The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
THE XIth DYNASTY: HARMHABI—THE HITTITE EMPIRE IN SYRIA AND IN ASIA MINOR—SETI I. AND RAMSES II.—THE PEOPLE OF THE SEA: MINEPHTAH AND THE ISRAELITE EXODUS.
The birth and antecedents of Harmhabi, his youth, his enthronement—The final triumph of Amon and his priests—Harmhabi infuses order into the government: his wars against the Ethiopians and Asiatics—The Khati, their civilization, religion; their political and military constitution; the extension of their empire towards the north—The countries and populations of Asia Minor; commercial routes between the Euphrates and the AEgean Sea—The treaty concluded between Harmhabi and Sapalulu.
Ramses I. and the uncertainties as to his origin—Seti I. and the campaign against Syria in the 1st year of his reign; the re-establishment of the Egyptian empire—Working of the gold-mines at Etai—The monuments constructed by Seti I. in Nubia, at Karnak, Luxor, and Abydos—The valley of the kings and tomb of Seti I. at Thebes.
Ramses II., his infancy, his association in the Government, his debut in Ethiopia: he builds a residence in the Delta—His campaign against the Khati in the 5th year of his reign—The talcing of Qodshu, the victory of Ramses II. and the truce established with Khatusaru: the poem of Pentauirit—His treaty with the Khati in the 21st year of his reign: the balance of power in Syria: the marriage of Ramses II. with a Hittite princess—Public works: the Speos at Abu-Simbel; Luxor, Karnak, the Eamesseum, the monuments in the Delta—The regency of Khamoisit and Minephtah, the legend of Sesostris, the coffin and mummy of Ramses II.
Minephtah—The kingdom of Libya, the people of the sea—The first invasion of Libya: the Egyptian victory at Piriu; the triumph of Minephtah—Seti II., Amenmeses, Siphtah-Minephtah—The foreign captives in Egypt; the Exodus of the Hebrews and their march to Sinai—An Egyptian romance of the Exodus: Amenophis, son of Pa-apis.
[Illustration: 117.jpg Page Image]
The XIXth dynasty: Harmhabi—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 Harmhabi, who was himself descended from Thutmosis III., was raised to the kingly office.* His mother, Mutnozmit, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the Gizeh Museum probably represents her. The body is mutilated, but the head is charming in
* A fragment of an inscription at Karnak calls Thutmosis III. “the father of his fathers.” Champollion called him Hornemnob, Rosellini, Hor-hemheb, Hor-em-hbai, and both identified him with the Horos of Manetho, hence the custom among Egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the name Horus. Deveria 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 Harmhabi in the bilingual texts of the Ptolemaic period.
** Mutnozmit was at first considered the daughter and successor of Harmhabi, or his wife. Birch showed that the monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was inclined to think that she was Harmhabi’s 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 Amenothes, when Tii was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when Harmhabi had emerged from obscurity, that Amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by Mutnozmit—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 child’s 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 Harmhabi, 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 Harmhabi, 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. Ai proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.**
* All that we know of the youth of Harmhabi 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 Deir el-Bahari treating of the birth of Hatshopsitu, and to those at Luxor bearing upon Amenothes III. (cf. vol. iv. pp. 342, 343; and p. 51 of the present volume), and to prove for certain that Harmhabi’s mother was a princess of the royal line by right.
** The king is not named in the inscription. It cannot have been Amenothes IV., for an individual of the importance of Harmhabi, living alongside this king, would at least have had a tomb begun for him at. Tel el-Amarna. We may hesitate between Ai and Tutankhamon; but the inscription seems to say definitely that Harmhabi succeeded directly to the king under whom he had held important offices for many years, and this compels us to fix upon Ai, 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 Harmhabi’s tomb at Saqqarah, and now scattered among the various museums—at Gizeh, Leyden, London, and Alexandria. Birch was the first to assign those monuments to the Pharaoh Harmhabi, 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 Harmhabi of the tomb at Saqqarah and the Pharaoh Harmhabi are one and the same person; Harmhabi, sufficiently highPage 4
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 Saqqarah, as Ai 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. Ai no longer occupied it. Horus took Harmhabi 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 Amenothes. Amon rejoiced to see Harmhabi, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, Mutnozmit; 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 Gizeh.
** 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 (Amon’s) 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 Harmhabi had married was in question, Miifcnozmit, according to Brugsch. If the reference is not to a goddess, who along with Amon took part in the ceremonies, but to Mutnozmit, 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 Ea, we pray Amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of Ea 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
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 Khuniatonu, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy.
[Illustration: 123.jpg THE FIRST PYLON OF HARMHABI 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. Harmhabi, 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. Harmhabi’s 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 Harmhabi rivalled the first Amen-othes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonu 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 Thutmosis 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 Amenofches IV., Ai, and Tutankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabi at Thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. “He restored the sanctuaries from the marshes
* Harmhabi refers to the edicts of Thutmosis 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. Harmhabi, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided
[Illustration: 127.jpg AMENOTHES IV. FROM A FRAGMENT USED AGAIN BY HARMHABI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Prisse d’Avennes.
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 Harmhabi 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 Harmhabi 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 Amenothes III. no sovereign had condescended, it would I appear, to conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the Upper Nile. Harmhabi 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, Hapi the Nile, and Sobku 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 Puanit. Somali chiefs were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of Thutmosis 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 HARMHABI 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 fellahin 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 Monatiu.
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 Khati, 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 Thutmosis I., Thutmosis 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 Khati, 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 Chaldaean conquest had barely touched them; the Egyptian campaign had not more effect, and Thutmosis 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.
* Halevy asserts that the Khati were Semites, and bases his assertion on materials of the Assyrian period. Thes Khati, 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 Khati 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 Qodshu.
*** It is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of tribute from the Khati in the Annals of Thutmosis 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 Khati addresses to Amenothes 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 Khati; 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 Khati were called abari, strong, vigorous, as also their bulls. The King of Alasia, while offering to Amenothes III. a profitable speculation, advises him to have nothing to do with the King of the Khati or with the King of Sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the Egyptians held constant commercial relations with the Khati.
** M. de Rouge suggested that Khati “the Little” was the name of the Hittites of Hebron. The expression, “Khati 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-rabat, but Khani-galbat. 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 Chaldaeans, 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 Khati. The Egyptian artists and modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority of them have represented the Khati 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 king’s 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 Chaldaean 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 Khati, 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 Ra,* others as representing Sit, or rather Sutkhu, that patron of the Hyksos which was identified by them with Sit: every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its Sutkhu—Sutkhu of Paliqa, Sutkhu of Khissapa, Sutkhu of Sarsu, Sutkhu of Salpina. The goddesses in their eyes also became Astartes, 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 Graeco-Roman period reveal the existence in this region of a god, Rho, Rhos. Did this god exist among the Khati, and did the similarity of the pronunciation of it to that of the god Ra 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 Khati: Qaui was probably the eponymous hero of the Qui people, as Khati was of the Khati. Tarku and Tisubu appear to me to be contained in the names Targanunasa, Targazatas, and Tartisubu; Tisubu is probably the Tessupas 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
Khati, who was for thirty years a
contemporary of Ramses
II.
Tishubu, the Ramman 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, Khipa, is said to be a denomination of Ramman; we find it in the names of the princesses Tadu-khipa, Gilu-khipa, Puu-khipa.
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 Rammanu 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 Qodshu in the time of Ramses II. shows us the King of the Khati 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 Amenothes IV. the revolt of his brother Artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the neighbouring chiefs, Pirkhi, and all the Khati 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 elite 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 Thutmosis III. and Amenothes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. It was owing probably to the
* Aziru defends himself in one of his letters against the accusation of having received four messengers from the King of the Khati, while he refused to receive those from Egypt. The complicity of Aziru with the Khati 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 Khati.
Even inthe time of Amenofches 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 Khuniatonu, they set to work to annex the countries of Nukhassi, Nii, Tunipa, and Zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria. The religious confusion in Egypt under Tutankhamon and Ai left them a free field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabi 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 Khati, which makes him coeval with Ramses I.: it was with him probably that Harmhabi 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 Khati.
All Naharaim had submitted to him: Zahi, Alasia, and the Amurru had passed under his government from that of the Pharaohs; Carchemish, Tunipa, Nii, Hamath, figured among his royal cities, and Qodshu 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 Chaldaea 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 Pentauirit mentions, among the countries confederate with the Khati, 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 Qodshu, 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 Amenothes 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
* 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 Lykaon by the side of Lykos, Kataon by the side of Ketis and Kat-patuka; while the form of the name Danaos is preserved in Greek legend, Danaon 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 Rouge 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 Mueller revived the hypotheses of De Rouge 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 Maeonian 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
[Illustration: 146.jpg Map]
The western coast which stretches into the AEgean 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 AEgean 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 Khati, distributed throughout the valleys of the Anti-Taurus, between the Euphrates and Mount Argseus, there were tribes allied to the Khati*—possibly at this time the Tabal and the Mushka—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 Khati.
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
* 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 Methone; 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 AEgean 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 Khati, 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 Mueller 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 Graeco-Roman period by the name Ketis 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 AEgean 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 Khati 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, Chaldaea, and Egypt, then from the west for the necessities of the countries on the AEgean. 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 Maeonia, 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 Khati, 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 AEgean, 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 Chaldaea and Egypt. From the time of Thutmosis 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 Khati, 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 Chaldaea 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 Khati 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
* The country of Augarit, Ugarit, 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 Khalybon (Aleppo) and Apamoea, the writer confusing it with Akaiti, named in the campaign of Amenothes 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 Eiuna by Champollion, who identified it with the Ionians; this reading and identification were adopted by Lenormant and by W. Max Mueller. Chabas hesitates between Eiuna and Maiuna, Ionia and Moonia and Brugsch read it Malunna. The reading Iriuna, Iliuna, 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 Khati so considerable, that Harmhabi, 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 Khati 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 Rouge 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 Khati. 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 Harmhabi 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 Khati, which speaks of a treaty concluded with Sapalulu, looks back to the time of Ramses II.’s predecessor, Harmhabi.
*** 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 Amurru and the regions of the Lebanon, which fact seems to imply the submission of Kharu. 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 Harmhabi in assigning Carmel as its limit. The list of the nations of the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded, submission to Harmhabi, were traced on the first pylon of this monarch at Karnak, and on its adjoining walls. Among others, the names of the Khati 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 Thutmosis III., the Khati, 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 Harmhabi’s 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 Harmhabi’s reign; it is possible that the year XXI. may belong to one of Harmhabi’s 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 Harmhabi. 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 Khuniatonu, 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 Harmhabi,* and had obtained in marriage for his son Seti the hand of Tuia, 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 Khuniatonu, in order to return to Thebes with Tutankhamon and Ai.
** The fact that the marriage was celebrated under the auspices of Harmhabi, 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 Tuia, as early as the first year of Seti, among the ranks of the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against the Tihonu; 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 Tuia; 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 Rouge
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 Harmhabi 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 Thutmosis and Amenothes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced by others, such as Seti, Minephtah, 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 father’s 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 Shausu have plotted rebellion; the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of Kharu, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence; every one cutteth his neighbour’s 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 Shausu 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 mau—near the pool of the same name, the Migdol of the springs of Huzina, the fortress of Uazit, the Tower of the Brave, and the Migdol of Seti at the pools of Absakaba. The Bedawin, 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 Babbiti, and finally Pakanana.**
* 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 Pakanana has, with much probability, been fixed at El-Kenan or Khurbet-Kanaan, 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 Pakanana, 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 Kharu. 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 Emil 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 Ianuamu and Qodshu 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 Zalu, 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 Thutmosis 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 Khati, 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 Harmhabi, 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
* 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
[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-Ra, 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 Golenischeff.
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 Thutmosis 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 Lepsius’s
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. Seti’s 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 Amenothes 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 father’s.*
* 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
[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 sun’s 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 d’oil 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. Amenothes 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
[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 facade, 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 Turah, 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 Amenothes 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
Thebes possessed this king’s 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 facade 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 Amenothes III., Ai, and probably Tutankhamon and Harmhabi, are buried.*
* There are, in fact, close to those of Ai and Amenothes 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 Tutankhamon and Harmhabi: 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 Deir el-Bahari, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of Hatshopsitu. This basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly
* 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 Harmhabi to have been buried in the eastern valley, near Amenothes III.
It is not known whether this herculean work was accomplished during the reign of Harnhabi 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 Turah 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 king’s 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 Tuia, 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 Kuban 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 Sibu, 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
* 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 Tihonu, 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 Beit-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 Manetho’s lists, but the presence of Ramses II. as a stripling, in the campaign of Seti’s 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 king’s 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
* 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 king’s 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 Shausu, and on reaching the Nahr el-Kelb, which then formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn of the road,
* The stelae 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 Khati, the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and states that Mautallu succumbed “to his destiny.” The name of the Prince of the Khati 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 enemy’s 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 Sutkhu, 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-Chaldaean 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 Khatusaru, 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 fromPage 38
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 Zalu, on the 9th of Payni in his Vth year, marched rapidly across Canaan till they reached the valley of the Litany, 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 Qodshu,* 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 Qodshu, 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 Khati from the Egyptians.
Khatusaru 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 Bedawin. “Our brethren,” said they, “who are the chiefs of the tribes united under the vile Prince of Khati, send us to give information to your Majesty: We desire to serve the Pharaoh. We are deserting the vile Prince of the Khati; 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 Qodshu 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, Phra, 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 Pharaoh’s 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 QODSHU]
Drawn by Boudier, from
a photograph by Beato of the west
front of the Eamesseum.
The soldiers, fired by the king’s example, stood their ground resolutely during the long hours of the afternoon; at length, as night was drawing on, the legions of Phra and Sutkhu, who had hastily retraced their steps, arrived on the scene of action. A large body of Khafci, 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. Khatusaru, 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. Mazraima, the Prince of Khati’s 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 QODSHU ISSUING FORTH TO HELP THE PRINCE OF KHATI.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Benedite.
Khatusaru himself was on the point of perishing, when the troops which had been shut up in Qodshu, together with the inhabitants, made a general sortie; the Egyptians were for a moment held in check, and the fugitives meanwhile were able to enter the town. Either there was insufficient provision for so many mouths, or the enemy had lost all heart from the disaster; at any rate, further resistance appeared useless. The next morning Khatusaru sent to propose a truce or peace to the victorious Pharaoh. The Egyptians had probably suffered at least as much as their adversaries, and perhaps regarded the eventuality of a siege with no small distaste; Ramses, therefore, accepted the offers made to him and prepared to return to Egypt. The fame of his exploits had gone before him, and he himself was not a little proud of the energy he had displayed on the day of battle. His predecessors had always shown themselves to be skilful generals and brave soldiers, but none of them had ever before borne, or all but borne, single-handed the brunt of an attack. Ramses loaded his shield-bearer Manna with rewards for having stood by him in the hour of danger, and ordered abundant provender and sumptuous harness for the good horses—“Strength-in-Thebaid” and “Nurit the satisfied”—who had drawn his chariot.*
* A gold ring in the
Louvre bears in relief on its bezel two
little horses; which
are probably “Strength-in-Thebaid"and
“Nurit satisfied.”
He determined that the most characteristic episodes of the campaign—the beating of the spies, the surprise of the camp, the king’s repeated charges, the arrival of his veterans, the flight of the Syrians, and the surrender of Qodshu—should be represented on the walls and pylons of the temples. A poem in rhymed strophes in every case accompanies these records of his glory, whether at Luxor, at the Eamesseum, at the Memnonium of Abydos, or in the heart of Nubia at Abu Simbel. The author of the poem must have been present during the campaign, or must have had the account of it from the lips of his sovereign, for his work bears no traces of the coldness of official reports, and a warlike strain runs through it from one end to the other, so as still to invest it with life after a lapse of more than thirty centuries.*
* The author is unknown:
Pentaur, or rather Pentauirit, to
whom E. de Rouge attributed
the poem, is merely the
transcriber of the copy
we possess on papyrus.
But little pains are bestowed on the introduction, and the poet does not give free vent to his enthusiasm until the moment when he describes his hero, left almost alone, charging the enemy in the sight of his followers. The Pharaoh was surrounded by two thousand five hundred chariots, and his retreat was cut off by the warriors of the “perverse” Khati and of the other nations who accompanied them—the peoples of Arvad, Mysia, and Pedasos; each of their chariots contained three men, and the ranks were so serried that they formed but one dense mass. “No other prince was with me, no general officers, no one in command of the archers or chariots. My foot-soldiers deserted me, my charioteers fled before the foe, and not one of them stood firm beside me to fight against them.” Then said His Majesty: “Who art thou, then, my father Amon? A father who forgets his son? Or have I committed aught against thee? Have I not marched and halted according to thy command? When he does not violate thy orders, the lord of Egypt is indeed great, and he overthrows the barbarians in his path! What are these Asiatics to thy heart? Amon will humiliate those who know not the god. Have I not consecrated innumerable offerings to thee? Filling thy holy dwelling-place with my prisoners, I build thee a temple for millions of years, I lavish all my goods on thy storehouses, I offer thee the whole world to enrich thy domains.... A miserable fate indeed awaits him who sets himself against thy will, but happy is he who finds favour with thee by deeds done for thee with a loving heart. I invoke thee, O my father Amon! Here am I in the midst of people so numerous that it cannot be known who are the nations joined together against me, and I am alone among them, none other is with me. My many soldiers have forsaken
The ordeal was a terrible one for the Khati; but when the first moment of defeat was over, they again took courage and resumed the campaign. This single effort had not exhausted their resources, and they rapidly filled up the gaps which had been made in their ranks. The plains of Naharaim and the mountains of Cilicia supplied them with fresh chariots and foot-soldiers in the place of those they had lost, and bands of mercenaries were furnished from the table-lands of Asia Minor, so that when Ramses II. reappeared in Syria, he found himself confronted by a completely fresh army. Khatusaru, having profited by experience, did not again attempt a general engagement, but contented himself with disputing step by step the upper valleys of the Litany and Orontes. Meantime his emissaries spread themselves over Phoenicia and Kharu, sowing the seeds of rebellion, often only too successfully. In the king’s VIIIth year there was a general rising in Galilee, and its towns—Galaput in the hill-country of Bit-Aniti, Merorn, Shalama, Dapur, and Anamaim*—had to be reduced one after another.
* Episodes from this
war are represented at Karnak. The list
of the towns taken,
now much mutilated, comprised twenty-
four names, which proves
the importance of the revolt.
Dapur was the hardest to carry. It crowned the top of a rocky eminence, and was protected by a double wall, which followed the irregularities of the hillside. It formed a rallying-point for a large force, which had to be overcome in the open country before the investment of the town could be attempted. The siege was at last brought to a conclusion, after a series of skirmishes, and the town taken by scaling, four Egyptian princes having been employed in conducting the attack. In the Pharaoh’s IXth year a revolt broke out on the Egyptian frontier, in the Shephelah, and the king placed himself at the head of his troops to crush it. Ascalon, in which the peasantry and their families had found, as they hoped, a safe refuge, opened its gates to the Pharaoh, and its fall brought about the submission of several neighbouring places. This, it appears, was the first time since the beginning of the conquests in Syria that the inhabitants of these regions attempted to take up arms, and we may well ask what could have induced them thus to renounce their ancient loyalty. Their defection reduced Egypt for the moment almost to her natural frontiers. Peace had scarcely been resumed when war again broke out with fresh violence in Coele-Syria, and one year it reached even to Naharaim, and raged around Tunipa as in the days of Thutmosis III. “Pharaoh assembled his foot-soldiers and chariots, and he commanded his foot-soldiers and his chariots to attack the perverse Khati who were in the neighbourhood of Tunipa, and he put on his armour and mounted his chariot, and he waged battle against the town of the perverse Khati at the head of his foot-soldiers and his chariots, covered with his armour;” the fortress, however, did not yield till the second attack. Ramses carried his arms still further afield, and with such results, that, to judge merely from the triumphal lists engraved on the walls of the temple of Karnak, the inhabitants on the banks of the Euphrates, those in Carchemish, Mitanni, Singar, Assyria, and Mannus found themselves once more at the mercy of the Egyptian battalions. These victories, however brilliant, were not decisive; if after any one of them the princes of Assyria and Singar may have sent presents to the Pharaoh, the Hittites, on the other hand, did not consider themselves beaten, and it was only after fifteen campaigns that they were at length sufficiently subdued to propose a treaty. At last, in the Egyptian king’s XXIst year, on the 21st of the month Tybi, when the Pharaoh, then residing in his good town of Anakhitu, was returning from the temple where he had been offering prayers to his father Amon-Ea, to Harmakhis of Heliopolis, to Phtah, and to Sutkhu the valiant son of Nuit, Eamses, one of the “messengers” who filled the office of lieutenant for the king in Asia, arrived at the palace and presented to him Tartisubu, who was authorised to make peace with Egypt in the name of Khatusaru.* Tartisubu carried in his hand a tablet of silver, on which his master had prescribed the conditions which appeared to him just and equitable. A short preamble recalling the alliances made between the ancestors of both parties, was followed by a declaration of friendship, and a reciprocal obligation to avoid in future all grounds of hostility.
* The treaty of Ramses
II. with the Prince of the Khati was
sculptured at Karnak.
Not only was a perpetual truce declared between both peoples, but they agreed to help each other at the first demand. “Should some enemy march against the countries subject to the great King of Egypt, and should he send to the great Prince of the Khati, saying: ’Come, bring me forces against them,’ the great Prince of the Khati shall do as he is asked by the great King of Egypt, and the great Prince of the Khati shall destroy his enemies. And if the great Prince of the Khati shall prefer not to come himself, he shall send his archers and his chariots to the great King of Egypt to destroy his enemies.” A similar clause ensured aid in return from Ramses to Khatusaru, “his brother,” while two articles couched in identical terms made provision against the possibility of any town or tribe dependent on either of the two sovereigns withdrawing its allegiance and placing it in the hands of the other party. In this case the Egyptians as well as the Hittites engaged not to receive, or at least not to accept, such offers, but to refer them at once to the legitimate lord. The whole treaty was placed under the guarantee of the gods both, of Egypt and of the Khati, whose names were given at length: “Whoever shall fail to observe the stipulations, let the thousand gods of Khati and the thousand gods of Egypt strike his house, his land, and his servants. But he who shall observe the stipulations engraved on the tablet of silver, whether he belong to the Hittite people or whether he belong to the people of Egypt, as he has not neglected them, may the thousand gods of Khati and the thousand gods of Egypt give him health, and grant that he may prosper, himself, the people of his house, and also his land and his servants.” The treaty itself ends by a description of the plaque of silver on which it was engraved. It was, in fact, a facsimile in metal of one of those clay tablets on which the Chaldaeans inscribed their contracts. The preliminary articles occupied the upper part in closely written lines of cuneiform characters, while in the middle, in a space left free for the purpose, was the impress of two seals, that of the Prince of the Khati and of his wife Puukhipa. Khatusaru was represented on them as standing upright in the arms of Sutkhu, while around the two figures ran the inscription, “Seal of Sutkhu, the sovereign of heaven.” Puukhipa leaned on the breast of a god, the patron of her native town of Aranna in Qaauadana, and the legend stated that this was the seal of the Sun of the town of Aranna, the regent of the earth. The text of the treaty was continued beneath, and probably extended to the other side of the tablet. The original draft had terminated after the description of the seals, but, to satisfy the Pharaoh, certain additional articles were appended for the protection of the commerce and industry of the two countries, for the prevention of the emigration
This treaty is the most ancient of all those of which the text has come down to us; its principal conditions were—perfect equality and reciprocity between the contracting sovereigns, an offensive and defensive alliance, and the extradition of criminals and refugees. The original was drawn up in Chaldaean script by the scribes of Khatusaru, probably on the model of former conventions between the Pharaohs and the Asiatic courts, and to this the Egyptian ministers had added a few clauses relative to the pardon of emigrants delivered up by one or other of the contracting parties. When, therefore, Tartisubu arrived in the city of Eamses, the acceptance of the treaty was merely a matter of form, and peace was virtually concluded. It did not confer on the conqueror the advantages which we might have expected from his successful campaigns: it enjoined, on the contrary, the definite renunciation of those countries, Mitanni, Naharaim, Alasia, and Amurru, over which Thutmosis III. and his immediate successors had formerly exercised an effective sovereignty. Sixteen years of victories had left matters in the same state as they were after the expedition of Harmhabi, and, like his predecessor, Ramses was able to retain merely those Asiatic provinces which were within the immediate influence of Egypt, such as the Phoenician coast proper, Kharu, Persea beyond Jordan, the oases of the Arabian desert, and the peninsula of Sinai.*
* The Anastasi Papyrus I. mentions a place called Zaru of Sesostris, in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, in a part of Syria which was not in Egyptian territory: the frontier in this locality must have passed between Arvad and Byblos on the coast, and between Qodshu and Hazor from Merom inland. Egyptian rule on the other side of the Jordan seems to be proved by the monument discovered a few years ago in the Hauran, and known under the name of the “Stone of Job” by the Bedawin of the neighbourhood.
This apparently unsatisfactory result, after such supreme efforts, was, however, upon closer examination, not so disappointing. For more than half a century
[Illustration: 214.jpg KHATUSARU, PRINCE OF KHATI, AND HIS DAUGHTER]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the plate in Lepsius; the triad
worshipped by Khatusaru
and his daughter is composed of
Ramses II., seated between
Amon-Ra and Phtah-Totunen.
Pharaoh was not a little proud of this union, and he has left us a naive record of the manner in which it came about. The inscription is engraved on the face of the rock at Abu Simbel in Nubia; and Ramses begins by boasting, in a heroic strain, of his own energy and exploits, of the fear with which his victories inspired the whole world, and of the anxiety of the Syrian kinglets to fulfil his least wishes. The Prince of the Khati had sent him sumptuous presents at every opportunity, and, not knowing how further to make himself agreeable to the Pharaoh, had finally addressed the great lords of his court, and reminded them how their country had formerly been ruined by war, how their master Sutkhu had taken part against them, and how they had been delivered from their ills by the clemency of the Sun of Egypt. “Let us therefore take our goods, and placing my eldest daughter at the head of them, let us repair to the domains of the great god, so that the King Sesostris may recognise us.” He accordingly did as he had proposed, and the embassy set out with gold and silver, valuable horses, and an escort of soldiers, together with cattle and provisions to supply them with food by the way. When they reached the borders of Kharu, the governor wrote immediately to the Pharaoh as follows: “Here is the Prince of the Khati, who brings his eldest daughter with a number of presents of every kind; and now this princess and the chief of the country of the Khati, after having crossed many mountains and undertaken a difficult journey from distant parts, have arrived at the frontiers of His Majesty. May we be instructed how we ought to act with regard to them.” The king was then in residence at Ramses. When the news reached him, he officially expressed his great joy at the event, since it was a thing unheard of in the annals of the country that so powerful a prince should go to such personal inconvenience in order to marry his daughter to an ally. The Pharaoh, therefore, despatched his nobles and an army to receive them, but he was careful to conceal the anxiety which he felt all the while, and, according to custom, took counsel of his patron god Sutkhu: “Who are these people who come with a message at this time to the country of Zahi?” The oracle, however, reassured him as to their intentions, and he thereupon hastened to prepare for their proper reception. The embassy made a triumphal entry into the city, the princess at its head, escorted by the Egyptian troops told off for the purpose, together with the foot-soldiers and charioteers of the Khati, comprising the flower of their army and militia. A solemn festival was held in their honour, in which food and drink were served without stint, and was concluded by the celebration of the marriage in the presence of the Egyptian lords and of the princes of the whole earth.*
* The fact of the marriage is known to us by the decree of Phtah Totunen at Abu Simbel in the XXXVth year of the king’s reign. The account of it in the text is taken from the stele at Abu Simbel. The last lines are so mutilated that I have been obliged to paraphrase them. The stele of the Princess of Bakhtan has preserved the romantic version of this marriage, such as was current about the Saite period. The King of the Khati must have taken advantage of the expedition which the Pharaoh made into Asia to send him presents by an embassy, at the head of which he placed his eldest daughter: the princess found favour with Ramses, who married her.
Ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her the new name of Uirimaunofiruri—“She who sees the beauties of the Sun.” She figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the place usually occupied by women of Egyptian race only, and these unusual honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years old. The friendly relations between the two courts became so intimate that the Pharaoh invited his father-in-law to visit him in his own country. “The great Prince of Khati informed the Prince of Qodi: ’Prepare thyself that we may go down into Egypt. The word of the king has gone forth, let us obey Sesostris. He gives the breath of life to those who love him; hence all the earth loves him, and Khati forms but one with him.’” They were received with pomp at Ramses-Anakhitu, and perhaps at Thebes. It was with a mixture of joy and astonishment that Egypt beheld her bitterest foe become her most faithful ally, “and the men of Qimit having but one heart with the chiefs of the Khati, a thing which had not happened since the ages of Pa.”
The half-century following the conclusion of this alliance was a period of world-wide prosperity. Syria was once more able to breathe freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. Not only caravans, but isolated travellers, were able to pass through the country from north to south without incurring any risks beyond those occasioned by an untrustworthy guide or a few highwaymen. It became in time a common task in the schools of Thebes to describe the typical Syrian tour of some soldier or functionary, and we still possess one of these imaginative stories in which the scribe takes his hero from Qodshu across the Lebanon to Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon, “the fish” of which latter place “are more numerous than the grains of sand;” he then makes him cross Galilee and the forest of oaks to Jaffa, climb the mountains of the Dead Sea, and following the maritime route by Raphia, reach Pelusium. The Egyptian galleys thronged the Phoenician ports, while those
[Illustration: 218.jpg PHOENICIAN BOATS LANDING AT THEBES]
Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by Daressy.
An open rail ran round the sides of the vessel, so as to prevent goods stowed upon the deck from falling into the sea when the vessel lurched. Voyages to Puanit were undertaken more frequently in quest of incense and precious metals. The working of the mines of Akiti had been the source of considerable outlay at the beginning of the reign. The measures taken by Seti to render the approaches to them practicable at all seasons had not produced the desired results; as far back as the IIIrd year of Ramses the overseers of the south had been forced to acknowledge that the managers of the convoys could no longer use any of the cisterns which had been hewn and built at such great expense. “Half of them die of thirst, together with their asses, for they have no means of carrying a sufficient number of skins of water to last during the journey there and back.” The friends and officers whose advice had been called in, did not doubt for a moment that the king would be willing to complete the work which his father had merely initiated. “If thou sayest to the water, ‘Come upon the mountain,’ the heavenly waters will spring out at the word of thy mouth, for thou art Ra incarnate, Khopri visibly created, thou art the living image of thy father Tumu, the Heliopolitan.”—“If thou thyself sayest to thy father the Nile, father of the gods,” added the Viceroy of Ethiopia, “’Raise the water up to the mountain,’ he will do all that thou hast said, for so it has been with all thy projects which have been accomplished in our presence, of which the like has never been heard, even in the songs of the poets.” The cisterns and wells were thereupon put into such a condition that the transport of gold was rendered easy for years to come. The war with the Khati had not suspended building and other works of public utility; and now, owing to the establishment of peace, the sovereign was able to devote himself entirely to them. He deepened the canal at Zalu; he repaired the walls and the fortified places which protected the frontier on the side of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and he built or enlarged the strongholds along the Nile at those points most frequently threatened by the incursions of nomad tribes. Ramses was the royal builder par excellence, and we may say without fear of contradiction that, from the second
[Illustration: 221.jpg THE PROJECTING COLUMNS OF THE SPEOS OF GERF-HOSSEIN]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
The sanctuary itself comprised an antechamber, supported by two columns and flanked by two oblong recesses; this led into the Holy of Holies, which was a narrow niche with a low ceiling, placed between two lateral chapels. A hall, nearly square in shape, connected these mysterious chambers with the propylaea, which were open to the sky and faced with Osiride caryatides.
[Illustration: 221.jpg THE CARYATIDES OF GERF-HOSSEIN]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Insinger and
Daniel Heron.
These appear to keep rigid and solemn watch over the approaches to the tabernacle, and their faces, half hidden in the shadow, still present such a stern appearance that the semi-barbaric Nubians of the neighbouring villages believe them to be possessed by implacable genii. They are supposed to move from their places during the hours of night, and the fire which flashes from their eyes destroys or fascinates whoever is rash enough to watch them.
Other kings before Ramses had constructed buildings in these spots, and their memory would naturally become associated with his in the future; he wished, therefore, to find a site where he would be without a rival, and to this end he transformed the cliff at Abu Simbel into a monument of his greatness. The rocks here project into the Nile and form a gigantic conical promontory, the face of which was covered with triumphal stelae, on which the sailors or troops going up or down the river could spell out as they passed the praises of the king and his exploits. A few feet of shore on the northern side, covered with dry and knotty bushes, affords in winter a landing-place for tourists. At the spot where the beach ends near the point of the promontory, sit four colossi, with their feet nearly touching the water, their backs leaning against a sloping wall of rock, which takes the likeness of a pylon. A band of hieroglyphs runs above their heads underneath the usual cornice, over which again is a row of crouching cynocephali looking straight before them, their hands resting upon their knees, and above this line of sacred images rises the steep and naked rock. One of the colossi is broken, and the bust of the statue, which must have been detached by some great shock, has fallen to the ground; the others rise to the height of 63 feet, and appear to look across the Nile as if watching the wadys leading to the gold-mines.
[Illustration 224.jpg THE TWO COLOSSI OF ABU SIMBEL TO THE SOUTH OF THE DOORWAY]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Insinger and
Daniel Heron.
The pschent crown surmounts their foreheads, and the two ends of the head-dress fall behind their ears; their features are of a noble type, calm and serious; the nose slightly aquiline, the under lip projecting above a square, but rather heavy, chin. Of such a type we may picture Ramses, after the conclusion of the peace with the Khati, in the full vigour of his manhood and at the height of his power.
[Illustration: 225.jpg THE INTERIOR OF THE SPEOS OF ABU SIMBEL]
Drawn by Boudier, from
a photograph by Insinger and Daniel
Heron.
The doorway of the temple is in the centre of the facade, and rises nearly to a level with the elbows of the colossi; above the lintel, and facing the river, stands a figure of the god Ra, represented with a human body and the head of a sparrow-hawk, while two images of the king in profile, one on each side of the god, offer him a figure of Truth. The first hall, 130 feet long by 58 feet broad, takes the place of the court surrounded by a colonnade which in other temples usually follows the pylon. Her eight Osiride figures, standing against as many square pillars, appear to support the weight of the superincumbent rock. Their profile catches the light as it enters through the open doorway, and in the early morning, when the rising sun casts a ruddy ray over their features,
[Illustration: 228.jpg THE FACE OF THE ROCK AT ABU SIMGEL]
His knees give way beneath him, his head falls heavily backwards, and the features are contracted in his death-agony. Pharaoh with his left hand has seized him by the arm, while with his right he points his lance against his enemy’s breast, and is about to pierce him through the heart. As a rule, this type of bas-relief is executed with a conventional grace which leaves the spectator unmoved, and free to consider the scene merely from its historical point of view, forgetful of the artist.
[Illustration: 229.jpg RAMSES II. PIERCES a Libyan chief with his lance]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mons. do Bock.
An examination of most of the other wall-decorations of the speos will furnish several examples of this type: we see Ramses with a suitable gesture brandishing his weapon above a group of prisoners, and the composition furnishes us with a fair example of official sculpture, correct, conventional, but devoid of interest. Here, on the contrary, the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to the time and scene of those far-off battles.
[Illustration: 230.jpg RAMSES II. STRIKES A GROUP OF PRISONERS]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.
The indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. A small speos, situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing colossi of smaller size, four of which represent Ramses, and two of them his wife, Isit Nofritari. This speos possesses neither peristyle nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars with Hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions.
[Illustration: 231.jpg THE FACADE OF THE LITTLE SPEOS OF HAUTHOR AT ABU SIMBEL]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plates in Champollion.
A third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory chamber to the two others. An inexhaustible stream of yellow sand poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially covered it every year. No sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed, than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi, and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. In spite of all that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared. It would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of posterity.*
* The English engineers
have succeeded in barring out the
sand, and have prevented
it from pouring over the cliff any
more.—Ed.
Seti had worked indefatigably at Thebes, but the shortness of his reign prevented him from completing the buildings he had begun there. There existed everywhere, at Luxor, at Karnak, and on the left bank of the Nile, the remains of his unfinished works; sanctuaries partially roofed in, porticoes incomplete, columns raised to merely half their height, halls as yet imperfect with blank walls, here and there covered with only the outlines in red and black ink of their future bas-reliefs, and statues hardly blocked out, or awaiting the final touch of the polisher.*
* This is the description which Ramses gave of the condition in which he found the Memnonium of Abydos. An examination of the inscriptions existing in the Theban temples which Seti I. had constructed, shows that it must have applied also to the appearance of certain portions of Qurneh, Luxor, and Karnak in the time of Ramses II.
Ramses took up the work where his father had relinquished it. At Luxor there was not enough space to give to the hypostyle hall the extension which the original plans proposed, and the great colonnade has an unfinished appearance.
[Illustration: 230.jpg COLUMNS OF TEMPLE AT LUXOR]
The Nile, in one of its capricious floods, had carried away the land upon which the architects had intended to erect the side aisles; and if they wished to add to the existing structure a great court and a pylon, without which no temple was considered complete, it was necessary to turn the axis of the building towards the east.
[Illustration: 233.jpg THE CHAPEL OF THUTMOSIS III. AND ONE OF THE PYLONS OF RAMSES II. AT LUXOR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
In their operations the architects came upon a beautiful little edifice of rose granite, which had been either erected or restored by Thutmosis III. at a time when the town was an independent municipality and was only beginning to extend its suburban dwellings to meet those of Karnak. They took care to make no change in this structure, but set to work to incorporate it into their final plans. It still stands at the north-west corner of the court, and the elegance of its somewhat slender little columns contrasts happily with the heaviness of the structure to which it is attached. A portion of its portico is hidden by the brickwork of the mosque of Abu’l Haggag: the part brought to light in the course of the excavations contains between each row of columns a colossal statue of Ramses II. We are accustomed to hear on all sides of the degeneracy of the sculptor’s art at this time, and of its having fallen into irreparable neglect. Nothing can be further from the truth than this sweeping statement. There are doubtless many statues and bas-reliefs of this epoch which shock us by their crudity and ugliness, but these owed their origin for the most part to provincial workshops which had been at all times of mediocre repute, and where the artists did not receive orders enough to enable them to correct by practice the defects of their education. We find but few productions of the Theban school exhibiting bad technique, and if we had only this one monument of Luxor from which to form our opinion of its merits, it would be sufficient to prove that the sculptors of Ramses II. were not a whit behind those of Harmham or Seti I. Adroitness in cutting the granite or hard sandstone had in no wise been lost, and the same may be said of the skill in bringing out the contour and life-like action of the figure, and of the art of infusing into the features and demeanour of the Pharaoh something of the superhuman majesty with which the Egyptian people were accustomed to invest their monarchs. If the statues of Ramses II. in the portico are not perfect models of sculpture, they have many good points, and their bold treatment makes them effectively decorative.
[Illustration: 235.jpg THE COLONNADE OF SETI I. AND THE THREE COLOSSAL STATUES OF RAMSES II. AT LUXOR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
Eight other statues of Ramses are arranged along the base of the facade, and two obelisks—one of which has been at Paris for half a century*—stood on either side of the entrance.
* The colonnade and
the little temple of Thutmosis III. were
concealed under the
houses of the village; they were first
brought to light in
the excavations of 1884-86.
The whole structure lacks unity, and there is nothing corresponding to it in this respect anywhere else in Egypt. The northern half does not join on to the southern, but seems to belong to quite a distinct structure, or the two parts might be regarded as having once formed a single edifice which had become divided by an accident, which the architect had endeavoured to unite together again by a line of columns running between two walls. The masonry of the hypostyle hall at Karnak was squared and dressed, but the walls had been left undecorated, as was also the case with the majority of the shafts of the columns and the surface of the architraves. Ramses covered the whole with a series of sculptured and painted scenes which had a rich ornamental effect; he then decorated the pylon, and inscribed on the outer wall to the south the list of cities which he had captured. The temple of Amon then assumed the aspect which it preserved henceforward for centuries. The Ramessides and their successors occupied themselves in filling it with furniture, and in taking steps for the repair of any damage that might accrue to the hall or pillars; they had their cartouches or inscriptions placed in vacant spaces, but they did not dare to modify its arrangement. It was reserved for the Ethiopian and Greek Pharaohs, in presence of the hypostyle and pylon of the XIXth dynasty, to conceive of others on a still vaster scale.
[Illustration: 236.jpg PAINTINGS OF CHAIRS]
Ramses, having completed the funerary chapel of Seti at Qurneh upon the left bank of the river, then began to think of preparing the edifice destined for the cult of his “double”—that Eamesseum whose majestic ruins still stand at a short distance to the north of the giants of Amenothes. Did these colossal statues stimulate his spirit of emulation to do something yet more marvellous? He erected here, at any rate, a still more colossal figure. The earthquake which shattered Memnon brought it to the ground, and fragments of it still strew the soil where they fell some nineteen centuries ago. There are so many of them that the spectator would think himself in the middle of a granite quarry.*
* The ear measures 3
feet 4 inches (feet ?) in length; the
statue
is 58 feet high from the top of the head to the
sole
of the foot, and the weight of the whole has been
estimated
at over a thousand tons.
[Illustration: 237.jpg THE REMAINS OF THE COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMSES II. AT THE RAMESSEUM]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato
The portions forming the breast, arms, and thighs are in detached pieces, but they are still recognisable where they lie close to each other. The head has lost nothing of its characteristic expression, and its proportions are so enormous, that a man could sleep crouched up in the hollow of one of its ears as if on a sofa. Behind the court overlooked by this colossal statue lay a second court, surrounded by a row of square pillars, each having a figure of Osiris attached to it. The god is represented as a mummy, the swathings throwing the body and limbs into relief.
[Illustration: 238.jpg THE RAMESSEUM]
Drawn by Boudier, from
a photograph by Beato; the great
blocks in the foreground
are the fragments of the colossal
statue of Ramses II.
His hands are freed from the bandages and are crossed on the breast, and hold respectively the flail and crook; the smiling face is surmounted by an enormous head-dress. The sanctuary with the buildings attached to it has perished, but enormous brick structures extend round the ruins, forming an enclosure of storehouses. Here the priests of the “double” were accustomed to dwell with their wives and slaves, and here they stored up the products of their domains—meat, vegetables, corn, fowls dried or preserved in fat, and wines procured from all the vineyards of Egypt.
These were merely the principal monuments put up by Ramses II. at Thebes during the sixty-seven years of his rule. There would be no end to the enumeration of his works if we were to mention all the other edifices which he constructed in the necropolis or among the dwellings of the living, all those which he restored, or those which he merely repaired or inscribed with his cartouches. These are often cut over the name of the original founder, and his usurpations of monuments are so numerous that he might be justly accused of having striven to blot out the memory of his predecessors, and of claiming for himself the entire work of the whole line of Pharaohs. It would seem as if, in his opinion, the glory of Egypt began with him, or at least with his father, and that no victorious campaigns had been ever heard of before those which he conducted against the Libyans and the Hittites.
The battle of Qodshu, with its attendant episodes—the flogging of the spies, the assault upon the camp, the charge of the chariots, the flight of the Syrians—is the favourite subject of his inscriptions; and the poem of Pentauirit adds to the bas-reliefs a description worthy of the acts represented. This epic reappears everywhere, in Nubia and in the Said, at Abu Simbel, at Beit-Wally, at Derr, at Luxor, at Karnak, and on the Eamesseum, and the same battle-scenes, with the same accompanying texts, reappear in the Memnonium, whose half-ruined walls still crown the necropolis of Abydos.
[Illustration: 240.jpg THE RUINS OF THE MEMNONIUM OF RAMSES II. AT ABYDOS]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
He had decided upon the erection of this latter monument at the very beginning of his reign, and the artisans who had worked at the similar structure of Seti I. were employed to cover its walls with admirable bas-reliefs. Ramses also laid claim to have his own resting-place at “the Cleft;” in this privilege he associated all the Pharaohs, from whom he imagined himself to be descended, and the same list of their names, which we find engraved in the chapel of his father, appears on his building also. Some ruins, lying beyond
* Partly excavated and
published by Mariette, and partly by
M. de Morgan. This
is probably the temple mentioned in the
Great Inscription
of Abu Simbel.
** These are probably
those mentioned by Herodotus, when he
says that Sesostris
constructed a propylon in the temple of
Hephaistos.
*** This is Abu-1-hol of the Arabs.
**** Ruins of the temple of Ra bear the cartouche of Ramses II. “Cleopatra’s Needle,” transported to Alexandria by one of the Ptolemies, had been set up by Ramses at Heliopolis; it is probably one of the four obelisks which the traditional Sesostris is said to have erected in that city, according to Pliny.
He colonised these towns with his prisoners, rebuilt them, and set to work to rouse them from the torpor into which they had fallen after their capture by Ahmosis. He made a third capital of Tanis, which rivalled both Memphis and Thebes.
[Illustration: 242.jpg THE COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMSES II. AT MITRAHINEH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph brought back by
Benedite.
Before this it had been little more than a deserted ruin: he cleared out the debris, brought a population to the place; rebuilt the temple, enlarging it by aisles which extended its area threefold; and here he enthroned, along with the local divinities, a triad, in which Amonra and Sutkhu sat side by side with his own deified “double.” The ruined walls, the overturned stelae, the obelisks recumbent in the dust, and the statues of his usurped predecessors, all bear his name. His colossal figure of statuary sandstone, in a sitting attitude like that at the Eamesseum, projected from the chief court, and seemed to look down upon the confused ruin of his works.*
* The fragments of the
colossus were employed in the Graeco-
Roman period as building
material, and used in the masonry
of a boundary wall.
We do not know how many wives he had in his harem, but one of the lists of his children which has come down to us enumerates, although mutilated at the end, one hundred and eleven sons, while of his daughters we know of fifty-five.*
* The list of Abydos enumerates thirty-three of his sons and thirty-two of his daughters, that of Wady-Sebua one hundred and eleven of his sons and fifty-one of his daughters; both lists are mutilated. The remaining lists for the most part record only some of the children living at the time they were drawn up, at Derr, at the Eamesseum, and at Abu Simbel.
The majority of these were the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters Nofritari Maritmut and Isitnofrit, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. Death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them Amenhikhopshuf, Amenhiunamif, and Ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the Khati; and some of his daughters—Bitaniti, Maritamon, Nibittaui—by becoming his wives lost their right to the throne. About the XXXth year of his reign, when he was close upon sixty, he began to think of an associate, and his choice rested on the eldest surviving son of his queen Isitnofrit, who was called Khamoisit. This prince was born before the succession of his father, and had exhibited distinguished bravery under the walls of Qodshu and at Ascalon. When he was still very young he had been invested with the office of high priest of the Memphite Phtah, and thus had secured to him the revenues of the possessions of the god, which were the largest in all Egypt after those of the Theban Anion. He had a great reputation for his knowledge of abstruse theological questions and of the science of magic—a later age attributing to him the composition of several books on magic giving directions for the invocation of spirits belonging to this world and the world beyond. He became the hero also of fantastic romances, in which it was related of him how, in consequence of his having stolen from the mummy of an old wizard the books of Thot, he became the victim of possession by a sort of lascivious and sanguinary ghoul. Ramses relieved himself of the cares of state by handing over to Khamoisifc the government of the country, without, however, conferring upon him the titles and insignia of royalty. The chief concern of Khamoisit was to secure the scrupulous observance of the divine laws. He celebrated at Silsilis the festivals of the inundation; he presided at the commemoration of his father’s apotheosis, and at the funeral rites of the Apis who died in the XXXth year of the king’s reign. Before
* Minephtah was in the
order of birth the thirteenth son of
Ramses II.
** A passage on a stele
of Ramses IV. formally attributes to
him a reign of sixty-seven
years. I procured at Koptos a
stele of his year LXVI.
[Illustration: 245.jpg THE CHAPEL OF THE APIS OF AMEKOTHES III.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Mariette.
He had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes describing them were depicted in scores of places. Popular fancy believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the Pharaoh of Pharaohs—the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. Legend preferred to recall him by the name Sesusu, Sesusturi—a designation which had been applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to moderns as Sesostris than by his proper name Ramses Miamun.*
* This designation, which is met with at Medinet-Habu and in the Anmtasi Papyrus I., was shown by E. de Rouge to refer to Ramses II.; the various readings Sesu, Sesusu, Sesusturi, explain the different forms Sesosis, Sesoosis, Sesostris. Wiedemann saw in this name the mention of a king of the XVIIIth dynasty not yet classified.
According to tradition, he was at first sent to Ethiopia with a fleet of four hundred ships, by which he succeeded in conquering the coasts of the Red Sea as far as the Indus. In later times several stelae in the cinnamon country were ascribed to him. He is credited after this with having led into the east a great army, with which he conquered Syria, Media, Persia, Bactriana, and India as far as the ocean; and with having on his return journey through the deserts of Scythia reached the Don [Tanais], where, on the shore of the Masotic Sea, he left a number of his soldiers, whose descendants afterwards peopled Colchis. It was even alleged that he had ventured into Europe, but that the lack of provisions and the inclemency of the climate had prevented him from advancing further than Thrace.
[Illustration: 246.jpg STATUE OF KHAMOISIT]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statue in the British Museum.
He returned to Egypt after an absence of nine years, and after having set up on his homeward journey statues and stelae everywhere in commemoration of his victories. Herodotus asserts that he himself had seen several of these monuments in his travels in Syria and Ionia. Some of these are of genuine Egyptian manufacture, and are to be attributed to our Ramses; they are to be found near Tyre, and on the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb, where they mark the frontier to which his empire extended in this direction. Others have but little resemblance to Egyptian monuments, and were really the work of the Asiatic peoples among whom they were found. The two figures referred to long ago by Herodotus, which have been discovered near Ninfi between Sardis and Smyrna, are instances of the latter.
[Illustration: 247.jpg STELE OF THE NAHR EL-KELB]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
The shoes of the figures are turned up at the toe, and the head-dress has more resemblance to the high hats of the people of Asia Minor than to the double crown of Egypt, while the lower garment is striped horizontally in place of vertically. The inscription, moreover, is in an Asiatic form of writing, and has nothing Egyptian about it. Ramses II. in his youth was the handsomest man of his time. He was tall and straight; his figure was well moulded—the shoulders broad, the arms full and vigorous, the legs muscular; the face was oval, with a firm and smiling mouth, a thin aquiline nose, and large open eyes.
[Illustration: 248.jpg THE BAS-BELIEF OF NINFI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
[Illustration: 249.jpg THE COFFIN AND MUMMY OF RAMSES II]
Drawn by Boudier, from
a photograph taken from the mummy
itself, by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
There may be seen below the cartouche the lines of the official report of inspection written during the XXIst dynasty. Old age and death did not succeed in marring the face sufficiently to disfigure it. The coffin containing his body is not the same as that in which his children placed him on the day of his obsequies; it is another substituted for it by one of the Ramessides, and the mask upon it has but a distant resemblance to the face of the victorious Pharaoh. The mummy is thin, much shrunken, and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions.*
* Even after the coalescence of the vertebrae and the shrinkage produced by mummification, the body of Ramses II. still measures over 5 feet 8 inches.
The head, which is bald on the top, is somewhat long, and small in relation to the bulk of the body; there is but little hair on the forehead, but at the back of the head it is thick, and in smooth stiff locks, still preserving its white colour beneath the yellow balsams of his last toilet. The forehead is low, the supra-orbital ridges accentuated, the eyebrows thick, the eyes small and set close to the nose, the temples hollow, the cheek-bones prominent; the ears, finely moulded, stand out from the head, and are pierced, like those of a woman, for the usual ornaments pendant from the lobe. A strong jaw and square chin, together, with a large thick-lipped mouth, which reveals through the black paste within it a few much-worn but sound teeth, make up the features of the mummied king. His moustache and beard, which were closely shaven in his lifetime, had grown somewhat in his last sickness or after his death; the coarse and thick hairs in them, white like those of the head and eyebrows, attain a length of two or three millimetres. The skin shows an ochreous yellow colour under the black bituminous plaster. The mask of the mummy, in fact, gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer. The disappearance of the old hero did not produce many changes in the position of affairs in Egypt: Minephtah from this time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of Ramses II., he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when Egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. The danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of Asia, for the relations of the Pharaoh with his Kharu subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated Syria,* he sent wheat to his Hittite allies.
* A document preserved in the Anastasi Papyrus III. shows how regular the relations with Syria had become. It is the journal of a custom-house officer, or of a scribe placed at one of the frontier posts, who notes from day to day the letters, messengers, officers, and troops which passed from the 15th to the 25th of Pachons, in the IIIrd year of the reign.
The nations, however, to the north and east, in Libya and in the Mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the old world. The Tirnihu, some of them tributaries from the XIIth, and others from the first years of the XVIIIth dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. From time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following
* The nationality of
these tribes is evidenced by the names
of their chiefs, which
recall exactly those of the
Numidians—Massyla,
Massinissa, Massiva.
** The Labu, Laubu, Lobu, are mentioned for the first time under Ramses II.; these are the Libyans of classical geographers. The Mashauasha answer to the Maxycs of Herodotus; they furnished mercenaries to the armies of Ramses II.
They were men tall of stature and large of limb, with fair skins, light hair, and blue eyes; everything, in fact, indicating their northern origin. They took pleasure in tattooing the skin, just as the Tuaregs and Kabyles are now accustomed to do, and some, if not all, of them practised circumcision, like a portion of the Egyptians and Semites. In the arrangement of the hair, a curl fell upon the shoulder, while the remainder was arranged in small frizzled locks. Their chiefs and braves wore on their heads two flowering plumes. A loin-cloth, a wild-beast’s skin thrown over the back, a mantle, or rather a covering of woollen or dyed cloth, fringed and ornamented with many-coloured needlework, falling from the left shoulder with no attachment in front, so as to leave the body unimpeded in walking,—these constituted the ordinary costume of the people. Their arms were similar to those of the Egyptians, consisting of the lance, the mace, the iron or copper dagger, the boomerang, the bow and arrow, and the sling.
[Illustration: 253.jpg A LIBYAN]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
They also employed horses and chariots. Their bravery made them a foe not to be despised, in spite of their ignorance of tactics and their want of discipline. When they were afterwards formed into regiments and conducted by experienced generals, they became the best auxiliary troops which Egypt could boast of. The Labu from this time forward were the most energetic of the tribes, and their chiefs prided themselves upon possessing the leadership over all the other clans in this region of the world.*
* This was the case
in the wars of Minephtah and Ramses
III., in which the Labu
and their kings took the command of
the confederate armies
assembled against Egypt.
The Labu might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the Egyptians. At the moment when Minephtah ascended the throne, their king, Maraiu, son of Didi, ruled over the immense territory lying between the Fayum and the two Syrtes: the Timihu, the Kahaka, and the Mashauasha rendered him the same obedience as his own people. A revolution had thus occurred in Africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in Naharaim, when Sapalulu founded the Hittite empire. A great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing Egyptian control had existed before. The danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the whole breadth of Kharu, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian cities; but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. Minephtah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the westerns, as his father had formerly done that of the easterns, and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the Egyptians had fought under the walls of Qodshu sixty years before. The Shardana, Lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the Delta and the Phoenician seaports owing to the vigilant watch kept by the Egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the Libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. Whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a Greek tradition of a recent age speaks, we cannot say. They certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the King of the Khati or of the Pharaoh himself. Maraiu brought with him Achaeans, Shardana, Tursha, Shagalasha,* and Lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.** This was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. Maraiu had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the Nile valley, to settle permanently there as the Hyksos had done before him.
* The Shakalasha, Shagalasha, identified with the Sicilians by E. de Rouge, were a people of Asia Minor whose position there is approximately indicated by the site of the town Sagalassos, named after them.
** The Inscription
of Minephtah distinguishes the Libyans
of Maraiu from “the
people of the Sea.”
He set out on his march towards the end of the IVth year of the Pharaoh’s reign, or the beginning of his Vth, surrounded by the elite of his troops, “the first choice from among all the soldiers and all the heroes in each land.” The announcement of their approach spread terror among the Egyptians. The peace which they had enjoyed for fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their military organisation had become somewhat rusty. The standing army had almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough to protect the frontier. As a consequence, the oases of Farafrah and of the Natron lakes fell into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the eastern provinces of the Delta became the possession of the invader before any steps could be taken for their defence. Memphis, which realised the imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent rulers who had given no heed to the country’s ramparts, and had allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. Fortunately Syria remained quiet. The Khati, in return for the aid afforded them by Minephtah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the Pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his Asiatic provinces. He could with perfect security take the necessary measures for ensuring “Heliopolis, the city of Tumu,” against surprise, “for arming Memphis, the citadel of Phtah-Tonen, and for restoring all things which were in disorder: he fortified Pibalisit, in the neighbourhood of the Shakana canal, on a branch of that of Heliopolis,” and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised lines.*
* Chabas would identify
Pibalisit with Bubastis; I agree
with Brugsch in placing
it at Belbeis.
Maraiu, however, continued to advance; in the early months of the summer he had crossed the Canopic branch of the Nile, and was now about to encamp not far from the town of Pirici. When the king heard of this “he became furious against them as a lion that fascinates its victim; he called his officers together and addressed them: ’I am about to make you hear the words of your master, and to teach you this: I am the sovereign shepherd who feeds you; I pass my days in seeking out that which is useful for you: I am your father; is there among you a father like me who makes his children live? You are trembling like geese, you do not know what is good to do: no one gives an answer to the enemy, and our desolated land is abandoned to the incursions of all nations. The barbarians harass the frontier, rebels violate it every day, every one robs it, enemies devastate our seaports, they penetrate into the fields of Egypt; if there is an arm of a river they halt there, they stay for days, for months; they come as numerous as reptiles, and no one is able to sweep them back, these wretches who love death and hate life, whose
These were brave words, but we may fancy the figure that this king of more than sixty years of age would have presented in a chariot in the middle of the fray, and his competence to lead an effective charge against the enemy. On the other hand, his absence in such a critical position of affairs would have endangered the morale of his soldiers and possibly compromised the issue of the battle. A dream settled the whole question.*
* Ed. Meyer sees in
this nothing but a customary rhetorical
expression, and thinks
that the god spoke in order to
encourage the king to
defend himself vigorously.
While Minephtah was asleep one night, he saw a gigantic figure of Phtah standing before him, and forbidding him to advance. “‘Stay,’ cried the god to him, while handing him the curved khopesh: ’put away discouragement from thee!’ His Majesty said to him: ’But what am I to do then?’ And Phtah answered him: ’Despatch thy infantry, and send before it numerous chariots to the confines of the territory of Piriu.’"**
* This name was read Pa-ari by E. de Rouge, Pa-ali by Lauth, and was transcribed Pa-ari-shop by Brugsch, who identified with Prosopitis. The orthography of the text at Athribis shows that we ought to read Piri, Piru, Piriu; possibly the name is identical with that of laru which is mentioned in the Pyramid-texts.
The Pharaoh obeyed the command, and did not stir from his position. Maraiu had, in the mean time, arranged his attack for the 1st of Epiphi, at the rising of the sun: it did not take place, however, until the 3rd. “The archers of His Majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut off by the edge of the sword.” When Maraiu saw the carnage, “he was afraid, his heart failed him; he betook himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him.” His treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; “he tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of those wretched Libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who had the care of His Majesty’s team of horses followed in their steps” and put most of them to the sword. Maraiu succeeded, however,
[Illustration: 260.jpg STATUE OF MINEPHTAH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Deveria.
“He is very strong, Binri Minephtah,” sang the court poets, “very wise are his projects—his words have as beneficial effect as those of Thot—everything which he does is completed to the end.—When he is like a guide at the head of his armies—his voice penetrates the fortress walls.—Very friendly to those who bow their backs—before Miamun—his valiant soldiers spare him who humbles himself—before his courage and before his strength;—they fall upon the Libyans—they consume the Syrian;—the Shardana whom thou hast brought back by thy sword—make prisoners of their own tribes.—Very happy thy return to Thebes—victorious! Thy chariot is drawn by hand—the conquered chiefs march backwards before thee—whilst thou leadest them to thy venerable father—Amon, husband of his mother.” And the poets amuse themselves with summoning Maraiu to appear in Egypt, pursued as he was by his own people and obliged to hide himself from them. “He is nothing any
* This passage is taken from a stele discovered by Petrie in 1896, on the site of the Amenophium at Thebes. The mention of the Israilu immediately calls to mind the place-names Yushaph-ilu, Yakob-ilu, on lists of Thutmosis III. which have been compared with the names Jacob and Joseph.
Minephtah ought to have followed up his opportunity to the end, but he had no such intention, and his inaction gave Maraiu time to breathe. Perhaps the effort which he had made had exhausted his resources, perhaps old age prevented him from prosecuting his success; he was content, in any case, to station bodies of pickets on the frontier, and to fortify a few new positions to the east of the Delta. The Libyan kingdom was now in the same position as that in which the Hittite had been after the campaign of Seti I.: its power had been checked for the moment, but it remained intact on the Egyptian frontier, awaiting its opportunity.
Minephtah lived for some time after this memorable year* and the number of monuments which belong to this period show that he reigned in peace. We can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him; at Tanis as well as Thebes, in Nubia as well as in the Delta. He worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the inundation at Silsileh. One at least of the stelae which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still, excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance.
* The last known year of his reign is the year VIII. The lists of Manetho assign to him a reign of from twenty to forty years; Brugsch makes it out to have been thirty-four years, from 1300 to 1266 B.C., which is evidently too much, but we may attribute to him without risk of serious error a reign of about twenty years.
The last years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was obliged to delegate his authority.
[Illustration: 263.jpg THE CHAPELS OF RAMSES II. AND MINEPHTAH AT SISILEH]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
One of the latter, a man of Semite origin, named Ben-Azana, of Zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation of his first patron, ramsesupirniri, appears to have acted for him as regent. Minephtah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called Seti, after his great-grandfather.* Seti II. had doubtless reached middle age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him, nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man.** The expression in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholic. MU It is the type of Seti I. and Ramses II., but enfeebled and, as it were, saddened. An inscription of his second year attributes to him victories in Asia,*** but others of the same period indicate the existence of disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his father.
* E. de Rouge introduced Amenmeses and Siphtah between Minephtah and Seti II., and I had up to the present followed his example; I have come back to the position of Chabas, making Seti II. the immediate successor of Minephtah, which is also the view of Brugsch, Wiedemann, and Ed. Meyer. The succession as it is now given does not seem to me to be free from difficulties; the solution generally adopted has only the merit of being preferable to that of E. de Rouge, which I previously supported.
** The last date known
of his reign is the year II. which is
found at Silsilis; Chabas
was, nevertheless, of the opinion
that he reigned a considerable
time.
*** The expressions employed in this document do not vary much from the usual protocol of all kings of this period. The triumphal chant of Seti II. preserved in the Anastasi Papyrus IV. is a copy of the triumphal chant of Minephtah, which is in the same Papyrus.
[Illustration: 264.jpg STATUE OF SETI II.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
These were occasioned by a certain Aiari, who was high priest of Phtah, and who had usurped titles belonged ordinarily to the Pharaoh or his eldest son, in the house of Sibu, “heir and hereditary prince of the two lands.” Seti died, it would seem, without having had time to finish his tomb. We do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but were probably the grandsons of the Amenmesis and the Siphtah, whom we meet with among the children of Ramses. The first of these was also called Amenmesis,* and he held sway for several years over the whole of Egypt, and over its foreign possessions.
* Graffiti of this sovereign have been found at the second cataract. Certain expressions have induced E. de Rouge to believe that he, as well as Siphtah, came originally from Khibit in the Aphroditopolite nome. This was an allusion, as Chabas had seen, to the myth of Horus, similar to that relating to Thutmosis III., and which we more usually meet with in the cases of those kings who were not marked out from their birth onwards for the throne.
[Illustration: 265.jpg SETI II.]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
The second, who was named Siphtah-Minephtah, ascended “the throne of his father” thanks to the devotion of his minister Bai,* but in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called Tausirit. He maintained himself in this position for at least six years, during which he made an expedition into Ethiopia, and received in audience at Thebes messengers from all foreign nations. He kept up so zealously the appearance of universal dominion, that to judge from his inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his predecessors at Thebes.
Egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick pace towards its downfall. No sooner had this monarch disappeared than it began to break up.** There were no doubt many claimants for the crown, but none of them succeeded in disposing of the claims of his rivals, and anarchy reigned supreme from one end of the Nile valley to the other. The land of Qimit began to drift away, and the people within it had no longer a sovereign, and this, too, for many years, until other times came; for “the land of Qimit was in the hands of the princes ruling over the nomes, and they put each other to death, both great and small.
* Bai has left two inscriptions behind him, one at Silsilis and the other at Sehel, and the titles he assumes on both monuments show the position he occupied at the Theban court during the reign of Siphtah-Minephtah. Chabas thought that Bai had succeeded in maintaining his rights to the crown against the claims of Amenmesis.
** The little that we
know about this period of anarchy has
been obtained from the
Harris Papyrus.
Other times came afterwards, during years of nothingness, in which Arisu, a Syrian,* was chief among them, and the whole country paid tribute before him; every one plotted with his neighbour to steal the goods of others, and it was the same with regard to the gods as with regard to men, offerings were no longer made in the temples.”
* The name of this individual was deciphered by Chabas; Lauth, and after him Krall, were inclined to read it as Ket, Ketesh, in order to identify it with the Ketes of Diodorus Siculus. A form of the name Arisai in the Bible may be its original, or that of Arish which is found in Phoenician, especially Punic, inscriptions.
This was in truth the revenge of the feudal system
[Illustration: 268.jpg AMENMESIS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a picture in Rosellini.
They made themselves masters of a position almost opposite Memphis, and commanding the river, and held their ground there with such obstinacy that it was found necessary to give up to them the province which they occupied: they built here a town, which they afterwards called Babylon. A similar legend attributes the building of the neighbouring village of Troiu to captives from Troy.*
The scattered barbarian tribes of the Delta, whether Hebrews or the remnant of the iiyksos, had endured there a miserable lot ever since the accession of the Ramessides. The rebuilding of the cities which had been destroyed there during the wars with the Hyksos had restricted the extent of territory on which they could pasture their herds. Ramses II. treated them as slaves of the treasury,** and the Hebrews were not long under his rule before they began to look back with regret on the time of the monarchs “who knew Joseph."**
* The name Babylon comes probably from Banbonu, Barbonu, Babonu—a term which, under the form Hat-Banbonu, served to designate a quarter of Heliopolis, or rather a suburban village of that city. Troja was, as we have seen, the ancient city of Troiu, now Turah, celebrated for its quarries of fine limestone. The narratives collected by the historians whom Diodorus consulted were products of the Saite period, and intended to explain to Greeks the existence on Egyptian territory of names recalling those of Babylon in Chaldaea and of Homeric Troy.
** A very ancient tradition identifies Ramses II. with the Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Exod. i. 8). Recent excavations showing that the great works in the east of the Delta began under this king, or under Seti II. at the earliest, confirm in a general way the accuracy of the traditional view: I have, therefore, accepted it in part, and placed the Exodus after the death of Ramses II. Other authorities place it further back, and Lieblein in 1863 was inclined to put it under Amenothes III.
The Egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were “grieved because of the children of Israel."* A secondary version of the same narrative gives a more detailed account of their condition: “They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field."** The unfortunate slaves awaited only an opportunity to escape from the cruelty of their persecutors.
* Exod. i. 11, 12. Excavations made by Naville have brought to light near Tel el-Maskhutah the ruins of one of the towns which the Hebrews of the Alexandrine period identified with the cities constructed by their ancestors in Egypt: the town excavated by Naville is Pitumu, and consequently the Pithom of the Biblical account, and at the same time also the Succoth of Exod. xii. 37, xiii. 20, the first station of the Bne-Israel after leaving Ramses.
** Exod, i. 13, 14.
The national traditions of the Hebrews inform us that the king, in displeasure at seeing them increase so mightily notwithstanding his repression, commanded the midwives to strangle henceforward their male children at their birth. A woman of the house of Levi, after having concealed her infant for three months, put him in an ark of bulrushes and consigned him to the Nile, at a place where the daughter of Pharaoh was accustomed to bathe. The princess on perceiving the child had compassion on him, adopted him, called him Moses—saved from the waters—and had him instructed in all the knowledge of the Egyptians. Moses had already attained forty years of age, when he one day encountered an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, and slew him in his anger, shortly afterwards fleeing
* Exod. ii.-xiii.
I have limited myself here to a summary
of the Biblical narrative,
without entering into a criticism
of the text, which I
leave to others.
** Exod. xv. 1-10 (R.V.)
From this narrative we see that the Hebrews, or at least those of them who dwelt in the Delta, made their escape from their oppressors, and took refuge in the solitudes of Arabia. According to the opinion of accredited historians, this Exodus took place in the reign of Minephtah, and the evidence of the triumphal inscription, lately discovered by Prof. Petrie, seems to confirm this view, in relating that the people of Israilu were destroyed, and had no longer a seed. The context indicates pretty clearly that these ill-treated Israilu were then somewhere south of Syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of Ascalon and Glezer. If it is the Biblical Israelites who are here mentioned for the first time on an Egyptian monument, one might suppose that they had just quitted the land of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert. Although the peoples of the sea and the Libyans did not succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of Goshen, the Israelites must have profited both by the disorder into which the Egyptians were thrown by the invaders, and by the consequent withdrawal to Memphis of the troops previously stationed on the east of the Delta, to break away from their servitude and cross the frontier. If, on the other hand,
Having crossed the Red Sea, the Israelites pursued their course to the north-east on the usual road leading into Syria, and then turning towards the south, at length arrived at Sinai. It was a moment when the nations of Asia were stirring. To proceed straight to Canaan by the beaten track would have been to run the risk of encountering their moving hordes, or of jostling against the Egyptian troops, who still garrisoned the strongholds of the She-phelah. The fugitives had, therefore, to shun the great military roads if they were to avoid coming into murderous conflict with the barbarians, or running into the teeth of Pharaoh’s pursuing army. The desert offered an appropriate asylum to people of nomadic inclinations like themselves; they betook themselves to it as if by instinct, and spent there a wandering life for several generations.*
* This explanation of
the wanderings of the Israelites has
been doubted by most
historians: it has a cogency, once we
admit the reality of
the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus.
The traditions collected in their sacred books described at length their marches and their halting-places, the great sufferings they endured, and the striking miracles which God performed on their behalf.*
* The itinerary of the Hebrew people through the desert contains a very small number of names which were not actually in use. They represent possibly either the stations at which the caravans of the merchants put up, or the localities where the Bedawin and their herds were accustomed to sojourn. The majority of them cannot be identified, but enough can still be made out to give us a general idea of the march of the emigrants.
Moses conducted them through all these experiences, continually troubled by their murmurings and seditions, but always ready to help them out of the difficulties into which they were led, on every occasion, by their want of faith. He taught them, under God’s direction, how to correct the bitterness of brackish waters by applying to them the wood of a certain tree.*
* Exod. xv. 23-25. The station Marah, “the bitter waters,” is identified by modern tradition with Ain Howarah. There is a similar way of rendering waters potable still in use among the Bedawin of these regions.
** Exod. xvi. 13-15.
“And the house of Israel called the name thereof ’manna: ’and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey."* “And the children of Israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan."** Further on, at Eephidim, the water failed: Moses struck the rocks at Horeb, and a spring gushed out.*** The Amalekites, in the meantime, began to oppose their passage; and one might naturally doubt the power of a rabble of slaves, unaccustomed to war, to break through such an obstacle. Joshua was made their general, “and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill: and it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword."****
* Exod. xvi. 31. Prom early times the manna of the Hebrews had been identified with the mann-es-sama, “the gift of heaven,” of the Arabs, which exudes in small quantities from the leaves of the tamarisk after being pricked by insects: the question, however, is still under discussion whether another species of vegetable manna may not be meant.
** Exod. xvi. 35.
*** Exod. xvii.
1-7. There is a general agreement as to
the identification of
Rephidim with the Wady Peiran, the
village of Pharan of
the Graeco-Roman geographers.
**** Exod. xvii. 8-13.
Three months after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt they encamped at the foot of Sinai, and “the Lord called unto Moses out of the mountain, saying, ’Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples: for all the earth is Mine: and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.’ The people answered together and said, ’All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.’ And the Lord said unto Moses, ’Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and may also believe thee for ever.’” “On the third day, when it was morning, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mountain. And Mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice."*
* Exod. xix. 3-6, 9, 16-19.
Then followed the giving of the supreme law, the conditions of the covenant which the Lord Himself deigned to promulgate directly to His people. It was engraved on two tables of stone, and contained, in ten concise statements, the commandments which the Creator of the Universe imposed upon the people of His choice.
“I. I am Jahveh, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.
II. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, etc.
III. Thou shalt not take the name of Jahveh thy God in vain.
IV. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.
V. Honour thy father and thy mother.
VI. Thou shalt do no murder.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
X. Thou shalt not covet."*
* We have two forms
of the Decalogue—one in Exod. xx.
2-
17, and the other in
Deut. v. 6-18.
“And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, ’Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’"* God gave His commandments to Moses in instalments as the circumstances required them: on one occasion the rites of sacrifice, the details of the sacerdotal vestments, the mode of consecrating the priests, the composition of the oil and the incense for the altar; later on, the observance of the three annual festivals, and the orders as to absolute rest on the seventh day, as to the distinctions between clean and unclean animals, as to drink, as to the purification of women, and lawful and unlawful marriages.**
* Exod. xx. 18, 19.
** This legislation and the history of the circumstances on which it was promulgated are contained in four of the books of the Pentateuch, viz. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Any one of the numerous text-books published in Germany will be found to contain an analysis of these books, and the prevalent opinions as to the date of the documents which it [the Hexateuch] contains. I confine myself here and afterwards only to such results as may fitly be used in a general history.
The people waited from week to week until Jahveh had completed the revelation of His commands, and in their impatience broke the new law more than once. On one occasion, when “Moses delayed to come out of the mount,” they believed themselves abandoned by heaven, and obliged Aaron, the high priest, to make for them a golden calf, before which they offered burnt offerings. The sojourn of the people at the foot of Sinai lasted eleven months. At the end of this period they set out once more on their slow marches to the Promised Land, guided during the day by a cloud, and during the night by a pillar of fire, which moved before them. This is a general summary of what we find in the sacred writings.
The Israelites, when they set out from Egypt, were not yet a nation. They were but a confused horde, flying with their herds from their pursuers; with no resources, badly armed, and unfit to sustain the attack of regular troops. After leaving Sinai, they wandered for some time among the solitudes of Arabia Petraea in search of some uninhabited country where they could fix their tents, and at length settled on the borders of Idumaea, in the mountainous region surrounding Kadesh-Barnea.* Kadesh had from ancient times a reputation for sanctity among the Bedawin of the neighbourhood: it rejoiced in the possession of a wonderful well—the Well of Judgment—to which visits were made for the purpose of worship, and for obtaining the “judgment” of God. The country is a poor one, arid and burnt up, but it contains wells which never fail, and wadys suitable for the culture of wheat and for the rearing of cattle. The tribe which became possessed of a region in which there was a perennial supply of water was fortunate indeed, and a fragment of the psalmody of Israel at the time of their sojourn here still echoes in a measure the transports of joy which the people gave way to at the discovery of a new spring: “Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it: the well which the princes digged, which the nobles of the people delved with the sceptre and with their staves."**
* The site of Kadesh-Barnea
appears to have been fixed with
certainty at Ain-Qadis
by C. Trumbull.
** Numb. xxi. 17, 18. The context makes it certain that this song was sung at Beer, beyond the Arnon, in the land of Moab. It has long been recognised that it had a special reference, and that it refers to an incident in the wanderings of the people through the desert.
The wanderers took possession of this region after some successful brushes with the enemy, and settled there, without being further troubled by their neighbours or by their former masters. The Egyptians, indeed, absorbed in their civil discords, or in wars with foreign nations, soon forgot their escaped slaves, and never troubled themselves for centuries over what had become of the poor wretches, until in the reign of the Ptolemies, when they had learned from the Bible something of the people of God, they began to seek in their own annals for traces of their sojourn in Egypt and of their departure from the country. A new version of the Exodus was the result, in which Hebrew tradition was clumsily blended with the materials of a semi-historical romance, of which Amenothes III. was the hero. His minister and namesake, Amenothes, son of Hapu, left ineffaceable impressions on the minds of the inhabitants of Thebes: he not only erected the colossal figures in the Amenophium, but he constructed the chapel at Deir el-Medineh, which was afterwards restored in Ptolemaic times, and where he continued to be worshipped as long as the Egyptian religion lasted. Profound knowledge of the mysteries of magic were attributed to him, as in later times to Prince Khamoisit, son of Ramses II. On this subject he wrote certain works which maintained their reputation for more than a thousand years after his death,* and all that was known about him marked him out for the important part he came to play in those romantic stories so popular among the Egyptians.
* One of these books,
which is mentioned in several
religious texts, is
preserved in the Louvre Papyrus.
The Pharaoh in whose good graces he lived had a desire, we are informed, to behold the gods, after the example of his ancestor Horus. The son of Hapu, or Pa-Apis, informed him that he could not succeed in his design until he had expelled from the country all the lepers and unclean persons who contaminated it. Acting on this information, he brought together all those who suffered from physical defects, and confined them, to the number of eighty thousand, in the quarries of Turah. There were priests among them, and the gods became wrathful at the treatment to which their servants were exposed; the soothsayer, therefore, fearing the divine anger, predicted that certain people would shortly arise who, forming an alliance with the Unclean, would, together with them, hold sway in Egypt for thirteen years. He then committed suicide, but the king nevertheless had compassion on the outcasts, and granted to them, for their exclusive use, the town of Avaris, which had been deserted since the
* A list of the Pharaohs
after Ai, as far as it is possible
to make them out, is
here given:
[Illustration: 281.jpg Table]
This is but a romance, in which a very little history is mingled with a great deal of fable: the scribes as well as the people were acquainted with the fact that Egypt had been in danger of dissolution at the time when the Hebrews left the banks of the Nile, but they were ignorant of the details, of the precise date and of the name of the reigning Pharaoh. A certain similarity in sound suggested to them the idea of assimilating the prince whom the Chroniclers called Menepthes or Amenepthes with Amen-othes, i.e. Amenophis III.; and they gave to the Pharaoh of the XIXth dynasty the minister who had served under a king of the XVIIIth: they metamorphosed at the same time the Hebrews into lepers allied with the Shepherds. From this strange combination there resulted a narrative which at once fell in with the tastes of the lovers of the marvellous, and was a sufficient substitute for the truth which had long since been forgotten. As in the case of the Egyptians of the Greek period, we can see only through a fog what took place after the deaths of Minephtah and Seti II. We know only for certain that the chiefs of the nomes were in perpetual strife with each other, and that a foreign power was dominant in the country as in the time of Apophis. The days of the empire would have Harmhabi himself belonged to the XVIIIth dynasty, for he modelled the form of his cartouches on those of the Ahmesside Pharaohs: the XIXth dynasty began only, in all probability, with Ramses I., but the course of the history has compelled me to separate Harmhabi from his predecessors. Not knowing the length of the reigns, we cannot determine the total duration of the dynasty: we shall not, however, be far wrong in assigning to it a length of 130 years or thereabouts, i.e. from 1350 to somewhere near 1220 B.C. been numbered if a deliverer had not promptly made his appearance. The direct line of Ramses II. was extinct, but his innumerable sons by innumerable concubines
RAMSES III.—THE THEBAN CITY UNDER THE RAMESSIDES—MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
Nalthtasit and Ramses III.: the decline of the military spirit in Egypt—The reorganisation of the army and fleet by Ramses—The second Libyan invasion—The Asiatic peoples, the Pulasati, the Zakleala, and the Tyrseni: their incursions into Syria and their defeat—The campaign of the year XL and the fall of the Libyan kingdom—Cruising on the Red Sea—The buildings at Medinet-Habu—The conspiracy of Pentauirit—The mummy of Ramses III.
The sons and immediate successors of Ramses III.—Thebes and the Egyptian population: the transformation of the people and of the great lords: the feudal system from being military becomes religious—The wealth of precious metals, jewellery, furniture, costume—Literary education, and the influence of the Semitic language on the Egyptian: romantic stories, the historical novel, fables, caricatures and satires, collections of maxims and moral dialogues, love-poems.
[Illustration: 287.jpg Page Image]
Ramses III.—The Theban city under the Ramessides—Manners and customs.
As in a former crisis, Egypt once more owed her salvation to a scion of the old Theban race. A descendant of Seti I. or Ramses II., named Nakhtusit, rallied round him the forces of the southern nomes, and succeeded, though not without difficulty, in dispossessing the Syrian Arisu. “When he arose, he was like Sutkhu, providing for all the necessities of the country which, for feebleness, could not stand, killing the rebels which were in the Delta, purifying the great throne of Egypt; he was regent of the two lands in the place of Tumu, setting himself to reorganise that which had been overthrown, to such good purpose, that each one recognised as brethren those who had been separated from him as by a wall for so long a time, strengthening the temples by pious gifts, so that the traditional rites could be celebrated at the divine cycles."*
* The exact relationship between Nakhtusit and Ramses II. is not known; he was probably the grandson or great-grandson of that sovereign, though Ed. Meyer thinks he was perhaps the son of Seti II. The name should be read either Nakhitsit, with the singular of the first word composing it, or Nakhitusit, Nakhtusit, with the plural, as in the analogous name of the king of the XXXth dynasty, Nectanebo.
Many were the difficulties that he had to encounter before he could restore to his country that peace and wealth which she had enjoyed under the long reign of Sesostris. It seems probable that his advancing years made him feel unequal to the task, or that he desired to guard against the possibility of disturbances in the event of his sudden death; at all events, he associated with himself on the throne his eldest son Ramses—not, however, as a Pharaoh who had full rights to the crown, like the coadjutors of the Amenemhaits and Usirtasens, but as a prince invested with extraordinary powers, after the example of the sons of the Pharaohs Thutmosis and Seti I. Ramses recalls with pride, towards the close of his life, how his father “had promoted him to the dignity of heir-presumptive to the throne of Sibu,” and how he had been acclaimed as “the supreme head of Qimit for the administration of the whole earth united together."* This constituted the rise of a new dynasty on the ruins of the old—the last, however, which was able to retain the supremacy of Egypt over the Oriental world. We are unable to ascertain how long this double reign lasted.
* The only certain monument
that we as yet possess of this
double reign is a large
stele cut on the rock behind
Medinet-Habu.
[Illustration: 289.jpg NAKHTUSIT.]
Nakhtusit, fully occupied by enemies within the country, had no leisure either to build or to restore any monuments;* on his death, as no tomb had been prepared for him, his mummy was buried in that of the usurper Siphtah and the Queen Tausirit.
* Wiedemann attributes to him the construction of one of the doors of the temple of Mut at Karnak; it would appear that there is a confusion in his notes between the prenomen of this sovereign and that of Seti II., who actually did decorate one of the doorways of that temple. Nakhusit must have also worked on the temple of Phtah at Memphis. His cartouche is met with on a statue originally dedicated by a Pharaoh of the XIIth dynasty, discovered at Tell-Nebesheh.
He was soon forgotten, and but few traces of his services survived him; his name was subsequently removed from the official list of the kings, while others not so deserving as he—as, for instance, Siphtah-Minephtah and Amenmesis—were honourably inscribed in it. The memory of his son overshadowed his own, and the series of the legitimate kings who formed the XXth dynasty did not include him. Ramses III. took for his hero his namesake, Ramses the Great,
* Thus the great decree
of Phtah-Totunen, carved by Ramses
II. in the year XXXV.
on the rocks of Abu Simbel, was copied
by Ramses III. at Medinet-Habu
in the year XII.
He began by restoring order in the administration of affairs; “he established truth, crushed error, purified the temple from all crime,” and made his authority felt not only in the length and breadth of the Nile valley, but in what was still left of the Asiatic provinces. The disturbances of the preceding years had weakened the prestige of Amon-Ra, and the king’s supremacy would have been seriously endangered, had any one arisen in Syria of sufficient energy to take advantage of the existing state of affairs. But since the death of Khatusaru, the power of the Khati had considerably declined, and they retained their position merely through their former prestige; they were in as much need of peace, or even more so, than the Egyptians, for the same discords which had harassed the reigns of Seti II. and his successors had doubtless brought trouble to their own sovereigns. They had made no serious efforts to extend their dominion over any of those countries which had been the objects of the cupidity of their forefathers, while the peoples of Kharu and Phoenicia, thrown back on their own resources, had not ventured to take up arms against the Pharaoh. The yoke lay lightly upon them, and in no way hampered their internal liberty; they governed as they liked, they exchanged one prince or chief for another, they waged petty wars as of old, without, as a rule, exposing themselves to interference from the Egyptian troops occupying the country, or from the “royal messengers.” These vassal provinces had probably ceased to pay tribute, or had done so irregularly, during the years of anarchy following the death of Siphtah, but they had taken no concerted action, nor attempted any revolt, so that when Ramses III. ascended the throne he was spared the trouble of reconquering them. He had merely to claim allegiance to have it at once rendered him—an allegiance which included the populations in the neighbourhood of Qodshu and on the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb. The empire, which had threatened to fall to pieces amid the civil wars, and which would indeed have succumbed had they continued a few years longer, again revived now that an energetic prince had been found to resume the direction of affairs, and to weld together those elements which had been on the point of disintegration.
One state alone appeared to regret the revival of the Imperial power; this was the kingdom of Libya. It had continued to increase in size since the days of Minephtah, and its population had been swelled by the annexation of several strange tribes inhabiting the vast area of the Sahara. One of these, the Mashauasha, acquired the ascendency among these desert races owing to their numbers and valour, and together with the other tribes—the Sabati, the Kaiakasha, the Shaiu, the Hasa, the Bikana, and the Qahaka*—formed a confederacy, which now threatened Egypt on the west. This federation was conducted by Didi, Mashaknu, and Maraiu, all children of that Maraiu who had led the first Libyan invasion, and also by Zamaru and Zautmaru, two princes of less important tribes.** Their combined forces had attacked Egypt for the second time during the years of anarchy, and had gained possession one after another of all the towns in the west of the Delta, from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the town of Qarbina: the Canopic branch of the Nile now formed the limit of their dominion, and they often crossed it to devastate the central provinces.***
* This enumeration is furnished by the summary of the campaigns of Ramses III. in The Great Harris Papyrus. The Sabati of this text are probably identical with the people of the Sapudiu or Spudi (Asbytse), mentioned on one of the pylons of Medinet-Habu.
** The relationship
is nowhere stated, but it is thought to
be probable from the
names of Didi and Maraiu, repeated in
both series of inscriptions.
*** The town of Qarbina has been identified with the Canopus of the Greeks, and also with the modern Korbani; and the district of Gautu, which adjoined it, with the territory of the modern town of Edko. Spiegel-berg throws doubt on the identification of Qarbu or Qarbina, with Canopus. Revillout prefers to connect Qarbina with Heracleopolis Parva in Lower Egypt.
Nakhtusiti had been unable to drive them out, and Ramses had not ventured on the task immediately after his accession. The military institutions of the country had become totally disorganised after the death of Minephtah, and that part of the community responsible for furnishing the army with recruits had been so weakened by the late troubles, that they were in a worse condition than before the first Libyan invasion. The losses they had suffered since Egypt began its foreign conquests had not been repaired by the introduction of fresh elements, and the hope of spoil was now insufficient to induce members of the upper classes to enter the army. There was no difficulty in filling the ranks from the fellahin, but the middle class and the aristocracy, accustomed to ease and wealth, no longer came forward in large numbers, and disdained the military profession. It was the fashion in the schools to contrast the calling of a scribe with that of a foot-soldier or
* This is the order
of march represented during the Syrian
campaign, as gathered
from the arrangement observed in the
pictures at Medinet-Habu.
It was well for Ramses that on ascending the throne he had devoted himself to the task of recruiting the Egyptian army, and of personally and carefully superintending the instruction and equipment of his men; for it was thanks to these precautions that, when the confederated Libyans attacked the country about the Vth year of his reign, he was enabled to repulse them with complete success. “Didi, Mashaknu, Maraiu, together with Zamaru and Zautmaru, had strongly urged them to attack Egypt and to carry fire before them from one end of it to the other.”—“Their warriors confided to each other in their counsels, and their hearts were full: ‘We will be drunk!’ and their princes said within their breasts: ‘We will fill our hearts with violence!’ But their plans were overthrown, thwarted, broken against the heart of the god, and the prayer of their chief, which their lips repeated, was not granted by the god.” They met the Egyptians at a
* The number of the
dead is calculated from that of the
hands and phalli brought
in by the soldiers after the
victory, the heaps of
which are represented at Medinet-Habu.
They regarded their defeat as a judgment from God against which there was no appeal; when their fate had been once pronounced, nothing remained to the condemned except to submit to it humbly, and to accommodate themselves to the master to whom they were now bound by a decree from on high. The prisoners of one day became on the next the devoted soldiers of the prince against whom they had formerly fought resolutely, and they were employed against their own tribes, their employers having no fear of their deserting to the other side during the engagement. They were lodged in the barracks at Thebes, or in the provinces under the feudal lords and governors of the Pharaoh, and were encouraged to retain their savage customs and warlike spirit. They intermarried either with the fellahin or with women of their own tribes, and were reinforced at intervals by fresh prisoners or volunteers. Drafted principally into the Delta and the cities of Middle Egypt, they thus ended by constituting a semi-foreign population, destined by nature and training to the calling of arms, and forming a sort of warrior caste, differing widely from the militia of former times, and known for many generations by their national name of Mashauasha. As early as the XIIth dynasty, the Pharaohs had, in a similar way, imported the Mazaiu from Nubia, and had used them as a military police; Ramses III. now resolved
[Illustration: 299.jpg one of the Libyan chiefs VANQUISHED BY RAMSES III.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
He might perhaps have been tempted to follow up his success and assume the offensive, had not affairs in Asia at this juncture demanded the whole of his attention. The movement of great masses of European tribes in a southerly and easterly direction was beginning to be felt by the inhabitants of the Balkans, who were forced to set out in a double stream of emigration—one crossing the Bosphorus and the Propontis towards the centre of Asia Minor, while the other made for what was later known as Greece Proper, by way of the passes over Olympus and Pindus. The nations who had hitherto inhabited these regions, now found themselves thrust forward by the pressure of invading hordes, and were constrained to move towards the south and east by every avenue which presented itself. It was probably the irruption of the Phrygians into the high table-land which gave rise to the general exodus of these various nations—the Pulasati, the Zakkala, the Shagalasha, the Danauna, and the Uashasha—some of whom had already made their way into Syria and taken part in campaigns there, while others had as yet never measured strength with the Egyptians. The main body of these migrating tribes chose the overland route, keeping within easy distance of the coast, from Pamphylia as far as the confines of Naharaim.
[Illustration: 300.jpg THE WAGGONS OF THE PULASATI AND THEIR CONFEDERATES]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
They were accompanied by their families, who must have been mercilessly jolted in the ox-drawn square waggons with solid wheels in which they travelled. The body of the vehicle was built either of roughly squared planks, or else of something resembling wicker-work. The round axletree was kept in its place by means of a rude pin, and four oxen were harnessed abreast to the whole structure. The children wore no clothes, and had, for the most part, their hair tied into a tuft on the top of their heads; the women affected a closely fitting cap, and were wrapped in large blue or red garments drawn close to the body.* The men’s attire varied according to the tribe to which they belonged. The Pulasati undoubtedly held the chief place; they were both soldiers and sailors, and we must recognise in them the foremost of those tribes known to the Greeks of classical times as the Oarians, who infested the coasts of Asia Minor as well as those of Greece and the AEgean islands.**
* These details are
taken from the battle-scenes at Medinet-
Habu.
** The Pulasati have been connected with the Philistines by Champollion, and subsequently by the early English Egyptologists, who thought they recognised in them the inhabitants of the Shephelah. Chabas was the first to identify them with the Pelasgi; Unger and Brugsch prefer to attribute to them a Libyan origin, but the latter finally returns to the Pelasgic and Philistine hypothesis. They were without doubt the Philistines, but in their migratory state, before they settled on the coast of Palestine.
[Illustration: 301.jpg PULASATI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
Crete was at this time the seat of a maritime empire, whose chiefs were perpetually cruising the seas and harassing the civilized states of the Eastern Mediterranean. These sea-rovers had grown wealthy through piracy, and contact with the merchants of Syria and Egypt had awakened in them a taste for a certain luxury and refinement, of which we find no traces in the remains of their civilization anterior to this period. Some of the symbols in the inscriptions found on their monuments recall certain of the Egyptian characters, while others present an original aspect and seem to be of AEgean origin. We find in them, arranged in juxtaposition, signs representing flowers, birds, fish, quadrupeds of various kinds, members of the human body, and boats and household implements. From the little which is known of this script we are inclined to derive it from a similar source to that which has furnished those we meet with in several parts of Asia Minor and Northern Syria. It would appear that in ancient times, somewhere in the centre of the Peninsula—but under what influence or during what period we know not—a syllabary was developed, of which varieties were handed on from tribe to tribe, spreading on the one side to the Hittites, Cilicians, and the peoples on the borders of Syria and Egypt, and on the other to the Trojans, to the people of the Cyclades, and into Crete and Greece. It is easy to distinguish the Pulasati by the felt helmet which they wore fastened under the chin by two straps and surmounted by a crest of feathers. The upper part of their bodies was covered by bands of leather or some thick material, below which hung a simple loin-cloth, while their feet were bare or shod with short sandals. They carried each a round buckler with two handles, and the stout bronze sword common to the northern races, suspended by a cross belt passing over the left shoulder, and were further armed with two daggers and two javelins. They hurled the latter from a short distance while attacking, and then drawing their sword or daggers, fell upon the enemy; we find among them a few chariots of the Hittite type, each manned by a driver and two fighting men. The Tyrseni appear to have been the most numerous after the Pulasati, next to whom
* The Zakkara, or Zakkala, have been identified with the Teucrians by Lauth, Chabas, and Fr. Lenormant, with the Zygritse of Libya by linger and Brugsch, who subsequently returned to the Teucrian hypothesis; W. Max Millier regards them as an Asiatic nation probably of the Lydian family. The identification with the Siculo-Pelasgi of the AEgean Sea was proposed by Maspero.
** The form of the word
shows that it is of Asiatic origin,
Uasasos, Uassos, which
refers us to Caria or Lycia.
Their fleet sailed along the coast and kept within sight of the force on land. The squadrons depicted on the monuments are without doubt those of the two peoples, the Pulasati and Zakkala. Their ships resembled in many respects those of Egypt, except in the fact that they had no cut-water. The bow and stern rose up straight like the neck of a goose or swan; two structures for fighting purposes were erected above the dock, while a rail running round the sides of the vessel protected the bodies of the rowers. An upper yard curved in shape hung from the single mast, which terminated in a top for the look-out during a battle. The upper yard was not made to lower, and the top-men managed the sail in the same manner as the Egyptian sailors. The resemblance between this fleet and that of Ramses is easily explained. The dwellers on the AEgean, owing to the knowledge they had acquired of the Phoenician galleys, which were accustomed to cruise annually in their waters, became experts in shipbuilding.
[Illustration: 304.jpg A SIHAGALASHA CHIEF]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Petrie.
They copied the lines of the Phoenician craft, imitated the rigging, and learned to manoeuvre their vessels so well, both on ordinary occasions and in a battle, that they could now oppose to the skilled eastern navigators ships as well fitted out and commanded by captains as experienced as those of Egypt or Asia.
There had been a general movement among all these peoples at the very time when Ramses was repelling the attack of the Libyans; “the isles had quivered, and had vomited forth their people at once."*
* This campaign is mentioned in the inscription of Medinet- Habu. We find some information about the war in the Great Harris Papyrus, also in the inscription of Medinet-Habu which describes the campaign of the year V., and in other shorter texts of the same temple.
They were subjected to one of those irresistible impulses such as had driven the Shepherds into Egypt; or again, in later times, had carried away the Cimmerians and the Scyths to the pillage of Asia Minor: “no country could hold out against their arms, neither Khati, nor Qodi, nor Carchemish, nor Arvad, nor Alasia, without being brought to nothing.” The ancient kingdoms of Sapalulu and Khatusaru, already tottering, crumbled to pieces under the shock, and were broken up into their primitive elements. The barbarians, unable to carry the towns by assault, and too impatient to resort to a lengthened siege, spread over the valley of the Orontes, burning and devastating the country everywhere. Having reached the frontiers of the empire, in the country of the Amorites, they came to a halt, and constructing an entrenched camp, installed within it their women and the booty they had acquired. Some of their predatory bands, having ravaged the Bekaa, ended by attacking the subjects of the Pharaoh himself, and their chiefs dreamed of an invasion of Egypt. Ramses, informed of their design by the despatches of his officers and vassals, resolved to prevent its accomplishment. He summoned his troops together, both indigenous and mercenary, in his own person looked after their armament and commissariat, and in the VIIIth year of his reign crossed the frontier near Zalu. He advanced by forced marches to meet the enemy, whom he encountered somewhere in Southern Syria, on the borders of the Shephelah,* and after a stubbornly contested campaign obtained the victory. He carried off from the field, in addition to the treasures of the confederate tribes, some of the chariots which had been used for the transport of their families. The survivors made their way hastily to the north-west, in the direction of the sea, in order to receive the support of their navy, but the king followed them step by step.
* No site is given for these battles. E. de Rouge placed the theatre of war in Syria, and his opinion was accepted by Brugsch. Chabas referred it to the mouth of the Nile near Pelusium, and his authority has prevailed up to the present. The remarks of W. Max Mueller have brought me back to the opinion of the earlier Egyptologists; but I differ from him in looking for the locality further south, and not to the mouth of Nahr el-Kelb as the site of the naval battle. It seems to me that the fact that the Zakkala were prisoners at Dor, and the Pulasati in the Shephelah, is enough to assign the campaign to the regions I have mentioned in the text.
It is recorded that he occupied himself with lion-hunting en route after the example of the victors of
[Illustration: 307.jpg THE ARMY OP RAMSES III. ON THE MARCH, AND THE LION-HUNT]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
Some of the AEgean galleys were capsized and sank when the Egyptian vessels rammed them with their sharp stems, and the crews, in endeavouring to escape to land by swimming, were picked off by the arrows of the archers of the guard who were commanded by Ramses and his sons; they perished in the waves, or only escaped through the compassion of the victors. “I had fortified,” said the Pharaoh, “my frontier at Zahi; I had drawn up before these people my generals, my provincial governors, the vassal princes, and the best of my soldiers. The mouths of the river seemed to be a mighty rampart of galleys, barques, and vessels of all kinds, equipped from the bow to the stern with valiant armed men. The infantry, the flower of Egypt, were as lions roaring on the mountains; the charioteers, selected from among the most rapid warriors, had for their captains only officers confident in themselves; the horses quivered in all their limbs, and were burning to trample the nations underfoot. As for me, I was like the warlike Montu: I stood up before them and they saw the vigour of my arms. I, King Ramses, I was as a hero who is conscious of his valour, and who stretches his hands over the people in the day of battle. Those who have violated my frontier will never more garner harvests from this earth: the period of their soul has been fixed for ever. My forces were drawn up before them on the ‘Very Green,’ a devouring flame approached them at the river mouth, annihilation embraced them on every side. Those who were on the strand I laid low on the seashore, slaughtered like victims of the butcher. I made their vessels to capsize, and their riches fell into the sea.” Those who had not fallen in the fight were caught, as it were, in the cast of a net. A rapid cruiser of the fleet carried the Egyptian standard along the coast as far as the regions of the Orontes and Saros. The land troops, on the other hand, following on the heels of the defeated enemy, pushed through Coele-Syria, and in their first burst of zeal succeeded in reaching the plains of the Euphrates. A century had elapsed since a Pharaoh had planted his standard in this region, and the country must have seemed as novel to the soldiers of Ramses III. as to those of his predecessor Thutmosis.
[Illustration: 308.jpg THE DEFEAT OF THE PEOPLES OF THE SEA]
The Khati were still its masters; and all enfeebled as they were by the ravages of the invading barbarians, were nevertheless not slow in preparing to resist their ancient enemies. The majority of the citadels shut their gates in the face of Ramses, who, wishing to lose no time, did not attempt to besiege them: he treated their territory with the usual severity, devastating their open towns, destroying their harvests, breaking down their fruit trees, and cutting away their forests. He was able, moreover, without arresting his march, to carry by assault several of their fortified towns, Alaza among the number, the destruction of which is represented in the scenes of his victories. The spoils were considerable, and came very opportunely to reward the soldiers or to provide funds for the erection of monuments. The last battalion of troops, however, had hardly recrossed the isthmus when Lotanu became again its own master, and Egyptian rule was once more limited to its traditional provinces of Kharu and Phoenicia. The King of the Khati appears among the prisoners whom the Pharaoh is represented as bringing to his father Amon; Carchemish, Tunipa, Khalabu, Katna, Pabukhu, Arvad, Mitanni, Mannus, Asi, and a score of other famous towns of this period appear in the list of the subjugated nations, recalling the triumphs of Thutmosis III. and Amenothes II. Ramses did not allow himself to be deceived into thinking that his success was final. He accepted the protestations of obedience which were spontaneously offered him, but he undertook no further expedition of importance either to restrain or to provoke his enemies: the restricted rule which satisfied his exemplar Ramses II. ought, he thought, to be sufficient for his own ambition.
Egypt breathed freely once more on the announcement of the victory; henceforward she was “as a bed without anguish.” “Let each woman now go to and fro according to her will,” cried the sovereign, in describing the campaign, “her ornaments upon her, and directing her steps to any place she likes!” And in order to provide still further guarantees of public security, he converted his Asiatic captives, as he previously had his African prisoners, into a bulwark against the barbarians, and a safeguard of the frontier. The war must, doubtless, have decimated Southern Syria; and he planted along its coast what remained of the defeated tribes—the Philistines in the Shephelah, and the Zakkala on the borders of the great oak forest stretching from Oarmel to Dor.*
* It is in this region
that we find henceforward the Hebrews
in contact with the
Philistines: at the end of the XXIst
Egyptian dynasty a scribe
makes Dor a town of the Zakkala.
Watch-towers were erected for the supervision of this region, and for rallying-points in case of internal revolts or attacks from without. One of these, the Migdol of Ramses III., was erected, not far from the scene of the decisive battle, on the spot where the spoils had been divided. This living barrier, so to speak, stood between the Nile valley and the dangers which threatened it from Asia, and it was not long before its value was put to the proof. The Libyans, who had been saved from destruction by the diversion created in their favour on the eastern side of the empire, having now recovered their courage, set about collecting their hordes together for a fresh invasion. They returned to the attack in the XIth year of Ramses, under the leadership of Kapur, a prince of the Mashauasha.*
* The second campaign
against the Libyans is known to us
from the inscriptions
of the year XI. at Medinet-Habu.
[Illustration: 313.jpg THE CAPTIVE CHIEFS OF RAMSES III. AT MEDINET-IHABU]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. The first prisoner on the left is the Prince of the Khati (cf. the cut on p. 318 of the present work), the second is the Prince of the Amauru [Amoritos], the third the Prince of the Zakkala, the fourth that of the Shardana, the fifth that of the Shakalasha (see the cut on p. 304 of this work), and the sixth that of the Tursha [Tyrseni].
Their soul had said to them for the second time that “they would end their lives in the nomes of Egypt, that they would till its valleys and its plains as their own land.” The issue did not correspond with their intentions. “Death fell upon them within Egypt, for they had hastened with their feet to the furnace which consumes corruption, under the fire of the valour of the king who rages like Baal from the heights of heaven. All his limbs are invested with victorious strength; with his right hand he lays hold of the multitudes, his left extends to those who are against him, like a cloud of arrows directed upon them to destroy them, and his sword cuts like that of Montu. Kapur, who had come to demand homage, blind with fear, threw down his arms, and his troops did the same. He sent up to heaven a suppliant cry, and his son [Mashashalu] arrested his foot and his hand; for, behold, there rises beside him the god who knows what he has in his heart: His Majesty falls upon their heads as a mountain of granite and crushes them, the earth drinks up their blood as if it had been water...; their army was slaughtered, slaughtered their soldiers,” near a fortress situated on the borders of the desert called the “Castle of Usirmari-Miamon.” They were seized, “they were stricken, their arms bound, like geese piled up in the bottom of a boat, under the feet of His Majesty."* The fugitives were pursued at the sword’s point from the Castle of Usirmari-Miamon to the Castle of the Sands, a distance of over thirty miles.**
* The name of the son
of Kapur, Mashashalu, Masesyla, which
is wanting in this inscription,
is supplied from a parallel
inscription.
* The Castle of Usirmari-Miamon was “on the mountain of the horn of the world,” which induces me to believe that we must seek its site on the borders of the Libyan desert. The royal title entering into its name being liable to change with every reign, it is possible that we have an earlier reference to this stronghold in a mutilated passage of the Athribis Stele, which relates to the campaigns of Minephtah; it must have commanded one of the most frequented routes leading to the oasis of Amon.
[Illustration: 314.jpg RAMSES III. BINDS THE CHIEFS OF THE LIBYANS]
From a photograph by Beato.
Two thousand and seventy-five Libyans were left upon the ground that day, two thousand and fifty-two perished in other engagements, while two thousand and thirty-two, both male and female, were made prisoners. These were almost irreparable losses for a people of necessarily small numbers, and if we add the number of those who had succumbed in the disaster of six years before, we can readily realise how discouraged the invaders must have been, and how little likely they were to try the fortune of war once more. Their power dwindled and vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen; the provisional cohesion given to their forces by a few ambitious chiefs broke up after their repeated defeats, and the rudiments of an empire which had struck terror into the Pharaohs, resolved itself into its primitive elements, a number of tribes scattered over the desert. They were driven back beyond the Libyan mountains; fortresses* guarded the routes they had previously followed, and they were obliged henceforward to renounce any hope of an invasion en masse, and to content themselves with a few raiding expeditions into the fertile plain of the Delta, where they had formerly found a transitory halting-place. Counter-raids organised by the local troops or by the mercenaries who garrisoned the principal towns in the neighbourhood of Memphis—Hermopolis and Thinisl—inflicted punishment upon them when they became too audacious. Their tribes, henceforward, as far as Egypt was concerned, formed a kind of reserve from which the Pharaoh could raise soldiers every year, and draw sufficient materials to bring his army up to fighting strength when internal revolt or an invasion from without called for military activity.
* The Great Harris Papyrus speaks of fortifications erected in the towns of Anhuri-Shu, possibly Thinis, and of Thot, possibly Hermopolis, in order to repel the tribes of the Tihonu who were ceaselessly harassing the frontier.
[Illustration: 318.jpg THE PRINCE OF THE KHATI]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph taken at Medinet-
Habu.
The campaign of the XIth year brought to an end the great military expeditions of Ramses III. Henceforward he never took the lead in any more serious military enterprise than that of repressing the Bedawin of Seir for acts of brigandage,* or the Ethiopians for some similar reason. He confined his attention to the maintenance of commercial and industrial relations with manufacturing countries, and with the markets of Asia and Africa. He strengthened the garrisons of Sinai, and encouraged the working of the ancient mines in that region. He sent a colony of quarry-men and of smelters to the land of Atika, in order to work the veins of silver which were alleged to exist there.**
The Sairu of the
Egyptian texts have been identified with
the Bedawin of Seir.
** This is the Gebel-Ataka of our day. All this district is imperfectly explored, but we know that it contains mines and quarries some of which were worked as late as in the time of the Mameluk Sultans.
He launched a fleet on the Red Sea, and sent it to the countries of fragrant spices. “The captains of the sailors were there, together with the chiefs of the corvee and accountants, to provide provision” for the people of the Divine Lands “from the innumerable products of Egypt; and these products were counted by myriads. Sailing through the great sea of Qodi, they arrived at Puantt without mishap, and there collected cargoes for their galleys and ships, consisting of all the unknown marvels of Tonutir, as well as considerable quantities of the perfumes of Puatin, which they stowed on board by tens of thousands without number. The sons of the princes of Tonutir came themselves into Qimit with their tributes. They reached the region of Coptos safe and sound, and disembarked there in peace with their riches.” It was somewhere about Sau and Tuau that the merchants and royal officers landed, following the example of the expeditions of the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties. Here they organised caravans of asses and slaves, which taking the shortest route across the mountain—that of the valley of Rahanu—carried the precious commodities to Coptos, whence they were transferred to boats and distributed along the river. The erection of public buildings, which had been interrupted since the time of Minephtah, began again with renewed activity. The captives in the recent victories furnished the requisite labour, while the mines, the voyages to the Somali coast, and the tributes of vassals provided the necessary money. Syria was not lost sight of in this resumption of peaceful occupations. The overthrow of the Khati secured Egyptian rule in this region, and promised a long tranquillity within its borders. One temple at least was erected in the country—that of Pa-kanana—where the princes of Kharu were to assemble to offer worship to the Pharaoh, and to pay each one his quota of the general tribute. The Pulasati were employed to
[Illustration: 320.jpg SIGNS, ARMS AND INSTRUMENTS]
All the knowledge of the Egyptian painters, and all the technical skill of their artificers in ceramic, must have been employed to compose such harmoniously balanced decorations, with their free handling of line and colour, and their thousands of rosettes, squares, stars, and buttons of varicoloured pastes.*
* This temple has been known since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the Louvre is in possession of some fragments from it which came from Salt’s collection; it was rediscovered in 1870, and some portions of it were transferred by Mariette to the Boulaq Museum. The remainder was destroyed by the fellahin, at the instigation of the enlightened amateurs of Cairo, and fragments of it have passed into various private collections. The decoration has been attributed to Chaldoan influence, but it is a work purely Egyptian, both in style and in technique.
[Illustration: 321.jpg THE COLOSSAL OSIRIAN FIGURES in THE FIRST COURT AT MEDINET-HABU]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The difficulties to overcome were so appalling, that when the marvellous work was once accomplished, no subsequent attempt was made to construct a second like it: all the remaining structures of Ramses III., whether at Memphis, in the neighbourhood of Abydos, or at Karnak, were in the conventional style of the Pharaohs. He determined, nevertheless, to give to the exterior of the Memnonium, which he built near Medinet-Habu for the worship of himself, the proportions and appearance of an Asiatic “Migdol,” influenced probably by his remembrance of similar structures which he had seen during his Syrian campaign.
These were years of profound tranquillity. The Pharaoh intended that absolute order should reign throughout his realm, and that justice should be dispensed impartially within it.
[Illustration: 322.jpg THE FIRST PYLON OF THE TEMPLE]
There were to be no more exactions, no more crying iniquities: whoever was discovered oppressing the people, no matter whether he were court official or feudal lord—was instantly deprived of his functions, and replaced by an administrator of tried integrity. Ramses boasts, moreover, in an idyllic manner, of having planted trees everywhere, and of having built arbours wherein the people might sit in the shade in the open air; while women might go to and fro where they would in security, no one daring to insult them on the way. The Shardanian and Libyan mercenaries were restricted to the castles which they garrisoned, and were subjected to such a severe discipline that no one had any cause of complaint against these armed barbarians settled in the heart of Egypt. “I have,” continues the king, “lifted up every miserable one out of his misfortune, I have granted life to him, I have saved him from the mighty who were oppressing him, and have secured rest for every one in his own town.” The details of the description are exaggerated, but the general import of it is true. Egypt had recovered the peace and prosperity of which it had been deprived for at least half a century, that is, since the death of Minephtah. The king, however, was not in such a happy condition as his people, and court intrigues embittered the later years of his life. One of his sons, whose name is unknown to us, but who is designated in the official records by the nickname of Pentauirit, formed a conspiracy against him. His mother, Tii, who was a woman of secondary rank, took it into her head to secure the crown for him, to the detriment of the children of Queen Isit. An extensive plot was hatched in which scribes, officers of the guard, priests, and officials in high place, both natives and foreigners, were involved. A resort to the supernatural was at first attempted,
* The translations by Deveria, Lepage-Renouf, and Erman agree in making it a case of judicial suicide: there was left to the condemned a choice of his mode of death, in order to avoid the scandal of a public execution. It is also possible to make it a condemnation to death in person, which did not allow of the substitution of a proxy willing, for a payment to his family, to undergo death in place of the condemned; but, unfortunately, no other text is to be found supporting the existence of such a practice in Egypt.
It makes one’s flesh creep to look at it: the hands and feet are tied by strong bands, and are curled up as if under an intolerable pain; the abdomen is drawn up, the stomach projects like a ball, the chest is contracted, the head is thrown back, the face is contorted in a hideous grimace, the retracted lips expose the teeth, and the mouth is open as if to give utterance to a last despairing cry. The conviction is borne in upon us that the man was invested while still alive with the wrappings of the dead. Is this the mummy of Pentauirit, or of some other prince as culpable as he was, and condemned to this frightful punishment? In order to prevent the recurrence of such wicked plots, Pharaoh resolved to share his throne with that one of his sons who had most right to it. In the XXXIInd year of his reign he called together his military and civil chiefs, the generals of the foreign mercenaries, the Shardana, the priests, and the nobles of the court, and presented to them, according to custom, his heir-designate, who
[Illustration: 327.jpg THE MUMMY OF RAMSES III.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a, photograph by Emil Brugsch-
Bey.
The joint reign lasted for only four years. Ramses III. was not much over sixty years of age when he died. He was still vigorous and muscular, but he had become stout and heavy. The fatty matter of the body having been dissolved by the natron in the process of embalming, the skin distended during life has gathered up into enormous loose folds, especially about the nape of the neck, under the chin, on the hips, and at the articulations of the limbs. The closely shaven head and cheeks present no trace of hair or beard. The forehead, although neither broad nor high, is better proportioned than that of Ramses II.; the supra-orbital ridges are less accentuated than his, the cheek-bones not so prominent, the nose not so arched, and the chin and jaw less massive. The eyes were perhaps larger, but no opinion can be offered on this point, for the eyelids have been cut away, and the cleared-out cavities have been filled with rags. The ears do not stand out so far from the head as those of Ramses II., but they have been pierced for ear-rings. The mouth, large by nature, has been still further widened in the process of embalming, owing to the awkwardness of the operator, who has cut into the cheeks at the side. The thin lips allow the white and regular teeth to be seen; the first molar on the right has been either broken in half, or has worn away more rapidly than the rest. Ramses III. seems, on the whole, to have been a sort of reduced copy, a little more delicate in make, of Ramses II.; his face shows more subtlety of expression and intelligence, though less nobility than that of the latter, while his figure is not so upright, his shoulders not so broad, and his general muscular vigour less. What has been said of his personality may be extended to his reign; it was evidently and designedly an imitation of the reign of Ramses IL, but fell short of its model owing to the insufficiency of his resources in men and money. If Ramses III. did not succeed in becoming one of the most powerful of the Theban Pharaohs, it was not for lack of energy or ability; the depressed condition of Egypt at the time limited the success of his endeavours and caused them to fall short of his intentions. The work accomplished by him was not on this account less glorious.
* The order of the Ramessides was first made out by Champollion the younger and by Rosellini. Bunsen and Lepsius reckon in it thirteen kings; E. de Rouge puts the number at fifteen or sixteen; Maspero makes the number to be twelve, which was reduced still further by Setho. Erman thinks that Ramses IX. and Ramses X. were also possibly sons of Ramses III.; he consequently declines to recognise King Maritumu as a son of that sovereign, as Brugsch would make out.
* The monuments of these
later Ramessides are so rare and so
doubtful that I cannot
yet see my way to a solution of the
questions which they
raise.
The short reigns of these Pharaohs were marked by no events which would cast lustre on their names; one might say that they had nothing else to do than to enjoy peacefully the riches accumulated by their forefather. Ramses IV. was anxious to profit by the commercial relations which had been again established between Egypt and Puanit, and, in order to facilitate the transit between Coptos and Kosseir, founded a station, and a temple dedicated to Isis, in the mountain of Bakhni; by this route, we learn, more than eight thousand men had passed under the auspices of the high priest of Amon, Nakh-tu-ramses. This is the only undertaking of public utility which we can attribute to any of these kings. As we see them in their statues and portraits, they are heavy and squat and without refinement, with protruding eyes, thick lips, flattened and commonplace noses, round and expressionless faces. Their work was confined to the engraving of their cartouches on the blank spaces of the temples at Karnak and Medinet-Habu, and the addition of a few stones to the buildings at Memphis, Abydos, and Heliopolis. Whatever energy and means they possessed were expended on the construction of their magnificent tombs.
[Illustration: 331.jpg A RAMSES OF THE XXth DYNASTY]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
Bey. This is the
Ramses VI. of the series now generally
adopted.
These may still be seen in the Biban el-Moluk, and no visitor can refrain from admiring them for their magnitude and decoration. As to funerary chapels, owing to the shortness of the reigns of these kings, there was not time to construct them, and they therefore made up for this want by appropriating the chapel of their father, which was at Medinet-Habu, and it was here consequently that their worship was maintained. The last of the sons of Ramses III. was succeeded by another and equally ephemeral Ramses; after whom came Ramses X. and Ramses XI., who re-established the tradition of more lasting reigns. There was now no need of expeditions against Kharu or Libya, for these enfeebled countries no longer disputed, from the force of custom, the authority of Egypt. From time to time an embassy from these countries would arrive at Thebes, bringing presents, which were pompously recorded as representing so much tribute.* If it is true that a people which has no history is happy, then Egypt ought to be reckoned as more fortunate under the feebler descendants of Ramses III. than it had ever been under the most famous Pharaohs.
* The mention of a tribute,
for instance, in the time of
Ramses IV. from the
Lotanu.
Thebes continued to be the favourite royal residence. Here in its temple the kings were crowned, and in its palaces they passed the greater part of their lives, and here in its valley of sepulchres they were laid to rest when their reigns and lives were ended. The small city of the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty had long encroached upon the plain, and was now transformed into an immense town, with magnificent monuments, and a motley population, having absorbed in its extension the villages of Ashiru,* and Madit, and even the southern Apit, which we now call Luxor. But their walls could still be seen, rising up in the middle of modern constructions, a memorial of the heroic ages, when the power of the Theban princes was trembling in the balance, and when conflicts with the neighbouring barons or with the legitimate king were on the point of breaking out at every moment.**
* The village of Ashiru was situated to the south of the temple of Karnak, close to the temple of Mut. Its ruins, containing the statues of Sokhit collected by Amenothes III., extend around the remains marked X in Mariette’s plan.
* These are the walls which are generally regarded as marking the sacred enclosure of the temples: an examination of the ruins of Thebes shows us that, during the XXth and XXIst dynasties, brick-built houses lay against these walls both on the inner and outer sides, so that they must have been half hidden by buildings, as are the ancient walls of Paris at the present day.
The inhabitants of Apit retained their walls, which coincided almost exactly with the boundary of Nsittaui, the great sanctuary of Amon; Ashiru sheltered behind its ramparts the temple of Mut, while Apit-risit clustered around a building consecrated by Amenothes III. to his divine father, the lord of Thebes. Within the boundary walls of Thebes extended whole suburbs, more or less densely populated and prosperous, through which ran avenues of sphinxes connecting together the three chief boroughs of which the sovereign city was composed. On every side might have been seen the same collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. The population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners attracted hither by commerce or held as slaves.
* Letronne, after having shown that we have no authentic ancient document giving us the population, fixes it at 200,000 souls. My estimate, which is, if anything, exaggerated, is based on the comparison of the area of ancient Thebes and that of such modern towns as Shit, Girgeh and Qina, whose populations are known for the last fifty years from the census.
[Illustration: 334.jpg MAP: THEBES IN THE XXTH DYNASTY]
The court of the Pharaoh drew to the city numerous provincials, who, coming thither to seek their fortune, took up their abode there, planting in the capital of Southern Egypt types from the north and the centre of the country, as well as from Nubia and the Oases; such a continuous infusion of foreign material into the ancient Theban stock gave rise to families of a highly mixed character, in which all the various races of Egypt were blended in the most capricious fashion. In every twenty officers, and in the same number of ordinary officials, about half would be either Syrians, or recently naturalised Nubians, or the descendants of both, and among the citizens such names as Pakhari the Syrian, Palamnani the native of the Lebanon, Pinahsi the negro, Palasiai the Alasian, preserved the indications of foreign origin.* A similar mixture of races was found in other cities, and Memphis, Bubastis, Tanis, and Siut must have presented as striking an aspect in this respect as Thebes.** At Memphis there were regular colonies of Phoenician, Canaanite, and Amorite merchants sufficiently prosperous to have temples there to their national gods, and influential enough to gain adherents to their religion from the indigenous inhabitants. They worshipped Baal, Aniti. Baal-Zaphuna, and Ashtoreth, side by side with Phtah, Nofirtumu, and Sokhit,*** and this condition of things at Memphis was possibly paralleled elsewhere—as at Tanis and Bubastis.
* Among the forty-three individuals compromised in the conspiracy against Ramses III. whose names have been examined by Deveria, nine are foreigners, chiefly Semites, and were so recognised by the Egyptians themselves—Adiram, Balmahara, Garapusa, lunini the Libyan, Paiarisalama, possibly the Jerusalemite, Nanaiu, possibly the Ninevite, Palulca the Lycian, Qadendena, and Uarana or Naramu.
** An examination of
the stelae of Abydos shows the extent of
foreign influence in
this city in the middle of the
XVIIIth dynasty.
*** These gods are mentioned in the preamble of a letter written on the verso of the Sallier Papyrus. From the mode in which they are introduced we may rightly infer that they had, like the Egyptian gods who are mentioned with them, their chapels at Memphis. A place in Memphis is called “the district called the district of the Khatiu” is an inscription of the IIIth year of Ai, and shows that Hittites were there by the side of Canaanites.
This blending of races was probably not so extensive in the country districts, except in places where mercenaries were employed as garrisons; but Sudanese or Hittite slaves, brought back by the soldiers of the ranks, had introduced Ethiopian and Asiatic elements into many a family of the fellahin.*
* One of the letters
in the Great Bologna Papyrus treats of
a Syrian slave, employed
as a cultivator at Hermopolis, who
had run away from his
master.
We have only to examine in any of our museums the statues of the Memphite and Theban periods respectively, to see the contrast between the individuals represented in them as far as regards stature and appearance. Some members of the courts of the Ramessides stand out as genuine Semites notwithstanding the disguise of their Egyptian names; and in the times of Kheops and Usirtasen they would have been regarded as barbarians. Many of them exhibit on their faces a blending of the distinctive features of one or other of the predominant Oriental races of the time. Additional evidence of a mixture of races is forthcoming when we examine with an unbiased mind the mummies of the period, and the complexity of the new elements introduced among the people by the political movements of the later centuries is thus strongly confirmed. The new-comers had all been absorbed and assimilated by the country, but the generations which arose from this continual cross-breeding, while representing externally the Egyptians of older epochs, in manners, language, and religion, were at bottom something different, and the difference became the more accentuated as the foreign elements increased. The people were thus gradually divested of the character which had distinguished them before the conquest of Syria; the dispositions and defects imported from without counteracted to such an extent their own native dispositions and defects that all marks of individuality were effaced and nullified. The race tended to become more and more what it long continued to be afterwards,—a lifeless and inert mass, without individual energy—endowed, it is true, with patience, endurance, cheerfulness of temperament, and good nature, but with little power of self-government, and thus forced to submit to foreign masters who made use of it and oppressed it without pity.
The upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses. The feudal nobles who had expelled the Shepherds, and carried the frontiers of the empire to the banks of the Euphrates, seemed to have expended their energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist. As long as Egypt was restricted to the Nile valley, there was no such disproportion between the power of the Pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when occasion arose, even against the monarch. The conquest of Asia, while it compelled them either to take up arms themselves or to send their troops to a distance, accustomed them and their soldiers to a passive obedience. The maintenance of a strict discipline in the army was the first condition of successful campaigning at great distances from the mother country and in the midst of hostile people, and the unquestioning respect which they had to pay to the orders of their general prepared them for abject submission to the will of their sovereign. To their bravery, moveover, they owed not only money and slaves, but also necklaces and bracelets of honour, and distinctions and offices in the Pharaonic administration. The king, in addition, neglected no opportunity for securing their devotion to himself. He gave to them in marriage his sisters, his daughters, his cousins, and any of the princesses whom he was not compelled by law to make his own wives. He selected from their harems nursing-mothers for his own sons, and this choice established between him and them a foster relationship, which was as binding among the Egyptians and other Oriental peoples as one of blood. It was not even necessary for the establishment of this relation that the foster-mother’s connexion with the Pharaoh’s son should be durable or even effective: the woman had only to offer her breast to the child for a moment, and this symbol was quite enough to make her his nurse—his true monait. This fictitious fosterage was carried so far, that it was even made use of in the case of youths and persons of mature age. When an Egyptian woman wished to adopt an adult, the law prescribed that she should offer him the breast, and from that moment he became her son. A similar ceremony was prescribed in the case of men who wished to assume the quality of male nurse—monai—or even, indeed, of female nurse—monait—like that of their wives; according to which they were to place, it would seem, the end of one of their fingers in the mouth of the child.* Once this affinity was established, the fidelity of these feudal lords was established beyond question; and their official duties to the sovereign were not considered as accomplished when they had fulfilled their military obligations, for they continued to serve him in the palace as they had served him on the field. Wherever the necessities of the government called them—at Memphis, at Ramses, or elsewhere—they assembled around the Pharaoh; like him they had their palaces at Thebes, and when they died they were anxious to be buried there beside him.**
* These symbolical modes of adoption were first pointed out by Maspero. Legend has given examples of them: as, for instance, where Isis fosters the child of Malkander, King of Byblos, by inserting the tip of her finger in its mouth.
** The tomb of a prince of Tobui, the lesser Aphroditopolis, was discovered at Thebes by Maspero. The rock-out tombs of two Thinite princes were noted in the same necropolis. These two were of the time of Thutmosis III. I have remarked in tombs not yet made public the mention of princes of El-Kab, who played an important part about the person of the Pharaohs down to the beginning of the XXth dynasty.
Many of the old houses had become extinct, while others, owing to marriages, were absorbed into the royal family; the fiefs conceded to the relations or favourites of the Pharaoh continued to exist, indeed, as of old, but the ancient distrustful and turbulent feudality had given place to an aristocracy of courtiers, who lived oftener in attendance on the monarch than on their own estates, and whose authority continued to diminish to the profit of the absolute rule of the king. There would be nothing astonishing in the “count” becoming nothing more than a governor, hereditary or otherwise, in Thebes itself; he could hardly be anything higher in the capital of the empire.* But the same restriction of authority was evidenced in all the provinces: the recruiting of soldiers, the receipt of taxes, most of the offices associated with the civil or military administration, became more and more affairs of the State, and passed from the hands of the feudal lord into those of the functionaries of the Crown. The few barons who still lived on their estates, while they were thus dispossessed of the greater part of their prerogatives, obtained some compensation, on the other hand, on the side of religion. From early times they had been by birth the heads of the local cults, and their protocol had contained, together with those titles which justified their possession of the temporalities of the nome, others which attributed to them spiritual supremacy. The sacred character with which they were invested became more and more prominent in proportion as their political influence became curtailed, and we find scions of the old warlike families or representatives of a new lineage at Thinis, at Akhmim,** in the nome of Baalu, at Hieraconpolis,*** at El-Kab,**** and in every place where we have information from the monuments as to their position, bestowing more concern upon their sacerdotal than on their other duties.
* Rakhmiri and his son Manakhpirsonbu were both “counts “of Thebes under Thutmosis III., and there is nothing to show that there was any other person among them invested with the same functions and belonging to a different family.
** For example, the tomb of Anhurimosu, high priest of Anhuri-Shu and prince of Thinis, under Minephtah, where the sacerdotal characterPage 106
is almost exclusively prominent. The same is the case with the tombs of the princes of Akhmim in the time of Khuniatonu and his successors: the few still existing in 1884-5 have not been published. The stelae belonging to them are at Paris and Berlin.
*** Horimosu, Prince
of Hieraconpolis under Thutmosis III.,
is, above everything
else, a prophet of the local Horus.
**** The princes of El-Kab during the XIXth and XXth dynasties were, before everything, priests of Nekhabit, as appears from an examination of their tombs, which, lying in a side valley, far away from the tomb of Pihiri, are rarely visited.
This transfiguration of the functions of the barons, which had been completed under the XIXth and XXth dynasties, corresponded with a more general movement by which the Pharaohs themselves were driven to accentuate their official position as high priests, and to assign to their sons sacerdotal functions in relation to the principal deities. This rekindling of religious fervour would not, doubtless, have restrained military zeal in case of war;* but if it did not tend to suppress entirely individual bravery, it discouraged the taste for arms and for the bold adventures which had characterised the old feudality.
* The sons of Ramses
II., Khamoisit and Maritumu, were bravo
warriors in spite of
their being high priests of Phtah at
Memphis, and of Ra at
Heliopolis.
The duties of sacrificing, of offering prayer, of celebrating the sacred rites according to the prescribed forms, and rendering due homage to the gods in the manner they demanded, were of such an exactingly scrupulous and complex character that the Pharaohs and the lords of earlier times had to assign them to men specially fitted for, and appointed to, the task; now that they had assumed these absorbing functions themselves, they were obliged to delegate to others an increasingly greater proportion of their civil and military duties. Thus, while the king and his great vassals were devoutly occupying themselves in matters of worship and theology, generals by profession were relieving them of the care of commanding their armies; and as these individuals were frequently the chiefs of Ethiopian, Asiatic, and especially of Libyan bands, military authority, and, with it, predominant influence in the State were quickly passing into the hands of the barbarians. A sort of aristocracy of veterans, notably of Shardana or Mashauasha, entirely devoted to arms, grew up and increased gradually side by side with the ancient noble families, now by preference devoted to the priesthood.*
* This military aristocracy was fully developed in the XXIst and XXIInd dynasties, but it began to take shape after Ramses III. had planted the Shardana and Qahaka in certain towns as garrisons.
The barons, whether of ancient or modern lineage, were possessed of immense wealth, especially those
* The quantity of gold in ingots or rings, mentioned in the Annals of Tkutmosis III., represents altogether a weight of nearly a ton and a quarter, or in value some L140,000 of our money. And this is far from being the whole of the metal obtained from the enemy, for a large portion of the inscription has disappeared, and the unrecorded amount might be taken, without much risk of error, at as much as that of which we have evidence—say, some two and a half tons, which Thutmosis had received or brought back between the years XXIII. and XLII. of his reign—an estimation rather under than over the reality. These figures, moreover, take no account of the vessels and statues, or of the furniture and arms plated with gold. Silver was not received in such large quantities, but it was of great value, and the like may be said of copper and lead.
* The facts justifying this position were observed and put together for the first time by Chabas: a translation is given in his memoir of a register of the XXth or XXIst dynasty, which gives the price of butcher’s meat, both in gold and silver, at this date. Fresh examples have been since collected by Spiegelberg, who has succeeded in drawing up a kind of tariff for the period between the XVIIIth and XXth dynasties.
This custom, although not yet widely extended, placed at the disposal of trade enormous masses of metal, which were preserved in the form of ingots or bricks, except the portion which went to the manufacture of rings, jewellery, or valuable vessels.*
* There are depicted
on the monuments bags or heaps of gold
dust, ingots in the
shape of bricks, rings, and vases,
arranged alongside each
other.
The general prosperity encouraged a passion for goldsmith’s work, and the use of bracelets, necklaces, and chains became common among classes of the people who were not previously accustomed to wear them. There was henceforward no scribe or merchant, however poor he might be, who had not his seal made of gold or silver, or at any rate of copper gilt. The stone was sometimes fixed, but frequently arranged so as to turn round on a pivot; while among people of superior rank it had some emblem or device upon it, such as a scorpion, a sparrow-hawk, a lion, or a cynocephalous monkey. Chains occupied the same position among the ornaments of Egyptian women as rings among men; they were indispensable decorations. Examples of silver chains are known of some five feet in length, while others do not exceed two to three inches. There are specimens in gold of all sizes, single, double, and triple, with large or small links, some thick and heavy, while others are as slight and flexible as the finest Venetian lace. The poorest peasant woman, alike with the lady of the court, could boast of the possession of a chain, and she must have been in dire poverty who had not some other ornament in her jewel-case. The jewellery of Queen Ahhotpu shows to what degree of excellence the work of the Egyptian goldsmiths had attained at the time of the expulsion of the Nyksos: they had not only preserved the good traditions of the best workmen of the XIIth dynasty, but they had perfected the technical details, and had learned to combine form and colour with a greater skill. The pectorals of Prince Khamoisit and the Lord Psaru,now in the Louvre, but which were originally placed in the tomb of the Apis in the time of Ramses II., are splendid examples.
[Illustration: 345.jpg PECTORAL OF RAMSES II.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the jewel in the Louvre.
The most common form of these represents in miniature the front of a temple with a moulded or flat border, surmounted by a curved cornice. In one of them, which was doubtless a present from the king himself, the cartouche, containing the first name of the Pharaoh-Usirmari, appears just below the frieze, and serves as a centre for the design within the frame. The wings of the ram-headed sparrow-hawk, the emblem of Amonra, are so displayed as to support it, while a large urseus and a vulture beneath embracing both the sparrow-hawk and the cartouche with outspread wings give the idea of divine protection. Two didu, each of them filling one of the lower corners, symbolise duration. The framework of the design is made up of divisions marked out in gold, and filled either with coloured enamels or pieces of polished stone. The general effect is one of elegance, refinement, and harmony, the three principal elements of the design becoming
[Illustration: 347.jpg THE RAM-HEADED SPARROW-HAWK IN THE LOUVRE]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a jewel in the Louvre.
The ram’s head in the second case excels in the beauty of its workmanship anything to be found elsewhere in the museums of Europe or Egypt. It is of the finest gold, but its value does not depend upon the precious material: the ancient engraver knew how to model it with a bold and free hand, and he has managed to invest it with as much dignity as if he had been carving his subject in heroic size out of a block of granite or limestone. It is not an example of pure industrial art, but of an art for which a designation is lacking. Other examples, although more carefully executed and of more costly materials, do not approach it in value: such, for instance, are the earrings of Ramses XII. at Gizeh, which are made up of an ostentatious combination of disks, filigree-work, chains, beads, and hanging figures of the urseus.
To get an idea of the character of the plate on the royal sideboards, we must have recourse to the sculptures in the temples, or to the paintings on the tombs: the engraved gold or silver centrepieces, dishes, bowls, cups, and amphoras, if valued by weight only, were too precious to escape the avarice of the impoverished generations which followed the era of Theban prosperity. In the fabrication of these we can trace foreign influences, but not to the extent of a predominance over native art: even if the subject to be dealt with by the artist happened to be a Phoenician god or an Asiatic prisoner, he was not content with slavishly copying his model; he translated it and interpreted it, so as to give it an Egyptian character.
The household furniture was in keeping with these precious objects. Beds and armchairs in valuable woods, inlaid with ivory, carved, gilt, painted in subdued and bright colours, upholstered with mattresses and cushions of many-hued Asiatic stuffs, or of home-made materials, fashioned after Chaldaean patterns, were in use among the well-to-do, while people of moderate means had to be content with old-fashioned furniture of the ancient regime.
[Illustration: 348.jpg DECORATED ARMCHAIR]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from one of these objects in the
tomb of Ramses III.
The Theban dwelling-house was indeed more sumptuously furnished than the earliest Memphite, but we find the same general arrangements in both, which provided, in addition to quarters for the masters, a similar number of rooms intended for the slaves, for granaries, storehouses, and stables. While the outward decoration of life was subject to change, the inward element remained unaltered. Costume was a more complex matter than in former times: the dresses and lower garments were more gauffered, had more embroidery and stripes; the wigs were larger and longer, and rose up in capricious arrangements of curls and plaits.
[Illustration: 349.jpg EGYPTIAN WIG]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertens.
The use of the chariot had now become a matter of daily custom, and the number of domestics, already formidable, was increased by fresh additions in the shape of coachmen, grooms, and saises, who ran before their master to clear a way for the horses through the crowded streets of the city.*
* The pictures at Tel el-Amarna exhibit the king, queen, and princesses driving in their chariots with escorts of soldiers and runners. We often find in the tomb-paintings the chariot and coachman of some dignitary, waiting while their master inspects a field or a workshop, or while he is making a visit to the palace for some reward.
As material, existence became more complex, intellectual life partook of the same movement, and, without deviating much from the lines prescribed for it by the learned and the scribes of the Memphite age, literature had
[Illustration: 350.jpg Page Image with Furniture]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from photographs of the objects in
the Museums of Berlin
and Gizeh.
From these sources they had borrowed certain formulae and incantation, medical recipes, and devout legends, in which the deities of Assyria and especially Astarte played the chief part. They appropriated in this manner a certain number of words and phrases with which they were accustomed to interlard their discourses and writings. They thought it polite to call a door no longer by the word ro, but the term tira, and to accompany themselves no longer with the harp bordt, but with the same instrument under its new name kinnor, and to make the salam in saluting the sovereign in place of crying before him, aau. They were thorough-going Semiticisers; but one is less offended by their affectation when one considers that the number of captives in the country, and the intermarriages with Canaanite women, had familiarised a portion of the community from childhood with the sounds and ideas of the languages from which the scribes were accustomed to borrow unblushingly. This artifice, if it served to infuse an appearance of originality into their writings, had no influence upon their method of composition. Their poetical ideal remained what it had been in the time of their ancestors, but seeing that we are now unable to determine the characteristic cadence of sentences or the mental attitude which marked each generation of literary men, it is often difficult for us to find out the qualities in their writings which gave them popularity. A complete library of one of the learned in the Ramesside period must have contained a strange mixture of works, embracing, in addition to books of devotion, which were indispensable to those who were solicitous about their souls,* collections of hymns, romances, war and love songs, moral and philosophical treatises, letters, and legal documents.
* There are found in the rubrics of many religious books, for example that dealing with the unseen world, promises of health and prosperity to the soul which, “while still on earth,” had read and learned them. A similar formula appears at the end of several important chapters of the Book of the Dead.
It would have been similar in character to the literary-possessions of an Egyptian of the Memphite period,* but the language in which it was written would not have been so stiff and dry, but would have flowed more easily, and been more sustained and better balanced.
* The composition of these libraries may be gathered from the collections of papyri which have turned up from time to time, and have been sold by the Arabs to Europeans buyers; e.g. the Sallier Collection, the Anastasi Collections, and that of Harris. They have found their way eventually into the British Museum or the Museum at Leyden, and have been published in the Select Papyri of the former, or in the Monuments Egyptiens of the latter.
The great odes to the deities which we find in the Theban papyri are better fitted, perhaps, than the profane compositions of the period, to give us an idea of the advance which Egyptian genius had made in the width and richness of its modes of expression, while still maintaining almost the same dead-level of idea which had characterised it from the outset. Among these, one dedicated to Harmakhis, the sovereign sun, is no longer restricted to a bare enumeration of the acts and virtues of the “Disk,” but ventures to treat of his daily course and his final triumphs in terms which might have been used in describing the victorious campaigns or the apotheosis of a Pharaoh. It begins with his awakening, at the moment when he has torn himself away from the embraces of night. Standing upright in the cabin of the divine bark, “the fair boat of millions of years,” with the coils of the serpent Mihni around him, he glides in silence on the eternal current of the celestial waters, guided and protected by those battalions of secondary deities with whose odd forms the monuments have made us familiar. “Heaven is in delight, the earth is in joy, gods and men are making festival, to render glory to Phra-Harmakhis, when they see him arise in his bark, having overturned his enemies in his own time!” They accompany him from hour to hour, they fight the good fight with him against Apopi, they shout aloud as he inflicts each fresh wound upon the monster: they do not even abandon him when the west has swallowed him up in its darkness.* Some parts of the hymn remind us, in the definiteness of the imagery and in the abundance of detail, of a portion of the poem of Pentauirit, or one of those inscriptions of Ramses III. wherein he celebrates the defeat of hordes of Asiatics or Libyans.
* The remains of Egyptian
romantic literature have been
collected and translated
into French by Maspero, and
subsequently into English
by Flinders Petrie.
The Egyptians took a delight in listening to stories. They preferred tales which dealt with the marvellous and excited their imagination, introducing speaking animals, gods in disguise, ghosts and magic. One of them tells of a king who was distressed because he had no heir, and had no sooner obtained the favour he desired from the gods, than the Seven Hathors, the mistresses of Fate, destroyed his happiness by predicting that the child would meet with his death by a serpent, a dog, or a crocodile. Efforts were made to provide against such a fatality by shutting him up in a tower; but no sooner had he grown to man’s estate, than he procured himself a dog, went off to wander through the world, and married the daughter of the Prince of Naharaim. His fate meets him first under the form of a serpent, which is killed by his wife; he is next assailed by a crocodile, and the dog kills the crocodile, but as the oracles must be fulfilled, the brute turns and despatches his master without further consideration. Another story describes two brothers, Anupu and Bitiu, who live happily together on their farm till the wife of the elder falls in love with the younger, and on his repulsing her advances, she accuses him to her husband of having offered her violence. The virtue of the younger brother would not have availed him much, had not his animals warned him of danger, and had not Phra-Harmakhis surrounded him at the critical moment with a stream teeming with crocodiles. He mutilates himself to prove his innocence, and announces that henceforth he will lead a mysterious existence far from mankind; he will retire to the Valley of the Acacia, place his heart on the topmost flower of the tree, and no one will be able with impunity to steal it from him. The gods, however, who frequent this earth take pity on his loneliness, and create for him a wife of such beauty that the Nile falls in love with her, and steals a lock of her hair, which is carried by its waters down into Egypt. Pharaoh finds the lock, and, intoxicated by its scent, commands his people to go in quest of the owner. Having discovered the lady, Pharaoh marries her, and ascertaining from her who she is, he sends men to cut down the Acacia, but no sooner has the flower touched the earth, than Bitiu droops and dies. The elder brother is made immediately acquainted with the fact by means of various prodigies. The wine poured out to him becomes troubled, his beer leaves a deposit. He seizes his shoes and staff and sets out to find the heart.
After a search of seven years he discovers it, and reviving it in a vase of water, he puts it into the mouth of the corpse, which at once returns to life. Bitiu, from this moment, seeks only to be revenged. He changes himself into the bull Apis, and, on being led to court, he reproaches the queen with the crime she has committed against him. The queen causes his throat to be cut; two drops of his blood fall in front of the gate of the palace, and produce in the
* This version of the
Fable of the Members and the Stomach
was discovered upon
a schoolboy’s tablet at Turin.
Animals also had their place in this universal comedy. The passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral. La Fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the Nile of whose existence he little dreamed.
[Illustration: 357.jpg THE CAT AND THE JACKAL GO OFF TO THE FIELDS WITH THEIR FLOCKS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.
As La Fontaine found an illustrator in Granville, so, too, in Egypt the draughtsman brought his reed to the aid of the fabulist, and by his cleverly executed sketches gave greater point to the sarcasm of story than mere words could have conveyed. Where the author had briefly mentioned that the jackal and the cat had cunningly forced their services on the animals whom they wished to devour at their leisure, the artist would depict the jackal and the cat equipped as peasants, with wallets on their backs, and sticks over their shoulders, marching behind a troup of gazelles or a flock of fat geese: it was easy to foretell the fate of their unfortunate charges. Elsewhere it is an ox who brings up before his master a cat who has cheated him, and his proverbial stupidity would incline us to think that he will end by being punished himself for the misdeeds of which he had accused the other. Puss’s sly and artful expression, the ass-headed and important-looking judge, with the wand and costume of a high and mighty dignitary, give pungency to the story, and recall the daily scenes at the judgment-seat of the lord of Thebes. In another place we see a donkey, a lion, a crocodile, and a monkey giving an instrumental and vocal concert.
[Illustration: 358.jpg THE CAT BEFORE ITS JUDGE]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.
A lion and a gazelle play a game of chess. A cat of fashion, with a flower in her hair, has a disagreement with a goose: they have come to blows, and the excitable puss, who fears she will come off worst in the struggle, falls backwards in a fright. The draughtsmen having once found vent for their satire, stopped at nothing, and even royalty itself did not escape their attacks. While the writers of the day made fun of the military calling, both in prose and verse, the caricaturists parodied the combats and triumphal scenes of the Ramses or Thutmosis of the day depicted on the walls of the pylons. The Pharaoh of all the rats, perched upon a chariot drawn by dogs, bravely charges an army of cats; standing in the heroic attitude of a conqueror, he pierces them with his darts, while his horses tread the fallen underfoot; his legions meanwhile in advance of him attack a fort defended by tomcats, with the same ardour that the Egyptian battalions would display in assaulting a Syrian stronghold.
[Illustration: 359.jpg A CONCERT OF ANIMALS DEVOTED TO MUSIC]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.
This treatment of ethics did not prevent the Egyptian writers from giving way to their natural inclinations, and composing large volumes on this subject after the manner of Kaqimni or Phtahhotpu. One of their books, in which the aged Ani inscribes his Instructions to his son, Khonshotpu, is compiled in the form of a dialogue, and contains the usual commonplaces upon virtue, temperance, piety, the respect due to parents from children, or to the great ones of this world from their inferiors. The language in which it is written is ingenious, picturesque, and at times eloquent; the work explains much that is obscure in Egyptian life, and upon which the monuments have thrown no light. “Beware of the woman who goes out surreptitiously in her town, do not follow her or any like her, do not expose thyself to the experience of what it costs a man to face an Ocean of which the bounds are unknown.* The wife whose husband is far from home sends thee letters, and invites thee to come to her daily when she has no witnesses; if she succeeds in entangling thee in her net, it is a crime which is punishable by death as soon as it is known, even if no wicked act has taken place, for men will commit every sort of crime when under this temptation alone.”
* I have been obliged to paraphrase the sentence considerably to render it intelligible to the modern reader. The Egyptian text says briefly: “Do not know the man who braves the water of the Ocean whose bounds are unknown."To know the man means here know the state of the man who does an action.
“Be not quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious. Thou fallest, thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy boon-companions around thee say: ‘Away with the drunkard!’ Thou art wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like an infant.” In speaking of what a man owes to his mother, Ani waxes eloquent: “When she bore thee as all have to bear, she had in thee a heavy burden without being able to call on thee to share it. When thou wert born, after thy months were fulfilled, she placed herself under a yoke in earnest, her breast was in thy mouth for three years; in spite of the increasing dirtiness of thy habits, her heart felt no disgust, and she never said: ‘What is that I do here?’ When thou didst go to school to be instructed in writing, she followed thee every day with bread and beer from thy house. Now thou art a full-grown man, thou hast taken a wife, thou hast provided thyself with a house; bear always in mind the pains of thy birth and the care for thy education that thy mother lavished on thee, that her anger may not rise up against thee, and that she lift not her hands to God, for he will hear her complaint!” The whole of the book does not rise to this level, but we find in it several
It is, perhaps, difficult for us to imagine an Egyptian in love repeating madrigals to his mistress,* for we cannot easily realise that the hard and blackened bodies we see in our museums have once been men and women loving and beloved in their own day.
* The remains of Egyptian amatory literature have been collected, translated, and commentated on by Maspero. They have been preserved in two papyri, one of which is at Turin, the other in the British Museum. The first of these appears to be a sort of dialogue in which the trees of a garden boast one after another of the beauty of a woman, and discourse of the love-scenes which took place under their shadow.
The feeling which they entertained one for another had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love: they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste. The manners and customs of daily life among the Egyptians tended to blunt in them the feelings of modesty and refinement to which our civilization has accustomed us. Their children went about without clothes, or, at any rate, wore none until the age of puberty. Owing to the climate, both men and women left the upper part of the body more or less uncovered, or wore fabrics of a transparent nature. In the towns, the servants who moved about their masters or his guests had merely a narrow loin-cloth tied round their hips; while in the country, the peasants dispensed with even this covering, and the women tucked up their garments when at work so as to move more freely. The religious teaching and the ceremonies connected with their worship drew the attention of the faithful to the unveiled human form of their gods, and the hieroglyphs themselves contained pictures which shock our sense of propriety. Hence it came about that the young girl who was demanded in marriage had no idea, like the maiden of to-day, of the vague delights of an ideal union. The physical side was impressed upon her mind, and she was well aware of the full meaning of her consent. Her lover, separated from her by her disapproving
END OF VOL. V.