Читать книгу Eastern Life - Harriet Martineau - Страница 14

Before entering upon the study of the Monuments, it seems necessary to obtain something like an orderly view of the state of the country before and during their erection. At best, our conceptions must be obscure enough; but we can form none unless we arrange in our minds what we know of the history of Egypt, of which these monuments are at once the chief evidence and the eternal illustration.

The early history of Egypt differs from that of every other explored country in the nature of its records. Elsewhere, we derive all our knowledge from popular legends, which embody the main ideas to be preserved in forms which are not, and were never meant to be, historically true. It is the business of the philosophical historian to separate the true ideas from their environment of fiction, and to mark the time when the narrative, from being mythical, becomes historically true; – to classify the two orders of ancient historians – both inestimable in their way – the Poets who perpetuate national Ideas, and the Historians who perpetuate national Facts. – With regard to Egypt, we are in possession of as much of this early material as any nation has furnished; and we have the monuments besides.

These monuments consist of buildings or excavations, – of the sculptures upon them, – and of their inscriptions. From the edifices or caves we may learn much of the condition, mind, and manners of the people who wrought them, and, if their dates can be obtained, in historical order. – From their sculptures we may learn much of the personages, divine and human, about whom they thought most; and their inscriptions are of inestimable use in identifying these personages, and in declaring their dates. Being thus in possession of mythical legends, of the writings of historians, and of edifices and excavations covered with sculptures and inscriptions, we are as well supplied with records of the early history of Egypt as we can probably ever be with regard to any ancient people; and better than we yet are with regard to any other of the nations of the old world.

The legends relating to ancient Egypt are preserved in the works of its historians. It is the business of modern inquirers to separate them from the true historical material, and to extract from them, where possible, the essential Ideas which they embody.

The chief historians of Egypt are Hecataeus of Miletus, who was at Thebes about half a century before Herodotus, and some fragments of whose writings have come down to us: – Herodotus, from whom we learn more than from any other: – the writer of the book of Genesis: – Hecataeus of Abdera, from whose narrative extracts may be found in the works of Diodorus Siculus: – Manetho, an Egyptian, of whom also we have only extracts in other authors, but who supplies very valuable information: – Eratosthenes of Cyrene, whose writings are at once illustrative of those of Manetho and a check upon them: Diodorus Siculus, who travelled in Egypt and wrote a history of it, rather more than half a century before the Christian era: Strabo, who has left us a full account of what he saw in Egypt, between Alexandria and the First Cataract: and Abdallatif, an Arabian physician, who supplies a valuable report of the state of the Nile Valley and its people when he visited them in the twelfth century. – It is the business of modern inquirers to separate what these historians derived from the depositories of the national mythi from what they personally observed: to compare their works with one another, and to apply them as a key (where this can be done) to the monumental records.

As to the use of the monumental records, several precautions are necessary. Modern inquirers must beware of interpreting what they see by their own favourite ideas – as travellers do who contrive to see Hebrew groups among the Egyptian sculptures: they must diligently and patiently work out the knowledge of the ancient language and its signs, and beware of straining the little they know of these to accommodate any historical theory they may carry in their minds: and they must remember that the edifice and its sculptures are not always of the same date, and that therefore what is true of the one is not necessarily true of the other.

Without going into any detail (which would fill a volume if entered upon at all) about the respective values of these authorities, and their agreements and conflicts, I may give a slight sketch of what competent modern inquirers believe we have learned from them.

For our first glimpse into ancient Egyptian life we must go back upon the track of Time far further than we have been accustomed to suppose that track to extend. People who had believed all their lives that the globe and Man were created together, were startled when the new science of geology revealed to them the great fact that Man is a comparatively new creation on the earth, whose oceans and swamps and jungles were aforetime inhabited by monsters never seen by human eye but in their fossil remains. People who enter Egypt with the belief that the human race has existed only six thousand years, and that at that date the world was uninhabited by men, except within a small circuit in Asia, must undergo a somewhat similar revolution of ideas. All new research operates to remove further back the date of the formation of the Egyptian empire. The differences between the dates given by legendary records and by modern research (with the help of contemporary history) are very great; but the one agrees as little as the other with the popular notion that the human race is only six thousand years old.

When Hecataeus of Miletus was at Thebes, about 500 B.C., he spoke, as Herodotus tells us,⁵ to the priests of Amun, of his genealogy, declaring himself to be the sixteenth in descent from a god. Upon this, the priests conducted him into a great building of the temple, where they pointed out to him (as afterwards to Herodotus) the statues of their high priest. Each high priest placed a colossal wooden statue of himself in this place during his life; and each was the son of his predecessor. The priests would not admit that any of these was the son of a god. From first to last they were of human origin; and here, in direct lineal succession, were 345. Taking the average length of human life, how many thousand years would be occupied by the succession of 345 high priests, in a direct line from father to son! According to the priests, it was nearly 5000 years from the time of Horus. They further informed Herodotus that gods did reign in Egypt before they deputed their power to mortals.⁶ They spoke of eight gods who reigned first, among whom was one answering to Pan of the Greeks: then came twelve of another series; and, again, twelve more, the offspring of the second series; and of these Osiris was one; and it was not till after the reign of his son Horus that the first of these 345 high priests came into power. From Osiris to king Amasis the priests reckoned 15,000 years, declaring that they had exact registers of the successive lives which had filled up the time.⁷ – Such is the legendary history as it existed 500 years before Christ. We can gather from it thus much, that the priests then looked back upon a long reach of time – and believed the art of registering to be of an old date.

Here we have the earliest report of dates offered us. According to the latest researches,⁸ we cannot place the formation of the Egyptian empire under Menes nearer to us than 5500 years ago. And the Egyptians were then a civilised people, subject to legislation and executive authority, pursuing trade, and capable of the arts. A longer or shorter series of centuries must be allotted for bringing them up to this state, according to the views of the students of social life; but the shortest must bring us back to the current date of the creation of man. How these five or six thousand years are filled up we may see hereafter;

Leaving it to my readers to fix for themselves the point of time for our survey of the most ancient period of Egyptian history, I may be permitted to appoint the place. Let us take our stand above the Second Cataract; – on the rock of Abooseer, perhaps, where I could only look over southwards, and not go and learn. This is a good station, because it is a sort of barrier between two chains of monuments – a frontier resting-place, whence one may survey the area of ancient Egyptian civilisation from end to end.

Looking down the river, northwards, beyond the Nubian region (then Ethiopia), beyond the First Cataract, and far away over the great marsh which occupied the Nile valley, we see, coming out of the darkness of oblivion, Menes, the first Egyptian king, turning the river from its course under the Libyan mountain into a new bed, in the middle of the valley.⁹ Thus the priests of Thebes told Herodotus, saying that Menes made the dykes by which the land was reclaimed on which Memphis afterwards stood. It must strike everyone that this period 5500 years ago, must have been one of an advanced civilisation, such a work as this embankment requiring scientific ideas and methods, apt tools, and trained men. The priests ascribed to this same king the building of Memphis, and of the great temple of Phthah (answering to Vulcan) in that city. They read to Herodotus a long list of sovereigns (three hundred and thirty) who succeeded Menes, of whom one was an Egyptian woman and eighteen were Ethiopian kings,¹⁰ That there should have been a temple of Phthah implies the establishment of a priesthood. That a woman should have occupied the throne seems to imply the establishment of a principle of hereditary succession; or, at least, it tells of the subordination, in this early age, of force to authority. That there should have been Ethiopian sovereigns among the Egyptian implies a relation between the two countries, whether of warfare or commerce. During all this time the plain of Thebes lay bare.

The next sovereignty that was established in the valley was at This, about sixty miles below Thebes. A succession of monarchs reigned here, some say sixteen, some more, while the plain of Thebes still lay bare.

While these sovereigns were reigning at This, and before Thebes was heard of, the kings of Memphis were building the Pyramids of Geezeh. It is certain that the builders of these pyramids were learned men. How much science is requisite for the erection of such edifices need hardly be pointed out; – the mathematical skill and accuracy, the astronomical science shown in the placing of them true to the cardinal points, the command of mechanical powers which are at this day unknown to us, and the arts of writing and decoration shown in the inscriptions which covered their outside in the days of Herodotus,¹¹ though the casing which contained them is now destroyed. In the neighbouring tombs, however, we have evidence, as will be shown hereafter, of the state of some of the arts at that date; and I may mention here that the sign of the inkstand and reed pen are among the representations in the tombs. There is no doubt as to who built the Pyramids. Colonel Howard Vyse found the kings' names inscribed in them. When the Pyramids were built, it was a thousand years before Abraham was born, and the plain of Thebes still lay bare.

Now we must turn southwards, and look over as far as Dongola. For a long way above the Second Cataract there are no monuments. This is probably owing to the river not being navigable there, so that there were no trading stations. There are obvious reasons why temples and other monuments should rise where commerce halts, where men congregate, and desire protection of person and property, and exercise their social passions and affections. So, for the twenty-five days' journey where the river is impracticable, there are few monuments. Then some occur of a rather modern date: and far beyond them – up in Dongola – we come upon traces of a time when men were trafficking, building, and worshipping, while yet the plain of Thebes lay bare. To this point did the sovereigns of Memphis and of This extend their hand of power, erecting statues as memorials of themselves, and by their subjects, trading in such articles of use and luxury as they derived from the east. While the Ethiopian subjects of these early Pharaohs were building up that character for piety and probity which spread over the world, and found its way into the earliest legends and poems of distant nations, the plain of Thebes still lay wild and bare: not one stone yet placed upon another.

And now the time had arrived for the Theban kings to arise, give glory to the close of the Old Monarchy, and preserve the national name and existence during the thousand years of foreign domination which were to follow. In the course of reigns at which we have now arrived, El-Karnac began to show its massive buildings, and the plain of Thebes to present temptation to a foreign conqueror.

We have now arrived at the end of the First great Period of ascertained Egyptian history; – a period supposed, from astronomical calculation and critical research, to comprehend 889 years. – A dark and humiliating season was now drawing on.

Considering the great wealth and power of the kings now reigning at Memphis and at Thebes, we are obliged to form a high opinion of the strength of the Shepherd Race who presently subdued Egypt. Whence they came, no one seems to know, – further than that it was somewhere from the East. Whether they were Assyrians, as some have conjectured, or the Phoenicians, who were encroaching upon the Delta at a subsequent time, or some third party, we cannot learn, the Egyptians having always, as is natural, kept silence about them. The pride of the Egyptians was in their agriculture and commerce; and to be conquered by a pastoral people, whose business lay anywhere among the plains of the earth, rather than in the richly-tilled, narrow valley of the Nile, was a hard stroke of adversity for them. So, in their silence, all that we know of their strong enemy is that the Shepherd Race took Memphis, put garrisons in all the strong places of Egypt, made the kings of Memphis and Thebes tributary to them, and held their empire for 929 years – that is, for a time equal to that which extends from the death of our King Alfred to our own: a long season of subjugation, from which it is wonderful that the native Egyptian race should have revived. This dark season, during which the native kings were not absolutely dethroned, but depressed and made tributary, is commonly called the Middle Monarchy. It is supposed to extend from B.C. 2754 to B.C. 1825.

About this time, a visitor arrived in Egypt, and remained a short while, whose travels are interesting to us, and whose appearance affords a welcome rest to the imagination, after its wanderings in the dim regions of these old ages. The richest of the Phoenicians, who found themselves restricted for room and pasturage by the numbers of Chaldeans who moved westwards into Syria, found their way, through Arabia, to the abundance of corn which Lower Egypt afforded. Among these was Abraham, a man of such wealth and distinction that he and his followers were entertained as guests at Memphis, and his wife was lodged in the palace of the king. He must have looked up at the Pyramids, and learned some of the particulars which we, following on his traces, long in vain to know: – how they were reared, and for what purpose precisely; and perhaps many details of the progress of the work. It is true these pyramids had then stood somewhere about 1500 years: the builders, tens of thousands in number, had slept for many centuries in their graves: the kings who had reared them lay embalmed in the stillness of ages, and the glory of a supremacy which had passed away; and these edifices had become so familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants, that they were like natural features of the landscape: but as Abraham walked round those vast bases, and looked up at the smooth pictured surfaces of their sides, he might have had explained to him those secrets of ancient civilisation which we seek to pry into in vain.

We now come to the brilliant Third Period.

The Theban kings had been growing in strength for some time; and at length they were able to rise up against the Shepherd Race, and expel them from Memphis, and afterwards from their stronghold, Abaris. On the surrender of this last place, the enemy were permitted to march out of the country in safety, the number of their men being recorded as 240,000. – The period of 1300 years now entered upon was the grandest of Egyptian history – if, we may add, the Sesostris of old renown was, as some recent students have supposed, the Ramases II. of this Period. Some high authorities, as Lepsius and Bunsen, believe Sesostris to have belonged to the old Monarchy. However this may be, all agree that the deeds of many heroes are attributed to the one who now bears the name of Sesostris; and the achievements of Ramases the Great are quite enough to glorify his age, whether he had a predecessor like himself or not. Of these achievements I shall say nothing here, as they will come before us quite often enough in our study of the temples. Suffice it that the empire of Egypt was extended by conquest southwards to Abyssinia; westwards over Libya; northwards over Greece; and eastwards beyond the banks of the Ganges. The rock statues and stelae of Sesostris may yet be seen in countries far apart, but within this range: his Babylonian captives were employed on some of the great edifices we have seen, and were afterwards permitted to build a city for themselves near the point of the Delta; and the tributary kings and chiefs of all the conquered countries were required to come up to Egypt once a year, to pay homage by drawing the conqueror's chariot, in return for which they received gifts and favour. The kings of Lower Egypt appear to have declined about this period; if even they were not tributary to those of Upper Egypt. Of these kings, one was he who received Joseph into favour,¹² and made him his prime minister; and another was he who afterwards »knew not Joseph.« Of Joseph's administration of the affairs of Lower Egypt we know more than of the rule of any other minister of the Pharaohs. I have walked upon the mounds which cover the streets of Memphis, through which Joseph rode, on occasion of his investiture, and where the king's servants ran before him, to bid the people bow the knee. And when at Heliopolis, I was on the spot where he married his wife – the daughter of the priest and governor of On, afterwards Heliopolis.

It was in the early part of this Third Period of the Egyptian Monarchy that Cecrops is supposed (fable being here mingled with history) to have led a colony from Sais, and to have founded the kingdom of Athens,¹³ beginning here the long series of obligations that Greece, and, through Greece, Rome and the world, have been under to Egypt. It is almost overpowering to the imagination to contemplate the vast antiquity of the Egyptian empire, already above two thousand years, in the day when Cecrops was training his band of followers, to lead them in search of a place whereon to build Athens; – in a day long preceding that when Ceres was wandering about the earth in search of her daughter.

It was about this time that a still more important event than even the founding of Athens had taken place. We all know how a certain Egyptian lady went out one day to bathe, and what was found by her maidens in a rushy spot on the banks of the Nile. That lady was the daughter of one of the Pharaohs of Memphis, at a time (as some think) shortly before the union on one head of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. When she brought home the child found among the rushes, she little thought that that infant head was to become the organ of a wisdom that should eclipse the glory of Sesostris, and mainly determine the spiritual destinies of the human race for a longer course of centuries than even Egypt had yet seen.

When the Shepherd kings and their army were driven out of Egypt, many of their people remained as slaves, and were employed on the public works. The Hebrews were also thus employed – latterly on the fortifications of Thoum and Heliopolis; and the Egyptians confounded the two races of aliens in a common hatred. From the prevalence of leprosy among the Hebrews, and other causes, they were considered an unclean people; and they were sent by the Pharaoh of their day, under the warning of the priests, to live by themselves in the district allotted to them. Whether the Pharaoh who opposed the departure of this army of slaves was Thothmes III., or his son, Amunoph II., or some later king, is undetermined; but it is believed on high authority that it was Thothmes III.,¹⁴ and that he reigned many years after the Exodus. The date of the Exodus is agreed upon as about B.C. 1491, whoever was the Pharaoh reigning at the time. There is no assertion in the Mosaic narrative that Pharaoh himself was lost in the Red Sea,¹⁵ nor that the whole of his host perished; nor is there any allusion in the Song of Moses to the death of the sovereign: and some of the Hebrew traditions declare¹⁶ that Pharaoh survived, and extended his conquests afterwards into Assyria. Thus the supposition that the Israelites marched out in an early year of the reign of this monarch is not irreconcileable with his having reigned thirty-nine years, as Egyptian history declares that he did. Manetho mentions their numbers to have been eighty thousand when they were sent to live by themselves; and it is curious on this account, and on some others, to find the number assigned by the Mosaic history so high as six hundred thousand, besides women and children. Even if we suppose a proportion of these to have been their fellow-slaves of the Shepherd Race, who, being confounded with the Hebrews by their masters, took this opportunity of leaving the country, it gives us a high idea of the power and population of Egypt in those days that such a body could be abstracted from the working class of the country, and leave behind a sufficient force for the achievement of such wars and arts as we know were prosecuted after their departure.¹⁷

As our chief interest in Egypt was till lately from its being the scene of the early life of the Hebrew nation, we are apt to look for records of the Hebrews on the monuments wherever we go. I am convinced that none have been found relating to their connection with Egypt – none relating to them at all, till the long subsequent time when Jerusalem was conquered by Sheshonk (Shishak). In my opinion, it would be more surprising if there had been such records than that there are not. There is nothing in the presence of a body of slaves to require or suggest a monumental record, unless those slaves were made so by conquest, and had previously been a nation. The Hebrews were not a nation, and had no dream of being so till Moses began the mighty work of making them one. When they had a confirmed national existence; when their great King Solomon had married into the line of the Pharaohs, and their national interests came into collision with those of Egypt, we find them, among other nations, in the train of the captives of Sheshonk, on the walls of El Karnac. Some Hebrew names among those of the Egyptian months,¹⁸ and a sprinkling of Hebrew words in the Coptic language, are, I believe, the only traceable memorials in Egypt of the residence of the Israelites.

According to Pliny, one of the Ramases was on the throne of Egypt when Troy was taken: and within thirty years of that time, King Solomon married a daughter of one of the Pharaohs. How great Thebes had long been is clear from the mention of Upper Egypt in Homer, who says, perhaps truly enough in one sense, that it was the birthplace of some of tile Greek gods; and that its inhabitants were so wise as to be favourites, and even hosts of those gods. It was with these wise Thebans (then one with the Ethiopians) that Jupiter and his family were supposed by the Greeks to be making holiday, when out of reach, as it seemed, of the prayers of the besiegers of Troy. The Theban family of monarchs, however, was by this time declining in power; and after a century or two of weakness, they were displaced by stronger men from a higher station up the river; and Egypt was governed by princes from the hitherto subordinate province of Ethiopia. In three generations, Thebes ceased to be the capital of Egypt; and the seat of government was removed to Saïs in the Delta. This event happened nearly 700 years B.C. From this time, we have the advantage of certainty of dates, within, at least, the range of a few months. We have come down to the record of Babylonian eclipses, and the skies light up the history of the earth.

It was in this age that the downfall of old Egypt was provided for by the introduction of Greek influences into the Delta, at the time when the seat of sovereignty was there. While the national throne stood at Thebes, the religion, philosophy, learning, and language of the ancient race could be little, if at all, affected by what was doing in other parts of the world: but when the Thebaid became a province, and the metropolis was open to visits from the voyagers of the Mediterranean, the exclusively Egyptian character began to give way; and while Egypt furnished, through these foreigners, the religion, philosophy, and art of the whole civilised world, she was beginning to lose the nationality which was her strength. Nechepsus, one of the kings of Saïs, was a learned priest, and wrote on astronomy. His writings were in the Greek language. The kings of Sais now began to employ Greek mercenaries. Psammitichus I. not only employed as soldiers large numbers of Ionian and Carian immigrants, but, as Herodotus tells us,¹⁹ committed to them the children of the Egyptians, to be taught Greek, and gave them lands and other advantages for settlement in the Delta. Of course, this was displeasing to his native subjects, and the national unity was destroyed. One curious circumstance occurred under this king, which reveals much of the popular temper, and which has left some remarkable traces behind it, as will be seen in my next chapter. Psammitichus placed three armies of Egyptians on the three frontiers of Egypt,²⁰ That on the southern frontier, stationed at Elephantine, grew impatient, after a neglect of three years. Finding their petitions for removal unanswered, and their pay not forthcoming, they resolved to emigrate, and away they marched, up the river, as far beyond Meroë as Meroë is beyond Elephantine, and there lands were given them, where their descendants were found, three centuries afterwards. The king himself pursued and overtook them, and endeavoured by promises and prayers, and by appeals to them not to forsake their gods and their homes, to induce them to return. They told him, however, that they would make homes for themselves, and marched on. Their numbers being, as Herodotus tells, two hundred and forty thousand men, it was impossible to constrain them. The king took with him a force of Greek mercenaries, whom he sent some way, as we shall see by-and-by, after the deserters; but it appears that he did not go higher than Elephantine.

While we thus see how Egypt became weakened in preparation for downfall, it is pretty clear, on the other hand, how the process went on by which the rest of the world became enlightened by her knowledge, and ripened by her wisdom.

About thirty years after Saïs became the capital of Egypt, the first of the Wise Men of Greece, Thales, was born. He went to Egypt to improve his knowledge – and remarkable indeed was the knowledge he brought away. He was the first Greek who predicted an eclipse. He forewarned his Ionian countrymen of that celebrated eclipse which, when it happened, suspended the battle between the Medes and Lydians. It was Thales, we are told, who, after his return from Egypt, fixed the sun's orbit, or determined the duration of the year to be 365 days. It was in Egypt that he obtained his knowledge of Geometry: and he it was who imparted, on his return, the great discovery that the angle in a semicircle is always a right angle. In Egypt he ascertained the elevation of the pyramids by observing the shadows of measurable objects in relation to their height. His connection with Egypt gives us a new interest in his theories of creation or existence. He gave the name of Life to every active principle, as we should call it; and, in this sense, naturally declared that the universe was »full of gods.« At the same time, he is reported by tradition to have said, »The most ancient of things existing is God; for he is uncreated: the most beautiful thing is the universe, for it is God's creation.« Men in Greece wondered at him for saying what would not surprise even the common men in Egypt in his day, that Death does not differ from Life.

About the same time came a sober thinking man from Greece to Egypt, to exchange a cargo of olive-oil from Athens for Egyptian corn and luxuries from the East. After this thoughtful man had done his commercial business, he remained to see what he could of the country and people. He conversed much with a company of priests at Saïs, who taught him, as Plato tells us, much history, and some geography, and evidently not a little of law. His countrymen profited on his return by his studies at Saïs; for this oil-merchant was Solon the Law-Maker. One of his laws is assigned immediately to an Egyptian origin; that by which every man was required to give an account to the magistrate of his means of livelihood. As for the geography which Solon might learn at Saïs, there is the testimony of Herodotus that King Necho, the predecessor of Psammitichus I., sent a maritime expedition by the Red Sea, which circumnavigated Africa, and returned by the Pillars of Hercules.²¹ Plato tells us²² that one of Solon's priestly friends, Sonchis, told him of some Atlantic isles, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which were larger than Asia and Africa united. This sets one thinking whether the Egyptians had not some notion of the existence of America.

Within seventy years or so of Solon's visit to Egypt, a truly great man followed on his traces. Pythagoras was unsatisfied with all that could be learned from teachers at home – from Thales downwards – and went to Egypt to study philosophy and morals. He was introduced to King Amasis at Sais by letters from Polycrates. There is no saying how much of the philosophy of Pythagoras is derived and how much original: nor, of that which is derived, how much he owed to intercourse with the sages of Chaldaea and other countries. But I think no one who has felt an interest in the study of what is known of the Pythagorean philosophy can fail to be reminded of the philosopher at every step in those chambers of the tombs at Thebes which relate to Life and Death subjects. Where the paintings treat of the constitution of things, the regions which the soul of Man may inhabit, and the states through which it may pass, one feels that Pythagoras might have been the designer of them, if he were not a learner from them. I strongly suspect it would be found, if the truth could be known, that more of the spiritual religion, the abstruse philosophy, and the lofty ethics and political views of the old Egyptians have found their way into the general mind of our race through Pythagoras than by any or all other channels, except, perhaps, the institutions of Moses, and the speculations of Plato. Some traditions among the many which exist in relation to this, the first man who assumed the title of Philosopher, report him to have lived twenty years in the Nile valley; and then to have been carried off prisoner to Babylon, on the Persian invasion of Egypt.

This brings us near to the close of the great Third Period of Egyptian history. Before the Persians came, however, Hecataeus of Miletus, mentioned before as the earliest historical authority, went up to Thebes. I have spoken already of what he saw and heard there.

Cyrus was meanwhile meditating a renewal of the old wars between Babylon and Egypt, which had formerly been all to the glory of the Pharaohs. Before his death, Cyrus took Cyprus from the Egyptians: and he bequeathed the task of conquering Egypt itself to his son Cambyses. – The wise and fortunate king Amasis died before Cambyses reached Egypt: and with him, the Third Period of Egyptian history may be said to have expired; for his son Psammenitus could make so little resistance, that he had completed his surrender to the foolish and cruel conqueror before he had been on the throne six months.

We have now reached the mournful close of the great Third Period of Egyptian history; and there is little to dwell on in the succeeding two hundred years, when Egypt was a province of Persia. Upper Egypt never rose again. If there had been any strength or spirit left in her, she might have driven out Cambyses; for his folly left him open to almost any kind or degree of resistance from man or nature. Nature did her utmost to avenge the conquered people: but they could not help themselves. Cambyses set out for Ethiopia with his Persians, leaving his Greek troops to defend the Delta: but he made no provision for his long march southwards; and his soldiers, after exhausting the country, and killing their beasts of burden for food, began to slay one another, casting lots for one victim in ten of their number.²³ The army of fifty thousand men, whom he had raised in the valley, in order to conquer the Desert, – that is, to take the Oases, and burn the temple of the Oracle, – were never heard of more. Whether they perished by thirst, or were overtaken by the sand, was never known. So, all that the conqueror could do was to lay waste Thebes, where it appears there was now no one to stay his hand. He carried off its treasures of gold, silver, and ivory, broke open and robbed the Tombs of the Kings, threw down what he could of the temple buildings, and hewed in pieces such of the colossal statues as were not too strong for the brute force of his army. It was then, if Pausanias says true, that the Vocal statue, the easternmost of the Pair, was shattered and overthrown from the waist: after which, however, it still gave out its gentle music to the morning sun. On the return of Cambyses to Memphis,²⁴ he found the people rejoicing in the investiture of a new bull Apis, which had been found qualified to succeed the one which had died. He was angry at any rejoicing while he was baffled and unfortunate; asked how it was that they showed no joy when he was there before, and so much now when he had lost the chief part of his army; put to death the magistrates who informed him of the occasion of the festival; with his own hand stabbed the bull, and ordered the priests to be scourged.²⁵ Here again he broke open the tombs, and desecrated the temples. Meantime, the valley swarmed with strangers, who came in embassy from every part of the wide Persian dominion, to offer congratulation and magnificent presents, on the conquest of Egypt. – Yet this new province never became an easy possession. One revolt followed another; and the valley was a scene of almost continual conflict during the two hundred years of its nominal subservience to Persia. Its conquest by Cambyses took place in 525 B.C.

It was only during an occasional revolt that anyone from Athens could set foot in Egypt: for the great war between the Greeks and Persians was now going on. Anaxagoras was born 500 B.C., and he was therefore ten years old at the time of the battle of Marathon; and nineteen when that of Salamis was fought. But when he was forty years of age, Egypt became accessible for four years, by means of a revolt. During this time, though the Persians were never dislodged from Memphis, both Lower and Upper Egypt appeared to have become independent; and many Greeks, bent on the advancement of learning, and Anaxagoras among them, hastened to the Egyptian schools. Anaxagoras's work on the Nile has perished with his other writings: and there is no saying how much of his philosophy he derived from the teachings of the Egyptian priests: but there is a striking accordance between the opinions which he is variously reported to have held, and for which he is believed to have suffered banishment, and those which constituted part of the philosophy of Egypt. Wherever we turn, in tracing the course of ancient philosophy, we meet the priests of Egypt: and it really appears as if the great men of Greece and other countries had little to say on the highest and deepest subjects of human inquiry till they had studied at Memphis, or Sais, or Thebes, or Heliopolis. Here was the master of Socrates,²⁶ the originator of some of his most important opinions, and the great mover of his mind, studying in Egypt; and we shall hereafter find the great pupil of Socrates, and the interpreter of his mind, Plato, dwelling in the same school, for so long a time, it is thought, as to show in what reverence he held it.

Soon after Anaxagoras came Herodotus. We may be thankful that, among the Greeks who visited Egypt, there was one whose taste was more for matter-of-fact than for those high abstract inquiries which are not popularly included under that name: for the scientific and philosophical writings of his countrymen are, for the most part, lost, while the travels of Herodotus remain, as lively and fresh in their interest as ever. We may mourn that the others are gone; but we must rejoice that these are preserved. Here, at least, we obtain what we have longed for in the whole course of our study of the early Egyptian periods: records of the sayings and doings of the priests, and of the destinies of the people; pictures of the appearance of the great Valley and of its inhabitants; and details of their lives, customs, manners, history, and opinions. The temptation is strong to present again here, to fill up and illuminate this sketch of the history of old Egypt, some of the material of Herodotus: but his books lie within reach of every hand: and I will use them no further than is necessary to the illustration of what I myself observed in my study of the Monuments.

Within a hundred years of Herodotus came Plato. It may be questioned whether this visit of Plato to Egypt be not one of the most important events which have occurred in the history of the human mind. – The first thing that strikes us is how much there must have been to be learned in Egypt at this time, since Plato, his friend Eudoxus the astronomer, and Chrysippus the physician, all came – (such men, and from such a distance!) – to study in the schools of Heliopolis. It is related, and was believed in his own age, that Plato lived thirteen years at Heliopolis: and when Strabo was there, 350 years afterwards, he was shown the house where Plato and Eudoxus lived and studied. – Plato had met Socrates, it is believed, at the age of nineteen. After having learned what he could of him, and sustained his death, and been compelled for political reasons to leave Athens, he had gone to Megara, and joined the school of Euclid,²⁷ – also a pupil of Socrates, and one well qualified to cherish what Socrates had sown in the mind of Plato. Though this school was considered one of doubt and denial, its ultimate doctrine was that the Supreme Good is always the same and unchangeable. Thus trained and set thinking, Plato came to Egypt, and sat where Moses had sat, at the feet of the priests, gaining, as Moses had gained, an immortal wisdom from their lips. The methods of learning of these two men, and their acquisitions, differed according to the differing characteristics of their minds. Each took from his teachers what he could best appropriate. Moses was spiritualised to a wonderful degree, considering his position and race; but his surpassing eminence was as a redeeming legislator. Plato had deeply-considered views on political matters; but his surpassing eminence was as a spiritual philosopher. Moses redeemed a race of slaves, made men of them, organized them into a society, and constituted them a nation; while Plato did only theoretical work of that kind – enough to testify to the political philosophy of Egypt, but not to affect the condition of Greece. But Plato taught the Egyptian doctrine (illustrated on the tombs ages before, and, as Proclus declares, derived by Plato from Egypt) of the Immortality of the Soul, and rewards and punishments in an after-life. This was what Plato taught that Moses did not. The great old Egyptian doctrine, extending back, as the Book of Genesis shows us, as far as the Egyptian traditions reached – the great doctrine of a Divine Moral Government, was the soul alike of the practical legislation of Moses and the speculative philosophy of Plato; and this is, as it seems to us now, their great common qualification for bearing such a part as each does in the constitution of the prevalent Christianity. – We shall have to return to this hereafter, when we have seen more of the Egyptian priesthood. Meantime, I may observe that unless there is other evidence that Plato visited the Jews than the amount of Judaism in his writings, it does not seem necessary to suppose such a visit. If he passed thirteen years beside that fountain of wisdom where Moses dwelt till his manhood, it is not extraordinary that they should have great Ideas in common. The wonder would be if they had not. The intellectual might of Moses seems to show that the lapse of intervening ages had not much changed the character of the schools: and the result on the respective minds of the two students may have been much the same as if they had sat side by side in bodily presence, as they ever will do in the reason of all who faithfully contemplate the operation of the Christian religion on the minds of men, from the beginning till now. – That Plato derived and adopted much from his predecessors among Greek philosophers is very evident: and from Pythagoras above all. But many of these Greek philosophers had been trained in Egypt; and especially, as we have seen, Pythagoras, whose abstract ideas would appear to be displayed in a course of illustration on the walls of the Theban tombs, if we did not know that these tombs, with all their pictured mysteries, had been closed many centuries before the philosopher was born.

During all our review of the old Egyptians, we have not yet considered who they were. Of this there is little to say. It is useless to call them Copts; because all we can say of the Copts is that we must suppose them to be of the same race originally as the old Egyptians: and this throws no light on the derivation of either. Speaking of the origin of the Colchians, Herodotus says that the Egyptians believed them to be descended from followers of Sesostris: and that he thought this probable from (among other reasons) their being black, and having curly hair.²⁸ This blackness was probably only a relative term; for not only do we find the Nubians at this day, with their strong resemblance to the portraits in the tombs, of a dark bronze, but in the tombs there is a clear distinction between the absolute black of negro captives and other dark complexions. On these walls, the colour given to figures generally is a dark red. Where there is a bluish black, or neutral tint on the faces, it is distinctive merely of the priestly caste. The women are sometimes painted yellow; and so are certain strangers, supposed to be Asiatic or European. It is a curious circumstance, related by Sir W. Gell, that in the Tarquinian tombs in Etruria, all the men have the dark red complexion found in the Egyptian tombs. This rather tends to confirm the impression that the red colour may be symbolical, like the blue for the priests, and the yellow for the women. On the whole, it is thought probable that the old Egyptian complexion was of the dark bronze of the Nubians of the present day. – Herodotus says that, except the Libyans, no people were so blessed in point of health and temperament:²⁹ and he repeatedly records traits of their cleanliness, and nicety with regard to food and habits. It does not appear that they were insensible or reconciled to the plague of indigenous insects, as natives usually are, and especially Africans; for he tells us of their sleeping under nets to avoid the mosquitoes.³⁰ Their dress was of linen, with fringes round the legs,³¹ – and over this they wore a cloak of white wool, which must be laid aside before they entered the temples; – or the tomb; for it was not permitted to bury in woollen garments. Every man had but one wife:³² and the women were clearly in that state of freedom which must be supposed to exist where female sovereignty was a matter of course in its turn. Herodotus tells that the women went into the market, and conducted commerce while the men stayed at home to weave cloth.³³ He speaks of them as a serious-minded and most religious people. »They are very religious«, he says, »and surpass all men in the worship they render to the gods.«³⁴ He tells of their great repugnance to the customs of the Greeks and of all other men;³⁵ and everywhere attests the originality of the Egyptians, and their having given truth, knowledge, and customs to others, without having themselves derived from any.

One of the most interesting inquiries to us is about the language of these people. To form any idea of the labours of modern interpreters of the monuments, we must remember that they have not only to read the perfectly singular cipher of these writers on stone, but to find their very language. Of course, the only hope is in the study of the Coptic: and the Coptic became almost a dead language in the twelfth century of our era, and entirely so in the seventeenth, after having been for ages corrupted by the admixture of foreign terms going on at the same time with the loss of old native ones. Egypt never had any permanent colonies in which her language might be preserved during the ages when one foreign power after another took possession of her valley, and rendered the language of her people compound and corrupt. Without repeating here the long and well-known story of the progress of discovery of the ancient language, it is enough to give the results thus far attained.

The key, not only to the cipher but to the language, was afforded by the discovery of the same inscription written, as the inscription itself declared, in two languages and three characters – the Greek, the Enchorial or ordinary Egyptian writing, and the old sacred character. The most ancient was found to bear a close relation to the Coptic, as then known: a relation, probably, as has been observed by a recent writer,³⁶ »similar to that which the Latin does to the Italian, the Zend to the modern Persian, or the Sanscrit to many of the vernacular dialects now spoken in India.« This key was applied with wonderful sagacity and ingenuity by Champollion the younger, who proceeded a good deal further than reading the names and titles of the kings and their officers. He ventured upon introducing or deciphering (whichever it may be called) many words not to be found in the later Coptic, except in their supposed roots, nor, of course, anywhere else. The great difficulty is, that the language having, by lapse of ages, lost its original power of grammatical inflexion, a quality which it seems scarcely possible to restore, the relations of ideas in a sentence, which in the more modern Coptic are expressed by auxiliary terms, must be disposed by conjecture, or by doubtful internal comparison and analogy. It is easy to see how thus, while names and titles and all declaratory terms may be read, when once the alphabet is secured, all beyond must be in a high degree conjectural, at least till the stock of terms is largely increased. The stock is on the increase, however. Champollion made a noble beginning; Dr. Lepsius has corrected him in some important instances; and the Chevalier Bunsen has offered a Lexicon of the old Egyptian language, placing above four hundred words in comparison with the known Coptic, This is a supply which will go a good way in reading the legends on the monuments; by which process, again, we may be helped to more. The very singular nature of the alphabet being once understood, and the beginning of a Lexicon being supplied, there seems reason to hope that the process of discovery may be carried on by the application of one fresh mind after another to the task which all must see to be as important as any which can occupy the human faculties. Or, if all do not see this, it must be from insufficient knowledge of the facts: insufficient knowledge of the amount of the records, of their antiquity, and of their general nature. When the traveller gazes at vast buildings covered over in every part with writing; every architrave, every abacus, every recess, and every projection, all the lines of the cornice, and all the intervals of the sculptures, he is overwhelmed with the sense of the immensity of knowledge locked up from him before his eyes. Let those at home imagine the ecclesiastical history of Christendom written up thus on every inch of the surface of its cathedrals, and the civil history of any country, from its earliest times, thus engraved on all its public buildings and palaces, and he may form some conception of what it would be, in regard to mere amount, to be able to read the inscriptions in Egypt. If he is also aware that the religion, philosophy, and science of the world for many thousand years, a religion, philosophy, and science which reveal a greater nobleness, depth, and extent, the more they are explored, are recorded there, under our very eyes and hands, he will see that no nobler task awaits any lover of truth and of his race, than that of enabling mankind to read these earliest volumes of its own history.

And the world has no other resource in regard to this object. There is no doubt about the ancient Egyptians having had an extensive written literature: but it is lost. It was shelved when the Greek language and literature became the fashion in Egypt: and previous circumstances had been unfavourable to the preservation of the rolls of goat and sheep skins, and the papyri, which contained the best thoughts of the best men of five or six thousand years ago. We may mourn over this; – we must mourn, for it is certain that they knew things that we are yet ignorant of, and that they could do things which we can only wonder at: but the records are lost, and no man can help it now. There has been later damage, too, clearly traceable. We know how early Christianity was introduced into Egypt: and all who have been there have seen how indefatigable the early Christians were in destroying everything relating to the ancient people and their faith that they could lay their hands on. Again, the Emperor Severus carefully collected the writings which related to the mysteries of the priests, and buried them in the tomb of Alexander. And again, Diocletian ordered all the Egyptian books on alchemy to be destroyed, lest these makers of gold should become too rich to remain dependent on Rome. Thus scarcely a vestige of the ancient writing on destructible substances remains, and the monumental records are our only resource. While we take to heart the terrible loss, let us take to heart also the value of the resource, and search for the charm which may remove the spell of dumbness from these eloquent old teachers. Perhaps the solemn Memnon may yet respond if touched by the warm bright rays of zeal and intelligence, and the great Valley may take up the echoes from end to end. And this is a case where he who gives his labour quickly gives twice. Time is a more efficient defacer than even the Coptic Christians: and the indefatigable enemy, the Desert, can bury old records on a vaster scale than any Severus. There are rulers bearing sway, too, who are not more enlightened than the mischievous Diocletian.

As for the Egyptian method of recording the language, there were three kinds of writing: the Hieroglyphic or picture writing; the Hieratic – an abridged form of the hieroglyphic, used by the priests for their records; and the Enchorial, in popular use, which appears to be a still further abridgment of the Hieratic, whose signs have flowed into a running hand. Written language is found among the very earliest memorials of this most ancient people.

As for their social organisation, we know more of it than of most particulars concerning them. The most important, however, in the state appears to have been that of the caste of Priests. The monarch must be of that class. If a member of the next (the military) caste was made king, he must first become a priest.³⁷ – Herodotus says that Egyptian society was composed of seven castes; Plato says six;³⁸ Diodorus Siculus says five.³⁹ The classification of Herodotus is so strange that it is clear that he included under his titles some division of employments which we do not understand. He declares⁴⁰ the seven classes to be the Priests, the Military, the Herdsmen, the Swineherds, the Tradesmen, the Interpreters, and the Pilots and Seamen. The classification of Diodorus will help us better. He gives us the Priests, the Military, the Husbandmen, the Tradesmen and Artificers, and, lowest of all, the Shepherds; and with them the Poulterers, Fishermen, and Servants. The division indicates much of the national mind, as I need not point out. We must remember, throughout our study of the monuments, that the priests were not occupied with religion alone. They had possession, besides, of the departments of politics, law, medicine, science, and philosophy. It is curious to speculate on what must have been the division of employments among them, when we read in Herodotus how they partitioned out their art of medicine, – there being among them no general practitioners, as we should say, but physicians of the heart, the lungs, the abdomen; and oculists, dentists, etc.⁴¹ If such a subdivision was followed out through the whole range of study and practice in all professions, the priestly caste must contain within itself a sufficient diversity to preserve its enlightenment and magnanimity better than we, with our modern view of the tendencies of a system of castes, might suppose.

I have, perhaps, said enough of this ancient people to prepare for an entrance upon the study of their monuments. The other castes, and a multitude of details of personal and social condition and usage, will come before us when we turn to the sculptures and pictures. Before going on to their successors, we may call to mind the grounds which Herodotus assigns for his fulness of detail about the Pharaohs and their people. He says, »I shall enlarge further on what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no region besides where one sees so many works which are admirable and beyond expression.«⁴²

Beyond expression indeed are those great works. And do we not know that wherever men's works have a grandeur or beauty beyond expression the feeling which suggested and inspired them is yet more beyond expression still. O! how happy should I be if I could arouse in others by this book, as I experienced it myself from the monuments, any sense of the depth and solemnity of the IDEAS which were the foundation of the old Egyptian faith! I did not wait till I went to Egypt to remember that the faculty of Reverence is inherent in all men, and that its natural exercise is always to be sympathised with, irrespective of its objects. I did not wait till I went to Egypt to become aware that every permanent reverential observance has some great Idea at the bottom of it, and that it is our business not to deride or be shocked at the method of manifestation, but to endeavour to apprehend the Idea concerned. I vividly remember the satisfaction of ascertaining the ideas that lay at the bottom of those most barbarous South Sea Island practices of Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism. If some sympathy in conception and feeling is possible in even this lowest case, how far should we be from contempt or levity in studying the illustrations of Egyptian faith and hope which we find blazoned on works »admirable and beyond expression!« With all Men's tendency to praise the olden time, – to say that the former times are better than these, – we find that it is usually only the wisdom of their own forefathers that they extol; merely a former mode of holding and acting upon their own existing ideas. They have no such praise for the forefathers of another race, who had other ideas and acted them out differently. Instead of endeavouring to ascertain the ideas, they revile or ridicule the manifestation, which was never meant to meet their conceptions, and can never be interpreted by them. Thus we, as a society, take upon ourselves to abhor and utterly despise the »Idolatry« of the Egyptians, without asking ourselves whether we comprehend anything of the principles of Egyptian theology. The children on their stools by our firesides wonder eternally how people so clever could be so silly as to pay homage to crocodiles and cats: and their parents too often agree with them, instead of pointing out that there might be, and certainly were, reasons in the minds of Egyptians which made it a very different thing in them to cherish sacred animals from what it would be in us Everybody at home talks of the ugly and grotesque character of the Egyptians works of art: and no wonder, if they judge, with English mind and English eyes, from broken specimens in the British Museum One can only ask them to trust something to the word of travellers who have seen such works in their plenitude, in their own locality and proper connection. Probably some people in Greece were talking of the ugly and grotesque character of such Egyptian decorations as they might have heard of, while Herodotus was gazing on them on their native soil, and declaring in his own mind, as he afterwards did to the whole world, and to all time, that they were »admirable and beyond expression.« – I would ask for these considerations to be borne in mind, not only for the sake of justice to the earliest philosophers of the human race (as far as we know), but because it is impossible to appreciate the monuments – I may say impossible to see them – through any other medium than that of a teachable mind, working with a sympathising heart. If anyone hesitates to grant me this much let me ask him whether he would be willing to have the Christian religion judged of, five thousand years hence, by such a one as himself, when its existing forms shall have been long forgotten and its eternal principles shall be expanded in some yet unknown mode of manifestation? Supposing oblivion to have been by that time as completely wrapped round Catholic and Protestant ritual as round the ceremonial of Egyptian worship, would a Christian be content to have his faith judged of by a careless traveller of another race, who should thrust a way among the buried pillars of our cathedral aisles and look for superstition in every recess, and idolatry in every chapel; and who, lighting upon some carved fox and goose or grinning mask, should go home and declare that Christianity was made up of what was idolatrous, unideal, and grotesque? If he is aware that in our Christianity there is much that will not appear on our cathedrals five thousand years hence, let him only remember that there maybe much that is ideal and holy in other faiths which we have not hart the opportunity of appreciating. I believe this to be the case with every faith which, from the first appearance of the human race upon our globe, has met and gratified the faculty of Reverence in any considerable number of men. If I did not believe this with regard to the religion and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, I must have looked at them merely as a wonderful show, and should certainly have visited them in vain.

Here, then, we take leave of the Pharaohs and their times; and, we may say, of their people; for the spirit of the old Egyptians was gone, and only a lifeless body was left, to be used as it pleased their conquerors. We hear of the brilliant reigns of the Ptolemies, who now succeeded to the Egyptian throne: but theirs was a Greek civilisation, which, though unquestionably derived from Egypt many centuries before, was now as essentially different from that of the old Egyptians as were the characteristics of the two nations.

We must ever observe that there was no true fusion of the minds of the two races. The Greeks learned and adopted much from the Egyptians: but the Egyptians, instead of adopting from the Greeks, died out. No new god was ever introduced into Egypt: while the Greeks, after having long before derived many of their gods from Egypt, now accommodated their deities to those of the Egyptians, and in an arbitrary and superficial way adopted the old symbols. There is every reason to believe that the priests, when employed by the Ptolemies to interpret the monuments, fitted their new and compounded ideas to the old symbols, and thus produced a theology and philosophy which any resuscitated Pharaoh would have disavowed. The Greeks took no pains to learn the Egyptian language, or to enter into the old Egyptian mind; and there is therefore endless confusion in the accounts they have given to the world of the old gods and the old monarchs of the Nile valley. To understand anything of the monuments of the times we are now entering upon, it will be necessary to bear in mind that the Ptolemies and Caesars built upon Pharaonic foundations, and in imitation of Pharaonic edifices; but necessarily with such an admixture of Greek and Roman ideas with their Egyptian conceptions as to cause a complete corruption of ancient art. It is necessary never to forget this, or we shall be perpetually misled. We may admire the temples of the Ptolemies and Caesars as much or as little as we please; but we must remember that they are not Egyptian.

Every country weak enough to need the aid of Greek mercenaries was sure to become, ere long, Greek property. It was so with Persia, and with its province, Egypt. The event was hastened by the desire of the Egyptians to be quit of their Persian masters. Alexander the Great was the conqueror, as everybody knows. He chose his time when the chief part of the Persian forces of Egypt was absent – sent to fight the Greeks in Asia Minor. When once Alexander had set foot in Pelusium, the rest was easy; for the towns opened their gates to him with joy; and he had only to march to Heliopolis and then to Memphis. He gave his countenance, as well as he knew how, to the old worship, restoring the temples and honouring the symbols of the gods at Memphis, and marching to the Oasis of Amun, to present gifts to the chief deity of the Egyptians, and to claim to be his son. It was on his way there, by the coast, that he saw in passing the harbour where Alexandria now stands, and perceived its capabilities. He ordered the improvement of the harbour, and the building of the city which would have immortalised his name, if he had done nothing else. This visit of Alexander the Great to Egypt took place 332 B.C. He left orders that the country should be governed by its own laws, and that its religion should be absolutely respected. This was wise and humane; and no doubt we owe some of our knowledge of more ancient times to this conservative principle of Alexander's government. But he was not practically sustained by his deputies; and he died eight years after his visit to Egypt. – His successor gave the government of Egypt into the hands of Ptolemy, who called himself the son of Lagus, but was commonly believed to be an illegitimate son of Philip of Macedon. In seventeen years he became king; and with him begins the great line of the Ptolemies, of whom sixteen reigned in succession for 275 years, till the witch Cleopatra let the country go into the hands of the Romans, to become a Roman province, in 30 B.C.

It was under the government of the first Ptolemy that Greek visitors again explored the Nile valley as high as Thebes, and higher. Hecataeus of Abdera was one of these travellers, and a great traveller he was; for, if Diodorus Siculus tells us truly, he once stood on Salisbury Plain, and saw there the great temple of the Sun which we call Stonehenge:⁴³ and he certainly stood on the plain of Thebes, and saw the great temple of the Sun there. The priests had recovered their courage, under the just rule of the Greeks, and had brought out the gold and silver and other treasures of the temples which had been carefully hidden from the Persians. Thebes, however, was almost dead by this time; and its monuments were nearly all which a stranger had to see. We are glad to know that the records of the priests told of forty-seven tombs existing in the Valley of Kings' Sepulchres, of which seventeen had at that time been discovered under their concealment of earth and laid open. Some of these, and some fresh ones, have been explored in our own days; but it is an animating thing to believe that there were at least forty-seven originally; and that many yet remain, untouched since they were closed on the demise of the Pharaohs. Whose will be the honour of laying them open? – not in the Cambyses spirit of rapine; but in all honour and reverence, in search of treasures which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves carry away – a treasure of light out of the darkened place, and of knowledge out of that place where usually no device or knowledge is found!

We are grieved now to lose the old Egyptian names: but at this time they naturally become exchanged for Greek. On becomes Heliopolis. This becomes Abydos. Thebes (called in the Bible No Ammen) becomes Diospolis Magna. Pilak becomes Philae. Petpieh is Aphroditopolis (the city of Athor). Even the country itself, from being called Khem (answering to Ham in the Bible), is henceforth known as Aegyptus.

In the reign of the second Ptolemy lived a writer of uncommon interest and importance to us now: – Manetho, the Egyptian priest. We have only fragments of the writings of Manetho; but they are of great and immediate value to us: fragments of the history of Egypt, which he wrote at the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He wrote in Greek, of course, deriving his information from the inscriptions in the temples. What would not we give now for his knowledge of the Egyptian language! and what would we not give to have his works complete! His abode was at that great seat of learning where Moses got his lore – Heliopolis. He is the very man we want – to stand on the ridge of time, and tell us who are below, what was doing in the depths of the old ages. He did so stand; and he did fully tell what he saw: but his words are gone to the four winds, and but a few unconnected declarations have reached us. We have a list of old kings from him: and Josephus has, by extracting, preserved some passages of his account of the Hebrews when in Egypt: but Josephus, in his unscrupulous vanity, wishing to make out that his nation were descended from the Shepherd Kings, put certain words of his own into Manetho's mouth, thus impairing our trust in the poor extracts we have. It appears, and should be remembered, that the Egyptian records make no mention of the Hebrews; and that what Manetho told of them must therefore be derived from other, and probably inferior sources. His list of kings is preserved in some early Christian writers: but the difficulty has been how to use it, and how far to trust it. I must not enter here upon the story, however interesting, of the fluctuations of the credit of Manetho. Suffice it that all recent discoveries have directly tended to establish his character as an able and conscientious historian. The names he gives have been found inscribed in temples and tombs; and even, latterly, in the Pyramids: and the numerous and nameless incidental notices which occur in the study of ancient monuments have, in this instance, gone to corroborate the statements of Manetho. As the monuments are a confirmation of his statements, so are his statements a key to the monuments: and with this intimation of unbounded obligations to Manetho, we must leave him.

One event which happened in the reign of the second Ptolemy we must just refer to, as it is connected with the chronological questions which make up so much of the interest of the history of Egypt. The Jews then in Egypt were emancipated by this Ptolemy; and they employed their influence with him in obtaining, by his countenance, a good Greek translation of their Scriptures. By communication with the High Priest at Jerusalem, there came about an appointment of seventy qualified men who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and presented the world with the version called the Septuagint. The chronology of this work differs widely from that given by the Samaritan and Hebrew versions; the Septuagint assigning, between Adam and Abraham, nearly 1400 years more than the Hebrew; and so on. For a long course of time, the learned and religious world believed that the discrepancy between the Septuagint and (so-called) Mosaic histories was ascribable to forgery on the part of the Alexandrian Jews. But now that chronological evidence is flowing in from, other sources, the judgment of biblical scholars is becoming favourable to the Septuagint computation. Of course it becomes at the same time more accordant with the recorded history of Egypt.

In the reign of the third Ptolemy lived Eratosthenes, – a truly great scholar and wise man, – called the second Plato, and also the second, of the first man in every science. He was a Greek, understanding Egyptian: and he wrote a history of Egypt in correction of that of Manetho. Their statements, their lists of kings, appear at first sight irreconcileable. This is not the place in which to give an account of the difficulty. It is enough to say that the attention of scholars has been employed upon it to good purpose; and that it may be hoped that two men, reasonably believed so trustworthy, will be found, when we can understand them, to have told the same story, and to have supplied us with new knowledge by the Very difference in their way of telling it.

One great event must be noticed before we go on from the dominion of the Ptolemies to that of Rome. The Ptolemies degenerated, as royal races are apt to do; and after a few of their reigns, the Egyptians became as heartily tired of their Greek rulers as they had been of the Persian. In the time of the eighth and ninth sovereigns of this line Thebes rebelled, and maintained a long resistance against the authority and forces of Ptolemy Lathyrus. The temples were stout citadels, in which the besieged could seclude themselves: and they held them long. When Ptolemy Lathyrus prevailed at last, he made dreadful havoc at Thebes. Cambyses had done wonders in the way of destruction: but Lathyrus far exceeded him. As one walks over the plain of Thebes, whose final overthrow dates from this conflict, one's heart sickens among the ruins made by the Persian, the Greek, and the Earthquake. To the last of these one submits quietly, though mournfully, as to a fate: but those who do not regard men as necessary agents – agents of an exact necessity in human history, – may find their spirits rising in resentment against the long-buried invaders, as the spirits of the Thebans rose in resentment while they looked out upon their besiegers from the loopholes of their lofty propyla. This greatest and last act of devastation took place 88 B.C., fifty-eight years before Egypt became a Roman province.

About thirty years before this annexatian, Diodorus Siculus was in Egypt. He probably witnessed the beginning of the building of the Temple of Dendera. He saw much religious ceremonial, which it is curious to read of, though there is no saying how far it remained true to the old ideas in which it originated. The testimony of Diodorus as to what happened in his own time is of course more valuable than his essays in the ancient history: but the latter are interesting in their way, as showing what were the priestly traditions current in the last days of the Ptolemies.

As our object in this rapid view of Egyptian history is to obtain some clearness of ideas in preparation for looking at the monuments, we need not go into any detail of the times subsequent to the building of Egyptian monuments, or of the times of those Romans who erected some temples, but whose history is familiar to everybody. I need only Say that after the death of the last Cleopatra and her son, Caesarion, in 30 B.C., Egypt was annexed to the Roman dominions for seven hundred years. At the end of that period, the ruler of Egypt had enough to do to keep off Persian aggression. He bought off the Arabs – a stronger enemy – for a time; but the great conqueror Amrou marched in triumph from his capture of Damascus and Jerusalem, and, after some struggle and mischance, took the great cities of Egypt, and sent the libraries of Alexandria to heat the baths of that city; for which purpose, it is said that they lasted six months.

One of the first visitors to Egypt after its annexation to Rome was Strabo, who went up the banks of the Nile with the Prefect, as far as Aswán, and has left a full and careful account of what he saw. He enlarges on Alexandria, at that time a most magnificent city, while Thebes was a village, interspersed with colossal ruins. Memphis was still great, ranking next to Alexandria: but Heliopolis was sunk, and almost gone. Its schools were closed; but the memory of them remained, on the spot, as well as afar: for the house was shown where Plato and Euxodus lived and studied. Would it were there still! At present there is nothing left visible of Heliopolis but its obelisk and a circuit of mounds. Strabo thought the place almost deserted in his time: but what a boon it would be to us to see what was before his eyes, within a few years of the Christian era!

Here, then, we stop; at a period which we have been wont to consider ancient, but which, in regard to our object, is so modern as to have no further interest or purpose which need detain us.

We now proceed to the monuments.