l_ which
occur so frequently in Assyro-Chaldæan before a dental; the
two different spellings seem to show that the writers of the
inscriptions bearing on this war had before them a list of
the allies of Khâtusaru, written in cuneiform characters. If
we may identify the nation with the Kashki or Kashku of the
Assyrian texts, the ancestors of the people of Colchis of
classical times, the termination _-isha_ of the Egyptian
word would be the inflexion _-ash_ or _-ush_ of the Eastern-
Asiatic tongues which we find in so many race-names, e.g.
Adaush, Saradaush, Ammaush. Rouge and Brugsch identified
them with the Girgashites of the Bible. Brugsch, adopting
the spelling Kashki, endeavoured to connect them with
Casiotis; later on he identified them with the people of
Gergis in Troas. Ramsay recognises in them the Kisldsos of
Cilicia.
** In the account of the campaign the Shardana only are
mentioned; but we learn from a list in the _Anastasi Papyrus
I_, that the army of Ramses II. included, in ordinary
circumstances, in addition to the Shardana, a contingent of
Mashauasha, Kahaka, and other Libyan and negro mercenaries.
When preparations were completed, the force crossed the canal at Zalû,
on the 9th of Payni in his Vth year, marched rapidly across Canaan till
they reached the valley of the Litâny, along which they took their way,
and then followed up that of the Orontes. They encamped for a few days
at Shabtuna, to the south-west of Qodshû,* in the midst of the Amorite
country, sending out scouts and endeavouring to discover the position of
the enemy, of whose movements they possessed but vague information.
* Shabtuna had been placed on the Nahr es-Sebta, on the site
now occupied by Kalaat el-Hosn, a conjecture approved by
Mariette; it was more probably a town situated in the plain,
to the south of Bahr el-Kades, a little to the south-west of
Tell Keby Mindoh which represents Qodshû, and close to some
forests which at that time covered the slopes of Lebanon,
and, extending as they did to the bottom of the valley,
concealed the position of the Khâti from the Egyptians.
Khâtusaru lay concealed in the wooded valleys of the Lebanon; he was
kept well posted by his spies, and only waited an opportunity to take
the field; as an occasion did not immediately present itself, he had
recourse to a ruse with which the generals of the time were familiar.
Ramses, at length uneasy at not falling in with the enemy, advanced to
the south of Shabtuna, where he endeavoured to obtain information from
two Bedawîn. Our brethren, said they, who are the chiefs of
the tribes united under the vile Prince of Khâti, send us to give
information to your Majesty: We desire to serve the Pharaoh. We are
deserting the vile Prince of the Khâti; he is close to Khalupu (Aleppo),
to the north of the city of Tunipa, whither he has rapidly retired from
fear of the Pharaoh. This story had every appearance of probability;
and the distance--Khalupu was at least forty leagues away--explained why
the reconnoitring parties of the Egyptians had not fallen in with any of
the enemy. The Pharaoh, with this information, could not decide whether
to lay siege to Qodshû and wait until the Hittites were forced to
succour the town, or to push on towards the Euphrates and there seek the
engagement which his adversary seemed anxious to avoid.
[Illustration: 193.jpg THE SHARDANA GUARD OF RAMSES II.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He chose the latter of the two alternatives. He sent forward the legions
of Anion, Phrâ, Phtah, and Sutkhu, which constituted the main body of
his troops, and prepared to follow them with his household chariotry. At
the very moment when this division was being effected, the Hittites, who
had been represented by the spies as being far distant, were secretly
massing their forces to the north-east of Qodshu, ready to make an
attack upon the Pharaohs flank as soon as he should set out on his
march towards Khalupu. The enemy had considerable forces at their
disposal, and on the day of the engagement they placed 18,000 to 20,000
picked soldiers in the field.* Besides a well-disciplined infantry, they
possessed 2500 to 3000 chariots, containing, as was the Asiatic custom,
three men in each.**
* An army corps is reckoned as containing 9000 men on the
wall scenes at Luxor, and 8000 at the Eamesseum; the 3000
chariots were manned by 9000 men. In allowing four to five
thousand men for the rest of the soldiers engaged, we are
not likely to be far wrong, and shall thus obtain the modest
total mentioned in the text, contrary to the opinion current
among historians.
* The mercenaries are included in these figures, as is shown
by the reckoning of the Lycian, Dardanian, and Pedasian
chiefs who were in command of the chariots during the
charges against Ramses II.
The Egyptian camp was not entirely broken up, when the scouts brought
in two spies whom they had seized--Asiatics in long blue robes arranged
diagonally over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. The king, who was
seated on his throne delivering his final commands, ordered them to
be beaten till the truth should be extracted from them. They at last
confessed that they had been despatched to watch the departure of the
Egyptians, and admitted that the enemy was concealed in ambush behind
the town. Ramses hastily called a council of war and laid the situation
before his generals, not without severely reprimanding them for the
bad organisation of the intelligence department. The officers excused
themselves as best they could, and threw the blame on the provincial
governors, who had not been able to discover what was going on. The king
cut short these useless recriminations, sent swift messengers to recall
the divisions which had started early that morning, and gave orders
that all those remaining in camp should hold themselves in readiness to
attack. The council were still deliberating when news was brought that
the Hittites were in sight.
[Illustration: 195.jpg TWO HITTITE SPIES BEATEN BY THE EGYPTIAN
SOLDIERS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the picture in the temple at
Abu Simbel.
Their first onslaught was so violent that they threw down one side of
the camp wall, and penetrated into the enclosure. Ramses charged them at
the head of his household troops. Eight times he engaged the chariotry
which threatened to surround him, and each time he broke their ranks.
Once he found himself alone with Manna, his shield-bearer, in the midst
of a knot of warriors who were bent on his destruction, and he escaped
solely by his coolness and bravery. The tame lion which accompanied him
on his expeditions did terrible work by his side, and felled many an
Asiatic with his teeth and claws.*
* The lion is represented and named in the battle-scenes at
Abu Simbel, at Dorr, and at Luxor, where we see it in camp
on the eve of the battle, with its two front paws tied, and
its keeper threatening it.
[Illustration: 196.jpg THE EGYPTIAN CAMP AND THE COUNCIL OF WAR ON THE
MORNING OF THE BATTLE OF QODSHÛ]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato of the west
front of the Eamesseum.
The soldiers, fired by the kings example, stood their ground resolutely
during the long hours of the afternoon; at length, as night was drawing
on, the legions of Phrâ and Sûtkhû, who had hastily retraced their
steps, arrived on the scene of action. A large body of Khâfci, who were
hemmed in in that part of the camp which they had taken in the morning,
were at once killed or made prisoners, not a man of them escaping.
Khâtusaru, disconcerted by this sudden reinforcement of the enemy, beat
a retreat, and nightfall suspended the struggle. It was recommenced at
dawn the following morning with unabated fury, and terminated in the
rout of the confederates. Garbatusa, the shield-bearer of the Hittite
prince, the generals in command of his infantry and chariotry, and
Khalupsaru, the writer of books, fell during the action. The chariots,
driven back to the Orontes, rushed into the river in the hope of fording
it, but in so doing many lives were lost. Mazraîma, the Prince of
Khâtis brother, reached the opposite bank in safety, but the Chief of
Tonisa was drowned, and the lord of Khalupu was dragged out of the water
more dead than alive, and had to be held head downwards to disgorge the
water he had swallowed before he could be restored to consciousness.
[Illustration: 198.jpg THE GARRISON OF QODSHÛ ISSUING FORTH TO HELP THE
PRINCE OF KHÂTI.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Bénédite.