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The Syrian Goddess De Dea Syria, by Lucian of Samosataby Herbert A. Strong and John Garstang[1913] |
The Book of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC.
The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day".
Another translation would be "Book of emerging forth into the Light". The text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife.
The Book of the Dead was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Some of the spells included were drawn from these older works and date to the 3rd millennium BC. Other spells were composed later in Egyptian history, dating to the Third Intermediate Period (11th to 7th centuries BC).
Legends of the Gods
EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND
This highly readable book covers Egyptian religion, history, and culture through its entire civilization. We are accustomed to history measured in decades or centuries. Egypt requires thinking in terms of millenia. There was not one monolithic Egyptian belief system; it went through profound changes over time; this book describes this evolution in great detail. Mackenzie includes many extracts from religious texts, folk tales, and historical documents.
TUTANKHAMEN
Frontispiece
PAINTED LIMESTONE HEAD OF A QUEEN IN THE MUSEUM AT BERLIN.
It is supposed to represent Queen Nefertiti, wife of Amenhetep IV.
TO
THE MEMORY OF
GEORGE EDWARD STANHOPE MOLYNEUX HERBERT
EARL OF CARNARVON
The Wisdom of the Egyptians
OSIRIS KHENTI AMENTI, the Great God, seated in his shrine of fire. In front of Osiris is the Eye of Horus and behind him stand the Godesses ISIS and NEPHTHYS.
From the Papyrus of Hunefer in the British Museum
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THE FARMER PLUNDERS THE PEASANT
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
THE GIRL WIFE AND THE BATA BULL
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
"CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE", on the Thames Embankment, affords us an introduction to ancient Egypt, "the land of marvels" and of strange and numerous deities. This obelisk was shaped from a single block of red granite quarried at Assouan by order of one of the old Pharaohs; it is 68 feet 5, inches high, and weighs 186 tons. Like one of our own megalithic monuments, it is an interesting relic of stone worship. Primitive man believed that stones were inhabited by spirits which had to be propitiated with sacrifices and offerings, and, long after higher conceptions obtained, their crude beliefs survived among their descendants. This particular monument was erected as a habitation for one of the spirits of the sun god; in ancient Egypt the gods were believed to have had many spirits.
The "Needle" was presented to the British Government in 1820, and in 1877-8 was transported hither by Sir Erasmus Wilson at a cost of 10,000. For about eighteen centuries it had been a familiar object at Alexandria. Its connection with the famous Queen Cleopatra is uncertain; she may have ordered it to be removed from its original site on account of its archlogical interest, for it was already old in her day. It was first erected at Heliopolis thirty-two centuries ago. But even then Egypt was a land of ancient memories; the great Pyramids, near Cairo, were aged about 500 years, and the Calendar had been in existence for over fourteen centuries.
Heliopolis, "the city of the sun", is called On in the Bible. It was there that Moses was educated, and became "mighty in word and in deed". Joseph had previously married, at On, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, a priest of the sun temple, the site of which, at modern Matarieh, is marked by an erect obelisk of greater antiquity even than the "Needle". Near by are a holy well and a holy tree, long invested with great sanctity by local tradition. Coptic Christians and native Mohammedans still relate that when Joseph and Mary fled with the infant Christ into Egypt, to escape the fierce King Herod, they rested under the tree, and that Mary washed in the well the swaddling clothes of the holy child.
When "Cleopatra's Needle" was erected at On, which is also called Beth-shemesh 1 , "the house of the sun god", in the Hebrew Scriptures, the priests taught classes of students in the temple colleges. For about thirty centuries the city was the Oxford of Egypt. Eudoxus and Plato, in the course of their travels, visited the priestly professors and heard them lecture. As ancient tradition has credited Egypt with the origin of geometry, Euclid, the distinguished mathematician, who belonged to the brilliant Alexandria school, no doubt also paid a pilgrimage to the ancient seat of learning. When he was a student he must have been familiar with our "Needle"; perhaps he puzzled over it as much as some of us have puzzled over his problems.
At On the Egyptian students were instructed, among other things, to read and fashion those strange pictorial signs which appear on the four sides of the "Needle". These are called hieroglyphics, a term derived from the Greek words hieros, "sacred", and glypho, "I engrave", and first applied by the Greeks because they believed that picture writing was used only by Egyptian priests for religious purposes. Much of what we know regarding the myths, legends, and history of the land of the Pharaohs has been accumulated since modern linguists acquired the art of reading those pictorial inscriptions. The ancient system had passed out of human use and knowledge for many long centuries when the fortunate discovery was made of a slab of black basalt on which had been inscribed a decree in Greek and Egyptian. It is called the "Rosetta Stone", because it was dug up at Rosetta by a French officer of engineers In 1799, when Napoleon, who had invaded Egypt, ordered a fort to be rebuilt. It was afterwards seized by the British, along with other antiquities collected by the French, and was presented by George III to the British Museum in 1802.
Copies of the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were distributed by Napoleon, and subsequently by British scholars, to various centres of learning throughout Europe. It was found that the Greek section recorded a decree, issued by the native priests to celebrate the first anniversary of Pharaoh Ptolemy V in 195 B.C. The mysterious Egyptian section was rendered in hieroglyphics and also in Demotic, a late form of the cursive system of writing called Hieratic. In 1814 two distinguished linguists--Dr. Thomas Young in Britain, and Professor Champollion in France--engaged in studying the quaint pictorial signs. The credit of having first discovered the method of reading them is claimed for both these scholars, and a heated controversy waged for long years over the matter. Modern opinion inclines to the view that Young and Champollion solved the secret simultaneously and independently of each other. The translation of other Egyptian texts followed in course; and of late years so great has been the skill attained by scholars that they are able to detect blunders made by ancient scribes. Much uncertainty exists, however, and must ever exist) regarding the proper pronunciation of the language.
Another source of knowledge regarding the civilization of Egypt is the history of Manetho, a native priest, who lived at the beginning of the third century before Christ. His books perished when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, but epitomes survive in the writings of Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and George the Syncellus, while fragments are quoted by Josephus. Manetho divided the history of his country into thirty dynasties, and his system constitutes the framework upon which our knowledge of the great Egyptian past has accumulated.
Divergent views exist regarding the value of Manetho's history, and these are invariably expressed with point and vigour. Professor Breasted, the distinguished American Egyptologist, for instance, characterizes the chronology of the priestly historian as "a late, careless, and uncritical compilation", and he holds that it "can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in the vast majority of cases". "Manetho's dynastic totals", he says, "are so absurdly high throughout that they are not worthy of a moment's credence, being often nearly or quite double the maximum drawn from contemporary monuments. Their accuracy is now maintained only by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern scholars." Breasted goes even further than that by adding: "The compilation of puerile folk tales by Manetho is hardly worthy of the name history".
Professor Flinders Petrie, whose work as an excavator has been epochmaking, is inclined, on the other band, to attach much weight to the history of the native priest. "Unfortunately," he says, "much confusion has been caused by scholars not being content to accept Manetho as being substantially correct in the main, though with many small corruptions and errors. Nearly every historian has made large and arbitrary assumptions and changes, with a view to reducing the length of time stated. But recent discoveries seem to prove that we must accept the lists of kings as having been, correct, however they may have suffered in detail. . . . Every accurate test that we can apply shows the general trustworthiness of Manetho apart from minor corruptions."
Breasted, supported by other leading Egyptologists, accepts what is known as the "Berlin system of Egyptian chronology". The following tables illustrate how greatly he differs from Petrie:
|
Breasted. |
Petrie. |
|
|
Mena's Conquest |
3400 B.C. |
5550 B.C. |
|
Twelfth Dynasty |
2000 B.C. |
3400 B.C. |
|
Eighteenth Dynasty |
1580 B.C. |
1580 B.C. |
The Hyksos invasion took place, according to Manetho, at the beginning of the Fifteenth Dynasty, and he calculated that the Asiatic rulers were in Egypt for 511 years. Breasted's minimum is 100 years. King and Hall, like Newberry and Garstang, allow the Hyksos a little more than 200 years, while Hawes, the Cretan explorer, whose dating comes very close to that of Dr. Evans, says that "there is a growing conviction that Cretan evidence, especially in the eastern part of the island, favours the minimum (Berlin) system of Egyptian chronology". Breasted, it will be seen, allows 420 years for the period between the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, while Petrie gives 1820--a difference of 1400 years.
From 1580 B.C., onward, the authorities are in practical agreement; prior to that date the chronology is uncertain.
This confusion has been partly caused by the Egyptians having ignored the leap year addition of one day. Their calendar Of 365 days lost about a quarter of a day each twelvemonth and about a whole day every four years. New Year's Day began with the rising of the star Sirius (Sothos) on 17 June, and it coincided with the beginning of the Nile inundation. But in a cycle of 1461 years Sirius rose in every alternate month of the Egyptian year. When, therefore, we find in the Egyptian records a reference, at a particular period, to their first month (the month of Thoth), we are left to discover whether it was our April or October; and in dating back we must allow for the "wanderings of Sirius". Much controversial literature has accumulated regarding what is known as the Egyptian "Sothic Cycle".
Throughout this volume the dates are given in accordance with the minimum system, on account of the important evidence afforded by the Cretan discoveries. But we may agree to differ from Professor Petrie on chronological matters and yet continue to admire his genius and acknowledge the incalculable debt we owe him as one who has reconstructed some of the most obscure periods of Egyptian history. The light he has thrown upon early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic times, especially, has assured him an undying reputation, and he has set an example to all who have followed by the thoroughness and painstaking character of his work of research.
It is chiefly by modern-day excavators in Egypt, and in those countries which traded with the Nilotic kingdom in ancient times, that the past has been conjured up before us;. We know more about ancient Egypt now chan did the Greeks or the Romans, and more about pre-Dynastic times and the early Dynasties than even those Egyptian scholars who took degrees in the Heliopolitan colleges when "Cleopatra's Needle" was first erected. But our knowledge is withal fragmentary. We can but trace the outlines of Egyptian history; we cannot command that unfailing supply of documentary material which is available, for instance, in dealing with the history of a European nation. Fragments of pottery, a few weapons, strings of beads, some rude drawings, and tomb remains are all we have at our disposal in dealing with some periods; others are made articulate by inscriptions, but even after civilization had attained a high level we occasionally find it impossible to deal with those great movements which were shaping the destinies of the ancient people. Obscure periods recur all through Egyptian history, and some, indeed, are almost quite blank.
When "Cleopatra's Needle" was erected by Thothmes III, the Conqueror, and the forerunner of Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Egyptian civilization had attained its highest level. Although occasionally interrupted by internal revolt or invasions from north and south, it had gradually increased in splendour until Thothmes III extended the empire to the borders of Asia Minor. The Mediterranean Sea then became an "Egyptian lake". Peace offerings were sent to Thothmes from Crete and Cyprus, the Phoenicians owed him allegiance, and his favours were courted by the Babylonians and Assyrians: the "Needle" records the gifts which were made by the humbled King of the Hittites.
After the passing of Thothmes, who flourished in the Eighteenth Dynasty, decline set in, and, although lost ground was recovered after a time, the power of Egypt gradually grew less and less. "Cleopatra's Needle" may be regarded as marking the "halfway house" of Egyptian civilization. It was erected at the beginning of the Age of Empire. The chief periods before that are known as the Pre-Dynastic, the Archaic Age, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the Hyksos Age; after the fall of empire, in the Twentieth Dynasty, we have the periods of Libyan, Ethiopian, and Assyrian supremacy. Then came "The Restoration", or Saite period, which ended with the Persian Conquest. Subsequently the Greeks possessed the kingdom, which was afterwards seized by the Romans. Arabs and Turks followed, and to-day we witness a second Restoration under British rule. But not since the day when Ezekiel declared, in the Saite period: "There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt" (Ezek., xxx, 13) has a ruler of the old Egyptian race sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs.
The mythology of Egypt was formulated prior to the erection of the "Needle". Indeed, in tracing its beginnings we must go back to the pre-Dynastic times, when the beliefs of the various peoples who mingled in the ancient land were fused and developed under Egyptian influences.
We are confronted by a vast multitude of gods and goddesses. Attempts to enumerate them result, as a rule, in compilations resembling census returns. One of the Pharaohs, who lived about 4000 years ago, undertook the formidable task of accommodating them all under one roof, and caused to be erected for that purpose a great building which Greek writers called "The Labyrinth"; he had separate apartments dedicated to the various deities, and of these it was found necessary to construct no fewer than 3000, The ancient Egyptians lived in a world which swarmed with spirits, "numerous as gnats upon the evening beam". They symbolized everything; they gave concrete form to every abstract idea; they had deities which represented every phase and function of life, every act and incident of import, and every hour and every month; they had nature gods, animal gods and human gods, and gods of the living and gods of the dead. And, as if they had not a sufficient number of their own, they imported gods and goddesses from other countries.
In the midst of this mythological multitude, which a witty French Egyptologist calls "the rabble of deities", a few, comparatively speaking, loom vast and great. But some of these are but differentiated forms of a single god or goddess, whose various attributes were symbolized, so that deities budded from deities; others underwent separate development in different localities and assumed various names. If we gather those linking deities together in groups) the task of grappling with Egyptian mythology will be greatly simplified.
An interesting example of the separating process is afforded by Thoth of Hermopolis. That god of quaint and arresting aspect is most usually depicted with a man's body and the head of an ibis, surmounted by a lunar disk and crescent. As the divine lawyer and recorder, he checked the balance in the Judgment Hall of the Dead when the human heart was weighed before Osiris; as a rate, he measured out at birth the span of human life on a rod with serrated edge; he was also a patron of architects) a god of religious literature who was invoked by scribes, and a god of medicine. Originally he was a lunar deity, and was therefore of great antiquity, for, as Mr. Payne has emphasized in his History of the New World, a connection is traced between the lunar phenomena and the food supply in an earlier stage of civilization than that in which a connection is traced between the food supply and the solar phenomena.
The worship of the moon preceded in Egypt, as in many other countries, the worship of the sun. It still survives in Central Africa, and among primitive peoples elsewhere throughout the world. Even in highly civilized Europe we can still trace lingering evidences of belief in the benevolence of the lunar spirit, the ancient guide and protector of mankind.
The moon was believed to exercise a direct influence upon Nature as a generative agency; agriculturists were of opinion that seeds sown during its period of increase had more prolific growth than those sown when it was on the wane. Pliny said that "the blood of men grows and diminishes with the light of the moon, while leaves and herbage also feel the same influence". Crops were supposed to receive greater benefit in moonlight than in sunshine. In one of the Egyptian temple chants, the corn god is entreated to "give fecundity in the nighttime". The "harvest moon" was "the ripening moon", and many poets have in all ages sung its praises. It was followed in Scotland, where archaic Mediterranean beliefs appear to have tardy survival, by "the badger's moon", which marked the period for laying in winter stores, and then by "the hunter's moon", an indication that lunar worship prevailed in the archlogical "hunting period". Indeed the moon bulks as largely in European as in ancient Egyptian folklore: it is still believed in certain localities to cure diseases and to inspire love; until a comparatively recent date quaint ceremonies were performed in Scotland during its first phase by women who visited sculptured stones to pray for offspring.
Although the strictly lunar character of the Egyptian god Thoth is not apparent at first sight, it can be traced through his association with kindred deities. At Hermopolis and Edfu he was fused with Khonsu (or Khensu), who had developed from Ah, the lunar representative of the male principle, which was also "the fighting principle". Khonsu was depicted as a handsome youth, and he symbolized, in the Theban group of gods, certain specialized influences of the moon. He was the love god, the Egyptian Cupid, and the divine physician; he was also an explorer (the root khens signifies "to traverse") and the messenger and hunter of the gods. Special offerings were made to him at the Ploughing Festival, just before the seed was sown, and at the Harvest Festival, after the grain was reaped; and he was worshipped as the increaser of flocks and herds and human families. Like Thoth, he was a "measurer", and inspirer of architects, because the moon measures time. But in this direction Thoth had fuller development; he was a "lawyer" because the orderly changes of the moon suggested the observance of well-defined laws, and a "checker" and "scribe" because human transactions were checked and recorded in association with lunar movements. Time was first measured by the lunar month.
Moon gods were also corn gods, but Thoth had no pronounced association with agricultural rites. That phase of his character may have been suppressed as a result of the specializing process; it is also possible that he was differentiated in the pastoral and hunting period when the lunar spirit was especially credited with causing the growth of trees. In the Nineteenth Dynasty Thoth was shown recording the name of a Pharaoh on the sacred sycamore. He must have been, therefore, at one time a tree spirit, like Osiris. Tree spirits, as well as corn spirits, were manifestations of the moon god.
Thoth also links with Osiris, and this association is of special interest. Osiris was originally an ancient king of Egypt who taught the Egyptians how to rear crops and cultivate fruit trees. He was regarded as a human incarnation of the moon spirit. As a living ruler he displayed his lunar qualities by establishing laws for the regulation of human affairs and by promoting agriculture and gardening; when he died, like the moon, he similarly regulated the affairs of departed souls in the agricultural Paradise of the Egyptians; he was the great Judge of the Dead, and in the Hall of Judgment Thoth was his recorder.
Like Thoth, Osiris was identified with the tree spirit. His dead body was enclosed in a tree which grew round the coffin, and Isis voyaged alone over the sea to recover it. Isis was also the herald of the Nile inundation; she was, indeed, the flood. The myth, as will be seen, is reminiscent of archaic tree and well worship, which survives at Heliopolis, where the sacred well and tree are still venerated in association with the Christian legend. In Ireland the tree and corn god Dagda has similarly for wife a water goddess; she is called Boann, and personifies Boyne River.
Osiris had many manifestations, or, rather, he was the manifestation of many gods. But he never lost his early association with the moon. In one of the Isis temple chants, which details his various attributes and evolutionary phases, he is hailed as the god--
Who cometh to us as a babe each month.
He is thus the moon child, a manifestation of the ever-young, and ever-renewing moon god. The babe Osiris is cared for by Thoth--
He lays thy soul in the Maadit boat
By the magic of thy name of Ah (moon god).
Thoth utters the magic "password" to obtain for Osiris his seat in the boat, which will carry him over the heavens. This reference explains the line in the complex hymn to Osiris-Sokar:--
Hail, living soul of Osiris, crowning him with the moon. 2
We have now reached a point where Thoth, Osiris, Khonsu, and Ah are one; they are but various forms of the archaic moon spirit which was worshipped by primitive hunters and agriculturists as the begetter and guardian of life.
According to Dr. Budge, whose works on Egyptian mythology are as full of carefully compiled facts as were Joseph's great storehouses of grain, the ancient Egyptians, despite their crowded labyrinth, "believed in the existence of one great God, self-produced, self-existent, almighty, and eternal, who created the 'gods', the heavens, and the sun, moon and stars in them, and the earth and everything on it, including man and beast, bird, fish) and reptile. . . . Of this god", Dr. Budge believes, "they never attempted to make any figure, form, likeness, or similitude, for they thought that no man could depict or describe Him, and that all His attributes were quite beyond man's comprehension. On the rare occasions in which He is mentioned in their writings, He is always called 'Neter', i.e. God, and besides this He has no name. The exact meaning of the word 'Neter' is unknown." 3
Dr. Budge explains the multiplication of Nilotic deities by saying that the behests of "God Almighty . . . were performed by a number of gods, or, as we might say, emanations or angels", which were "of African rather than Asiatic origin". He prefers to elucidate Egyptian mythology by studying surviving African beliefs "in the great forests and on the Nile, Congo, Niger, and other great rivers", and shows that in these districts the moon god is still regarded as the creator.
A distinction is drawn by Dr. Budge between the Libyan deities and those of Upper Egypt, and his theory of one God has forcible application when confined to the archaic lunar deity. He refers to the period prior to the minglings of peoples and the introduction of Asiatic beliefs. But in dealing with historic Egyptian mythology we must distinguish between the African moon spirit, which is still identified by savage peoples with the creator god, and the representative Egyptian lunar deity, which symbolized the male principle, and was not the "first cause", but the son of a self-produced creating goddess. The difference between the two conceptions is of fundamental character.
It is apparent that some of the great Egyptian deities, and especially those of Delta origin, or Delta characterization, evolved from primitive groups of Nature spirits. At Heliopolis, where archaic Nilotic and other beliefs were preserved like flies in amber, because the Asiatic sun worshippers sought to include all existing forms of tribal religion in their own, a creation myth makes reference to the one God of the primordial deep. But associated with him, it is significant to note, were "the Fathers and the Mothers".
The "Mothers" appear to be represented by the seven Egyptian Fates who presided at birth. These were called "the seven Hathors", but their association with the Asiatic Hathor, who was Ishtar, was evidently arbitrary. The Mediterranean people, who formed the basis of the Egyptian race, were evidently worshippers of the "Mothers". In southern and western Europe, which they peopled n early times, various groups of "Mothers" were venerated. These included "Proxim(the kinswomen), Dervonn (the oak spirits), Niskai (the water spirits), Mair Matron Matres or Matr (the mothers), Quadrivi(the goddesses of crossroads). The Matres, Matr and Matronare often qualified by some local name. Deities of this type appear to have been popular in Britain, in the neighbourhood of Cologne, and in Provence. "In some cases it is uncertain", comments Professor Anwyl, from whose Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times we quote, "whether some of these grouped goddesses are Celtic or Teutonic." They were probably pre-Celtic and pre-Teutonic. "It is an interesting parallel", he adds, "to the existence of these grouped goddesses, when we find that in some parts of Wales 'Y Mamau.' (the mothers) is the name for the fairies. These grouped goddesses take us back to one of the most interesting stages in the early Celtic religion, when the earth spirits or the corn spirits had not yet been completely individualized." 4
Representatives of the groups of Egyptian spirits called "the Fathers" are found at Memphis, where Ptah, assisted by eight earth gnomes called Khnumu, was believed to have made the universe with his hammer by beating out the copper sky and shaping the hills and valleys. This group of dwarfs resemble closely the European elves, or male earth spirits, who dwelt inside mountains as the Khnumu dwelt underground.
In the process of time the various groups of male and female spirits were individualized. Some disappeared, leaving the chief spirit alone and supreme. When Ptah became a great god, the other earth gnomes vanished from the Memphis creation myth. Other members of groups remained and were developed separately. This evolutionary process can be traced, we think, in the suggestive association of the two sister goddesses Isis and Nepthys. In one of the temple chants both are declared to be the mothers of Osiris, who is called--
The bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys . . .
He, the progeny of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys,
The child surpassingly beautiful! 5
At the same time he is son of "his mother Nut". Osiris has thus three mothers. The conception may be difficult to grasp, but we must remember that we are dealing with vague beliefs regarding ancient mythological beings. Heimdal, the Norse god, had nine mothers, "the daughters of sea-dwelling Ran". 6 The Norse god, Tyr's grandmother, 7 was a giantess with nine hundred heads. If we reduce that number to nine, it might be suggested that she represented nine primitive earth spirits, which were multiplied and individualized by the tellers of wonder tales of mythological origin. The Egyptian Great Mother deities had sons, and practically all of these were identified with Osiris. It is not improbable, therefore, that the Mediterranean moon spirit, whom Osiris represented, had originally as many mothers as he had attributes. The "mothers" afterwards became "sisters" of the young god. Nepthys sings to Osiris:
All thy sister goddesses are at thy side
And behind thy couch.
The Heliopolitan reference to "the Fathers" and the "Mothers" indicates that fundamental beliefs of divergent origin were fused by the unscientific but diplomatic priestly theorists of the sun cult. It is evident that the people who believed in "Father spirits" were not identical with the people who believed in "Mother spirits".
We may divide into two classes the primitive symbolists who attempted to solve the riddle of the universe:
1. Those who conceived that life and natural phenomena had a female origin;
2. Those who conceived that life and natural phenomena had a male origin.
Both "schools of thought" were represented in Egypt from the earliest times of which we have any definite knowledge; but it may be inferred that the two rival conceptions were influenced by primitive tribal customs and habits of life.
It is possible that the theory of the female origin of life evolved in settled communities among large tribal units. These communities could not have come into existence, or continued to grow, without laws. As much may be taken for granted. Now, the earliest laws were evidently those which removed the prime cause of rivalries and outbreaks in tribal communities by affording protection to women. As primitive laws and primitive religions were inseparable, women must have been honoured on religious grounds. In such communities the growth of religious ideas would tend in the direction of exalting goddesses or mother spirits, rather than gods or father spirits. The men of the tribe would be regarded as the sons of an ancestress, and the gods as the sons of a goddess. The Irish tribe known as "Tuatha de Danann", for instance, were "the children of Danu", the mother of the Danann gods.
The theory of the male origin of life, on the other hand, may have grown up among smaller tribal units of wandering or mountain peoples, whose existence depended more on the prowess and activities of the males than on the influence exercised by their females, whom they usually captured or lured away. Such nomads, with their family groups over which the fathers exercised supreme authority, would naturally exalt the male and worship tribal ancestors and regard gods as greater than goddesses.
In Egypt the "mother-worshipping" peoples and the "father-worshipping" peoples were mingled, as we have indicated, long before the dawn of history. Nomadic peoples from desert lands and mountainous districts entered the Delta region of the Mediterranean race many centuries ere yet the Dynastic Egyptians made appearance in Upper Egypt. The illuminating researches of Professor Flinders Petrie prove conclusively that three or four distinct racial types were fused in pre-Dynastic times in Lower Egypt.
The evidence obtained from the comparative study of European mythologies tends to suggest that the "mother" spirits and the Great Mother deities were worshipped by the Mediterranean peoples, who multiplied rapidly in their North African area of characterization, and spread into Asia Minor and Europe and up the Nile valley as far as Nubia, where Thoth, the lunar god, was the son of Tefnut, one of the Great Mothers. But that matriarchal conception did not extend, as we have seen, into Central Africa. The evidence accumulated by explorers shows that the nomadic natives believe, as they have believed from time immemorial, in a Creator (god) rather than a Creatrix (goddess). Mungo Park found that the "one god" was worshipped only "at the appearance of the new moon". 8 In Arabia, the "mothers" were also prominent, and certain ethnologists have detected the Mediterranean type in that country. But, of course, all peoples who worshipped "mother spirits" were not of Mediterranean origin. In this respect, however, the Mediterraneans, like other races which multiplied into large settled communities, attained early a comparatively high degree of civilization on account of their reverence for motherhood and all it entailed.
The Great Mother deity was believed to be self-created and self-sustaining. In the Isis chants addressed to Osiris we read--
Thy mother Nut cometh to thee in peace;
She hath built up life from her own body.
There cometh unto thee Isis, lady of the horizon,
Who hath begotten herself alone. 9
According to the Greeks, the Great Mother Neith declared to her worshippers--
I am what has been,
What is,
And what shall be.
A hymn to Neith, of which Dr. Budge gives a scholarly and literal translation, contains the following lines:--
Hail! Great Mother, not hath been uncovered thy birth;
Hail! Great Goddess, within the underworld doubly hidden;
Thou unknown one--
Hail! thou divine one,
Not hath been unloosed thy garment.
The typical Great Mother was a virgin goddess who represented the female principle, and she had a fatherless son who represented the male principle. Like the Celtic Danu, she was the mother of the gods, from whom mankind were descended. But the characteristics of the several mother deities varied in different localities, as a result of the separating and specializing process which we have illustrated in dealing with some of the lunar gods. One Great Mother was an earth spirit, another was a water spirit, and a third was an atmosphere or sky spirit.
The popular Isis ultimately combined the attributes of all the Great Mothers, who were regarded as different manifestations of her, but it is evident that each underwent, for prolonged periods, separate development, and that their particular attributes were emphasized by local and tribal beliefs. An agricultural people, for instance, could not fail, in Egypt, to associate their Great Mother with the Nile food; a pastoral people, like the Libyans, on the other hand, might be expected to depict her as an earth spirit who caused the growth of grass.
As a goddess of maternity the Great Mother was given different forms. Isis was a woman, the Egyptianized Hathor was a cow, Apet of Thebes was a hippopotamus, Bast was a cat, Tefnut was a lioness, Uazit was a serpent, Hekt was a frog, and so on. All the sacred animals and reptiles were in time associated with Isis.
In Asia Minor the Great Mother was associated with the lioness, in Cyprus she was "My Lady of Trees and Doves", in Crete she was the serpent goddess; in Rome, Bona Dea was an earth goddess, and the Norse Freyja was, like the Egyptian Bast, a feline goddess--her car was drawn by cats.
One of the least known, but not the least important, of Great Mothers of Europe is found in the Highlands of Scotland, where, according to the ethnologists, the Mediterranean element bulks considerably among the racial types. She is called Cailleach Bheur, and is evidently a representative survival of great antiquity. In Ireland she degenerated, as did other old gigantic deities, into a historical personage. An interesting Highland folk tale states that she existed "from the long eternity of the world". She is described as "a great big old wife". Her face was "blue black". 10 and she had a single watery eye on her forehead, but "the sight of it" was "as swift as the mackerel of the ocean".
Like the Egyptian Ptah, this Scottish hag engaged herself in making the world. She carried upon her back a great creel filled with rocks and earth.. In various parts of northern Scotland small hills are said to have been formed by the spillings of her creel. She let loose the rivers and formed lochs. At night she rested on a mountain top beside a spring of fresh water. Like the Libyan Neith she was evidently the deity of a pastoral and hunting people, for she had herds of deer, goats, and sheep, over which she kept watch.
In the springtime the Cailleach, or hag, was associated with the tempests. When she sneezed, she was heard for many miles. But her stormy wrath, during the period in spring called in Gaelic "Cailleach", was especially roused because her son fled away on a white horse with a beautiful bride. The hag pursued him on a steed which leapt ravines as nimbly as the giant Arthur's' horse leapt over the Bristol Channel. But the son would not give up the bride, who had, it seems, great dread of the terrible old woman. The hag, however, managed to keep the couple apart by raising storm after storm. Her desire was to prevent the coming of summer. She carried in her hand a magic wand, or, as some stories have it, a hammer, which she waved over the earth to prevent the grass growing. But she could not baffle Nature. She, however, made a final attempt to keep apart her son and the young bride, who was evidently the spirit of summer, by raising her last great storm, which brought snow and floods, and was intended to destroy all life. Then her son fought against her and put her to flight. So "the old winter went past", as a Gaelic tale has it.
One of the many versions of the Scottish Hag story makes her the chief of eight "big old women" or witches. This group of nine suggests Ptah and his eight earth gnomes, the nine mothers of Heimdal the Norse god, and the Ennead of Heliopolis.
An Egyptian Great Mother, who was as much dreaded as the Scottish Hag, was Sekhet, the lioness-headed deity, who was the wife of Ptah. In a Twelfth-Dynasty story she is referred to as the terrible goddess of plagues. All the feline goddesses "represented", says Wiedemann, "the variable power of the sun, from genial warmth to scorching heat. Thus a Philtext states in reference to Isis-Hathor, who there personified all goddesses in one: 'Kindly is she as Bast, terrible is she as Sekhet'. As the conqueror of the enemies of the Egyptian gods, Sekhet carried a knife in her hand, for she it was who, under the name of the 'Eye of Ra', entered upon the task of destroying mankind. Other texts represent her as ancestress of part of the human race." 11
The oldest deities were evidently those of most savage character. 12 Sekhet must, therefore, have been a primitive conception of the Great Mother who rejoiced in slaughter and had to be propitiated. The kindly Bast and the lovable Isis, on the other hand, seem to be representative of a people who, having grown more humane, invested their deities with their own qualities. But the worship of mother goddesses was ever attended by rites which to us are revolting. Herodotus indicates the obscene character of those which prevailed in the Delta region. Female worshippers were unmoral (rather than immoral). In Asia Minor the festivals of the Great Mother and her son, who symbolized the generative agency in nature, were the scenes of terrible practices. Men mutilated their bodies and women became the "sacred wives" of the god. There are also indications that children were sacrificed. In Palestine large numbers of infants' skeletons have been found among prehistoric remains, and although doubt has been thrown on the belief that babies were sacrificed, we cannot overlook in this connection the evidence of Isaiah, who was an eyewitness of many terrible rites of Semitic and pre-Semitic origin.
"Against whom", cried the Hebrew prophet, "do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood, enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks" (Isaiah, lvii, 4 and 5).
In Ireland similar rites obtained "before the coming of Patrick of Macha", when the corn god, the son of the Great Mother, was dreaded and propitiated. He was called Cromm Cruaich, and was probably the archaic Dagda, son of Danu.
To him without glory
They would kill their piteous, wretched offspring
With much wailing and peril,
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue
Great was the horror and the scare of him.
--Celtic Myth and Legend.
Neith, the Libyan Great Mother, was an earth goddess. Nut, on the other hand, was a sky goddess, and associated with her was an earth god called Seb. Sometimes she is depicted with Seb alone, and sometimes a third deity, the atmosphere god, Shu, is added. Shu separates the heavens from the earth, and is shown as "the uplifter", supporting Nut, as Atlas supports the world. Nut is also pictured with another goddess drawn inside her entire form; within the second goddess a god is similarly depicted. This triad suggests Osiris and his two mothers. A mummy drawing of Nut, with symbols figured upon her body, indicates that she was the Great Mother of the sun disk and lunar disk and crescent. In one of the myths of the sun cult, Ra, the solar god, is said to be "born of Nut" each morning.
The most representative Egyptian Great Father was Ptah in his giant form and in his union with Tanen, the earth god. He was self-created; "no father begot thee", sang a priestly poet, "and no mother gave thee birth"; he built up his own body and shaped his limbs. Then he found "his seat" like a typical mountain giant; his head supported the sky and his feet rested upon the earth. Osiris, who also developed into a Great Father deity, was fused with Ptah at Memphis, and, according to the Pyramid texts, his name signifies "the seat maker". The sun and the moon were the eyes of the Great Father, the air issued from his nostrils and the Nile from his mouth. Other deities who link with Ptah include Khnumu, Hershef, and the great god of Mendes. These are dealt with in detail in Chapter XIV.
It is possible that Ptah was imported into Egypt by an invading tribe in pre-Dynastic times. He was an artisan god and his seat of worship was at Memphis, the home of the architects and the builders of the Pyramids and limestone mastabas. According to tradition, Egypt's first temple was erected to Ptah by King Mena.
The skilled working of limestone, with which Memphis was closely associated, made such spontaneous appearance in Egypt as to suggest that the art was developed elsewhere. It is of interest to find, therefore, that in Palestine a tall, pre-Semitic blonde race constructed wonderful artificial caves. These were "hewn out of the soft limestone", says Professor Macalister, "with great care and exactness. . . . They vary greatly in size and complexity; one cave was found by the writer that contained no less than sixty chambers. This was quite exceptional; but caves with five, ten, or even twenty chambers large and small are not uncommon. The passages sometimes are so narrow as to make their exploration difficult; and the chambers are sometimes so large that it requires a bright light such as that of magnesium wire to illuminate them sufficiently for examination. One chamber, now fallen in, was found to have been 400 feet long and 80 feet high. To have excavated these gigantic catacombs required the steady work of a long-settled population." They are "immense engineering works". The hewers of the artificial caves "possessed the use of metal tools, as the pick marks testify".
These caves, with their chambers and narrow passages, suggest the interiors of the Pyramids. A people who had attained such great skill in limestone working were equal to the task of erecting mountains of masonry in the Nile valley if, as seems possible, they effected settlement there in very early times. As they were of mountain characterization, these ancient artisans may have been Ptah worshippers.
The Pyramids evolved from mastabas. 13 Now in Palestine there are. to the north of Jerusalem, "remarkable prehistoric monuments". These, Professor Macalister says, "consist of long, broad walls in one of which a chamber and shaft have been made, happily compared by Pe Vincent to an Egyptian mastaba". 14
Legends regarding this tall people make reference to giants, and it is possible that with other mountain folk their hilltop deities, with whom they would be identified, were reputed to be of gigantic stature and bulk. They are also referred to in the Bible. When certain of the spies returned to Moses from southern Canaan "they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched". They said: "It is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants" (Numbers, xiii, 32-33). In other words, they were "sons of their gods".
It is evident that this tall, cave-hewing people had attained a high degree of civilization, with a well-organized system of government, ere they undertook engineering works on such a vast scale. Although they had established themselves in such close proximity to the Delta region, no reference is made to them in any surviving Egyptian records, so that they must have flourished at a remote period. They preceded the Semites in southern Palestine, and the Semites appeared in Egypt in pre-Dynastic times. Professor Macalister considers that they may be "roughly assigned to 3000 B.C.". A long period must be allowed for the growth of their art of skilled stone working.15
When the mysterious cave-dwellers were at the height of their power, they must have multiplied rapidly, and it is not improbable that some of their surplus stock poured into the Delta region. Their mode of life must have peculiarly fitted them for residence in towns, and it may be that the distinctive character of the mythology of Memphis was due to their presence in no inconsiderable numbers in that cosmopolitan city.
There is no indication that the Dynastic Egyptians, who first made their appearance in the upper part of the Nile valley, utilized the quarries prior to their conquest of Lower Egypt. They were a brick-making people, and their early tombs at Abydos were constructed of brick and wood. But after King Mena had united the two kingdoms by force of arms, stone working was introduced into Upper Egypt. A granite floor was laid in the tomb of King Usephais of the First Dynasty. This sudden transition from brick making to granite working is very remarkable. It Is interesting to note, however, that the father of Usephais is recorded to have erected a stone temple at Hierakonpolis. Probably it was constructed of limestone. As much is suggested by the finish displayed in the limestone chamber of the brick tomb of King Khasekhemui of the Second Dynasty. Brick, however, continued in use until King Zoser of the Third Dynasty, which began about 2930 B.C., had constructed of stone, for his tomb, the earliest Egyptian pyramid near Memphis.
It is highly probable that it was the experienced limestone workers of the north, and not the brickmakers of Upper Egypt, who first utilized granite. The Pharaohs of the First Dynasty may have drafted southward large numbers of the skilled workers who were settled at Memphis, or in its vicinity. We seem to trace the presence of a northern colony in Upper Egypt by the mythological beliefs which obtained in the vicinity of the granite quarries at Assouan. The chief god of the First Cataract was Khnumu, who bears a close resemblance to Ptah, the artisan god of Memphis. (See Chapter XIV.)
We have now dealt with two distinct kinds of supreme deities-the Great Father, and the Great Mother with her son. It is apparent that they were conceived of and developed by peoples of divergent origin and different habits of life, who mingled in Egypt under the influence of a centralized government. The ultimate result was a fusion of religious beliefs and the formulation of a highly complex mythology which was never thoroughly systematized at any period. The Great Father then became the husband of the Great Mother, or the son god was exalted as "husband of his mother". Thus Ptah was given for wife Sekhet, the fierce lioness-headed mother, who resembles Tefnut and other feline goddesses. Osiris, the son of Isis and Nepthys, on the other hand, became "husband of his mother", or mothers; he was recognized as the father of Horus, son of Isis, and of Anubis, son of Nepthys. Another myth makes him displace the old earth god Seb, son of Nut. Osiris was also a son of Nut, an earlier form of Isis. So was Seb, who became "husband of his mother". That Seb and Osiris were fused is evident in one of the temple chants, in which Isis, addressing Osiris, says: "Thy soul possesseth the earth".
In Asia Minor, where the broad-headed patriarchal Alpine hill people blended with the long-headed matriarchal Mediterranean people, the Pappas 16 god (Attis, Adon) became likewise the husband of the Ma goddess (Nana). A mythological scene sculptured upon a cliff at Ibreez in Cappadocia is supposed to represent the marriage of the two Great Father and Mother deities, and. it is significant to find that the son accompanies the self-created bride. As in Egypt, the father and the son were fused and at times are indistinguishable in the legends.
It now remains with us to deal with the worship of the solar disk. This religion was unknown to the early Mediterranean people who spread through Europe and reached the British Isles and Ireland. Nor did it rise into prominence in the land of the Pharaohs until after the erection of the Great Pyramids near Cairo. The kings did not become "sons of the sun" until the Fifth Dynasty.
There is general agreement among Egyptologists, that sun worship was imported from Asia and probably from Babylonia. It achieved fullest development on Egyptian lines at Heliopolis, "the city of the sun". There Ra, the solar deity, was first exalted as the Great Father who created the universe and all the gods and goddesses, from whom men and animals and fish and reptiles were descended. But the religion of the sun cult never achieved the popularity of the older faiths. It was embraced chiefly by the Pharaohs, the upper classes, and the foreign sections of the trading communities. The great masses of the people continued to worship the gods of the moon, earth, atmosphere, and water until Egyptian civilization perished of old age. Osiris was ever the deity of the agriculturists, and associated with him, of course, were Isis and Nepthys. Set, the red-haired god of prehistoric invaders, who slew Osiris, became the Egyptian Satan, and he was depicted as a black serpent, a black pig, a red mythical monster, or simply as a red-haired man; he was also given half-animal and half-human form.
As we have indicated, the policy adopted by the priests of the sun was to absorb every existing religious cult in Egypt. They permitted the worship of any deity, or group of deities, so long as Ra was regarded as the Great Father. No belief was too contradictory in tendency, and no myth was of too trivial a character, to be embraced in their complex theological system. As a result we find embedded, like fossils, in the religious literature of Heliopolis, many old myths which would have perished but for the acquisitiveness, of the diplomatic priests of the sun.
The oldest sun god was Tum, and he absorbed a primitive myth about Khepera, the beetle god. After Ra was introduced into Egypt the solar deity was called Ra-Tum. A triad was also formed by making Ra the noonday sun, Tum the evening sun, and Khepera the sun at dawn.
Khepera is depicted in beetle form, holding the sun disk between his two fore legs. To the primitive Egyptians the winged beetle was a sacred insect. Its association with the resurrected sun is explained by Wiedemann as follows: "The female (Ateuchus sacer) lays her eggs in a cake of dung, rolls this in the dust and makes it smooth and round so that it will keep moist and serve as food for her young; and finally she deposits it in a hole which she has scooped out in the ground; and covers it with earth. This habit had not escaped the observation of the Egyptians, although they failed to understand it, for scientific knowledge of natural history was very slight among all peoples of antiquity. The Egyptians supposed the Scarabs to be male, and that it was itself born anew from the egg which it alone had made, and thus lived an eternal life. . . ." 17
The Scarabs became a symbol of the resurrection and the rising sun. The dawn god raised up the solar disk as the beetle raised up the ball containing its eggs ere it set it a-rolling. Similarly souls were raised from death to life eternal.
Another myth represented the new-born sun as the child Horus rising from a lotus bloom which expanded its leaves on the breast of the primordial deep. Less poetic, but more popular, apparently, was the comedy about the chaos goose which was called "Great Cackler", because at the beginning she cackled loudly to the chaos gander and laid an egg, which was the sun. Ra was identified with the historical egg', but at Heliopolis the priests claimed that it was shaped by Ptah on his potter's wheel; Khn the other artisan god, was similarly credited with the work. The gander was identified with Seb, the earth god, and in the end Amon-Ra, the combined deity of Thebes, was represented as the great chaos goose and gander in one. The "beautiful goose" was also sacred to Isis.
Of foreign origin, probably, was the myth that the sun was a wild ass, which was ever chased by the Night serpent, Haiu, as it ran round the slopes of the mountains supporting the sky. These are probably the world-encircling mountains, which, according to the modern Egyptians, are peopled by giants (genii). Belief in mountain giants survive among the hillmen of Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe. The most popular old Egyptian idea was that the earth was surrounded by the ocean; the same opinion obtained in Greece. The wild ass, as we have seen, was also Set, the Nilotic Satan.
A similar myth represents the sun as a great cat, which was originally a female, but was identified with Ra as a male. It fought with the Night serpent, Apep, below the sacred tree at Heliopolis, and killed it at dawn. In this myth Set is identified with the serpent.
The cat and the wild ass enjoyed considerable popularity at Heliopolis. In the Book of the Dead it is declared: "I have heard the word of power (the magic word) which the ass spake to the cat in the house of Hapt-ra", but the "password" which was used by the souls of the dead is not given.
Another belief regarding the sun had its origin apparently among the moon worshippers. It can be traced in one of the Nut pictures. Shu, the atmosphere god, stands beneath the curving body of the Great Mother and receives in one of his hands a white pool of milk, which is the sun. In the mummy picture, already referred to, the sun disk is drawn between the breasts of the sky goddess.
Nut is sometimes called the "mother of Ra", but in a creation myth she is his wife, and her secret lover is Seb, the earth god.
It was emphasized at Heliopolis that Ra, as the Great Father, called Nut, Seb, and Shu into being. Those deities which he did not create were either his children or their descendants.
The creation story in which the priests of Heliopolis fused the old myths will be found in Chapter I. It familiarizes the reader with Egyptian beliefs in their earliest and latest aspects.
The second chapter is devoted to the Osiris and Isis legends, which shows that these deities have both a tribal and seasonal significance. In the chapters which follow, special attention is devoted to the periods in which the religious myths were formulated and the greater gods came into prominence 18 , while light is thrown on the beliefs and customs of the ancient people of Egypt by popular renderings of representative folk tales and metrical versions of selected songs and poems.
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CHAP. |
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INTRODUCTION |
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I. |
CREATION LEGEND OF SUN WORSHIPPERS |
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II. |
THE TRAGEDY OF OSIRIS |
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III. |
DAWN OF CIVILIZATION |
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IV. |
THE PEASANT WHO BECAME KING |
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V. |
RACIAL MYTHS IN EGYPT AND EUROPE |
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VI. |
THE CITY OF THE ELF GOD |
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VII. |
DEATH AND THE JUDGMENT |
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VIII. |
THE RELIGION OF THE STONE WORKERS |
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IX. |
A DAY IN OLD MEMPHIS |
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X. |
THE GREAT PYRAMID KINGS |
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XI. |
FOLK TALES OF FIFTY CENTURIES |
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XII. |
TRIUMPH OF THE SUN GOD |
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XIII. |
FALL OF THE OLD KINGDOM |
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XIV. |
FATHER GODS AND MOTHER GODDESSES |
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XV. |
THE RISE OF AMON |
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XVI. |
TALE OF THE FUGITIVE PRINCE |
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XVII. |
EGYPT'S GOLDEN AGE |
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XVIII. |
MYTHS AND LAYS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM |
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XIX. |
THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT |
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XX. |
THE HYKSOS AND THEIR STRANGE GOD |
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XXI. |
JOSEPH AND THE EXODUS |
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XXII. |
AMON, THE GOD OF EMPIRE |
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XXIII. |
TALK OF THE DOOMED PRINCE |
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XXIV. |
CHANGES IN SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE |
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XXV. |
AMENHOTEP THE MAGNIFICENT AND QUEEN TIY |
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XXVI. |
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLT OF THE POET KING |
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XXVII. |
THE EMPIRE OF RAMESES AND THE HOMERIC AGE |
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XXVIII. |
EGYPT AND THE HEBREW MONARCHY |
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XXIX. |
THE RESTORATION AND THE END |
THE GIRL WIFE AND THE BATA BULL
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
THE FARMER PLUNDERS THE PEASANT
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
SENUHET SLAYS THE WARRIOR OF TONU
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
QUEEN AHMES (WIFE OF THOTHMES I),
MOTHER OF THE FAMOUS QUEEN HATSHEPSUT
From a plaster cast of the relief on the wall of the Temple at Der-al Bahari (By courtesy of Mr. William Waldorf Astor)
LURING THE DOOM SERPENT
From the painting by Maurice Greiffenghagen
FOWLING SCENE
(Fresco from tomb at Thebes, XVIII Dynasty, about B.C. 1580-1350; now in British Museum)
FARM SCENE: THE COUNTING AND INSPECTION OF THE GEESE.
(Fresco from tomb at Thebes, XVIII Dynasty, about B.C. 1580-1350; now in British Museum)
PASTIME IN ANCIENT EGYPT THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO
After the painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A., in Preston Art Gallery
placed within the chapters
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LUNAR, SOLAR, AND EARTH GODS (THOTH, OSIRIS-AH, PTAH, RA, AND SET) |
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OSIRIS, ISIS, AND HORUS |
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SACRED ANIMALS |
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FIGURE OF THE APIS BULL, WITH A KING MAKING OFFERING |
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THE STEP PYRAMID OF SAKKARA |
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JUDGMENT SCENE: WEIGHING THE HEART |
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SERVITORS BRINGING THEIR OFFERINGS |
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"USHEBTIU" FIGURES OF VARIOUS PERIODS |
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A SEATED SCRIBE |
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AN OLD KINGDOM OFFICIAL ("SHEIKH-EL-BELED") |
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THE GREAT PYRAMID OF KHUFU (CHEOPS) |
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KING KHAFRA (IV DYNASTY) |
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NEFERT, A ROYAL PRINCESS OF THE OLD KINGDOM PERIOD |
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THREE TYPICAL "GREAT MOTHER" DEITIES (ISIS, BAST, AND SEKHET) |
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COURTYARD OF AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE (RESTORED) |
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LOCAL GODS WITH ADDED SOLAR AND OTHER AT TRIBUTES (KHN SEBEK, MIN, BES, ANUBIS) |
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EGYPTIAN CHARIOT (FLORENCE MUSEUM) |
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EGYPTIAN KING (SETI I) MOUNTED ON CHARIOT |
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A PLATOON (TROOP) OF EGYPTIAN SPEARMEN |
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DEITIES OF THE EMPIRE PERIOD (AMON-RA, MUT, AND HAPI) |
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RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF DER-EL-BAHARI, THEBES |
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AMENHOTEP III |
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AMENHOTEP IV (AKHENATON) |
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AKHENATON, HIS QUEEN, AND THEIR CHILDREN |
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MUMMY HEADS OF NOTABLE PHARAOHS (THOTHMES II, RAMESES II. RAMESES III, SETI I) |
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GREAT SEA AND LAND RAID: PHILISTINE PRISONERS |
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AMON PRESENTING TO SHESHONK LIST OF CITIES CAPTURED IN ISRAEL AND JUDAH |
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RESTORATION PERIOD DEITIES (PTAH -SOKAR -OSIRIS, IMHOTEP) |
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MUMMY CASES |
The God of the People--Egypt yearns for the Past--Rise of Saite Kings --Osiris as Great Father--Christianized Horus Legend--Scythians and Cimmerians--End of Assyrian Empire--Jeremiah and Pharaoh Necho--Surrender of Jerusalem--Early Explorers--Zedekiah and Pharaoh Hophra--Jerusalem sacked--Babylonian Captivity--Amasis and the Greeks--Coming of King Cyrus--Fall of Babylon--Persian Conquest of Egypt--Life in the Latter Days --Homely Letters--Cry of a Lost Soul.
THE civilization of ancient Egypt began with Osiris and ended with Osiris. Although the deified king had been thrust into the background for long centuries by the noble and great, he remained the god of the common people. "The dull crowd", as Plutarch called them, associated the ideas about their gods, "with changes of atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout. . . . They love to hear these things, and believe them, drawing conviction from things immediately at hand and customary." The peasant lived and died believing in Osiris. "As Osiris lives, so shall he also live; as Osiris died not, so shall he also not die; as Osiris perished not, so shall he also not perish." 1 Egypt was made prosperous by Osiris: he gave it the corn which brought all its wealth and power. The greatest Pharaohs were those who, reverencing Osiris, cut new irrigating canals, and boasted like Amenemhet I:
I loved the corn god . . . I have grown the grain
In every golden valley where the Nile
Entreated me. . . .
Egypt's Bata-like peasants constituted the strongest army commanded by the Pharaohs; they won golden spoils from Nature, which were of more account than the spoils from Syrian battlefields and the tribute of subject kings. Those constant toilers, who were innately conservative in their methods and customs and beliefs, bulk largely in the background of ancient Egyptian history; they were little affected by the changes which passed over the country century after century; once a political storm died down, they settled back into their own habits of life; they were "the nails that held the world (of Egypt) together".
We have seen the Pharaohs and their nobles going after strange gods, marrying alien wives, and adopting new manners and customs, forgetting those traditions which are the inspiration of national life and the essence of true patriotism. When Egypt fell and was ground under the heel of the Assyrian it was from the steadfast, although unlettered, peasants that the strength of the restoration was derived; they remembered the days that were, and they remembered Osiris. "Those Egyptians who live in the cultivated parts of the country", wrote Herodotus, "are of all I have seen the most ingenious, being attentive to the improvement of memory beyond the rest of mankind."
The Assyrian conquest stirred Egypt to its depths. When Thebes was sacked, and Amon-ra cast down from his high place, the worshippers of Osiris were reviving the beliefs and customs of the Old Kingdom, for they had never gone wholeheartedly after Ra and Amon or Sutekh and Astarte. When Ashur-banipal shattered the power of the Asiatic nobles of Egypt and drove out the Ethiopians, he also rescued the Egyptian people from their oppressors and strengthened the restoration movement which had begun under the Ethiopian kings.
Ashur-banipal was unable to retain for long his hold upon the land of the Pharaohs. Persistent revolts occupied his attention at the very heart of his empire. His brother, the subject king of Babylon, had secured the co-operation of the Elamites, the Aramns, the Chaldeans, and the Arabians, and a fierce struggle ensued, until in the end Babylon was besieged and captured and Elam was devastated. Meanwhile Cimmerians were invading Asia Minor and the Aryan Medes were pressing into Elam. When peace was at length restored Assyria, although triumphant, was weakened as a result of its terrible struggles, and the empire began to go to pieces.
Assyria's misfortunes gave Psamtek his opportunity. About two years after his rival, Tanut-amon, was driven out of Thebes, he had come to an understanding with King Gyges of Lydia, who, having driven off the first attack of Cimmerians, was able to send him Ionian and Carian mercenaries. Psamtek then ceased to pay tribute to Ashur-banipal, and was proclaimed Pharaoh of United Egypt. As he had married a daughter of Taharka, the Ethiopian, his succession to the throne was legalized according to the "unwritten law" of Egypt. The Assyrian officials and soldiers were driven across the Delta frontier.
Herodotus relates an interesting folktale regarding the rise of Psamtek. He was informed that the Egyptians chose twelve kings to reign over them, and these "connected themselves with intermarriages, and engaged to promote the common interest", chiefly because an oracle had declared that the one among them who offered a libation to Ptah in a brazen vessel should become the Pharaoh. One day in the labyrinth eleven of the kings made offerings in golden cups, but the priest had brought out no cup for Psamtek, who used his brazen helmet. The future Pharaoh was promptly exiled to a limited area in the Delta. He visited the oracle of the serpent goddess at Buto, and was informed that his cause would prosper when the sea produced brazen figures of men. Soon afterwards he heard that a body of Ionians and Carians, clad in brazen armour, had come oversea and were plundering on the Egyptian coast. He immediately entered into an alliance with them, promising rich rewards, vanquished his rivals in battle, and thus became sole sovereign of Egypt.
Sais was then the capital, and its presiding deity, the goddess Neith, assumed great importance; but by the mass of the people she was regarded as a form of Isis. The great city of Memphis, however, was the real centre of the social and religious life of the new Egypt which was the old. Thebes had ceased to have any political significance. No attempt was made to restore its dilapidated temples, from which many of the gods had been deported to Assyria, where they remained until the Persian age. Amon had fallen from his high estate, and his cult was presided over by a high priestess, a sister of Psamtek's queen, the "wife" of the god. With this lady was afterwards associated one of Psamtek's daughters, so that the remnant of the Amon endowments might come under the control of the royal house. Ra of Heliopolis shrank to the position of a local deity. The conservative Egyptians, as a whole, had never been converted to sun worship.
Osiris was restored as the national god in his Old Kingdom association with Ptah, the Great Father, the world deity, who had his origin upon the earth; his right eye was the sun and his left eye was the moon. But although the sun was "the eye of Osiris", the ancient deity was no more a sun god than Ra was an earth god. As Osiris-ra he absorbed certain attributes of the solar deity, but as Ra had similarly absorbed almost every other god, the process was not one of change so much as adjustment. 2 Ra ceased to be recognized as the Great Father of the Egyptian Pantheon. "Behold, thou (Osiris) art upon the seat of Ra." Osiris was essentially a god of vegetation and the material world; he was the soul of Ra, but his own soul was the soul of Seb, the earth god, which was hidden now in a tree, now in all animal, now in an egg: the wind was the breath and spirit of Osiris., and his eyes gave light. He was not born from the sun egg like Ra. Seb, the earth giant, in his bird form was before the egg, and Osiris absorbed Seb. Osiris became "the Great Egg", which was "the only egg", for the Ra "egg" had been appropriated from the earth worshippers. He was both Seb and the "egg"--"thou egg who becometh as one renewed". The father of Ra was Nu (water); the father of Osiris was Tanen (earth). 3
But although he fused with Ptah-Tanen and became the Great Father, Osiris was not divested of his ancient lunar attributes. He was worshipped as the Apis bull; his soul was in the bull, and it had come from the moon as a ray of light. Here then we have a fusion of myths of divergent origin. Osiris was still the old lunar god, son of the Great Mother, but he had become "husband of his mother" or mothers, and also his own father, because he was the moon which gave origin to the sacred bull. He was also the world giant whose soul was hidden. The Egyptian theologians of the restoration clung to all the old myths of their mingled tribal ancestors and attached them to Osiris.
So Osiris absorbed and outlived all the gods. In early Christian times the Serapeum, the earthly dwelling place of Serapis (Osiris-Apis), was the haunt of society Hadrian, writing to the consul Servian, said that the Alexandrians "have one god, Serapis, who is worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Gentiles". The half-Christianized Egyptians identified Christ with Horus, son of Osiris, and spoke of the Saviour as the young avenger in the "Legend of the Winged Disk", who swept down the Nile valley driving the devil (Set) out of Egypt. As early Gaelic converts said: "Christ is my Druid", those of the land of the Pharaohs appear to have declared similarly: "Christ is my Horus".
Horus and his mother, Isis, came into prominence with Osiris. Set, as Sutekh, was banished from Egypt, and was once again regarded as the devil. The cult of Isis ultimately spread into Europe. 4
But not only were the beliefs of the Old Kingdom revived; even its language was imitated in the literature and inscriptions of the Saite period, and officials were given the titles of their predecessors who served Zoser and Khufu. Art revived, drawing its inspiration from the remote past, and once again the tomb scenes assumed a rural character and all the mannerisms of those depicted in Old Kingdom times. Egypt yearned for the glories of other days, and became an imitator of itself. Everything that was old became sacred; antiquarian knowledge was regarded as the essence of wisdom. Hieroglyphic writing was gradually displaced by Demotic, and when the Greeks found that the learned priests alone were able to decipher the ancient inscriptions, they concluded that picture writing was a sacred art; hence the name "hieroglyphics", derived from hieros, sacred, and glypho, I engrave.
The excess of zeal displayed by the revivalists is illustrated in their deification of Imhotep, the learned architect of King Zoser of the Third Dynasty (see Chapter VIII). His memory had long been revered by the scribes; now he was exalted to a position not inferior to that held by Thoth in the time of Empire. As the son of Ptah, he was depicted as a young man wearing a tight-fitting cap, sitting with an open scroll upon his knees. He was reputed to cure diseases by the power of spells, and was a patron of learning, and he was a guide or priest of the dead, whom he cared for until they reached the Osirian Paradise. In Greek times he was called Imhes, and identified with Asklepios.
Animal worship was also carried to excess. Instead of regarding as sacred the representative of a particular species, the whole species was adored. Cats and rams, cows and birds, and fishes and reptiles were worshipped wholesale and mummified. The old animal deities were given new forms; Khn for instance, was depicted as a ram-headed hawk, Bast as a cat-headed hawk, and Anubis as a sparrow with the head of a jackal.
Psamtek reigned for over fifty-four years, and Egypt prospered. At Memphis he extended the temple of Ptah and built the Serapeum, in which the sacred bull was worshipped. He waged a long war in Philistia and captured Ashdod, and had to beat back from his frontier hordes of Scythians and Cimmerians, peoples of Aryan speech, who had overrun Asia Minor and were pressing down through Syria like the ancient Hittites; during their reign of terror King Gyges of Lydia was defeated and slain.
The Greeks were encouraged to settle in Egypt, and their folklays became current in the Delta region. Herodotus related a version of the tale of Troy which was told to him by the priests. It was to the effect that Paris fled to Egypt when Menelaus began military operations to recover Helen, and that he was refused the hospitality of the Pharaoh. In the Odyssey Menelaus says to Telemachus:
Long on the Egyptian coast by calms confined,
Heaven to my fleet refused a prosperous wind,
No vows had we preferred, nor victim slain,
For this the gods each favouring gale restrain.
Od., iv, 473.
When Psamtek's son, Necho, came to the throne the Assyrian empire was going to pieces. Nahum was warning Nineveh:
Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts. . . . I will shew the nations thy nakedness and the kingdoms thy shame. . . . The gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies; the fire shall devour thy bars. . . . Thy shepherds slumber, O King of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them. There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee (Nahum, iii).
After Ashur-banipal had devastated Elam it was occupied by the Aryan Medes. About 607 B.C. Cyaxares, the Median king, who had allied himself with the revolting Babylonians, besieged Nineveh, which was captured and ruthlessly plundered. The last Assyrian king, Sin-shar-ishkun, the second son of Ashur-banipal, is identified with the Sardanapalus of legend who set fire to his palace and perished in its flames so that he might not fall into the hands of his enemies. Tradition attached to his memory the achievements of his father.
Pharaoh Necho took advantage of Assyria's downfall by seizing Palestine. King Josiah of Judah went against him at Megiddo and was defeated and slain. "And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem" (2 Kings, xxiii, 30). Jehoahaz was selected as Josiah's successor, but Necho deposed him and made him a prisoner, and, having fixed Judah's tribute at "an hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold", he "Made Eliakim, the son of Josiah, king . . . and turned his name to Jehoiakim" (2 Kings, xxiii, 34). But although Necho had been strong enough to capture Kadesh, his triumph was shortlived. Less than four years later Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, who claimed Syria, routed Necho's army at Carchemish, and the Egyptians were forced to hasten back to their own land. "This is the day of the Lord of hosts, a day of vengeance", cried Jeremiah. . . . "Come up ye horses; and rage ye chariots; and let the mighty men come forth: the Ethiopians and the Libyans, that handle the shield; and the Lydians (mercenaries) that handle and bend the bow. . . . The sword shall devour. . . . Let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape. . . . The nations have heard of thy shame", cried the Hebrew prophet to the escaping Egyptians (Jeremiah, xlvi). "And the King of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the King of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the River Euphrates all that pertained to the King of Egypt (2 Kings, xxiv, 7).
Necho had come to an understanding with Nebuchadrezzar, and interfered no more in Palestine. A few years later Jehoiakim rebelled against the King of Babylon, expecting that Necho would support him, despite the warnings of Jeremiah, and Jerusalem was besieged and forced to surrender. Jehoiakim had died in the interval, and his son, Jehoiachin, and a large number of "the mighty of the land" were deported to Babylon (2 Kings, xxiv). Mattaniah, son of Josiah, was selected to rule over Jerusalem, his name being changed to Zedekiah.
Necho, according to Herodotus, had undertaken the construction of a canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, hut desisted after a time on account of a warning received from an oracle. He then devoted himself to building a large fleet. His father was reputed to have endeavoured to discover the source of the Nile, and it was probably with desire to have the problem solved that Necho sent an expedition of Phnicians to circumnavigate Africa. When the vessels, which started from the Red Sea, returned three years later by the Straits of Morocco, the belief was confirmed that the world was surrounded by the "Great Circle"--the ocean.
Apries, the second king after Necho, is the Pharaoh Hophra of the Bible. He had dreams of conquest in Syria, and formed an alliance which included unfortunate Judah, so that "Zedekiah rebelled against the King of Babylon" (Jeremiah, lii, 3). Nebuchadrezzar took swift and terrible vengeance against Josiah's unstable son. Jerusalem was captured after a two years' siege and laid in ruins (about 586 B.C.). Zedekiah fled, but was captured, "And the King of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. . . . Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the King of Babylon bound him in chains and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death" (Jeremiah, lii, 10, 11). The majority of the Jews were deported; a number fled with Jeremiah to Egypt. So ended the kingdom of Judah.
Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream.
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest!
Byron.
Jeremiah proclaimed the doom of Judah's tempter, crying: "Thus saith the Lord; Behold I will give Pharaoh-hophra, King of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah, King of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life" (Jeremiah, xliv, 30).
Apries fell about 568 B.C. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians revolted against him, apparently because of his partiality to the Greeks; his army of Ionian and Carian mercenaries was defeated by a native force under Amasis (Ahmes II), whose mother was a daughter of Psamtek II. A mutilated inscription at Babylon is believed to indicate that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt about this time, but it is not confirmed by any surviving Nilotic record. Apries was kept a prisoner by the new king, but the Egyptians demanded his death, and he was strangled.
Amasis reigned for over forty years. He was well known to the Greeks. Herodotus says that he regulated his time in this manner: from dawn until the city square was crowded he gave audience to whoever required it; the rest of the day he spent making merry with friends of not very high morals. Some of his nobles remonstrated with him because of his "excessive and unbecoming levities", and said he should conduct himself so as to increase the dignity of his name and the veneration of his subjects. Amasis answered: "Those who have a bow bend it only when they require to; it is relaxed when not in use. And if it were not, it would break and be of no service in time of need. It is just the same with a man; if he continually engaged in serious pursuits, and allowed no time for diversion, he would suffer gradual loss of mental and physical vigour."
Amasis "was very partial to the Greeks, and favoured them at every opportunity", Herodotus says. He encouraged them to settle at Naucratis, 5 where the temple called Hellenium was erected and Greek deities were worshipped. Amasis erected a magnificent portico to Neith at Sais, had placed in front of Ptah's temple at Memphis a colossal recumbent figure 75 feet long, and two erect figures 20 feet high, and caused to be built in the same city a magnificent new temple to Isis. To the Gro-Libyan city of Cyrene, with which he cultivated friendly relations, he gifted "a golden statue of Minerva". He married a princess of the Cyrenians. Herodotus relates that during the wedding celebrations Amasis "found himself afflicted with an imbecility which he experienced under no other circumstances"; probably he had been drinking heavily, as he was too prone to do. His cure was attributed to Venus, who was honoured with a statue for reward.
Amasis was not over popular with the Egyptians. Not only did he favour the Greeks, but promulgated a law to compel every citizen to make known once a year the source of his earnings.
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Painted and Gilded Figure of Ptah-Seker-Asar (Ptah-Sokar-Osiris) on a stand with a cavity containing a small portion of a body |
the architect of the first Pyramid, who became a god in the Restoration Period and "son of Ptah or Ptah Osiris"
Imhotep (Imuthes) |
RESTORATION PERIOD DEITIES
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1. Fine example of Restoration Period Coffin for priest of Amon and Bast. |
2. Characteristic Gro-Roman Coffin with painted portrait. |
MUMMY CASES
It is not surprising to find that he had to send Greek soldiers to Memphis to overawe the offended natives, who began to whisper treasonable sayings one to another.
His foreign policy was characterized by instability. Although he cultivated friendly relations for the purpose of mutual protection, he gave no assistance in opposing the Persian advance westward.
About the middle of the reign of Amasis a new power arose in the East which was destined to shatter the crumbling edifices of old-world civilization and usher in a new age. "Cyrus, the Achenian, King of Kings", who was really a Persian, overthrew King Astyages (B.C. 550) of the Medes and founded the great Aryan Medo-Persian empire and pressed westward to Asia Minor. Amasis formed alliances with the kings of Babylon, Sparta, and Lydia, and occupied Cyprus, which he evacuated when the Persians overthrew the Lydian power. Egypt had become "a shadow" indeed. Cyrus next turned his attention to Babylonia, besieging and capturing city after city. The regent, Belshazzar, ruled as king in Babylon, which, in 539 B.C., was completely invested. On the last night of his life, deeming himself secure, "Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand" (Daniel, v, i).
In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand:
The fingers of a man;--
A solitary hand
Along the letters ran,
And traced them like a wand.
. . . . . .
"Belshazzar's grave is made,
His kingdom passed away,
He, in the balance weighed,
Is light and worthless clay;
The shroud his robe of state,
His canopy the stone;
The Mede is at his gate!
The Persian on his throne!"
Byron.
So Babylon fell. Cyrus, who was proclaimed its king, allowed the Jews to return home, and the first lot saw the hills of Judah in 538 B.C., nearly half a century after Zedekiah was put to shame.
Cambyses, a man of ungovernable temper and subject to epileptic fits, succeeded Cyrus in 530 B.C. Nine months after the death of Amasis, the ineffectual intriguer (525 B.C.), he moved westward with a strong army and conquered Egypt. Psamtek III, after the defeat of his army of mercenaries at Pelusium, on the east of the Delta, retreated to Memphis. Soon afterwards a Persian herald sailed up the Nile to offer terms, but the Egyptians slew him and his attendants and destroyed the boat. Cambyses took speedy revenge. He invested Memphis, which ere long surrendered. According to Herodotus, he committed gross barbarities. Pharaoh's daughter and the daughters of noblemen were compelled to fetch water like slaves, nude and disgraced before the people, and Pharaoh's son and two thousand Egyptian youths, with ropes round their necks, were marched in procession to be cut to pieces as the herald of Cambyses had been, and even Pharaoh was executed. On his return from Nubia, where he conducted a fruitless campaign, Cambyses is said to have slain a newly found Apis bull, perhaps because Amasis had "loved Apis more than any other king". At Sais the vengeful Persian, according to Egyptian tradition, had the mummy of Amasis torn to pieces and burned.
With the conquest by Persia the history of ancient Egypt may be brought to an end. Before the coming of Alexander the Great, in B.C. 332, the shortlived and weak Dynasties Twenty-eight to Thirty flickered like the last flames of smouldering embers. Then followed the Ptolemaic age, which continued until 30 B.C., when, with the death of the famous Cleopatra, Egypt became "the granary of Rome".
Under the Ptolemies there was another restoration. It was modelled on the civilization of the latter half of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and Amenhotep, son of Hapi, the architect and magician who had been honoured by Queen Tiy's royal husband, was elevated to the rank of a god. A large proportion of the foreign population embraced Egyptian religion, and the dead were given gorgeous mummy cases with finely carved or painted portraits.
Vivid glimpses of life in Egypt from the second to the fourth century A.D.,--are afforded by the papyri discovered at Oxyrhynchus, chiefly by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt. Wealthy and populous Alexandria had its brilliant and luxury-loving social groups. Invitations to dinner were sent out in much the same form as at the present day. The following is dated second century A.D.:
Cbemon requests your company at dinner at the table of the lord of Serapis in the Serapeum to-morrow, the 15th, at 9 o'clock.
The worship of Apis was fashionable. A lady wrote to a friend about the beginning of the fourth century:
Greeting, my dear Serenia, from Petosiris. Be sure, dear, to come up on the 20th for the birthday festival of the god, and let me know whether you are coming by boat or by donkey in order that we may send for you accordingly. Take care not to forget. I pray for your continued health.
There were spoiled and petted boys even in the third century. One wrote to his indulgent father:
Theon to father Theon, greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city. If you won't take me with you to Alexandria I won't write you a letter, or speak to you, or say goodbye to you, and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand or ever greet you again. This is what will happen if you won't take me. Mother said to Archelaus: "It quite upsets me to be left behind". It was good of you to send me presents. . . . Send me a lyre I implore you. If you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink--there now!
Alexandria was always a hotbed of sedition. A youthful citizen in good circumstances wrote to his brother:
I learned from some fishermen that Secundus's house has been searched and my house has been searched. I shall therefore be obliged if you will write me an answer on this matter so that I may myself present a petition to the Prefect. . . . Let me hear about our bald friend, how his hair is growing again on the top; be sure and do.
Marriage engagements were dissolved when prospective sons-in-law were found to be concerned in lawless actions; prisoners were bailed out; improvident people begged for loans from friends to take valuables and clothing out of pawn; country folk complained that merchants sent large cheeses when they ordered small ones. Young men were expected to write home regularly. The following is a father's letter:--
I have been much surprised, my son, at not receiving hitherto a letter from you to tell me how you are. Nevertheless, sir, answer me with all speed, for I am quite distressed at having heard nothing from you.
So the social life of an interesting age is made articulate for us, and we find that human nature has not changed much through the centuries. 6
In the Ptolemaic age a papyrus was made eloquent with the lamentation of a girl wife in her tomb. At fourteen she was married to the high priest of Ptah, and after giving birth to three daughters in succession she prayed for a son, and a son was born. Four brief years went past and then she died. Her husband heard her crying from the tomb, entreating him to eat and drink and be merry, because the land of the dead was a land of slumber and blackness and great weariness . . . . . "The dead are without power to move . . . sire and mother they know not, nor do they long for their children, husbands, or wives. . . . Ah, woe is me! would I could drink of stream water, would I could feel the cool north wind on the river bank, so that my mind might have sweetness and its sorrow an end."
It is as if the soul of ancient Egypt, disillusioned in the grave, were crying to us in the darkness "down the corridors of time".
1 Erman, Handbuch.
2 The various gods became manifestations of Osiris. In the Osirian hymns, which were added to from time to time, Osiris is addressed: "Thou art Tum, the forerunner of Ra . . . the soul of Ra . . . the pupil of the eye that beholdest Tum . . . lord of fear, who causeth himself to come into being" (The Burden of Isis, Dennis).
3 The Burden of Isis; the egg, pp. 39, 45, 55; the sun, pp. 23, 24, 41, 49, 53; Tatenen (Tanen), p. 49; Seb, pp. 32, 47.
4 An image of Isis was found on the site of a Roman camp in Yorkshire.
5 "Mighty in ships."
6 The translations are from Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Egyptian Fund) Parts 2 and 3.
Isaiah foretells Egypt's Fall--The Priest Kings--Rise of the Libyans--Philistines and Hebrews--A "Corner" in Iron--Saul and David--Solomon's Alliance with Pharaoh Sheshonk (Shisak)--Jeroboam's Revolt--Israel Worships the "Lady of Heaven"--The Ethiopian Kings--Assyria's Great Empire--The "Ten Lost Tribes"--Pharaoh Taharka and Hezekiah--Assyrian Army destroyed--Isaiah a Great Statesman--Assyrian Conquest of Egypt--Sack of Thebes.
"THE burden of Egypt. Behold, the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof. . . . The brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up; the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper reeds 1 by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover, they that work in fine flax, and they, that weave networks, shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish" (Isaiah, xix).
From the death of Rameses III to the period of Isaiah, the great Hebrew prophet and politician, we must pass in review about five centuries of turbulence and change. The last great Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty was followed by nine weak rulers bearing the name of Rameses. Little is known, or is worth knowing, regarding them. They were but puppets in the hands of the powerful priests of Amon-ra, who had become the commanders of the army, the chief treasurers, grand viziers, and high judges of Egypt. The Oracle of Amon-ra confirmed all their doings. In the end the great Theban god became the rival of Osiris as Judge of the Dead, and the high priest, Herihor, thrust aside Rameses XII and seized the crown. Another priest king reigned at Tanis (Zoan) in the Delta.
Egypt was thrown into confusion under ecclesiastical rule, and land fell rapidly in value. Robbery on the highways and especially in tombs became a recognized profession, and corrupt officials shared in the spoils; the mummies of great Pharaohs, including Sed I and Rameses II, had to be taken by pious worshippers from the sepulchral chambers and concealed from the plunderers. No buildings were erected, and many great temples, including the Ramesseum, fell into disrepair.
After the passing of an obscure and inglorious century we find that the mingled tribes of Libyans and their western neighbours and conquerors, the Meshwesh, had poured into the Delta in increasing numbers, and penetrated as far south as Heracleopolis. Egypt was powerless in Palestine. The Philistines had moved southward, and for a period were overlords of the Hebrews. They had introduced iron) and restricted its use among their neighbours, as is made evident in the Bible.
Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears; but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. Yet they had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, And to sharpen the goads. So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan; but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there found (1 Samuel, xiii, 19-22).
Thus the Hebrews at the very beginning of their history as a nation had experience of a commercial "corner", which developed their business instincts, no doubt. Their teachers were Europeans who represented one of the world's oldest civilizations. 2 The oppression which they endured welded together the various tribes, and under Saul the Hebrews made common cause against the Philistines. When handsome, red-cheeked David, 3 who had probably a foreign strain in his blood, had consolidated Judah and Israel, the dominance of the Cretan settlers came to an end; they were restricted to the sea coast, and they ceased to have a monopoly of iron. Solomon, the chosen of the priests, was supported by a strong army, which included mercenaries, and became a great and powerful monarch, who emulated the splendour of the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. His supremacy in southern Syria was secured by an alliance with Egypt.
And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about (1 Kings, iii, 1).
The Pharaoh with whom Solomon had come to an understanding was Sheshonk (Shishak), a vigorous ruler and successful military leader, who established peace in his kingdom. He secured his Delta frontier from attack by laying a firm hand on the territory between Egypt and the "buffer state" of the Hebrews. In time we read that he had "taken Gezer" (an independent city state) "and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife" (1 Kings, ix, 16).
Sheshonk was the first king of the Libyan (Twenty-Second) Dynasty, which lasted for about two centuries. He was the descendant of a Meshwesh-Libyan mercenary who had become high priest of Her-shef at Heracleopolis and the commander of the local troops. Under this foreign nobleman and his descendants the nome flourished and became so powerful that Sheshonk was able to control the Delta region, where he allied himself with other Libyan military lords. In the end he married the daughter of the last weak priest king of Tanis, and was proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt. He made Bubastis his capital, and the local goddess, the cat-headed Bast, became the official deity of the kingdom. Amon was still recognized, but at the expense of other Delta deities who shared in the ascendancy of "the kindly Bast". Sheshonk held nominal sway over Thebes, and appointed his son high priest of Anion-ra, and he was able to extract tribute from Nubia.
Sheshonk's chief need was money, for he had to maintain a strong standing army of mercenaries. He must have cast envious eyes on the wealth which had accumulated in Solomon's kingdom, and, as it proved, was not slow to interfere in its internal affairs when opportunity offered. He extended his hospitality to Jeroboam, the leader of the Israelites who desired to be relieved of the heavy taxes imposed by Solomon. "Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam" (1 Kings, xi, 40). When Rehoboam came to the throne, Jeroboam pleaded on behalf of the oppressed ten tribes of the north, but the new king was advised to say: "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins". A revolt ensued, and Jeroboam became king of the north, supported, evidently, by Shishak. The golden calf was then worshipped by Jeroboam's subjects; it was probably the symbol of the Hathor-like "Lady of Heaven", whose worship was revived even in Jerusalem, when Jeremiah said: "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods" (Jeremiah, vii, 18). The religious organization, based upon the worship of the God of Israel, which had been promoted by David, was thus broken up; "there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days" (1 Kings, xiv, 30).
The opportunity afforded for invasion was quickly seized by Sheshonk. According to his own annals, he swept through Palestine, securing great spoils; indeed he claims that his mercenaries penetrated as far north as the River Orontes. It is stated in the Bible that he plundered Jerusalem, and "took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all; and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made" (1 Kings, xiv, 25-6).
About a century after the death of Sheshonk the power of the royal house is found to have declined; the various hereditary Libyan lords showed but nominal allegiance to the Crown. A rival kingdom had also arisen in the south. When the priest kings were driven from Thebes they founded a theocracy in the Nubian colony, which became known as Ethiopia, and there the Oracle of Amon controlled the affairs of State.
GREAT SEA AND LAND RAID: PHILISTINE PRISONERS
From the bas-relief on the gate of the temple of Rameses III at Medinet Habu
AMON PRESENTING TO SHESHONK LIST OF CITIES CAPTURED IN ISRAEL AND JUDAH
From the bas-relief on the great Temple at Karnak
In time the Ethiopian kingdom became strong enough to control a large part of Upper Egypt, and Thebes was occupied. Then Plankhy, the most capable of all the Ethiopian rulers, extended his conquests until he forced the princes of the north to acknowledge his supremacy.
Piankhy's most serious rival was Tefnekht, prince of Sais, who assembled an army of allies and fought his way southward as far as Thebes. He was driven back by Plankhy, who ultimately swept in triumph to Sais and compelled the submission of Tefnekht and his allies. He did not, however, effect the permanent occupation of Lower Egypt.
Shabaka, the first Pharaoh of the Ethiopian (Twenty-Fifth) Dynasty, ruled over all Egypt, having secured by force of arms the allegiance of the princes, or petty kings, of the north. He is believed to be the Biblical "So, King of Egypt" (2 Kings, xvii, 4). Syria and Palestine had become dependencies of the great Empire of Assyria, which included Babylonia and Mesopotamia and extended into Asia Minor. Shabaka had either dreams of acquiring territory in southern Syria, or desired to have buffer states to protect Egypt against Assyrian invasion, for he entered into an alliance with some of the petty kings. These included King Hoshea of Israel, who, trusting to Egypt's support, "brought no present (tribute) to the King of Assyria as he had done year by year" (2 Kings, xvii, 4). Sargon II of Assyria anticipated the rising, and speedily stamped it out. He had Ilu-bi'-di of Hamath flayed alive; he defeated a weak Egyptian force; and took Hanno, Prince of Gaza, and King Hoshea prisoners. Then he distributed, as he has re-recorded, 27,290 Israelites--"the ten lost tribes"-- between Mesopotamia and the Median highlands. 4 Large numbers of troublesome peoples were drafted from Babylonia into Samaria, where they mingled with the remnants of the tribes which remained. Thus came to an end the kingdom of the northern Hebrews; that of Judah--the kingdom of the Jews--remained in existence for another century and a half.
Taharka, the third and last Ethiopian Pharaoh, whose mother was a negress, is referred to in the Bible as Tirhakah (Isaiah, xxxvii, 9). Like Shabaka, he took an active part in Asian politics, and allied himself with, among others, Lull, King of Tyre, and Hezekiah, King of Judah. Sargon "the later", as he called himself, had been assassinated, and his son, Sennacherib, had to deal with several revolts during the early years of his reign. Ionians had invaded Cilicia, and had to be subdued; many of the prisoners were afterwards sent to Nineveh. Trouble was constantly brewing in Babylonia, where the supremacy of Assyria was being threatened by a confederacy of Chaldeans, Elamites, and Aramns; a pretender even arose in Babylon, and Sennacherib's brother, the governor, was murdered, and the city had to be besieged and captured. This "pretender", Merodach-Baladan, 5 had been concerned in the Egypto-Syrian alliance, and Sennacherib found it necessary to push westward, as soon as he had overrun Chaldea, to deal with the great revolt. He conquered Phnicia, with the exception of Tyre, but King Luli had taken refuge in Cyprus. Hastening southward he scattered an army of allies, which included Pharaoh Taharka's troops, and, having captured a number of cities in Judah, he laid siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah held out, but, according to the Assyrian account, made terms of peace with the emperor, and afterwards sent great gifts to Nineveh. A later expedition appears to have been regarded as necessary, however, and, according to the Biblical account, it ended disastrously, for Sennacherib's army was destroyed by a pestilence. Isaiah, who was in Jerusalem at the time, said: "Thus saith the Lord . . . Behold I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour and shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land" (2 Kings, xix, 7).
And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score and five thousand. . . . So Sennacherib, King of Assyria, departed (2 Kings, xix, 35, 36).
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset was seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved--and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent--the banners alone--
The lances unlifted--the trumpet unblown.
Arid the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentle, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.
Byron.
Isaiah, statesman and scholar, had been no party to the alliance between Egypt and Judah and the other Powers who trusted in the Babylonian Pretender; in fact, he had denounced it at the very outset. He entertained great contempt for the Egyptians. "Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it" (Isaiah, xxxvi, 6) . . . . "The princes of Zoan" (Tanis), he said, "are become fools, and the princes of Noph (Memphis 6 ) are deceived" (Isaiah, xix, 13). He foretold the fall of Tyre and the subjection of Egypt, and admonished the pro-Egyptians of Judah, saying: "Woe to the rebellious children . . . that walk into Egypt . . . to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt" (Isaiah, xxx, 1, 2). "For the Egyptians", he warned Hezekiah, "shall help in vain and to no purpose . . . their strength is to sit still . . . write it before them in a tablet", he added, "and note it in a book" (Isaiah, xxx, 7, 8). He had summed up the situation with characteristic sagacity.
Sennacherib's campaigns paralysed the kingdom of the Jews. Thousands of prisoners were deported, and when peace again prevailed Hezekiah had left only "the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah" (2 Kings, xix, 30).
After Sennacherib was murdered, as the result of a revolt which disturbed Babylon, his son, Assar-haddon, 7 had to deal with another western rising fomented by that scheming Ethiopian Pharaoh Taharka, who was riding speedily on the road to ruin.
About 674 B.C. the young Assyrian emperor conducted a vigorous campaign in Syria, and struck at the root of his imperial troubles by invading Egypt, which he conquered, and divided up between some twenty princes, the chief of whom was the half-Libyan Neche of Sais. Taharka endeavoured to reconquer his kingdom, and Assar-haddon set out with a strong army to deal with him, but died on the march.
A few years later Ashur-banipal, the new Assyrian emperor, defeated Taharka at Memphis. Necho of Sais, who had been intriguing with the Ethiopian king, was pardoned, and appointed chief agent of the emperor in Egypt, which had become an Assyrian province.
Taharka gave no further trouble. When he died, however, his successor, Tanut-amon, King of Ethiopia, endeavoured to wrest Upper and Lower Egypt from the Assyrians. Necho marched southward with a force of Assyrian troops, but was defeated and slain at Memphis. But the triumph of Tanut-amon was shortlived. Ashur-banipal once again entered Egypt and stamped out the last spark of Ethiopian power in that unhappy country. Thebes was captured and plundered, the images of the great gods were carried away to Nineveh, and the temples were despoiled of all their treasure. Half a century later, when Nahum, the Hebrew prophet, foretold the fall of Nineveh, "the bloody city . . . full of lies and robbery . . . the noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots" . . . he referred in his own graphic manner to the disaster which fell upon Thebes at the hands of the vengeful Assyrians.
"Art thou better than populous No (Thebes) that was situate among the rivers", cried the prophet, "that had the waters round about it . . . Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength and it was infinite. . . . Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains" (Nahum, iii, 8-10).
So the glory departed from Thebes, never again to return. Amon was cast down from his high place, the priesthood was broken up, and the political schemers who escaped the Assyrians found refuge in Ethiopia, where the kings submitted to their rule and became "as clay in the hands of the potter", with the result that the civilization of the Nubian power gradually faded away. Psamtek, who, according to Herodotus, had fled to Syria on the death of his father Necho, became Assyrian governor (Shaknu) in Egypt, and the country was left to settle down in its shame to produce the wherewithal demanded in tribute year by year by the mighty Emperor Ashur-banipal of Assyria.
1 Papyri.
2 "The remnant of the country of Caphtor" (Crete).--Jeremiah, xlvii, 4.
3 "A youth and ruddy and of a fair countenance" (1 Samuel xvii, 42).
4 These tribes were worshippers of the "golden calf". There is no proof that they were not absorbed by the peoples among whom they settled. A good story is told of a well-known archlogist. He was approached by a lady who supports the view that the British are descended from the "ten lost tribes". "I am not an Anglo-Israelite," he said; "I am afraid I am an Anglo-Philistine".
5 He "sent letters and a present to Hezekiah" (Isaiah, xxxix, 1). The shadow of the sundial of Ahaz had gone "ten degrees backward". According to an astronomical calculation there was a partial eclipse of the sun-of the upper part--which was visible at Jerusalem on 11 January, 689, B.C., about 11-30 a.m. (See also a Chronicles, xxxii.)
6 Or Napata, in Ethiopia.
7 Or Esarhaddon
Sectarian Rivalries--Struggles for Political Ascendancy--New Theology--The Dragon Slayer--Links between Sutekh, Horus, Sigurd, Siegfried, Finn-mac-Coul, Dietrich, and Hercules--Rameses I and the Hittites--Break-up of Mitanni Empire--Seti's Conquests--Wars of Rameses II--Treaty with the Hittites--Pharaoh's Sublime Vanity--Sea Raids by Europeans on Egypt--The Last Strong Pharaoh--The Great Trojan War.
THE Nineteenth Dynasty opens with Rameses I, but no record survives to throw light on his origin, or the political movement which brought him to the throne. He was an elderly man, and does not appear to have been related to Horemheb. When he had reigned for about two years his son Seti was appointed co-regent.
But although history is silent regarding the intrigues of this period, its silence is eloquent. As the king's throne name indicates, he was attached to the cult of Ra, and it is of significance to note that among his other names there is no recognition of Amon.
The history of Egypt is the history of its religion. Its destinies were controlled by its religious cults and by the sects within the cults. Although Ra was fused with Amon, there are indications that rivalries existed not only between Heliopolis and Thebes, but also between the sects in Thebes, where several temples were dedicated to the national god. The theological system which evolved from the beliefs associated with Amon, the old as lunar deity, must have presented many points of difference to those which emanated from Heliopolis, the home of scholars and speculative thinkers. During the Eighteenth Dynasty the priesthood was divided into two great parties: one supported the claims of Queen Hatshepsut, while the other espoused the cause of Thothmes III. It may be that the queen was favoured by the Ra section of the Amon-ra cult, and that her rival was the chosen of the Amon section. The Thothmes III party retained its political ascendancy until Thothmes IV, who worshipped Ra Harmachis, was placed upon the throne, although not the crown prince. It is possible that the situation created by the feuds which appear to have been waged between the rival sects in the priesthood facilitated the religious revolt of Akhenaton, which, it may be inferred, could have been stamped out if the rival sects had presented a united front and made common cause against him.
With the accession of Rameses I we appear to be confronted with the political ascendancy of the Ra section. It is evident that the priests effected the change in the succession to the throne, for the erection was at once undertaken of the great colonnaded hall at Karnak, which was completed by Rameses II. The old Amon party must have been broken up, for the solar attributes of Amon-ra became more and more pronounced as time went on, while lunar worship was associated mainly with Khonsu and the imported moon goddesses of the type of Astarte and the "strange Aphrodite". To this political and religious revolution may be attributed the traditional prejudice against Thothmes III.
The new political party, as its "new theology" suggests, derived its support not only from Heliopolis, but also from half-foreign Tanis in the Delta. Influences from without were evidently at work. Once again, as in the latter half of the Twelfth Dynasty and in Hyksos times, the god Set or Sutekh came into prominence in Egypt. The son of Rameses I, Seti, was a worshipper of Set--not the old Egyptianized devil Set, but the Set who slew the Apep serpent, and was identified with Horus.
The Set of Rameses II, son of Seti I, 1 wore a conical hat like a typical Hittite deity, arid from it was suspended a long rope or pigtail; he was also winged like the Horus sun disk. On a small plaque of glazed steatite this "wonderful deity" is depicted "piercing a serpent with a large spear". The serpent is evidently the storm demon of one of the Corycian caves in Asia Minor--the Typhon of the Greeks, which was slain by the deity identified now with Zeus and now with Hercules. The Greek writers who have dealt with Egyptian religion referred to "the roaring Set" as Typhon also. The god Sutekh of Tanis combined the attributes of the Hittite dragon slayer with those of Horus and Ra.
It is possible that to the fusion of Horus with the dragon slayer of Asia Minor may be traced the origin of Horus as Harpocrates (Her-pe-khred), the child god who touches his lips with an extended finger. The Greeks called him "the god of silence"; Egyptian literature throws no light on his original character. From what we know of Horus of the Osirian legends there is no reason why he should have considered. it necessary to preserve eternal silence.
In a particular type of the dragon-slaying stories of Europe, which may have gone north from Asia Minor with the worshippers of Tarku (Thor or Thunor), the hero--a humanized deity--places his finger in his mouth for a significant reason. After Siegfried killed the dragon he roasted its heart, and when he tasted it he immediately understood the language of birds. Sigurd, the Norse dragon slayer, is depicted with his thumb in his mouth after slaying Fafher. 2 The Highland Finn, the slayer of Black Arky, discovered that he had a tooth of knowledge when he roasted a salmon, and similarly thrust his burnt finger into his mouth. 3 In the Nineteenth-Dynasty fragmentary Egyptian folktale, "Setna and the Magic Book", which has been partially reconstructed by Professor Petrie, 4 Ahura relates: "He gave the book into my hands; and when I read a page of the spells in it, I also enchanted heaven and earth, the mountains and the sea; I also knew what the birds of the sky, the fishes of the deep, and the beasts of the hill all said". The prototype of Ahura in this "wonder tale" may have been Horus as Harpocrates. Ahura, like Sigurd and Siegfried, slays a "dragon" ere he becomes acquainted with the language of birds; it is called "a deathless snake". "He went to the deathless snake, and fought with him, and killed him; but he came to life again, and took a new form. He then fought again with him a second time; but he came to life again, and took a third form. He then cut him in two parts, and put sand between the parts, that he should not appear again" (Petrie). Dietrich von Bern experienced a similar difficulty in slaying Hilde, the giantess, so as to rescue Hildebrand from her clutches, 5 and Hercules was unable to put an end to the Hydra until Iolaus came to his assistance with a torch to prevent the growth of heads after decapitation. 6 Hercules buried the last head in the ground, thus imitating Ahura, who "put sand between the parts" of the "deathless snake". All these versions of a well-developed tale appear to be offshoots of the great Cilician legend of "The War of the Gods". Attached to an insignificant hill cave at Cromarty, in the Scottish Highlands, is the story of the wonders of Typhon's cavern in Sheitandere (Devil's Glen), Western Cilicia. Whether it was imported from Greece, or taken north by the Alpine people, is a problem which does not concern us here.
At the close of the Eighteenth Dynasty the Hittites were pressing southward through Palestine and were even threatening the Egyptian frontier. Indeed, large numbers of their colonists appear to have effected settlement at Tanis, where Sutekh and Astarte had become prominent deities. Rameses I arranged a peace treaty 7 with their king, Sapalul (Shubiluliuma), although he never fought a battle, which suggests that the two men were on friendly terms. The mother of Seti may have been a Hittite or Mitanni princess, the daughter or grandchild of one of the several Egyptian princesses who were given as brides to foreign rulers during the Eighteenth Dynasty. That the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty were supported by the foreign element in Egypt is suggested by their close association with Tanis, which had become a city of great political importance and the chief residence of the Pharaohs. Thebes tended to become more and more an ecclesiastical capital only.
Seti I was a tall, handsome man of slim build with sharp features and a vigorous and intelligent face. His ostentatious piety had, no doubt, a political motive; all over Egypt his name appears on shrines, and he restored many monuments which suffered during Akhenaton's reign. At Abydos he built a great sanctuary to Osiris, which shows that the god Set whom he worshipped was not the enemy of the ancient deified king, and he had temples erected at Memphis and Heliopolis, while he carried on the work at the great Theban colonnaded hall. He called himself "the sun of Egypt and the moon of all other lands", an indication of the supremacy achieved by the sun cult.
Seti was a dashing and successful soldier. He conducted campaigns against the Libyans on the north and the Nubians in the south, but his notable military successes were achieved in Syria.
A new Hittite king had arisen who either knew not the Pharaoh or regarded him as too powerful a rival; at any rate, the peace was broken. The Hittite overlord was fomenting disturbances in North Syria, and probably also in Palestine, where the rival Semitic tribes were engaged in constant and exhausting conflicts. He had allied himself with the Aramns, who were in possession of great tracts of Mesopotamia, and with invaders from Europe of Aryan speech in the north-west of Asia Minor.
The Hittite Empire had been broken up. In the height of its glory its kings had been overlords of Assyria. Tushratta's great-grandfather had sacked Ashur, and although Tushratta owed allegiance to Egypt he was able to send to Amenhotep III the Nineveh image of Ishtar, a sure indication of his supremacy over that famous city. When the Mitanni power was shattered, the Assyrians, Hittites, and Aramns divided between them the lands held by Tushratta and his Aryan ancestors.
Shubiluliuma was king of the Hittites when Seti scattered hordes of desert robbers who threatened his frontier. He then pressed through war-vexed Palestine with all the vigour and success of Thothmes III. In the Orontes valley he met and defeated an army of Hittites, made a demonstration before Kadesh, and returned in triumph. to Egypt. Seti died in 1292, having reigned for over twenty years.
His son Rameses II, called "The Great" (by his own command), found it necessary to devote the first fifteen of the sixty-seven years of his reign to conducting strenuous military operations chiefly against the Hittites and their allies. A new situation had arisen in Syria, which was being colonized by the surplus population of Asia Minor. The Hittite army followed the Hittite settlers, so that it was no longer possible for the Egyptians to. effect a military occupation of the North Syrian territory, held by Thothmes III and his successors, without waging constant warfare against their powerful northern rival. Rameses II appears, however, to have considered himself strong enough to reconquer the lost sphere of influence for Egypt. As soon as his ambition was realized by Mutallu, the Hittite king, a great army of allies, including Aramns and European raiders, was collected to await the ambitious Pharaoh.
Rameses had operated on the coast in his fourth year, and early in his fifth he advanced through Palestine to the valley of the Orontes. The Hittites and their allies were massed at Kadesh, but the Pharaoh, who trusted the story of two natives whom he captured, believed that they had retreated northward beyond Tunip. This seemed highly probable, because the Egyptian scouts were unable to get into touch with the enemy. But the overconfident Pharaoh was being led into a trap.
The Egyptian army was in four divisions, named Amon, Ra, Ptah, and Sutekh. Rameses was in haste to invest Kadesh, and pressed on with the Amon regiment, followed closely by the Ra regiment. The other two were, when he reached the city, at least a day's march in the rear.
Mutallu, the Hittite king, allowed Rameses to move round Kadesh on the western side with the Amon regiment and take up a position on the north. Meanwhile he sent round the eastern side of the city a force of 2500 charioteers, which fell upon the Ra regiment and cut through it, driving the greater part of it into the camp of Amon. Ere long Rameses found himself surrounded) with only a fragment of his army remaining, for the greater part of the Amon regiment had broken into flight with that of Ra and were scattered towards the north.
It was a desperate situation. But although Rameses was not a great general, he was a brave man, and fortune favoured him. Instead of pressing the attack from the west, the Hittites began to plunder the Egyptian camp. Their eastern wing was weak and was divided by the river from the infantry. Rameses led a strong force of charioteers, and drove this part of the Hittite army into the river. Meanwhile some reinforcements came up and fell upon the Asiatics in the Egyptian camp, slaying them almost to a man. Rameses was then able to collect some of his scattered forces, and he fought desperately against the western wing of the Hittite army until the Ptah regiment came up and drove the enemies of Egypt into the city.
Rameses had achieved a victory, but at a terrible cost. He returned to Egypt without accomplishing the capture of Kadesh, and created for himself a great military reputation by recording his feats of personal valour on temple walls and monuments. A poet who sang his praises declared that when the Pharaoh found himself surrounded, and, of course, "alone", he called upon Ra, whereupon the sun god appeared before him and said: "Alone thou art not, for I, thy father, am beside thee, and my hand is more to thee than hundreds of thousands. I who love the brave am the giver of victory." In one of his inscriptions the Pharaoh compared himself to Baal, god of battle.
Rameses delayed but he did not prevent the ultimate advance of the Hittites. In his subsequent campaigns he was less impetuous, but although he occasionally penetrated far northward, he secured no permanent hold over the territory which Thothmes III and Amenhotep "had won for Egypt. In the end he had to content himself with the overlordship of Palestine and part of Phnicia. Mutalla, the Hittite king, had to deal with a revolt among his allies, especially the Aramns, and was killed, and his brother Khattusil II, 8 who succeeded him, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Rameses, probably against Assyria, which had grown powerful and aggressive. The treaty, which was drawn up in 1271 B.C., made reference to previous agreements, but these, unfortunately, have perished; it was signed by the two monarchs, and witnessed by a thousand Egyptian gods and a thousand Hittite gods.
Several years afterwards Khattusil visited Egypt to attend the celebration of the marriage of his daughter to Rameses. He was accompanied by a strong force and brought many gifts. By the great mass of the Egyptians he was regarded as a vassal of the Pharaoh; he is believed to be the prince referred to in the folktale which relates that the image of the god Khonsu was sent from Egypt to cure his afflicted daughter (see Chapter XV).
Rameses was a man of inordinate ambition and sublime vanity. He desired to be known to posterity as the greatest Pharaoh who ever sat upon the throne of Egypt. So he covered the land with his monuments and boastful inscriptions, appropriated the works of his predecessors, and even demolished temples to obtain building material. In Nubia, which had become thoroughly Egyptianized, he erected temples to Amon, Ras and Ptah. The greatest of these is the sublime rock temple at Abu Simbel, which he dedicated to Amon and himself. Beside it is a small temple to Hathor and his queen Nefertari, "whom he loves", as an inscription sets forth. Fronting the Amon temple four gigantic colossi were erected. One of Rameses remains complete; he sits, hands upon knees, gazing contentedly over the desert sands; that of his wife has suffered from falling debris, but survives in a wonderful state of preservation.
At Thebes the Pharaoh erected a large and beautiful temple of victory to Amon-ra, which is known as the Ramesseum, and he completed the great colonnaded hall at Karnak, the vastest structure of its kind the world has ever seen. On the walls of the Ramesseum is the well-known Kadesh battle scene, sculptured in low relief. Rameses is depicted like a giant bending his bow as he drives in his chariot, scattering before him into the River Orontes hordes of Lilliputian Hittites.
But although the name of' Rameses II dominates the Nile from Wady Halfa down to the Delta, we know now that there were greater Pharaohs than he, and, in fact, that he was a man of average ability. His mummy lies in the Cairo museum; he has a haughty aristocratic face and a high curved nose which suggests that he was partly of Hittite descent. He lived until he was nearly a century old. A worshipper of voluptuous Asiatic goddesses, he kept a crowded harem and boasted that he had a hundred sons and a large although uncertain number of daughters.
His successor was Seti Mene-ptah. Apparently Ptah, as well as Set, had risen into prominence, for Rameses had made his favourite son, who predeceased him, the high priest of Memphis. The new king was well up in years when he came to the throne in 1243 B.C. and hastened to establish his fame by despoiling existing temples as his father had done before him. During his reign of ten years Egypt was threatened by a new peril. Europe was in a state of unrest, and hordes of men from "the isles" were pouring into the Delta and allying themselves with the Libyans with purpose to effect conquests and permanent settlement in the land of the Pharaohs. About the same time the Phrygian occupation of the north-western part of Asia Minor was in progress. The Hittite Empire was doomed; it was soon to be broken up into petty states.
The Egyptian raiders appear to have been a confederacy of the old Cretan mariners, who had turned pirates, and the kinsfolk of the peoples who had over run the island kingdom.
AKHENATON, HIS QUEEN, AND THEIR CHILDREN
(The upper panel shows Aton, the solar disk, sustaining and protecting royalty.
The rays terminate in hands, some of which hold the ankh symbols.)
From bas-reliefs in the Berlin Museum
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Thothmes II |
Rameses II |
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Rameses III |
Seti I |
MUMMY HEADS OF NOTABLE PHARAOHS
Included among them were the Shardana 9 and Danauna (? the "Danaoi" of Homer) who were represented among the mercenaries of Pharaoh's army, the Akhaivasha, the Shakalsha, and the Tursha. It is believed that the Akhaivasha were the Achns, the big, blonde, grey-eyed warriors identified with the "Keltoi" of the ancients, who according to the ethnologists were partly of Alpine and partly of Northern descent. It is possible that the Shakalsha were the people who gave their name to Sicily, and that they and the Tursha were kinsmen of the Lycians.
Pharaoh Mene-ptah was thoroughly alarmed, for the invaders penetrated as far as Heliopolis. But the god Ptah appeared to him in a dream and promised victory. Supported by his Shardana and Danauna mercenaries, who had no scruples about attacking their kinsmen, he routed the army of allies, slaying about 9000 men and taking as many prisoners.
A stele at Thebes makes reference to a campaign waged by Mene-ptah in Palestine, where the peoples subdued included the children of Israel.
Although the son of the great Rameses II boasted that he had "united and pacified all lands", Egypt was plunged in anarchy after his death, which occurred in 1215 B.C. Three claimants to the throne followed in succession in ten years, and then a Syrian usurper became the Pharaoh. Once again the feudal lords asserted themselves, and Egypt suffered from famine and constant disorders.
The second king of the Twentieth Dynasty, Rameses III, was the last great Pharaoh of Egypt. In the eighth year of his reign a second strong sea raid occurred; it is dated between 1200 and 1190 B.C. On this occasion the invading allies were reinforced by tribes from Asia Minor and North Syria, which included the Tikkarai, the Muski (? Moschoi of the Greeks), and the Pulishta or Pilesti who were known among Solomon's guards as the Peleshtem. The Pulishta are identified as the Philistines from Crete who gave their name to Palestine, which they occupied along the seaboard from Carmel to Ashdod and as far inland as Beth-shan below the plain of Jezreel.
It is evident that the great raid was well organized and under the supreme command of an experienced leader. A land force moved down the coast of Palestine to co-operate with the fleet, and with it came the raiders' wives and children and their goods and chattels conveyed in wheel carts. 10 Rameses III was prepared for the invasion. A land force guarded his Delta frontier and his fleet awaited the coming of the sea raiders. The first naval battle in history was fought within sight of the Egyptian coast, and the Pharaoh had the stirring spectacle sculptured in low relief on the north wall of his Amon-ra temple at Medinet Habu, on the western plain of Thebes. The Egyptian vessels were crowded with archers who poured deadly fusillades into the enemies' ships. An overwhelming victory was achieved by the Pharaoh; the sea power of the raiders was completely shattered.
Rameses then marched his army northwards through Palestine to meet the land raiders, whom he defeated somewhere in southern Phnicia.
The great Trojan war began shortly after this great attack upon Egypt. According to the Greeks it was waged between 1194 and 1184 B.C. Homer's Troy, the sixth city of the archeologists, had been built by the Phrygians. Priam was their king, and he had two sons, Hector, the crown prince, and Paris. Menelaus had secured the throne of Sparta by marrying Helen, the royal heiress. When, as it chanced, he went from home--perhaps to command the sea raid upon Egypt--Paris carried off his queen and thus became, apparently, the claimant of the Spartan throne. On his return home Menelaus assembled an army of allies, set sail in a fleet of sixty ships, and besieged the city of Troy. This war of succession became the subject of Homer's great epic, the Iliad, which deals with a civilization of the "Chalkosideric" period--the interval between the Bronze and Iron Ages. 11
Meanwhile Egypt had rest from its enemies. Rameses reigned for over thirty years. He had curbed the Libyans and the Nubians as well as the sea and land raiders, and held sway over a part of Palestine. But the great days of Egypt had come to an end. It was weakened by internal dissension, which was only held in check and not stamped out by an army of foreign mercenaries, including Libyans as well as Europeans. The national spirit flickered low among the half-foreign Egyptians of the ruling class. When Rameses III was laid in his tomb the decline of the power of the Pharaohs, which he had arrested for a time, proceeded apace. The destinies of Egypt were then shaped from without rather than from within.
1 Griffiths in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archlogy, Volume XVI, pp. 88-9.
2 One must distinguish between the various kinds of mythical monsters slumped as "dragons". The "fiery flying serpent" may resemble the "fire drake", but both 341 differ from the "cave dragon" which does not spout fire and the "beast" of Celtic story associated with rivers, lakes, and the sea. The latter is found in Japan and China, as well as in Scotland and Ireland. In "Beowulf", Grendel and his mother belong to the water "beast" order; the dragon which causes the hero's death is a "fire drake". Egypt has also its flood and fire monsters. Thor slew the Midgard serpent at the battle of the "Dusk of the Gods".
3 Teutonic Myth and Legend.
4 Finn and his Warrior Band. The salmon is associated with the water "dragon"; the "essence", or soul, of the demon was in the fish, as the "essence" of Osiris was in Amon. It would appear that the various forms of the monster had to be slain to complete its destruction. This conception is allied to the belief in transmigration of souls.
5 Teutonic Myth and Legend. In Swedish and Gaelic stories similar incidents occur.
6 Classic Myth and Legend. The colourless character of the Egyptian legend suggests that it was imported, like Sutekh; its significance evidently faded in the new geographical setting.
7 It is referred to in the subsequent treaty between Rameses II and the Hittite king.
8 Known to the Egyptians as Khetasar.
9 The old Cretans, the "Keftiu", are not referred to by the Egyptians after the reign of Amenhotep III. These newcomers were evidently the destroyers of the great palace at Knossos.
10 When the Philistines were advised by their priests to return the ark to the Israelites it was commanded: "Now, therefore make a new cart and take two milch kine and tie the kine to the cart".--(1 Samuel vi, 7).
11 The Cuchullin saga of Ireland belongs to the same archlogical period; bronze and iron weapons were used. Cuchullin is the Celtic Achilles; to both heroes were attached the attributes of some old tribal god. The spot on the heel of Achilles is shared by the more primitive Diarmid of the Ossianic saga.
The Shelley of Egypt--King as a Prophet--The Need of the Empire--Disturbing Race Movements--Fall of Cretan Kingdom--Hittites press Southward--Khabri advance on Palestine--Akhenaton's War on Amon--The New Capital--A Poet's Dream--Empire going to Ruin--Aton the "First Cause"--A Grand Theology--Origin of the New Deity--Shu in the Sun--The Soul in the Egg--The Air of Life--A Jealous God--The Future Life--Paradise or Transmigration of Souls--Death of Akhenaton--Close of a Brilliant Dynasty.
HERODOTUS was informed by the sages of Egypt that the Souls of the dead passed through "every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures", and, after a lapse of about three thousand years, "entered a second time into human bodies". If that belief were as prevalent at present in these islands as it was in early Celtic times, we might be at pains to convince the world that Shelley was a reincarnation of Akhenaton. The English poet was born about 3150 years after the death of Egypt's "heretic King", and both men had much in common; they were idealists and reformers at war with the world, and "beautiful but ineffectual angels". With equal force these lines by William Watson may be applied to the one as to the other:--
Impatient of the world's fixed way,
He ne'er could suffer God's delay,
But all the future in a day
Would build divine. . . .
Shelley's reference to himself in "Adonais" is admirably suited for Akhenaton.
Mid others of less note, came one frail form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Actn-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness.
A pard-like spirit beautiful and swift--
A Love in desolation masked;--a Power
Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a failing shower,
A breaking billow;-even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? . . .
Like Shelley, too, Akhenaton appears to have resolved, while yet a boy, to fight against "the selfish and the strong", whom he identified particularly with the priests of Amon, for these were prone indeed to "tyrannize without reproach and check". The Egyptian prince, like the young English gentleman, began to "heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore", and "from that secret store wrought linked armour for his soul"; he embraced and developed the theological beliefs of the obscure Aton cult, and set forth to convince an unheeding world that--
The One remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly.
From the point of view of the Egyptian Imperialists the reign of Akhenaton, like that of Queen Hatshepsut, was a distinct misfortune. As it happened, the dreamer king ascended the throne with the noble desire to make all men "wise, and just, and free, and mild", just when the Empire was in need of another ruler like Thothmes III to conduct strenuous military campaigns against hordes of invaders and accomplish the subjection of the rebellious Syrian princes.
AMENHOTEP II
From the colossal granite bust in the British Museum
AMENHOTEP IV (AKHENATON)
From the statuette in the Louvre, Paris
Once again, as in the Twelfth Dynasty, the civilized world was being disturbed by the outpourings from mountainous districts of pastoral peoples in quest of "fresh woods and pastures new". Crete had been invaded during the reign of Amenhotep III; the "sack of Knossos" was already a thing of the past; the great civilization of the island kingdom had received its extinguishing blow, and thousands of the "Kheftiu" were seeking permanent homes in the ean, Asia Minor, Phnicia, and Egypt. Ere Akhenaton's father had died, Thebes received ominous intelligence of the southward pressure of the Hittites and also of the advance on Palestine of the Khabri (? Hebrews)--the first "wave" of the third great Semitic migration from eastern Arabia, known as the "Aramn". The days of the half-Iranian, half-Egyptian Tushratta were numbered; the civilization of Mitanni was doomed to vanish like that of Crete.
Akhenaton began to reign as Amenhotep IV. With purpose, apparently, to effect the immediate conversion of Thebes, he began the erection of a temple to Aton (or Aten) in close proximity to that of Amon. Ere long an open rupture between the priesthood and the Pharaoh became the chief topic of political interest. Amon's high priests had been wont to occupy high and influential positions at Court; under Amenhotep III one had been chief treasurer and another grand vizier. Akhenaton was threatening the cult with complete political extinction. Then something was done, or attempted to be done, by the priestly party, which roused the ire of the strong-minded young king, for he suddenly commenced to wage a war of bitter persecution against Amon. Everywhere the god's name was chipped from the monuments; the tombs were entered, and the young Pharaoh did not spare even the name of his father. It was at this time that he himself became known officially as Akhen-aton, "the spirit of Aton" 1 --the human incarnation of the strange god. Then he decided to desert Thebes, and at Tell-el-Amarna, about 300 miles farther south, he caused to be laid out a "garden city", in which were built a gorgeous palace which surpassed that of his father, and a great temple dedicated to "the one and only god". Aton temples were also erected in Nubia, near the third cataract, and in Syria at a point which has not beet, located.
When he entered his new capital, which was called "Horizon of Aton", the young king resolved never to leave it again. There, dwelling apart from the unconverted world, and associating with believers only, he dedicated his life to the service of Aton, and the propagation of those beliefs which, he was convinced, would make the world a Paradise if, and when, mankind accepted them.
Meanwhile more and more alarming news poured in from Syria. "Let not the king overlook the killing of a deputy", wrote one subject prince . . . . .. If help does not come, Bikhura will be unable to hold Kumidi." * * * In a later communication the same prince "begs for troops"; but he begged in vain. "If the king does not send troops," he next informed Akhenaton, "all the king's lands, as far as Egypt, will fall into the hands of the Khabri." Another faithful ally wrote: "Let troops be sent, for the king has no longer any territory; the Khabri have wasted all". To this communication was added a footnote addressed to the royal scribe, which reads: "Bring aloud before my lord, the king, the words, 'The whole territory of my lord, the king, is going to ruin'." 2
In the stately temple at Tell-el-Amarna, made beautiful by sculptor and painter, and strewn daily with bright and perfumed flowers, the dreamer king, oblivious to approaching disaster, continued to adore Aton with all the abandon and sustaining faith of a cloistered medieval monk.
"Thou hast made me wise in thy designs and by thy might", he prayed to the god . . . . . "The world is in thy hand."
Akhenaton accounted it sinful to shed blood or to take away the life which Aton gave. No sacrifices were offered up in his temple; the fruits of the earth alone were laid on the altars. He had already beaten the sword into a ploughshare. When his allies and his garrison commanders in Syria appealed for troops, he had little else to send them but a religious poem or a prayer addressed to Aton.
Hard things are often said about Akhenaton. One writer dismisses him as an "thetic trifler", others regard him as "a half-mad king"; but we must recognize that he was a profoundly serious man with a great mission, a high-souled prophet if an impractical Pharaoh. He preached the gospel of culture and universal brotherhood, and his message to mankind is the only vital thing which survives to us in Egypt amidst the relics of the past.
'T is naught
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,--they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
He remains to us as one of "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown",
Whose names on earth are dark
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark. . . .
He believed in the "one and only god", Aton, whose power was manifested in the beneficent sun; the great deity was Father of all mankind, and provided for their needs and fixed the length of their days. Aton was revealed in beauty, and his worshippers were required to live beautiful lives--the cultured mind abhorred all that was evil, and sought after "the things which are most excellent"; it shrank from the shedding of blood; it promoted the idea of universal brotherhood, and conceived of a beautiful world pervaded by universal peace.
No statues of Aton were ever made; Akhenaton forbade idolatrous customs. Although Aton was a sun god, he was not the material sun; he was the First Cause manifested by the sun, "from which all things came, and from which ever issued forth the life-giving and life-sustaining influence symbolized by rays ending in hands that support and nourish human beings". "No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know," says Professor Flinders Petrie, "and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions, while it is even more abstract and impersonal, and may well rank as scientific theism." 3 The same writer says: "If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of its view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaton understood we cannot say, but he had certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. No rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole lord or Adon of the Universe". 4
The chief source of our knowledge of Akhenaton's religion is his great hymn, one of the finest surviving versions of which has been found in the tomb of a royal official at Tell-el-Amarna. It was first published by Bouriant, and has since been edited by Breasted, whose version is the recognized standard for all translations. 5
The development of Aton religion may have been advanced by Yuaa, Queen Tiy's father, during the reign of Amenhotep III, when it appears to have been introduced in Court circles, but it reached its ultimate splendour as a result of the philosophical teachings of the young genius Akhenaton. It has its crude beginnings in the mythological beliefs of those nature worshippers of Egypt and other countries who conceived that life and the universe were of male origin. We can trace it back even to the tribal conception that the soul of the world-shaping giant was in the chaos egg. In the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead Ra is addressed:
O thou art in thine Egg, who shinest from thy Aton.
O thou beautiful being, thou dost renew thyself, and make thyself young again under the form of Aton. . . .
Hail Aton, thou lord of beams of light; thou shinest and all faces (i.e. everybody) live. 6
There was an Aton cult at Heliopolis which taught that the creator Ra was "Shu in his Aton". Aton is the solar disk and Shu is the air god, the source of "the air of life". the Great Father who is the soul of the universe. Like "the Baal", Shu is also associated with the sun; the atmospheric god is manifested by lightning and fire as well as by tempest. Shu is thus not only "air which is in the sun", but also, according to Akhenaton's religion, "heat which is in Aton". In the Tell-el-Amarna poem, Aton, who creates all things, "makest the son to live in the body of his mother". Then follows a reference to "the egg":
When the chick is in the egg and is making a sound within the shell,
Thou givest it air inside it so that it may keep alive.
Budge's trans.
The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell,
Thou givest to it breath within the egg
To give life to that which thou makest.
Griffith's trans.
When the chicklet crieth in the egg-shell,
Thou givest him breath therein, to preserve him alive. 7
--Breasted's trans.
When Akhenaton and his queen were depicted worshipping Aton, the rays which stretched out from the sun and ended in hands not only supported their bodies but pressed towards their nostrils and lips the "ankh", the "symbol of life". The air of life was the sun-heated air; life was warmth and breath. 8 Why the "ankh" touched the lips is clearly indicated in the great hymn. When the child is born, Aton--
Openest his mouth that he may speak.
Aton was thus, like certain other Egyptian gods, "the opener", 9 who gave power of speech and life to a child at birth or to the mummy of the dead. In this connection Wiedemann says that Ptah "bore a name which is probably derived from the root pth, "to open", especially as used in the ritual term "opening of the mouth". Porphyrius, 10 "who was well informed in Egyptian matters", tells us that the god (Ptah) came forth from an egg which had issued from the mouth of Kneph (a word signifying "air breath", and "spirit Kneph is Khnin his character as an atmosphere god.
Some authorities identify Aton with the old Syrian god Adon. The root "ad" or "dad" signifies "father". As "ad" becomes at "in" Attis it may be that, as a result of habitual phonetic conditions, Adon became Aton. But Akhenaton's Aton was a greater conception than Adon.
The marked difference between the various Egyptian and Asiatic "Great Fathers" and the god of Akhenaton consists in this--Aton was not the chief of a Pantheon: he was the one and only god. "The Aton", says Professor Petrie, "was the only instance of a 'jealous god' in Egypt, and this worship was exclusive of all others, and claims universality." 11 Had Akhenaton's religion been the same as that of the Aton cult at Heliopolis we might expect to find him receiving direct support from that quarter. To the priests of Ra he was as great a "heretic" as he was to the priests of Amon, or Amon-Ra, at Thebes.
Akhenaton's conception of the material universe did not differ from that which generally obtained in. his day in Egypt. There was a Nile in heaven and a Nile in the underworld. In rainless Upper Egypt he believed that--
The Nile in heaven is for the strange people. . . .
Thou (Aton) placest a Nile in heaven that it may rain upon them.
Griffiths.
The Nile of the underworld was "for the land of Egypt".
When thou hast made the Nile beneath the earth
Thou bringest it according to thy will to make the people live. . . .
That it may nourish every field.
Griffiths.
Aton also made the firmament in which to rise:
Rising in thy forms as the living Aton,
Shining afar off and returning . . .
All eyes see thee before them.
Griffiths.
We do not obtain from the hymn any clear idea of Akhenaton's conception of evil. There is no reference to the devil serpent, or to the war waged against the sun god in Heliopolitan myth. But it appears that as light was associated with life, goodness, and beauty, darkness was similarly filled with death and evil. At night men lie down to sleep and "their nostrils are stopped", or "their breath is shut up". Then creatures of evil are abroad; "every lion cometh from his den and serpents of every kind bite" (Budge). Nor is there any reference to the after life. "When thou (Aton) settest in the western horizon the earth is in darkness, and is like a being that is dead" (Budge) or "like the dead" (Breasted and Griffiths). Akhenaton appears to have believed in the immortality of the soul-the bodies of Queen Tiy, his mother, and of his daughter and himself were embalmed--but it is not certain whether he thought that souls passed to Paradise, to which there is no reference in the poem, or passed from egg, or flower, to trees, animals, , until they once again entered human bodies, as in the Anpu-Bata story and others resembling it which survive in the folktales of various ages and various countries.
Akhenaton's hymn to Aton is believed to have been his own composition. Its beauty is indicated in the following extracts from Prof. Breasted's poetic translation:--
When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven,
Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.
When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven,
The world is in darkness like the dead.
Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon,
When thou shinest as Aton by day.
The darkness is banished, when thou sendest forth thy rays.
How manifold are all thy works,
They are hidden from before us,
O thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth,
Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire
While thou wast alone.
The world is in thy hand,
Even as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen, they live.
When thou settest, they die.
For thou art duration, beyond thy mere limbs.
By thee man liveth,
And their eyes look upon thy beauty
Until thou settest.
Thou makest the beauty of form. . . .
Thou art in my heart.
The revolution in art which was inaugurated under Amenhotep III is a marked feature of Akhenaton's reign. When sculptors and painters depicted the king he posed naturally, leaning on his staff with crossed legs, or accompanied by his queen and children. Some of the decorative work at Tell-el-Amarna will stand comparison with the finest productions of to-day.
The records which survive to us of the Akhenaton period are very scanty, for when the priests of the old faith again came to power they were at pains to obliterate them. Queen Tiy does not appear to have taken a prominent part in the new movement, which had developed beyond her expectations; and although she occasionally visited the city of Aton, her preference for Thebes, the scene of her social triumphs, remained to the end. Akhenaton's wife was a queen consort, as Tiy had been, and the royal couple delighted to appear among the people accompanied by their children.
The fall of the Amon party was complete. For several years the eight temples of Amon at Thebes lay empty and silent; their endowments had been confiscated for Aton, to whom new temples were erected in the Fayum and at Memphis, Heliopolis, Hermonthis, and Hermopolis.
An endeavour was made to enforce the worship of Aton by royal decree all over Egypt, with the result that the great mass of the people, who appear to have shown little concern regarding the fall of the tyrannical Amon party, were aroused to oppose with feelings of resentment an uncalled-for interference with the immemorial folk customs and beliefs which were so closely associated with their habits of life. But still the power of the "heretic king" remained supreme. The army remained loyal, although it had shrunk to an insignificant force, and when Akhenaton placed in command Horemheb it appears to have effectively controlled the disturbed areas.
Akhenaton died while still a young man, and left no son to succeed him. Semenkh-ka-ra, who had married a princess, became the next Pharaoh, but he appears to have been deposed by another son-in-law of the "heretic", named Tutenk-aton, who returned to Thebes, allied himself with the priests, and called himself Tutenkamon, "Image of Amon". He was followed in turn by Ai (Eye), who called himself "Divine Father" and then a military revolt, instigated by the priests, brought to the throne, after a brief period of anarchy, Horemheb, who secured his position by marrying a princess of the royal line. He popularized himself with the worshippers of the ancient cults by ruthlessly persecuting the adherents of the religion of Akhenaton, erasing the name of Aton everywhere. He appears to have re-established the power of Egypt over a part of Palestine, and he restored order in the kingdom. So the Eighteenth Dynasty came to an end about two and a half centuries after the expulsion of the Hyksos.
1 Or, "Aton is satisfied" (Sethe).
2 "Tell-el-Amarna Letters" in Professor Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt, Vol. II.
3 The Religion of Egypt, London, 1908.
4 A History of Egypt, Vol. II, London.
5 The most important of these appear in the following publications: Breasted's A History of Egypt, Petrie's A History of Egypt (version by Griffiths), Budge's Gods of the Egyptians, and Wiedemann's Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. In Naville's The Old Egyptian Faith (English translation by Rev. C. Campbell) the view is urged that Akhenaton's religious revolt was political in origin.
6 Budge's Gods of the Egyptians and Book of the Dead.
7 Amon-ra also "giveth breath to that which is in the egg" (Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Wiedemann, p. 115).
8 A ray of light from the moon gave origin to the Apis bull. See Chapter V.
9 Osiris Sokar is "the opener of the mouth of the four great gods who are in the underworld" (The Burden of Isis, p. 54).
10 Eusebius, Praratio Evangelica, III, 11; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians.
11 The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 54.
Prejudice against Thothmes III--Religion of Amenhotep II--Human Sacrifices in his Tomb--Thothmes IV and the Sphinx--Amenhotep III half a Foreigner--Queen Tiy's Father and Mother--A Royal Love Match--Recreations of the King--Tiy's Influence upon Art--A Stately Palace--The Queen's Pleasure Lake--Royalty no longer exclusive--The "Vocal Memnon"--King stricken with a Malady--Tiy's Powerful Influence--Relations with the Priests of Amon--Akhenaton's Boyhood.
FOR some unexplained reason the memory of Thothmes III was not revered by the priests, although he had once been a priest himself, and never failed, on returning from his victorious campaigns, to make generous gifts to Amon's temple at Karnak. No folktales about his tyranny and impiety survive, as in the case of the great Khufu, the Pyramid builder. He has suffered more from a conspiracy of silence. The prejudice against him remained even until Roman times, when an elderly priest translated to Germanicus the annals of Egypt's greatest emperor and coolly ascribed them to Rameses II. This intentional confusion of historical events may have given origin to the legends recorded by Greek writers regarding the mythical Pharaoh Sesostris, to whom was credited, with exaggerations, not only the achievements of Thothmes III and Rameses II, but also those of Senusert III the first Pharaoh who invaded Syria. Herodotus believed that one of the sculptured representations of the Hittite Great Father deity in Lydia was a memorial of Sesostris.
It may be that Thothmes III and Hatshepsut were supported by rival sects of the Theban priesthood, and that the disposal of Senmut and his friends, who were probably executed, was never forgiven. The obliteration of the great queen's name from the monuments, as we have suggested, may have been associated with a revolt which was afterwards regarded as heretical. We know little regarding the religious beliefs of Thothmes, but those of his son, Amenhotep II, were certainly peculiar, if not reactionary. He adored, besides Amon, Khn Ptah, and Osiris, the crocodile god Sebek, and the voluptuous goddess Astarte (Ashtoreth), Bast and Sekhet the feline deities, and Uazit the virgin serpent, and two of the Hathors. In his tomb there are evidences that he revived human sacrifice, which was associated with sun worship in the Fifth Dynasty; the body of a man with a cleft in his skull was found bound to a boat, and the mummies of a woman and child in an inner chamber suggest that he desired the company in the Osirian Paradise of his favourites in the royal household. Although he reigned for twenty years we know little regarding him. Possibly some of his greater monuments were either destroyed or appropriated by his successors. He conducted a campaign in Syria soon after he ascended the throne, and returned in triumph with the bodies of seven revolting princes suspended, heads downward, at the prow of the royal barge; six of these were afterwards exposed on the walls of Thebes, and one was sent to Napata in Nubia. He also conducted a military expedition as far south as Khartoum.
Another mysterious revolt, which may mark the return to power of the anti-Thothmes party, brought to the throne the next king, the juvenile Thothmes IV, who was not, apparently, the prince selected as heir by Amenhotep II. The names of the half-dozen brothers of the new Pharaoh were erased in the tomb of the royal tutor, and they themselves disappear from history. According to a folktale, Thothmes IV was the chosen of the sun god--a clear indication of priestly intervention--who was identified for the first time, as Ra Harmachis, with the great Sphinx at Gizeh. Thothmes had been out hunting, and lay to rest at noonday in the shadow of the Sphinx. He dreamt that the sun god appeared before him and desired that the sand should be cleared away from about his body. This was done, and a temple erected between the paws, which was soon afterwards covered over by the sand drift.
Thothmes IV was evidently favoured by the priests. His distinctly foreign face indicates that his mother was an Asiatic beauty; it is handsome but somewhat effeminate. He died when he was about thirty, after a reign of from eight to ten years. His royal wife was a daughter of Artatama I, the Aryan king of Mitanni; she was the mother of Amenhotep III, and grandmother of Akhenaton. The third Amenhotep had a distinctly non-Egyptian face, but of somewhat different type to that of his father; the cheeks are long, the nose curves upwards, arid he has the pointed chin and slim neck which distinguished his favourite wife Queen Tiy and their son Akenaton.
Much controversy has been waged over the racial origin of Queen Tiy, who was one of Egypt's most notable women. While some authorities regard her as an Asiatic--either Semite, Hittite, or Aryan--others believe her to be either an Egyptian or Libyan. It is impossible to confirm either of the conflicting views that she was a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked beauty with blue eyes, or that she was dark, with lustrous eyes and a creamy complexion; but there can be no doubt that she was a lady of great personal charm and intellectual power. One of her portraits, sculptured in low relief, is a delicately cut profile. Her expression combines sweetness with strength of will, and there is a disdainful pout in her refined and sensitive mouth; her upper lip is short, and her chin is shapely and protruding. Whether she was born in Egypt or not, there can be little doubt that she had alien blood in her veins. Her father, Yuaa, appears to have been one of those Asiatic noblemen who was educated in Egypt and settled there. He held the honorary, but probably lucrative, position of superintendent of Amon's sacred cattle. His mummy shows him to have been a handsome, lofty-browed man with a Tennysonian nose of Armenoid rather than Semitic type; he had also the short upper lip and chin of his daughter. Tiy's mother appears to have been an Egyptian lady. The marriage of the King Amenhotep III to Tiy had no political significance; the boy and girl--they could not have been much more than sixteen--had evidently fallen in love with one another. The union proved to be a happy one; their mutual devotion continued all through life. Tiy was no mere harem favourite; although not of royal birth she was exalted to the position of queen consort, and her name was coupled with that of her husband on official documents.
Amenhotep's reign of thirty-six years (1411 to 1375 B.C.) was peaceful and brilliant, and he earned his title "The Magnificent" rather by his wealth and love of splendour than by his qualities as a statesman. The Asiatic dependencies gave no trouble; the grandsons of the martial princes whom Thothmes III subdued by force of arms had been educated at Thebes and thoroughly Egyptianized. Amenhotep would have, no doubt, distinguished himself as a warrior had occasion offered, for on the single campaign of his reign, which he conducted into Nubia, he displayed the soldierly qualities of his ancestors. He was a lover of outdoor life and a keen sportsman. During the first ten years of his life he slew 102 lions, as he has recorded, and large numbers of wild cattle.
Queen Tiy, on the other hand, was a lady of intellectual attainments and artistic temperament. No doubt she was strongly influenced by her father. When we gaze on Yuaa's profound and cultured face we cannot help concluding that he was "the power behind the throne". The palace favourites included not only highborn nobles and ladies, but the scholars and speculative thinkers to whom the crude beliefs and superstitious conventionalities associated with the worship of Amon and the practices of the worldly minded priests had become distasteful and obsolete; architects and artists and musicians also basked in royal favour. The influence of Queen Tiy on the art of the age was as pronounced as it was beneficial; she encouraged the artists to shake off the stiff mannerisms of the schools, to study nature and appreciate its beauties of form and colour, to draw "with their eyes on the object". And so Egypt had not only its "revolution of artistic methods", but its "renascence of wonder". No doubt the movement was stimulated by the wonderful art which had reached so high a degree of perfection in Crete. Egypt at the time was the most powerful state in the civilized world, and was pulsating with foreign influences; the old giant, shackled by ancient customs and traditions, was aspiring to achieve intellectual freedom.
The new movement was accompanied by a growing love of luxury and display of Oriental splendour which appealed to the young king. To please his winsome bride he caused to be erected a stately palace on the western bank of the Nile at Thebes. It was constructed of brick and rare woods; the stucco-covered walls and ceilings of its commodious apartments were decorated with paintings, which included nature studies, scenes of Egyptian life, and glimpses of Paradise, exquisitely drawn and vividly coloured; here and there were suspended those beautiful woven tapestries which were not surpassed by the finest European productions of later times, and there was a wealth of beautiful vases in coloured glass, porcelain, and silver and gold. The throne room, in which Queen Tiy held her brilliant Courts, was 130 feet long and 40 feet wide. Papyri and lotus-bud pillars of haunting design supported the roof and blossomed against a sky-blue ceiling, with its flocks of pigeons and golden ravens in flight. The floor was richly carpeted and painted with marsh and river scenes, snarers capturing the "birds of Araby", huntsmen slaying wild animals, and fish gaping wide-eyed in clear waters. Amidst the carved and inlaid furniture in this scene of beauty the eye was taken by the raised golden thrones of the king and queen, over which the great gleaming pinions of the royal vulture were displayed in noble proportions.
A shady balcony protruded from the outer decorated walls; it was radiant with greenery and brilliant flowers from Asia, covered with coloured rugs, and provided with cushioned seats. When the invigorating wind from the north blew cool and dry over the desert, Queen Tiy and her artistic friends, lingering on the balcony, must have found much inspiration in the prospect unfolded before them. The grounds within the palace walls, basking in the warm sunlight, were agleam with Asian and Egyptian trees, shrubs, and many-coloured flowers. On the west rose in light and shadow the wonderful Theban hills of every changing hue; eastward between the blue, palm-fringed Nile, with its green banks and background of purple hills, lay a great mile-long artificial lake, sparkling in sunshine and surrounded by clumps of trees and mounds ablaze with strange and splendid blossoms. On this cool stretch of restful water the king and queen were wont to be rowed in their gorgeous barge of purple and gold named Beauties of Aton, while girl voices rose bird-like in song, and sweet music came from many-stringed harps and lyres, and from guitars, and lutes, and warbling double pipes. On nights of festival, religious mysteries were enacted on the illuminated waters, which reflected the radiance of many-coloured lights, the brilliant stars, and the silver crescent of the moon.
In the vicinity of the palace were the luxurious villas and beautiful gardens, with bathing pools and summer houses, of the brilliant lords and ladies who attended the state banquets and entertainments organized by Queen Tiy.
Egypt's king and queen no longer held themselves aloof from the people with the Chinese-like exclusiveness of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. They were the leaders of social life; their everyday doings were familiar to the gossipers. No air of mystery and idolatrous superstition pervaded the Court; domestic life in its finest aspects was held up as an ideal to the people. Public functions were invested with great splendour, royalty drove out in chariots of silver and gold, brilliantly costumed, and attended by richly attired lords and ladies and royal attendants and guards. The king was invariably accompanied by the queen.
Amenhotep vied with his predecessors in erecting magnificent temples. His favourite architect was Amenhotep, son of Hapi, a remarkable man whose memory was long venerated; by the common people he was regarded as a great magician. It must have been he who appealed to the vanity of the king by designing the two colossal royal statues which were erected on the western plain of Thebes; they were afterwards known as the "vocal Memnon", because they were reputed to utter sounds at sunrise, caused, no doubt, by some ingenious device. These representations of Amenhotep III rose to a height of seventy feet, and still dominate the landscape in mutilated condition; they guarded the entrance of the royal mortuary temple which was demolished in the following Dynasty. Amenhotep was worshipped in his temple at Memphis, while Queen Tiy was similarly honoured in Nubia.
Great wealth accumulated in Egypt during this period. Tushratta, the subject king of Mitanni, writing to Amenhotep, declared, when he asked for gold "in great quantity" that "in the land of my brother gold is as plentiful as dust". The Pharaoh had added to his harem a sister of Tushratta's, his Asian cousin, named Gilu-khipa, l and she arrived with over three hundred ladies and attendants, but she did not displace Queen Tiy.
Much light has been thrown on the relations between Egypt and other countries by the Tell-el-Amarna letters--a number of clay tablets inscribed in Babylonian script which were discovered a few years ago. Babylonian was at the time the language of diplomacy. In these we find rulers writing in affectionate terms to one another and playing the game of politics with astuteness and Oriental duplicity.
In the beautiful Theban palace was born to Queen Tiy, in the twentieth year of her husband's reign, the distinguished Akhenaton, who was to become the most remarkable Pharaoh who ever sat on the throne of Egypt. He was the only son; several princesses had preceded him. The young heir of the favourite wife was called Amenhotep, and when his father died he ascended the throne as Amenhotep IV. He was then about fourteen years of age, but had already married Nerfertiti, an Asiatic princess, apparently a daughter of Tushratta.
The last half-dozen years of the life of Amenhotep III were clouded in gloom. He was laid aside by some disease--either paralysis or insanity--which Tushratta of Mitanni sought to cure by sending on two occasions images of the goddess Ishtar. 2 Queen Tiy appears to have governed the kingdom in the interval, and it is possible that she inaugurated the religious revolt, which became so closely associated with the name of her son, to counteract not only the retrogressive tendencies of the priests of Amon, but also, perhaps, to curb their political power; for, no doubt, they did their utmost to exercise a direct influence on the affairs of state. The existence of strained relations between the Amon temple and the royal palace during the boyhood of the future Pharaoh may well have infused his mind with that bitterness against the great religious cult of Thebes which he afterwards did his utmost to give practical expression to by doctrinal teachings and open persecution.
Wealth and Luxury--Gaiety of Town Life--Social Functions--Ancient Temperance Lectures--The Judges--Mercenary Soldiers--Foreign Brides and their Influence--Important Deities worshipped--Sutekh and Baal--The Air God--The Phoenician Thor--Voluptuous Goddesses--Ashtoreth of the Bible--References to Saul and Solomon--The Strange God Bes--Magic and Ethics--New Ideas of the judgment--Use and Significance of Amulets--Jacob's Example--New Burial Customs.
IN less than a century after the expulsion of the Hyksos a great change passed over the social conditions of Egypt. The kingdom was thoroughly organized under the supreme control of the Court. Every inch of land which the Pharaohs reconquered was vested in the Crown; the estates of the old nobility who had disappeared under the regime of Joseph were administered by officials; all the peasants became serfs of the king and paid a proportion of their produce in rent and taxation. The law was firmly administered, and the natural resources of the country were developed to the utmost.
When the arms of the Pharaoh secured settled conditions in Syria, the trade routes were reopened and the merchant class increased and prospered. There was no lack of employment. Temple building nursed the various industries into prosperity, and careers were opened for capable men in the civil service and the army. When the wealth of Asia poured into Egypt not only through the ordinary channels of commerce, but also in tribute from the dependencies, the nation assumed that air of comfort and prosperity which we find reflected in the artistic productions of the time. The tomb scenes no longer reveal a plain-living, scantily attired people or dignified and barefooted noblemen and Pharaohs amidst scenes of rural simplicity. Egypt of the Eighteenth Dynasty has a setting of Oriental splendour. Its people are gaily attired and richly bejewelled, and the luxurious homes of the wealthy resound with music and song and the clatter of wine cups.
When the Egyptian nobles of the Old and Middle Kingdoms had carved in their tombs the scenes of everyday life which they desired to be repeated in Paradise, they were content to have ploughmen and builders and domestic servants to provide them with the simple necessaries of life: the leisured classes of the Empire sought more after amusements; they could not be happy without their society functions, their merry feasts and rich attire, their troops of singers and dancers, their luxurious villas with elaborate furnishings, and their horses and chariots and grooms.
Town life was full of gaiety under the Empire. Wealthy people had large and commodious houses and delighted to entertain their friends, who drove up in chariots, attended by servants, and clad in many-coloured and embroidered garments. As the guests gathered and gossiped in these ancient days the hired musicians played harps and lyres, guitars, flutes, and double pipes; the lords and ladies seated themselves on single and double chairs, and wine and fruits were brought in by slaves, who also provided garlands and bouquets of scented flowers, perfumes, and oil for anointment. The drinking cups were of artistic shape, and might be either of glass or porcelain, or of silver or gold, finely engraved, and perhaps studded with precious stones. Joseph's cup was of silver (Genesis, xliv, 2).
The dinner consisted of many courses. These Eighteenth-Dynasty guests ate the flesh of the ox, the wild goat, or the gazelle, and certain fish, but never the tabooed eel, and they partook of geese and ducks and other birds in season; pork and mutton were rigidly excluded. 1 A variety of vegetables, and fruit and pastries., were included in the menu. In fact all classes feasted well. It is not surprising to find that when the Israelites were starving in the deserts of Arabia they sighed for the food of Egypt, and said: "Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick" (Numbers, xi, 4 and 5). They also longed for Egyptian bread (Exodus, xvi, 3).
The society guests of Egypt were served at little tables, or as they sat in rows according to rank, by the nude or scantily attired servants, who handed round the dishes and napkins. All the guests ate with their fingers; they used knives for cutting and spoons for liquids; they washed before and after meals.
Ere wine drinking was resumed, the model of a mummy, or perhaps a real mummy, was drawn round the feasting hall, while the musicians chanted "The Lay of the Harper". (Chapter XVIII.) Then came a round of amusements. Jugglers and acrobats performed feats, nude girls danced, and songs were sung; again and again the drinking cups were replenished with wine. Many drank heavily. It was no uncommon thing in ancient Egypt to see intoxicated people. Even in the Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hassan there are evidences that the priestly exhortations to live temperate lives were necessitated by the habits of the time; servants are depicted carrying home their masters in various stages of intoxication. Nor were the women guiltless in this respect. In the Empire tomb scenes at Thebes tipsy ladies are seen supported by servants or attended with bowls when they turn sick and their embroidered robes slip from their shoulders. 2.
A temperance advocate in ancient Egypt, who lamented the customs of his age, addressed his friends as follows: "Do not drink beer to excess. . . . When you are intoxicated you say things which you are unable to recall; you may trip and break your limbs, but no one goes to your assistance, and your friends who continue to drink despise you and call out: 'Put this fellow away; he is drunk!' If, perchance, someone desires to ask your advice when you are intoxicated, you are found lying in the dust like a senseless child."
A teacher once wrote to his pupil, saying: "I am told that you are neglecting your studies, and that you are giving yourself up to enjoyment. It is said that you wander about through the streets of an evening smelling of wine. The smell of wine will make men avoid you. Wine will destroy your soul; you will become like a broken oar which cannot steer on either side; like a temple in which there is no god, or like a house without bread. Wine is an abomination."
In sharp contrast to the merrymakers of the Empire period are the stern and just administrators of the law.
Judges were expected to make no distinction between rich and poor, and exemplary punishments were meted out to those who, by showing favour or accepting bribes, were found to be unworthy stewards. Daily courts were held, at which the evidence was taken down by scribes; cases were debated, the forty law rolls were always referred to and consulted, and decisions were enforced by the officers of the court. The king boasted not only of the victories he achieved on foreign campaigns; he desired also to have his memory revered as "the establisher of law"; when ineffectual appeal was made to him as the supreme judge, he "spoke not; the law remained".
But although Egypt was being governed by men of high ideals, influences were at work which were sapping the vitality of the nation. The accumulation of wealth and the increasing love of luxury made men less prone to undertake severe and exacting duties. It was ultimately found impossible to recruit a large army in Egypt. The pleasure-loving gentlemen preferred the excitement of the chase to the perils of the battlefield, and the pleasures of cities to the monotony of the garrison life and the long and arduous marches on foreign campaigns. "Soldiers of fortune" were accordingly enlisted, so that a strong standing army might be maintained. The archers known as the "Nine-bow Barbarians" came from Nubia, and from Europe were obtained the fierce "Shardana", the Mycenn people who gave their name to Sardinia. Ultimately Libyans, and even Asiatics, were recruited; one of the regiments which followed Rameses II in his Syrian campaign was named after the alien god Sutekh. The foreign section of the Egyptian army was acknowledged to be the best. Its loyalty, however, depended on the condition of the Imperial exchequer, and it ultimately became a menace instead of a support to the empire.
Foreign traders were also being attracted to Egypt, while the kings and the noblemen showed such a decided preference for handsome alien wives that a new type of face appeared in society, as may be seen in the pictures and statuary of the times. Instead of the severe and energetic faces of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, we find among the upper classes effeminate-looking noblemen with somewhat languid expressions, and refined ladies with delicately cut features, languorous eyes, and sensitive lips. Occasionally, however, a non-Egyptian face is at once cultured and vigorous.
The foreign elements in society exercised a marked influence on the religious beliefs of the age. Strange gods were imported, and the voluptuous worship of the goddesses of love and war became increasingly popular; the former included Baal, Sutekh, and Reshep, and the latter Astarte, Anath, and Kadesh. Ere we deal with the changes which were effected by foreign influence in the Egyptian religion, we will pass these deities briefly under review.
Baal signifies "the god the lord", or "the owner and was a term applied to the chief or ruler of one of the primitive groups of nameless deities 3 ; his spouse was called "Baalath", "the lady". The Baal of Tyre was Melkarth; the Baal of Harran was Sin, the moon god; the Baal of Tarsus was an atmospheric or wind god; the Baal of Heaven was the sun god. 4 There were as many Baals in Asia as there were Horuses in Egypt.
Sutekh and Baal were generic terms. As we have indicated, Sutekh was the prototype of the Egyptianized Set, the terminal "kh" signifying "majesty". Indeed Set and Sutekh were identified in the Nineteenth Dynasty. The "roaring Set" was the atmospheric or storm god Sutekh, the "Baal" or "lord" of all other deities. Possibly the Egyptian "Neter" was similarly a term applied originally to the nameless chief god of primitive conception.
Baal and Sutekh were, like Ptah and Khn the Great Father deities of the tribes who conceived that life and the world were of male origin. Some people identified the Great Father with the earth or water., as others identified him with the sun or the moon. The Baal and Sutekh worshippers, on the other hand, believed that the "air god" was the originator of life; he was the "soul" of the world. Like the Egyptian Shu, he was "the uplifter". According to Wiedemann, the root "shu" signifies "to uplift oneself". As the "Uplifter" of himself and the heavens, Shu was "the Baal". Primitive peoples all over the world have identified "air" and "'breath" with "spirit". As we have shown (Chapter XIV), Khn#39;s name "Kneph" signifies "wind" and "spirit"--the "air of life". The Aryan root "an", "to blow" or "breathe", is found in the Latin "anima", "air" and "breath"; the Gaelic "anal"; the Greek "anemos"; and in English words like "animate", The significance of Baal and Sutekh as atmospheric or wind gods is thus quite apparent; they were the sources of "the air of life".
As "the creator god" was the originator of both good and evil, he was worshipped as the giver of food, the nourisher of crops, and the generative principle in nature, and also propitiated as a destroying and blighting and avenging influence. His wrath was made manifest in the storm; he was then "the roaring Set", or the thunder god, like the Norse Thor. In the Bible the God of Israel is contrasted with "the Baal" when Elijah, after exposing and slaying Baal's false prophets (1 Kings, xviii), took refuge in a cave.
Behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice (1 Kings, xix, 11-12).
Baal was thus "the lord" of wind, earthquake, and fire. "In Egypt", says Wiedemann, 5 "Baal was regarded as a god of the sky--a conception which fairly corresponds to his original nature--and as a great but essentially a destructive deity." He was "a personification", says Budge, 6 "of the burning and destroying sun heat and the blazing desert wind". Similarly Shu, "the uplifter", was identified with the hot desert winds, while his consort Tefnut symbolized the blazing sunlight, and was the bringer of the pestilence; she was also "the spitter" who sent the rain.
Baal was worshipped in Egypt at Tanis (Zoan); a temple was also erected to him at Memphis. Rameses II boasted that he was a warrior lord like Baal, and showed much respect for the imported deity.
Sutekh, "lord of heaven", was the "Sutekh of Kheta" (the Hittites), the god of the North Syrian allies of the Hittites) the god of the Hyksos, and the god of the early invaders who attacked the Osirian people of pre-Dynastic Egypt. As we have seen (Chapter XVIII), Sutekh came into prominence as a great god during the Twelfth Dynasty, in connection with the worship of the crocodile. Seti I, father of Rameses II, was named after Sutekh, and a temple was erected for his worship by Rameses III at Thebes.
Sutekh is shown on a scarab with wings and a horned cap, standing upon the back of a lion. He was respected by the Egyptians because he represented the Hittite power; he was the giver of victory and territory. 7 As Set he was despised in Egypt during the period that he represented a repulsed and powerless enemy.
Another Asiatic deity who was honoured in Egypt was Reshep (or Reshpu), the Resef of the Phnicians. He was another form of Baal, a "heaven lord", "lord of eternity", "governor of the gods", His name signifies "lightning", or "he who shoots out fire". As the thunder god he was the god of battle. The Egyptians depicted him as a bearded man with Semitic profile, carrying a club and spear, or a spear and the symbol of life (ankh). From his helmet projects the head and neck of a gazelle, one of the holy animals associated with Astarte. A triad was formed in Egypt of Min, Reshep, and Kadesh.
Astarte was the most popular of the imported deities. Her worship became widespread during the later dynasties. At Memphis she was adored with the moon god Ah, and when Herodotus visited the city he found a small temple dedicated to "the strange Aphrodite" (Venus). She was the goddess of the eastern part of Tanis (Zoan). Astarte is the goddess of ill repute referred to in the Bible as Ashtaroth and Ashtoreth "of the Zidonians". Solomon "went after Ashtoreth" (1 Kings, xi, 5). The Israelites were condemned when "they forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth" (Judges, ii, 13). Samuel commanded: "Put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among ye". This goddess was worshipped both by the Phnicians and the Philistines, and when the latter slew Saul they hung his armour in her temple (i Samuel, xxxi, 10). Temples were erected to her in Cyprus and at Carthage. As Aphrodite she was the spouse of Adonis, and at Apacha in Syria she was identified with the planet Venus as the morning and evening star; she fell as a meteor from Mount Lebanon into the River Adonis. As a goddess of love and maternity she links with Isis, Hathor, Ishtar, "Mother Ida", Mylitta, and Baalath. Among the mountains this Mother Goddess had herds of deer and other animals like the Scottish hag "Cailleach Bheur".
Astarte was worshipped in Egypt early in the Eighteenth Dynasty, and was a lunar deity and goddess of war. She appears to have been introduced into the Nile valley with the horse. Like Tefnut, and other Egyptian feline goddesses, she was depicted with the head of a lioness. As the "Lady of Horses" she stands in a chariot driving four horses over a fallen foe.
There were many local types of this Great Mother deity in Asia. Another who was honoured in Egypt was Anthat (Anta), who was associated in ancient Arabia with the moon god Sin, and in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, with Ashir (Ashur). Several towns in northern and southern Syria bear her name. Thothmes III erected a shrine to her at Thebes, and in a treaty between Rameses II and the Hittites she and Astarte are coupled like Isis and Nepthys. Anthat is also the spouse of Sutekh. She is depicted on the Egyptian monuments as a goddess of battle, holding a spear in one hand and swinging a battleaxe in the other, seated on a throne or armed with shield and club riding on a horse in her Aasith form, favoured by Seti I. Rameses III named a favourite daughter Banth-anth, "daughter of Anthat".
Kadesh (Quedesh) "the holy one", was another form of Astarte. As the "mistress of all the gods", and the patroness of the "unmoral" women connected with her temples, she emphasized the licentious phase of the character of Ashtoreth which was so warmly denounced by the Hebrew prophets. The Egyptians depicted her as a moon goddess, standing nude on the back of a lioness, which indicated that she was imported from the Hittites; in one hand she carries lotus flowers and what appears to be a mirror, and in the other two serpents. As "the eye of Ra" she links with Hathor and Sekhet.
The grotesque god Bes also came into prominence during the Eighteenth Dynasty; it is possible that he was introduced as early as the Twelfth. Although his worship spread into Syria he appears to have been of African origin and may have been imported from Somaliland. Like the Deng, he was a dwarf with long arms and crooked legs; his nose was broad and flat, his ears projected like those of a cat, he had bushy hair and eyebrows and a beard, his lips were thick and gross. Over his back he wore the skin of a wild animal, the tail trailing behind. He was always drawn full face, like Kadesh and unlike typical Egyptian deities. He was a war god, a god of music playing a harp, and a love god. The oldest surviving representation of Bes is found in the Der el Bahari temple of Amon, where he attends at the birth of Hatshepsut. As late as Roman times he was known by his oracle at Abydos. Absorbed by the sun worshippers, he became the nurse of Harpokrates (Horus) whom he nourished and amused. He also guarded the child god against the attacks of serpents, which he tore to pieces between his teeth. As Sepd he was given a handsome body and a leonine face.
The luxury-loving and voluptuous worshippers of the Empire period found the ethical principles of the Ptah-Osirian creed little to their taste. They appear to have argued that if men and women were to be judged by the King of the Dead, according to the deeds they committed upon earth, there was little hope of the rich ever entering Paradise. Apparently belief in the heaven of the sun worshippers had faded away; it was incomprehensible, especially to the foreign element, that generations of Ra believers could be accommodated in the sun bark, to which entry was obtained by uttering "magic passwords".
The priests of Amon-Ra, who combined the worship and conceptions of the sun and moon cults, solved the problem of securing admission to the happy fields of Osiris, in Nether Egypt, by the use of charms and formul It was unnecessary for worshippers who believed the priests either to live moral lives or to commit to memory the "confession of faith" which they must repeat before Osiris; the necessary formulwere inscribed on the rolls of papyri which form the Book of the Dead, and when one of these was purchased, to be laid beside the mummy, the name of the dead was written in the spaces left blank for that purpose. But another difficulty had to be surmounted. When the heart was weighed before Osiris it made confession, according to the conception of the Old Kingdom, of the sins of which it was guilty. The priests effectually silenced the heart by using as a charm the scarabs, the symbol of resurrection, on which was inscribed: "Oh, my heart, confess not against me as a witness!" These words were believed to have magical potency, and the, scarabs and other amulets became increasingly popular during the Empire period. The "tet" amulet was a symbol of the blood of Isis and protected the dead against the demons; the "dad" amulet, a fourfold altar, symbolized the backbone of Osiris and gave strength to the body and secured entrance to Paradise; the "ankh", a symbol of life, renewed vitality; the oval shaped "cartouche", which gave magical protection to the names of monarchs on their monuments, was also used as an amulet-evidently to prevent the demons from devouring the name of the dead.
Among the numerous charms were the "Horus eyes", 8 which were ever vigilant to detect evil influences. The right eye was the sun and the left the moon, so that protection was secured by day and by night.
Charms were in use from the earliest times, but the elaborate use of them in connection with burials begins with the Eighteenth Dynasty. They are, of course, relics of stone worship. Young and old in primitive times wore "luck stones" to protect themselves against the "evil eye", to prevent and cure diseases, and to secure good fortune. Indeed all personal ornaments appear to have had origin as charms. That they were recognized by the Hebrews as having idolatrous significance is clearly indicated in the Bible. After Jacob had met Esau, and slain the Hivites who desired to marry his daughters and female followers, he commanded his household to "put away the strange gods that are among you"; then we read: "And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their ear-rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem" (Genesis, xxxv, 3, 4). Evidently the ear-rings were connected with pagan worship and were as unworthy of Israel as the idols.
The changes which passed over the religious beliefs of the Egyptians during the Empire period were accompanied by new burial customs. Instead of constructing pyramids and mastabas, the Pharaohs and his lords had tomb chambers excavated among the hills. The cliffs opposite Thebes are honeycombed with the graves of the nobility; behind them lies the lonely "Valley of the Kings' Tombs". Some of the royal tombs are of elaborate structure, with many chambers and long narrow passages, but none surpass the greatest of the mysterious artificial caves of southern Palestine, on which they may have been modelled.
The splendour and wealth of this age is reflected in the elaborate furnishing of the tombs and the expensive adornment of mummies. Even among the middle and lower classes comparatively large sums were expended in performing the last material services to the departed.
Pharaoh's Heir--Decree of the Fates--Son must die a Sudden Death--His Lonely Childhood--The Dog--Prince goes upon his Travels--The Lady of the Tower--Won by the Disguised Prince--An Angry Father--Prince returns Home--Perils of Darkness--The Giant and the Crocodile--The Serpent slain--Mystery of the Prince's Fate--Resemblances to European Stories--An Unsolved Problem.
Now hear the tale of the doomed prince. Once upon a time there was a king in Egypt whose heart was heavy because that he had no son. He called upon the gods, and the gods heard, and they decreed that an heir should be born to him. In time came the day of the child's birth. The seven Hathors (Fates) greeted the prince and pronounced his destiny; they said he would meet with a sudden death, either by a crocodile, or a serpent, or a dog.
The nurses informed the king what the Hathors had said, and the heart of His Majesty was troubled. He commanded that a house should be erected in a lonely place, so that the child might be guarded well, and he provided servants, and all kinds of luxuries, and gave orders that the prince should not be taken outside his safe retreat.
It came to pass that the boy grew strong and big. One day he climbed to the flat roof of the house. Looking down, he saw a dog which followed a man, and wondered greatly thereat.
Then he spoke to one of the servants, saying: "What is that which follows the man walking along the road?"
"That," answered the servant, "is a dog." '
The boy said: "I should like to have one for myself. Bring a dog to me."
When he spoke thus, the servant informed the king. His Majesty said: "Let him have a young boar hunter, so that he may not fret."
So the prince was given a dog as he had desired.
The boy grew into young manhood, and his limbs were stout; he was indeed a prince of the land. He grew restless in the lonely house, and sent a message to his royal father, saying: "Hear me. Why am I kept a prisoner here? I am destined to die either by a crocodile, a serpent, or a dog; it is the will of the gods. Then let me go forth and follow my heart's desire while I live.'
His Majesty considered the matter, and said he would grant the lad's wish. So he caused him to be provided with all kinds of weapons, and consented that the dog should follow him.
A servant of the king conducted the young prince to the eastern frontier, 1 and said: "Now you may go wherever you desire."
The lad called his dog, and set his face toward the north. He hunted on his way and fared well. In time he reached the country of Naharina (Mitanni), and went to the house of a chief.
Now the chief was without a son, and he had but one daughter and she was very fair. He had caused to be erected for her a stately tower with seventy windows, on the summit of a cliff 700 feet from the ground. The fame of the girl went abroad, and her father sent for all the sons of chiefs in the land and said to them:
"My daughter will be given in marriage to the youth who can climb up to her window."
Day after day the lads endeavoured to scale the cliff, and one afternoon when they were so engaged the young prince arrived and saw them. He was given hearty welcome. They took him to their house, they cleansed him with water and gave him perfumes, and then they set food before him and gave fodder to his horse. They showed him great kindness, and brought sandals to him.
Then they said: "Whence come ye, young man?"
The prince answered: "I am the son of one of the Pharaoh's charioteers. My mother died, and my father then took another wife, who hates me. I have run away from home."
He said no more. They kissed him as if he were a brother, and prevailed upon him to tarry with them a while.
"What can I do here?" asked the prince.
The young men said: "Each day we try to scale the cliff and reach the window of the chief's daughter. She is very fair, and will be given in marriage to the fortunate one who can climb up to her."
On the next day they resumed their wonted task, and the prince stood apart, watching them. Then day followed day, and they endeavoured in vain to reach the window, while he looked on.
It came to pass at length that the prince said to the others: "If you consent, I will make endeavour also; I should like to climb among you."
They gave him leave to join them in the daily task. Now it chanced that the beautiful daughter of the chief in Naharina looked down from her window in the high tower, gazing upon the youths. The prince saw her, and he began to climb with the sons of the chiefs, and he went up and up until he reached the window of the great chief's daughter, the fair one. She took him in her arms and she kissed him.
Then one who had looked on, sought to make glad the heart of the girl's father, and hastened to him and spoke, saying:
"At last one of the youths has reached the window of your daughter."
The great chief asked: "Whose son is he?"
He was told: "The youth is the son of one of the Pharaoh's charioteers, who fled from Egypt because of his stepmother."
Then was the great chief very angry, and he said: "Am I to give my daughter in marriage to an Egyptian fugitive? Order him to return at once to his own land."
Messengers were sent to the youth in the tower, and they said to him: "Begone! You must return to the place whence you came."
But the fair maid clung to him. She called upon the god, and swore an oath, saying: "By the name of Ra Harmachis, if he is not to be mine, I will neither eat nor drink again."
When she had spoken thus s he grew faint, as if she were about to die.
A messenger hastened to her father and told him what the girl had vowed and how she thereupon sank fainting.
The great chief then sent men to put the stranger to death if he remained in the tower.
When they came nigh the girl, she cried: "By the god, if you slay my chosen one, I will die also. I will not live a single hour if he is taken from me."
The girl's words were repeated to her father, and he, the great chief, said: "Let the young man, this stranger, be brought into my presence."
Then was the prince taken before the great chief. He was stricken with fear, but the girl's father embraced him and kissed him, saying: "You are indeed a noble youth. Tell me who you are. I love you as if you were mine own son."
The prince made answer: "My father is a charioteer in the army of the Pharaoh. My mother died, and my father then took another wife, who hates me. I have run away from home."
The great chief gave his daughter to the prince for wife, and provided a goodly dwelling, with servants, a portion of land, and many cattle.
It came to pass some time after this that the prince spoke to his wife, saying:
"It is my destiny to die one of three deaths-either by a crocodile, or a serpent, or a dog."
"Let the dog be slain at once," urged the woman.
Said the prince: "I will not permit that my dog be slain. Besides, he would never do me harm."
His wife was much concerned for his safety. He would not let the dog go out unless he went with it.
It came to pass that the prince travelled with his wife to the land of Egypt, and visited the place in which he had formerly dwelt. A giant was with him there. The giant would not allow him to go out after dark, because a crocodile came up from the river each night. But the giant himself went forth, and the crocodile sought in vain to escape him. He bewitched it.
He continued to go out each night, and when dawn came the prince went abroad, and the giant lay down to sleep. This continued for the space of two months.
It came to pass on a certain day that the prince made merry in his house. There was a great feast. When darkness fell he lay down to rest, and he fell asleep. His wife busied herself cleansing and anointing her body. Suddenly she beheld a serpent which crept out of a hole to sting the prince. She was sitting beside him, and she called the servants to fill a bowl with milk and honeyed wine for the serpent, and it drank thereof and was intoxicated. Then it was rendered helpless, and rolled over. The woman seized her dagger and slew the serpent, which she flung into her bath.
When she had finished, she awoke the prince, who marvelled greatly that he had escaped, and his wife said: "Behold the god has given me the chance to remove one of your dooms. He will let me strike another blow."
The prince made offerings to the god, and prostrated himself, and he continued so to do every day.
It came to pass many days afterwards that the prince went out to walk some distance from his house. He did not go alone, for his dog followed him. It chanced that the dog seized an animal in flight, and the prince followed the chase, running. He reached a place near the bank of the river and went down after the dog. Now the dog was beside the crocodile, who led the prince to the place where the giant was. The crocodile said: "I am your doom and I follow you . . . (I cannot contend) with the giant, but, remember, I will watch you. . . . You may bewitch me (like) the giant, but if you see (me coming once again you will certainly perish).
Now it came to pass, after the space of two months, that the prince went . . .
Note.--Here the British Museum papyrus, which contains several doubtful sentences, is mutilated and ends abruptly. The conclusion of the story is left, therefore, to our imaginations.
One cannot help being struck with certain resemblances in the ancient narrative to a familiar type of Celtic story, which relates the adventures of a king's son who goes forth disguised as "a poor lad" to seek his fortunes and win a bride by performing some heroic deed in a foreign country. The lady in the lofty tower is familiar. In Irish mythology she is the daughter of Balor, King of Night, who had her secluded thus because it was prophesied that her son would slay him. But the Cyclopean smith, Mackinley, won her, and her son Lugh, the dawn god, killed Balor with the "round stone", which was the sun. The mother of the Greek Hermes, who slew his grandson, Argus, with the "round stone", was concealed in a secret underground chamber, from which her lover rescued her.
Apparently the Egyptian prince was safe so long as he resided in a foreign country, and that may be the reason why his father had him conducted to the frontier. It would appear also that he has nothing to fear during the day. The crocodile is bewitched so long as the giant ties in slumber. In certain European stories a man who works a spell must similarly go to sleep. When Sigurd (the Norse Siegfried) roasts the dragon's heart, Regin lies down to sleep, and when Finn-mac-Coul (the, Scottish Finn) roasts the salmon, Black Arky, his father's murderer, lies asleep also. (See Teutonic Myth and Legend.) In a Sutherlandshire story a magician goes to sleep while snakes are being boiled to obtain a curative potion.
The Egyptian protecting giant (also translated "mighty man") is likewise familiar in a certain class of Scottish (? Mediterranean) folktales.
In our Northern legends which relate the wonderful feats of the disguised son of a king he invariably lies asleep with his head on the knees of the fair lady who "combs his hair". She sees "the beast" (or dragon) coming against her and awakens him. In this Egyptian tale the woman, however, slays the serpent, which comes against the man instead.
Readers will naturally ask: "Was the prince killed by the crocodile or by the dog? . . . Or did he escape? Was his wife given the opportunity to strike a blow?"
In "Celtic" stories the "first blow" is allowed, and it is invariably successful. One relates that a woman saved a hero's life by striking, as was her privilege, the first blow, and, as she used a magic wand, she slew the sleeping giant who was to strike the next "trial blow".
Was the crocodile slain in the end, and did the dog kill his master by accident? This faithful animal is of familiar type. He is one of the dogs "which has its day". In Northern tales the dog is sometimes slain by its master after it has successfully overcome a monster of the night. The terrible combat renders it dangerous afterwards. Besides, "it had its day".
Did the Egyptian dog kill the crocodile? Or did the prince's wife slay the dog, thinking the crocodile was unable to injure her husband? And was the spell then broken, and the crocodile permitted to slay the prince?
The problem may be solved if, and when, another version of this ancient story is discovered.
Lunar Worship--The Great Mother of Darkness.--Anion as a Moon God--Fusion with Ra--Ptah a Form of the Theban Deity--Fenkhu--"and "Fenish" Artisans--Osiris and Amon--Veneration of Religious Pharaohs--Amon's Wife and Concubine--Conquests of Thothmes I--Rival Claimants to the Throne--Queen Hatshepsut--Her Famous Expedition--Rise of Thothmes III--A Great Strategist--His Conquests--The Egyptian Empire --Amon's Poetic Praise--The Emperor's Buildings and Obelisks.
THE moon god Ah comes into prominence during the Egyptian War of Independence. This ancient deity must have been closely associated with the Theban religious cult which Ra Apepa, the Hyksos king, singled out for attack, because the name of the queen mother, Ah-hotep, signifies "Ah is satisfied", and that of her victorious son Ah-mes, "born of Ah".
It is highly probable that Ah was the son of the great Mother deity Apet, who was identified with the female hippopotamus Taurt, "the mighty one", goddess of maternity, and "mother of the gods". At Thebes and Ombos, Osiris was regarded as the son of the sacred hippopotamus. As we have seen in the Introduction, he was, like Ah, identified with the moon spirit, which symbolized the male principle. The Apet hippopotamus was the animal incarnation of the Great Mother; as a water goddess, therefore, Apet links with Nut, who rose from the primordial deep and was "the waters above the firmament".
At the beginning there was naught save darkness and water. The spirit of the night was the Great Mother, and her first-born was the moon child. Life came from death and light from darkness. Such appears to have been the conception of the worshippers of the sky-and-water goddess and the lunar god.
On the other hand, the worshippers of the male earth spirit believed that the firmament was made of metal which was beaten out by the Great Father, Ptah, at the beginning. Ere metal came into use it may have been conceived that the sky was made of stone. Hathor, the sky goddess, was significantly enough "the lady of turquoise", and Ra, the sun god, was in the Fifth Dynasty symbolized by an obelisk.
Osiris, the human incarnation of primitive Nilotic deities, absorbed the attributes of the moon spirit and the male earth spirit. Isis, on the other hand, apparently absorbed those of Nut, the sky-and-water goddess, and of Neith, the earth goddess, who symbolized growth.
As moon worship was of greater antiquity in Egypt than sun worship, and was associated with agricultural rites, the Theban cult must have made popular appeal, and helped to rally the mass of the people to throw off the yoke of the Hyksos Ra and Sutekh worshippers. The political significance of Apepa's order to slay the hippopotami is therefore apparent.
When the influence of the southern conquerors extended to Hermopolis, Ah was merged with Thoth, who was originally a lunar deity. In fact, as we have shown in our Introduction, he was another form of Khonsu. With Mut, "the mother", who is indistinguishable from Apet, Khonsu and Thoth formed a Theban triad. In Nubia, where archaic Mediterranean beliefs appear to have been persistent, Thoth was the son of Tefnut, the lioness-headed goddess, who was given arbitrary association with Shu, the atmosphere god, by the theorists of Heliopolis. Mut was also depicted at Thebes with the head of a lioness.
As we have already suggested, it is possible that Amon was originally the son of Mut-Apet. He may have developed as a symbolized attribute of Ah. Fragments of old hymns make reference to him as a lunar deity, and as a "traverser" of space like Khonsu-Thoth. Indeed, even in his hawk-headed form, he retains his early association with the moon, for he wears the solar disk with the lunar crescent. 1
Amon, like the sons of all the Great Mother deities, represented in his animal forms the "male principle" and the "fighting principle". He became "the husband of his mother" when the Great Father and Great Mother conceptions were fused. This process is illustrated in the triad formed by Ptah, the father, Mut, the mother, and Thoth, the son. Ptah's wife Sekhet, with the head of a lioness, is indistinguishable from Mut) Tefnut, and Bast.
As a Great Father deity, Amon, "husband of his mother" became "king of the gods", 2 and lost his original lunar character. His fusion with the sun god of Heliopolis, which was accomplished for political purposes, made the change complete, for he became Amon-Ra, the great representative deity of Egypt, who combines the attributes of all other gods.
Amon-Ra was depicted as a great bearded man, clad in a sleeveless tunic suspended from his shoulders, with the tail of art animal hanging behind. His headdress of high double plumes, with lunar and solar symbols, was coloured in sections red and blue, and red and green, as if to signify all association with the river flowing between its batiks and the growth of verdure. Sometimes he is shown with Min's ram's horns curving downwards round his ears, and sometimes with those of Khnspreading outward. 3 He wore a collar and armlets and bracelets.
As a god of war he rose into great prominence during the Eighteenth Dynasty. The victorious kings, who became owners of all the land in Egypt, and returned with great spoils from many battlefields, were lavish in their gifts to his temple, and his priests became exceedingly wealthy and powerful. There never was in Egypt a more influential cult than that of Amon-Ra.
His solar attributes, however, were not so prominent in the Eighteenth as in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. The influence of the moon cult remained for a considerable period. As much is suggested by the names of the kings. Ah-mes I, "born of Ah", was followed by four rulers called Amen-hotep, "Amon is satisfied", and four called Thoth-mes, "born of Thoth".
The influence of the Ra cult at Heliopolis was tempered by that of the Amon cult at Thebes, with the result that the old Egyptian lunar gods came into prominence. Nor were Ptah and other kindred deities excluded from the group of official gods as in the Fifth Dynasty. At Memphis Amon-Ra was worshipped as Ptah. In a hymn addressed to the great Theban deity it was declared--
Memphis receives thee in the form of Ptah--
He who is the first-born of all gods;
He who was at the beginning.
It would appear that the Memphites had combined with the Thebans to drive the Hyksos out of Egypt. When Ahmes began the work of reconstructing the temples, the first gods he honoured were Amon and Ptah. In the limestone quarries near Cairo two tablets record that stone was excavated for the great temples at Memphis and Thebes. No reference is made to Heliopolis. It is of special interest to find that the workmen who were employed were of the Fenkhu, a Syrian tribe. There can be no doubt these quarriers were foreigners. In an Assouan inscription of Thothmes II it is stated that the boundary of the Egyptian empire on the north extended to the Syrian lakes, and that the Pharaoh's arms were "not repulsed from the land of the Fenkhu". A stele erected by Thothmes III at Wady Halfa records a victory during a Syrian campaign over "the Fenkhu". Ahmes must have obtained these skilled quarriers from the Fenkhu for the purpose of hastening on the work of restoring the temples in return for some favour conferred, for he did not wage war against the tribe, which remained powerful at the time of Thothmes III. It is impossible, however, to identify them with certainty. To this day the inhabitants of Palestine still credit all the surviving works of antiquity to the "Fenish", and although the reference is evidently to the Philistines and Phnicians, as well as to the hewers of the great artificial caves, it is possible that the latter, who are referred to in the Bible as the Rephaim or Anakim, were originally the "Fenish" and the Egyptian "Fenkhu". Ahmes may have followed the example of his temple- and pyramid-building predecessors in drawing fresh supplies of skilled stoneworkers from southern Palestine.
Osiris worship was combined with that of Amon at Thebes, but, as we have seen, Osiris and Amon had much in common, for both gods had lunar attributes.
Osiris "hides his essence in the great shrine of Amon". 4 The Amon ram was an animal incarnation of the corn spirit. It is significant to find, in this connection, that the priests of Amon for a long period sought sepulture at sacred Abydos, which had become closely associated with Osirian worship. But there was a strange fusion of beliefs regarding the other world. Men died believing that they would enter the bark of Ra and also reach the Osirian Paradise. Ultimately the Heliopolitan belief in the efficacy of magical formulimpaired the ethical character of the Ptah-Osirian creed.
Although Ahmes I was the liberator of Egypt, his memory was not revered so greatly as that of his son and successor Amenhotep I (Amenophis). The great Pharaohs of the records were the religious Pharaohs; if a monarch was assiduous in venerating the gods, and especially in erecting and endowing temples, his fame was assured; the grateful priests "kept his memory green". Amenhotep I and his wife Aahmes-Nefertari were, after their death, revered as deities; references are made to them as protectors and punishers of men in the Nineteenth Dynasty.
Nefertari was during her life "Amon's wife". She slept in the temple, and her children were reputed to be the sons and daughters of the god. The high priest's wife was "the concubine of Amon". It was Amenhotep I who founded the endowments of the Amon cult at Thebes which ultimately became so wealthy and powerful. He also began the erection of the magnificent buildings at Karnak, which were added to by his successors. His reign, which lasted for only about ten years, was occupied chiefly in reorganizing the kingdom and in establishing the new national religion. Assisted by the veteran military nobles of El Kab, he waged war against the Libyans on the north and the Nubians on the south. He appears also to have penetrated Syria, but no records of the campaign survive. His successors, however, ere he invaded Asia, claimed to hold sway as far north as the Euphrates.
The next king, Thothmes I, came to the throne as the husband of a princess of the royal line. He found it necessary to invade Nubia. Ahmes of Ebana, who accompanied him, records in his tomb that a battle was fought between the second and third cataract. The Pharaoh slew the Nubian leader who opposed him, and, on his return, had the body suspended head downwards at the bow of the royal ship. Thothmes penetrated Nubia beyond the third cataract, and reached the island of Arko, where Sebekhotep had undertaken the erection of his great statues. A fortress was erected and garrisoned on the island of Tombos at the third cataract. Nubia thus became once again an Egyptian province.
A campaign of conquest was next waged in Syria, where Egyptian dominance was continually challenged by the rival powers in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. "It was probably", write King and Hall, "with the Iranian kingdom of Mitanni, between Euphrates and Tigris, that the Dynasty carried on its struggle for Syria." No royal records of the campaign of Thothmes I survive, but we gather from the tomb inscriptions of Ahmes of Ebana and Ahmes of El Kab, that a great victory was won in Naharina, "the land of the rivers", which secured Egyptian supremacy. The king was afterwards able to boast that the northern boundary of the Empire extended "as far as the circuit of the sun"--
it was believed that: the world's edge was at the source of the Euphrates on the north and of that of the Nile on the south, and that both rivers flowed from the ocean, "the great Circle" surrounding the earth, in which lay the great serpent.
Thothmes I made an addition to the Karnak temple, and erected two great pylons on the thirtieth anniversary of his reign, when, at the Sed festival, he appears to have selected his successor. On one of the pylons he recorded that he had established peace in Egypt, ended lawlessness, and stamped out impiety, and that he had subdued the rebels in the Delta region. He also implored Amon to give the throne to his daughter Hatshepsut.
The closing period of the king's reign is obscure, and there is no agreement as to the events which occurred in connection with the family feud which ensued. Thothmes III dated his reign from the year preceding the death of Thothmes I. but in the interval Thothmes II and Hatshepsut sat on the throne.
The children of the royal princess who was the wife of Thothmes I included two sons and two daughters, but they all died young with the exception of the Princess Hatshepsut. Another wife was the mother of Thothmes II, while a concubine gave birth to Thothmes III.
Such is Breasted's reading of the problem, which is made difficult on account of the mutilation of inscriptions by the rival claimants. Other Egyptologists suggest that Thothmes III was the son of Thothmes II.
Thothmes III was a priest in the temple of Amon. He secured his succession by marrying either Hatshepsut or her daughter. According to Breasted, he superseded Thothmes I at a festival at which the Oracle of Amon proclaimed him as the Pharaoh. Thothmes III then began his reign, and. the old king lived in retirement.
After a time the usurping prince had to recognize the co-regency of Hatshepsut. But, ere long, he was thrust aside, and the queen reigned alone as "the female Horus". Thothmes II then seized the throne on his own and his father's behalf, and when Thothmes I died, Thothmes II allied himself with Thothmes III. When they had reigned about two years Thothmes II died, but Thothmes III was not able to retain his high position. Once again Hatshepsut, who had evidently won over a section of the priesthood, seized the reins of government, and Thothmes III was once again "relegated to the background". 5 At the festivals he appeared as a priest.
Hatshepsut must have been a woman of great ability and force of character to have displaced such a man as Thothmes III. For about fourteen years she ruled alone, and engaged herself chiefly in restoring the religious buildings which had either been demolished or had fallen into disrepair during the Hyksos period. She completed the great mortuary temple at Der-el-Bahari, which had been begun under Thothmes II. It was modelled on the smaller temple of Mentuhotep, and is still magnificent in ruin. Situated against the western cliffs at Thebes, it was constructed in three terraces with sublime colonnades finely proportioned and exquisitely wrought. An inner chamber was excavated from the rock. On the temple walls the mythical scenes in connection with the birth of the queen were sculptured in low relief, and to get over the difficulty of being recognized as a "son of the sun", Hatshepsut was depicted in company of her male "double". On state occasions she wore a false beard.
The queen's most famous undertaking was to send an expedition of eight ships to the land of Punt to obtain myrrh trees, incense, rare woods, and sacred animals for the temple. It was her pious wish that Amon should have a garden to walk in.
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Mut |
Hapi, |
Amon-Ra |
DEITIES OF THE EMPIRE PERIOD
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF DER-EL-BAHARI, THEBES
To celebrate her jubilee Hatshepsut had erected two magnificent obelisks, nearly a hundred feet high, in front of the Karnak temple in which Thothmes III was a priest. One of these still stands erect, and is greatly admired by visitors. The obelisks, like the temple, were designed by the much-favoured architect Senmut, an accomplished artist and scheming statesman, who was a prominent figure in the party which supported the queen.
But so deeply was Hatshepsut concerned in devoting the revenues of the State to religious purposes that the affairs of empire were neglected. The flame of revolt was spreading through Syria, where the tribal chiefs scorned to owe allegiance to a woman, especially as she neglected to enforce her will at the point of the sword. Apparently, too, the Mitanni power had recovered from the blows dealt by the military Pharaohs of a previous generation and had again become aggressive. Then Hatshepsut died. She may have fallen a victim of a palace revolt of which no record survives. Her mummy has never been discovered. When the deep tunnel which she had constructed for her tomb was entered, it was found to have been despoiled. It may be that her body was never deposited there. After her death no more is heard of her favourite Senmut, or her daughter, whom she had selected as her successor. Her name was ruthlessly erased from her monuments. All the indications point to a military revolt, supported by a section of the priesthood, at a time of national peril.
Thothmes III, who immediately came to the throne, lost no time in raising an army and pressing northward to subdue the Syrian rebellion. Although he has been referred to as "this little man with coarse features, as we know from his mummy", it would be a mistake to retain the impression that he was of repulsive aspect. He died when he was an old man; his jaw was not tied up before embalmment, which was not highly successful, for his nose was disfigured, and has partly crumbled away. The statues of the king present the striking face of a vigorous and self-contained man; in one he has a nose which rivals that of Wellington, and an air of dignity and refinement which accords with what we know of his character; for not only was he a great leader who, as his grand vizier has informed the ages, knew all that happened and never failed to carry out a matter he took in hand, he was also a man of artistic ability, accustomed, as Breasted informs us, to spend his leisure time "designing exquisite vases".
The hour had come and the man! With a well-organized army, in which he had placed the most capable men in command, he swept his victorious way through Syria and struck terror to the hearts of the rebels. His name--Manakhpirria (Men-kheper-ra) Thothmes--was dreaded long after his death, and may have originated the Semitic title "Pharaoh", which was never used by the native kings of Egypt.
The greatest triumph of the various Syrian campaigns conducted by Thothmes III was the capture of Megiddo, in the Hebrew tribal area of Issachar. That fortified stronghold, situated on the plain of Jezreel, was a point of great strategic importance--"the Key", indeed, of northern Palestine. It had to be approached over the ridge of Carmel, and was partly surrounded by the tributary known as "the brook Kina", which flows into the Kishon River. Two highways leading to Megiddo lay before the Egyptian army, like the legs of inward curving calipers, and between these a narrow mountain pass cut in an almost straight and direct line into the town.
The Egyptian generals intended to advance along the northern curving highway, but Thothmes III was, like Nelson, a great strategist who ever did the unexpected. He decided to push through the pass, although along the greater part of it his horsemen would have to advance in Indian file. To inspire his followers with his own great courage, the fearless monarch rode in front. His daring manuvre was a complete success. Ere it was comprehended by the enemy, his army was pouring down upon the plain.
He completely upset the plans of the Asiatic allies, who had divided their forces to await the advance of the Egyptians by the north and the south, occupying the while, no doubt, strong positions.
The battle took place next day on the river bank. Thothmes led on a victorious charge, and scattered the enemy so that they retreated in confusion and took refuge in the city. Had the Egyptians not been too eager to secure the spoils of victory, they might have captured Megiddo, as Thothmes informed them afterwards. A long siege followed, but at length the town was starved into submission, and the princes came forth to swear allegiance to the Pharaoh. They also made payment of the tribute which they had withheld during the closing years of Hatshepsut's reign. Thothmes took the eldest sons of the various revolting princes as hostages, and deported them to Thebes. The spoils of victory included over goo chariots and 200 coats of mail and much gold and silver. Ere he returned home he captured three towns in Lebanon, and reorganized the administration of northern Palestine.
Other campaigns followed. On one of these Thothmes made swift attack upon some revolting princes by crossing the sea and landing on the Phnician coast. The Hittites gave trouble on the north, and he pushed on to Carchemish, their southern capital, and captured it. At Kadesh, on the Orontes, he also dealt a shattering blow against the Hittites and their allies from Mitanni. He had previously subdued the Libyans, and conducted a successful campaign into Nubia. Thus he built up a great empire, and made Egypt the foremost power in the world. Tribute poured into the royal exchequer from the various subject states, and peace offerings were made by the Hittites and even by the rulers of Cyprus and Crete. Both Assyria and Babylonia cultivated friendly relations with Thothmes III, who appears to have been as distinguished a diplomatist as he was a conqueror.
The priests of Amon composed a great hymn in his honour, which, they pretended, had been recited by their god.
I have come, I have given to thee to smite the land of the Syrians
Under thy feet they lie through the length and breadth of the god's land;
I have made them see thy might like to a star revolving
When it sheds its burning beams and drops its dew on the meadows.
I have come, I have given to thee to vanquish the Western peoples Crete is stricken with fear, terror is reigning in Cyprus;
Like to a great young bull, I have made them behold thy power, Fearless and quick to strike, none is so bold to resist thee.
I have come, I have given to thee to conquer the folk of the marshes,
The terror of thee has fallen over the lands of Mitanni; Like to a crocodile fierce they have beheld thee in glory;
O monarch of fear at sea, none is so bold to approach thee.
The chief buildings of Thothmes III were erected to Amon at Thebes, but he did not fail to honour Ra at Heliopolis, Ptah at Memphis, and Hathor at Dendera. One of his jubilee obelisks, which he erected at Thebes., now stands in Constantinople; another is in Rome; the pair set up at Heliopolis have been given prominent sites on either side of the Atlantic Ocean--one in New York and the other on the Thames Embankment, London. His reign, which he dated from his first accession prior to the death of Thothmes I, extended over a period of fifty-four years. He died on 17 March, 1447, B.C., and was buried in the lonely "Valley of Kings' Tombs".
1 In an Amon-Ra hymn the deity is called "maker of men, former of the flocks, lord of corn" (Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Wiedemann, p. 116).
2 "The gods gather as dogs round his feet."--Hymn to Amon-re.
3 "Amon of the two horns."
4 That is, the soul of Osiris is in Amon, as the soul of the giant is in the egg, the ram, , "doubly hidden". Amon-Ra is addressed in a temple chant: "Hidden is thy abode, lord of the gods".
5 A History of Egypt, James Henry Breasted, London, 1906.
Biblical References to Hyksos Period--Joseph as Grand Vizier--His Sagacity--Reorganizing the Kingdom--Israelites in Goshen--A Jacob King--Period of the Exodus--Egyptian References to Hebrews--A Striking Folktale--Cause of Theban Revolt--A National Hero--A Famous Queen Mother--A Warrior King--"Battles Long Ago"--Expulsion of Foreigners--Unrest in Syria--New Methods of Warfare.
IN the familiar Bible story of Joseph, the young Hebrew slave who became grand vizier in the land of the Nile, there is a significant reference to the nationality of his master Potiphar. Although that dignitary was "an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard", he was not of alien origin; we are pointedly informed that he was "an Egyptian". We also gather that Hyksos jurisdiction extended beyond the Delta region. During the dry cycle, when the great famine prevailed, Joseph "gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan" for the corn which the people purchased. Then he proceeded to acquire for the Crown all the privately owned estates in the Nile Valley and Delta region, with purpose, it would appear, to abolish the feudal system. An exception was made, however, of the lands attached to the temples. Apparently Pharaoh desired to conciliate the priests, whose political influence was very great, because we find that he allowed them free supplies of corn; indeed he had previously selected for Joseph's wife, "Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On"; an indication that he specially favoured the influential sun cult of Heliopolis. Queen Hatshepsut's assertion that the foreign kings ruled in ignorance of Ra was manifestly neither strictly accurate nor unbiased.
The inference drawn from the Biblical narrative that the Hyksos Pharaohs adopted a policy of conciliation is confirmed by the evidence gleaned amidst the scanty records of the period. We find that some of these rulers assumed Ra titles, although they were also "beloved of Set" (Sutekh), and that one of them actually restored the tomb of Queen Apuit of the Sixth Dynasty. The Egyptians apparently indulged in pious exaggerations. That the Hyksos influence was not averse to culture is evidenced by the fact that the name of King Apepa Ra-aa-user is associated with a mathematical treatise which is preserved in the British Museum.
If learning was fostered, the arts and industries could not have been neglected. The Egyptian iconoclasts systematically destroyed practically all the monuments of the period, so that we have no direct evidence to support the assumption that it was characterized by a spirit of decadence due to the influence of uncultured desert dwellers. The skill displayed at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty was too great to be of sudden growth, and certainly does not suggest that for about two centuries there had existed no appreciation of, or demand for, works of art. Although sculpture had grown mechanical, there had been, apparently, progressive development in other directions. We find, for instance, a marked and increased appreciation of colour, suggesting influence from a district where Nature presents more variety and distinguishing beauty than the somewhat monotonous valley of the Nile; ware was being highly glazed and tinted with taste and skill unknown in the Twelfth Dynasty, and painting had become more popular.
But, perhaps, it was in the work of administration that the Egyptians learned most from their Hyksos rulers. Joseph, who was undoubtedly a great statesman, must have impressed them greatly with his sound doctrines of political economy. That sagacious young vizier displayed an acute and far-sighted appreciation of the real needs of Egypt, a country which cannot be made prosperous under divided rule. No doubt he was guided by the experienced councillors at Court, but had he not been gifted with singular intelligence and strong force of character, he could never have performed his onerous duties with so much distinction and success. He fostered the agricultural industry during the years of plenty, and "gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number".
Then came the seven years of famine. "And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. . . . And Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold unto the Egyptians." Much wealth poured into the Imperial Exchequer. "All countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn." The dry cycle prevailed apparently over a considerable area, and it must have propelled the migrations of pastoral peoples which subsequently effected so great a change in the political conditions of Asia.
It is interesting to note that at this period the horse was known in Egypt. On the occasion of Joseph's elevation to the post of grand vizier, Pharaoh "made him to ride in the second chariot which he had". Then when the Egyptians, who found it necessary to continue purchasing corn, cried out "the money falleth", the young Hebrew "gave them bread in exchange for horses",
The wholesale purchase of estates followed. "Buy us and our land for bread," said the Egyptians, "and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh. . . . So the land became Pharaoh's. . . . And as for the people, he (Joseph) removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof."
The work of reorganization proceeded apace. Joseph in due season distributed seed, and made it conditional that a fifth part of the produce of all farms should be paid in taxation. A strong central government was thus established upon a sound economic basis, and it may have flourished until some change occurred of which we have no knowledge. Perhaps the decline of the Hyksos power was not wholly due to a revolt in the south; it may have been contributed to as well by interference from without.
Meanwhile the children of Israel "dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions therein and multiplied exceedingly". Josephus's statement that they were identical with the Hyksos hardly accords with the evidence of the Bible. It is possible, however, that other Semites besides Joseph attained high positions during the period of foreign control. In fact, one of the Pharaohs was named Jacob-her, or possibly, as Breasted suggests, "Jacob-El". Such a choice of ruler would not be inconsistent with the policy of the Hittites, who allowed subject peoples to control their own affairs so long as they adhered to the treaty of alliance and recognized the suzerainty of the supreme Power.
It is impossible to fix with any certainty the time at which the Israelites settled in Egypt. They came, not as conquerors, but after the Hyksos had seized the crown. Apparently, too, they had no intention of effecting permanent settlement, because the bodies of Jacob and Joseph, having been embalmed, were carried to the family cave tomb "in the land of Canaan", which Abraham had purchased from "Ephron the Hittite".
No inscription regarding Joseph or the great famine has survived. But the Egyptians were not likely to preserve any record of a grand vizier who starved them into submission. A tablet which makes reference to a seven years famine during the Third Dynasty has been proved to be a pious fraud of the Roman period. It was based, in all probability, on the Joseph story. The alleged record sets forth that King Zoser, who was greatly distressed regarding the condition of the country, sent a message to the Governor of Nubia, asking for information regarding the rise of the Nile. Statistics were duly supplied according to his desire. Then Pharaoh "dreamed a dream", and saw the god Khn who informed him that Egypt was being afflicted because no temples had been erected to the gods. As soon as he woke up, His Majesty made gifts of land to the priests of Khn and arranged that they should receive a certain proportion of all the fish and game caught in the vicinity of the first cataract.
There is no agreement as to when the Exodus of the Israelites took place. Some authorities are of opinion that it coincided with the expulsion of the Hyksos. Such a view, however, conflicts with the Biblical reference to a period of bondage. The Pharaoh of the Oppression was a "new king" and he "knew not Joseph". He enslaved and oppressed the Israelites, who had been so singularly favoured by the foreign rulers. According to tradition, he was Rameses II, during whose reign Moses acquired "all the wisdom of the Egyptians" and became "mighty in words and deeds". The next king was Mene-ptah, but he cannot be regarded as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He reigned little over ten years, and one of his inscriptions makes reference to the Israelites as a people resident in Canaan, where they were attacked by the Egyptian army during a Syrian campaign. It is probable that the Hebrews were the Khabri mentioned in the Tell el Amarna letters, two centuries before Mene-ptah's time. They were then waging war against Canaanitish allies of Egypt, and the Prince of Gezer sent an urgent but ineffectual appeal to the Pharaoh Akenaton for assistance. The Exodus must have taken place in the early part of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and possibly during the reign of Thothmes I-about a generation after Ahmes expelled the Asiatics from Avaris.
During the latter part of the Hyksos period the Theban princes, whom Manetho gives as the kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty, were tributary rulers over a goodly part of Upper Egypt. Reinforced from Nubia, and aided by the princes of certain of the nomes, they suddenly rose against their oppressors, and began to wage the War of Independence, which lasted for about a quarter of a century.
An interesting papyrus, preserved in the British Museum, contains a fragmentary folktale, which indicates that the immediate cause of the rising was an attempt on the part of the Hyksos overlord to compel the Egyptians to worship the god Sutekh.
"It came to pass", we read, "that Egypt was possessed by the Impure, and there was no lord and king."
This may mean that either the Hyksos rule had limited power in Upper Egypt or was subject to a higher authority in Asia. The folktale proceeds: "Now King Sekenenra was lord of the south. . . . Impure Asiatics were in the cities (? as garrisons), and Apepa was lord in Avaris. They worked their will in the land, and enjoyed all the good things of Egypt. The god Sutekh was Apepa's master, for he worshipped Sutekh alone, and erected for him an enduring temple. . . . He sacrificed and gave offerings every day unto Sutekh. . . ."
The tale then goes on to relate that Apepa sent a messenger to Sekenenra, the lord of Thebes, "the city of the south", with an important document which had been prepared after lengthy consultation with a number of learned scribes.
Sekenenra appears to have received the messenger with undisguised alarm. He asked: "What order do you bring? Why have you made this journey?"
The document was read, and, so far as can be gathered from the blurred and mutilated papyrus, it was something to the following effect:--
The King Ra Apepa sends to you to say: Let the hippopotami, be put out of the pool in the city of Thebes. I cannot get sleep, either by day or by night, because their roaring is in my ear.
No wonder that "the lord of the south" was astounded. The sacred animals at Thebes could not possibly be disturbing the slumbers of a monarch residing on the Delta frontier. Apepa was evidently anxious to pick a quarrel with the Thebans, for his hypocritical complaint was, in effect, an express order to accomplish the suppression of a popular form of worship. Well he knew that he could not adopt more direct means to stir up a spirit of rebellion among his Egyptian subjects. Possibly the growing power of the Theban ruler may have caused him to feel somewhat alarmed, and he desired to shatter it before it became too strong for him.
Sekenenra was unable for a time to decide what reply he should make. At length, having entertained the messenger, he bade him to convey the following brief but pointed answer to Apepa: "I intend to do as is your wish".
Apparently he desired to gain time, for there could remain no doubt that a serious crisis was approaching. No sooner did the messenger take his departure than the Theban ruler summoned before him all the great lords in the district, and to them he related "what had come to pass". These men were likewise "astounded"; they heard what Sekenenra had to tell them "with feelings of sorrow, but were silent, for none knew what to say".
The fragmentary tale then ends abruptly with the words: "The King Ra Apepa sent to -----"
We can infer, however, that his second message roused a storm of opposition, and that whatever demand it contained was met with a blank refusal. King Ra Apepa must have then sent southward a strong army to enforce his decree and subdue the subject princes who dared to have minds of their own.
If we identify Sekenenra with the Theban king of that name, whose mummy was found at Der el Bahari, and is now in the Cairo museum, we can conclude that the ancient folktale contained a popular account of the brief but glorious career and tragic death of a national hero, who, like the Scottish Sir William Wallace, inspired his countrymen with the desire for freedom and independence.
Sekenenra died on the battlefield. We can see him pressing forward at the head of the Egyptian army, fighting with indomitable courage and accomplishing mighty deeds. Accompanied by his most valiant followers, he hews his way through the Hyksos force. But "one by one they fall around him". . . . Now he is alone. He is surrounded. . . . The warriors in front of him are mowed down, for none can withstand his blows. But an Asiatic creeps up on his left side, swings his battleaxe, and smites a glancing blow. Sekenenra totters; his cheek bone and teeth have been laid bare. Another Asiatic on his right leaps up and stabs him on the forehead. Ere he falls, his first successful assailant strikes again, and the battleaxe crashes through the left side of the hero's skull. The Hyksos shout triumphantly, but the Egyptians are not dismayed; clamouring in battle fury, they rush on to avenge the death of Sekenenra. . . . That hero has not died in vain.
The mummy of the great prince bears the evidence of the terrible wounds he received. In his agony he had bitten his tongue between his teeth. But it is apparent that before he fell he turned the tide of battle. and that the Hyksos were compelled to retreat, for his body was recovered and carried back to Thebes, where it was embalmed after putrefaction had set in.
Sekenenra appears to have been a handsome and dashing soldier. He was tall, slim, and active, with a strong, refined face of dark Mediterranean type. Probably he was a descendant of one of the ancient families which had taken refuge in the south after the Hyksos invaders had accomplished the fall of the native monarchy.
His queen, Ah-hotep, who was a hereditary princess in her own right, lived until she was a hundred years old. Her three sons reigned in succession, and continued the war against the Hyksos. The youngest of these was Ahmes I, and he was the first Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Ah-hotep must have followed his career with pride, for he drove the Asiatics across the frontier. She survived him, and then lived through the reign of Amenhotep I also, for she did not pass away until Thotmes I ruled in splendour over united Egypt, and caused its name to be dreaded in western Asia.
Ahmes I, like the heroic Sekenenra, received the support of the El Kab family, which was descended from one of the old feudal lords. His successes are recorded in the tomb of his namesake, the son of Ebana, a princess, and of Baba, the lord of El Kab, who had served under Sekenenra. This El Kab Ahmes was quite a youth--he tells us that he was "too young to have a wife"--when he fought on foot behind the chariot of the Pharaoh. He was afterwards promoted to the rank of admiral) and won a naval victory on a canal. So greatly did the young nobleman distinguish himself that he received a decoration--a golden collar, the equivalent of our "Victoria Cross". Indeed he was similarly honoured for performing feats of valour on four subsequent occasions, and he also received gifts of land and of male and female slaves who had been taken captive.
The progress northward of Ahmes I, with army and river fleet, was accompanied by much hard fighting. But at length he compelled the Hyksos force, which had suffered heavily, to take refuge in the fortified town of Avaris. After a prolonged siege the enemy took flight, and he pursued them across the frontier.
We have followed, so far, the narrative of Ahmes, son of Ebana. According to Manetho's account of the expulsion, as quoted by Josephus, who, perhaps, tampered with it, King Ahmes was unable to do more than shut up the Asiatics in Avaris. Then Thummosis (Thothmes), successor of Ahmes, endeavoured to carry the town by assault, but failed in the attempt. Just when he was beginning to despair of accomplishing his purpose, the enemy offered to capitulate if they would be allowed to depart in peace. This condition was accepted, whereupon 240,000 men, women, and children evacuated Avaris and crossed the frontier into Syria. Manetho adds that they migrated to the district afterwards known as Judea, and built Jerusalem, because "they were in dread of the Assyrians". But, as we have seen, the Assyrians were not at this period the predominating power in the East. Manetho (or Josephus) was plainly wrong. A new and hostile enemy, however, had appeared at Mitanni--the dreaded Aryans, who worshipped the strange gods Indra, Mithra, and Varuna.
After clearing the Delta of Asiatic soldiers, Ahmes I turned his attention to Nubia. He did not meet with much opposition, and succeeded in extending the southern frontier to the second cataract, thus recovering the area which had been controlled by the great Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty. He had afterwards to suppress two abortive risings in the heart of the kingdom, which may have been engineered by Hyksos sympathizers. Then he devoted himself to the work of restoring the monuments of his ancestors and the temples of the gods. After a strenuous reign of over twenty years he died in the prime of life, lamented, no doubt, by the people whom he had set free, and especially by the queen mother, Ah-hotep, that wife of a mighty leader and nurse of valiant heroes-one of the first great women in history.
The military successes of the Egyptians were largely contributed to by their use of the horse, which the Aryans had introduced into the West.
New methods of fighting had also been adopted by the Egyptians. When the Eighteenth-Dynasty soldiers were depicted on the monuments and in the tombs the artists had for their models highly disciplined and well-organized bodies of men who had undergone a rigorous
EGYPTIAN CHARIOT (Florence Museum)
EGYPTIAN KING (SETI I) MOUNTED ON CHARIOT
From the bas-relief on the great temple of Karnak
A PLATOON (TROOP) OF EGYPTIAN SPEARMEN
From the bas-relief in the temple at Der-el Bahari
training. The infantry were marshalled in regular lines, and on battlefields made vigorous and orderly charges. Charioteers gathered into action with the dash and combination of modern-day cavalry. Had this new military system evolved in Upper Egypt as a result of the example shown by the Hyksos? Or had the trade in horses brought into the Nile valley Aryan warriors who became the drill sergeants and adjutants of the army which drove the Hyksos from the land of the Pharaohs?
training. The infantry were marshalled in regular lines, and on battlefields made vigorous and orderly charges. Charioteers gathered into action with the dash and combination of modern-day cavalry. Had this new military system evolved in Upper Egypt as a result of the example shown by the Hyksos? Or had the trade in horses brought into the Nile valley Aryan warriors who became the drill sergeants and adjutants of the army which drove the Hyksos from the land of the Pharaohs?
The Sebek-Ra Rulers--A Great Pharaoh--The Shadow of Anarchy--Coming of the "Shepherd Kings"--Carnival of Destruction--A Military Occupation --Causes of World--wide Unrest--Dry Cycles--Invasions of Pastoral Peoples--History in Mythology--Tribal Father and Mother Deities--Sutekh, Thor, Hercules--Mountain Deities and Cave Demons--Hyksos Civilization--Trade with Europe and Asia--The Horse--Hittite Influence in Palestine--Raid on Babylon--Kassites and Aryans--Aryan Gods in Syria--Mitanni Kingdom.
AFTER the close of the Golden Age the materials for Egyptian history become somewhat scanty. The Thirteenth Dynasty opened peacefully, and the Sebek-Ra names of its kings indicate that the cults of the crocodile and the sun held the balance of power. The influence exercised by the Pharaohs, however, appears to have been strictly circumscribed. Some of them may have reigned in Crocodilopolis or its vicinity, but Thebes ultimately became the capital, which indicates that the Delta region, with its growing foreign element, was considered insecure for the royal house. The great kings of the Twelfth Dynasty had established their power in the north, where they found it necessary to keep watchful eyes on the Libyan and Syrian frontiers.
Succession to the throne appears to have been regulated by descent in the female line. Evidently the Legitimists were resolved that alien influence should not predominate at Court, and in this regard they must have received the support of the great mass of the Egyptian people, of whom Herodotus said: "They contentedly adhere to the customs of their ancestors, and are averse from foreign manners". It is significant to find that the father of one of the Sebekhotep kings was a priest who achieved greatness because he married a princess. This Sebekhotep was followed by his son, who had a Hathor name, but he was dethroned after a brief reign. The next Pharaoh was the paternal uncle of the fallen monarch. His royal name was Neferkhara-Sebekhotep, and he proved to be the greatest ruler of this obscure period. He controlled the entire kingdom, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the second cataract, where records were made of the rise of the Nile. On the island of Argo, near the third cataract, he erected two granite statues over 20 feet in height, which stood in front of a large temple. Nubian aggression must have been held firmly in check by a considerable garrison. But not for long. After two weak kings had reigned, the throne was seized by Neshi, "the negro", a worshipper of Ra and Set. His colossal statue of black granite testifies to the supremacy achieved by the Nubian raiders. In the north another usurper of whom we have trace is Mermenfatiu, "Commander of the Soldiers".
The shadow of anarchy had again fallen upon Egypt. Once more, too, the feudal lords asserted themselves, and the kingdom was broken up into a number of petty states. A long list of monarchs is given by Manetho, and these may include many of the hereditary nome governors who became Pharaohs in their own domains and waged war against their neighbours. Thebes remained the centre of the largest area of control, which may have enjoyed a meed of prosperity, but the rest of Egypt must have suffered greatly on account of the lack of supervision over the needful distribution of water. Peasants may well have neglected to till the soil in districts ever open to the raids of plunderers, exclaiming, in the words of the Twelfth-Dynasty prophet: "What is the good of it? We know what is coming."
Egypt was thoroughly disorganized and unable to resist its enemies. These were ever watchful for an opportunity to strike. The Nubians had already achieved some success, although they were ultimately expelled by the Thebans; the Libyans must have been active in the north, while the Asiatics were pouring over the Delta frontier and possessing themselves of great tracts of territory. Then came the Hyksos invaders, regarding whose identity much controversy has been waged. They were evidently no disorganized rabble, and there are indications that under their sway Egypt became, for an uncertain period, a part of a great empire of which we, as yet, know very little.
Josephus, the patriotic Jewish historian, who believed that the Hyksos were "the children of Israel", quoted Manetho as saying that "they were a people of ignoble race who had confidence to invade our country, which they subdued easily without having to fight a battle. They set our towns on fire; they destroyed the temples of the gods, and caused the people to suffer every kind of barbarity. During the entire period of their dynasty they waged war against the people of Egypt, desiring to exterminate the whole race. . . . The foreigners were called Hyksos, which signifies 'Shepherd Kings'."
Manetho's reference to a carnival of destruction is confirmed by the inscription of Queen Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who declared with characteristic piety:
I have restored what was cast down,
I have built up what was uncompleted,
Since the Asiatics were in Avaris of the north land,
And the barbarians were among them, destroying buildings,
While they governed, not knowing Ra.
But if the hated Hyksos were wreckers of buildings, so were the Egyptians, who were ever prone to obliterate all records of unpopular rulers. Khufu's enduring pyramid defied them, but they destroyed his mummy and perpetuated his memory in a spirit of undeniable bitterness, although he was one of their greatest men. He was an enemy of their gods, which means that he laid too firm a hand upon the ambitious and acquisitive priests. Thutmose III and Akenaton also undertook in their day the vengeful work of erasing inscriptions, while Rameses II and others freely appropriated the monuments of their predecessors. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that few traces of the Hyksos rulers survive, and that, in a folktale, they are referred to as "the impure". They ruled "not knowing Ra", and were therefore delivered to oblivion. Manetho, who compiled his history about a thousand years after they were driven from the country, was unable to ascertain much about them. Only a few of the kings to whom he makes reference can be identified, and these belong to the Fifteenth Dynasty. Of the Sixteenth Dynasty he knew little or nothing, but in dealing with the Seventeenth he was on surer ground, because Upper Egypt had then regained its freedom, and was gradually reconquering lost territory in the north.
The Hyksos overwhelmed the land at the close of the Fourteenth Dynasty. Then they chose for a king "one of their own people". According to Manetho his name was Salatis, and with him begins the Fifteenth Dynasty. He selected Memphis as his capital, and there "he made Upper and Lower Egypt pay tribute", while he left garrisons at places which were "considered to be proper for them". Did the Hyksos, therefore, effect merely a military occupation of Egypt and compel the payment of tribute to a controlling power in Asia? On this point we obtain no clear idea from Manetho, who proceeds to state that the foreigners erected a strongly fortified town called Avaris--afterwards destroyed by the Egyptians--and there they kept a garrison of 240,000 men, so as to secure the frontier from the attacks of the Assyrians, "who, they foresaw, would invade Egypt". Salatis held military reviews to overawe all foreigners.
Whatever enemy the Hyksos feared, or prepared to meet, it was certainly not the Assyrians, who were at the time fully occupied with their own affairs; they had not yet attained to that military strength which subsequently caused the name of their god Ashur to be dreaded even in the Nile valley.
The reference, however, may be to Babylonia, where, as we shall see, an aggressive people had made their appearance.
In absence of reliable records regarding the Hyksos people, or perhaps we should say peoples, for it is possible that there was more than one invasion, we must cross the frontier of Egypt to obtain some idea of the conditions prevailing in Asia during this obscure but fascinating period.
Great changes were passing over the civilized world. Old kingdoms were being broken up, and new kingdoms were in process of formation. The immediate cause was the outpourings of pastoral peoples from steppes and plateaus in quest of "fresh woods and pastures new", because herbage had grown scanty during a prolonged "dry cycle" in countries like Arabia, Turkestan, and the Iranian plateau. Once these migrations by propulsion began, they were followed by migrations caused by expulsion. The movements were in some districts accompanied by constant fighting, and a people who displayed the best warlike qualities ultimately became conquerors on a gradually increasing scale. Another cause of migration was the growth of population. When an ancestral district became crowded, the surplus stock broke away in "waves". But movements of this kind invariably followed the line of least resistance, and did not necessarily involve marked changes in habits of life, for pastoral peoples moved from upland to upland, as did agriculturists from river valley to river valley and seafarers from coast to coast. When, however, peaceful settlements were effected by nomads in highly civilized areas an increased impetus must have been given to migration from their native country, where their kindred, hearing of their prosperity, began to dream dreams of the land of plenty. Nomads who entered Babylon or Egypt became "the outposts" of those sudden and violent migrations of wholesale character which occurred during prolonged periods of drought. The Hyksos conquest of Egypt is associated with one of these "dry cycles".
In an earlier chapter 1 we have referred to the gradual expansion from North Africa of the early Mediterranean "long heads", who spread themselves over the unoccupied or sparsely populated valleys and shores of Palestine, Asia Minor, and Europe. Simultaneously, or not much later, Asiatic "broad heads" moved in successive "waves" along the mountain ranges; these are the Alpine people of the ethnologists, and they are traced from the Himalayas to Brittany and the British Isles. The beliefs and tribal customs of the Mediterraneans appear to have been mainly of Matriarchal character, while those of the Alpine folk were mainly Patriarchal.
The mixture of these peoples caused the development of a great civilization in Asia Minor, and so, it is believed, had origin the Hittite kingdom. Other races were embraced, however, in the Hittite confederacy. Mongols from Turkestan moved southward during a dry period apparently, and became a strong element in the Hittite area of control, while Semites from Arabia, who appeared at very early times in Syria, became allies of the rising people, with whom they fused in some districts. The eagle-nosed, bearded Alpine Hittites are believed to be represented by the present-day Armenians and the Mongolian Hittites by the Kurds. Some ethnologists are of opinion that the characteristic Jewish nose indicates an early fusion of Hittites and Syrians. There was also an Alpine blend in Assyria, where the Semites had facial characteristics which distinguished them from the ancestral stock in Arabia.
Hittite theology is of special interest to us because its influence can be traced in Egypt immediately before and especially during the Hyksos period. Some of the tribes of Asia Minor worshipped the Great Mother deity Ma or Ammas, who, like the Libyan Neith and other virgin goddesses of the Delta, was self-created and had a fatherless son. She was essentially an earth goddess, and of similar character to Astarte, Aphrodite, the Cretan serpent goddess, "Our Lady of Doves" in Cyprus, the Celtic Anu or Danu in Ireland, and the Scottish Cailleach Bheur who shaped the hills, let loose the rivers, and waved her hammer over the growing grass.
In Cilicia the male deities predominated, and in southern Cappadocia, where primitive tribal beliefs appear to have fused early, we find a great rock sculpture, depicting, it is believed, the marriage of the Great Father and Great Mother deities of the Alpine and Mediterranean peoples.
The Great Father god of the Hittites is Pappas or Attis ("father"), who was best known to the Egyptians as Sutekh. He is identified with Baal, "the lord," a deity no longer regarded as Semitic in origin. It was the moon god Sin, for instance, who gave his name to Sinai, and the Arabian sun deity was female.
Sutekh is depicted on a cliff near Smyrna as a bearded god with curly hair and a high, curving nose. He looks a typical mountaineer, clad in a tunic which is tightened round the waist by the "hunger belt" so familiar in Scottish hill lore, and wearing boots with turned-up toes, specially suited for high snow-covered altitudes.
Sutekh was a sky and atmosphere deity who caused the storms and sent thunder. He was a god of war, and wore goat's horns to symbolize fertility and the male principle. As Tark or Tarku he is depicted carrying in one hand a hammer and in the other three wriggling flashes of lightning, suggesting the Teutonic Thor. He is also shown grasping a mace and trident or a double battleaxe. As Ramman 2 with double horns, and bearing his axe and three thunderbolts, he received adoption in Babylonia after the Hittite conquest.
When the Great Mother was wedded to the Great Father, her son may have been regarded as the son of Tarku also. It was probably the younger deity who was identified by the Greeks with Hercules, son of Zeus. But we need not expect a continuity of well-defined ideas regarding deities of common origin who have developed separately. These two gods, the Great Father and the son of the Great Mother, are sometimes indistinguishable. They not only varied in different districts, but also at different periods. In the latest phase of Hittite religion the Great Father, the conquering war god of the Alpine people, predominated, and he absorbed the attributes of other deities in localities where Hittite influence became supreme.
The Hittite deities were associated with mountains and mysterious caves, which indicates that in their earliest stages they were giants and hags of the type familiar among the Tyrol mountains, in the Scottish highlands, and in Scandinavia. They had also their animal affinities and were depicted standing on the backs of lions and lionesses. The double-headed eagle and the three-legged symbol had also religious significance.
In addition to the deities there were fearsome demons. The Hittite Typhoon, like the Egyptian Set and Apep serpent, warred against the gods. He was half-human and half-reptile--the upper part of his body was that of a man and the lower that of a serpent. He lived in a cave which was connected by an underground passage with the cave of the gods. Tempests issued from his jaws and lightning flashed from his terrible flaming eyes. He was slain by Tarku, as the Hydra was slain by Hercules, and the various dragons of European story were slain by heroes of popular romance.
Egypt also had its somewhat colourless dragon legend, which was probably imported. In one of the Horus stories, Set became a "roaring serpent", and in this form he concealed himself in a hole (a cave) which, by command of the ubiquitous Ra, he was not permitted to leave. He thus became identified with the Apep serpent. Sutekh, the later Set, who was regarded in the Delta as the true sun god, displaced Ra and Horus and figured as the "dragon slayer". The earlier Set was not originally a demon. He was, it would appear, the god of a foreign people who entered Egypt in pre-Dynastic times and were ultimately associated with all that was evil and impure, like the later Hyksos who worshipped Sutekh.
In Syria and Mitanni, prior to the Hyksos period, the Great Father deity of the Hittites became the supreme god. The most reasonable inference is that he was the divine representative of the conquering people in Asia Minor. He bore several territorial names: he was Hadad or Dad in Syria and Teshub (or Teshup) in Mitanni; he was Tarku farther north. But that he was identical with Sutekh there can be little doubt, for when Rameses II entered into a treaty with the Hittites, Sutekh and Amon Ra were referred to as the chief representative gods of the two great empires.
Now it is a significant fact that the Hittite war god was the chief deity of the Hyksos. Like Ra-Tum of Heliopolis and Horus of Edfu his appearance in Egypt points to a definite foreign influence. He was the deity of a people who exercised control over subject states--a strange god who was adopted by compulsion because he represented the ruling Power. The Hyksos kings endeavoured to compel the Egyptians to recognize Sutekh, their official non-Arabian god--an indication that their organization had a religious basis.
From Manetho's references to this obscure period we gather that the invaders of Egypt were well organized indeed. Their raid was not followed by those intertribal feuds which usually accompanied forcible settlement in a country by Semitic hordes from Arabia. They did not break up into warring factions, like the early invaders of Palestine. Before reaching Egypt they must have come under the influence of a well-organized State. They had attained, at any rate, that stage of civilization when a people recognize the necessity for establishing a strong central government.
The Hyksos must be credited with military and administrative experience, seeing that they garrisoned strategic points, and maintained a standing army like the greatest of the Pharaohs. The collection of tribute is also significant In like manner did the later Egyptian emperors extract revenue from the petty kings of subject states in Syria. What Power received the tribute gathered by the Hyksos? All the indications point to the Hittites. If the Hyksos people were not wholly from Asia Minor, it is highly probable that the army of occupation was under Hittite control.
It may be that the invading forces included Semites from Arabia, plundering Bedouins, Amorites, and even Phoenicians who had migrated from the north of the Persian Gulf to the Palestine coast, --and that assistance was given by the Libyans, reinforced by mercenaries from Crete or the ean Peninsula. But it is inconceivable that a hungry horde of desert dwellers, or an uncontrolled and homogeneous rabble from Arabia, could have maintained firm control of Egypt for a prolonged period. The nomads, however, who accompanied the Hyksos forces, may have been "the barbarians in the midst of them" who are referred to in the inscription of Queen Hatshepsut. No doubt the invaders were welcomed and assisted by those troublesome alien peoples, who, during the Twelfth Dynasty, had settled in Egypt and absorbed its civilization. But the army of occupation was ever regarded as a foreign element, and in all probability it was reinforced mainly from without. The country must have been well governed. Queen Hatshepsut admits as much, for she condemns the Hyksos chiefly on religious grounds; they destroyed the temples--perhaps some were simply allowed to fall into disrepair--and they ruled "not knowing Ra". Had the foreign kings followed the example of some of the most popular Pharaohs, they might have purchased the allegiance of the priests of the various cults; but their desire was to establish the worship of the Hittite Sutekh as a result, it may be inferred, of political influence exercised by the foreign power which received the tribute. One or two of the Hyksos kings affected a preference for Egyptian gods.
We must take at a discount the prejudiced Egyptian reference to the hated alien rulers. During the greater part of the Hyksos period peaceful conditions prevailed not only in Egypt but over a considerable area in Asia. The great trade routes were reopened, and commerce appears to have been in a flourishing condition. Agriculture, therefore, must have been fostered; a surplus yield of corn was required not only to pay tribute but also to offer in exchange for the commodities of other countries. We meet, in Manetho's King Ianias, a ruler who was evidently progressive and enterprising. He is identified with Ian, or Khian, whose name appears on Hyksos relics which have been found at Knossos, Crete, and Bagdad in Persia. His non-Egyptian title "ank adebu", which signifies "Embracer of Countries", suggests that he was a representative of a great power which controlled more than one conquered kingdom. Breasted, the American Egyptologist, translates Hyksos as "rulers of countries", which means practically the same thing, although other authorities show a preference for Manetho's rendering, "Shepherd Kings", or its equivalent "Princes of Desert Dwellers". It may be, of course, that "Hyksos" was a term of contempt for a people whom the proud Egyptians made scornful reference to as "the polluted" or "the impure". To this day Europeans are regarded in China as "foreign devils".
We regard the Hyksos period as "a dark age" mainly because of the absence of those records which the Egyptians were at pains to destroy. Perhaps we are also prone to be influenced by their denunciations of the foreigners. We have no justification for assuming, however, that progress was arrested for a prolonged period extending over about two centuries. The arts did not suffer decline, nor did the builders lose their skill. So thoroughly was the kingdom reorganized that the power of the feudal lords was completely shattered. Even the Twelfth-Dynasty kings were unable to accomplish as much. The Hyksos also introduced the domesticated horse into Egypt, but at what period we are unable to ascertain. Manetho makes no reference to it in his brief account of the invasion. If, however, there were charioteers in the foreign army when it swept over the land, they could not have come from Arabia, and Bedouins were not likely to be able to manufacture or repair chariots. Only a rich country could have obtained horses at this early period. They had newly arrived in western Asia and must have been scarce and difficult to obtain.
Whence, then, came the horse which shattered and built up the great empires? It was first tamed by the Aryans, and its place of origin is signified by its Assyrian name "the ass of the East". How it reached Western Asia and subsequently made its appearance in the Nile valley, is a matter of special interest to us in dealing with the Hyksos problems.
We must first glance, however at the conditions which prevailed in the immediate neighbourhood of Egypt prior to the invasion. During the "Golden Age" the Pharaohs were much concerned about maintaining a strongly defended north-eastern frontier. No Egyptian records survive to throw light on the relations between Egypt and Syria, but the large number of Twelfth-Dynasty ornaments, scarabs, and amulets, bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions, which have been excavated at Gezer and elsewhere, indicate that trade was brisk and continuous. A great change had meantime passed over Palestine. "Sometime about 2000 to 1800 B.C.", says Professor Macalister, the well-known Palestinian explorer, "we find a rather sudden advance in civilization to have taken place. This, like all the other forward steps of which recent excavation in the country has revealed traces, was due to foreign interference. The Semitic nations, Amorite, Hebrew, or Arab, never invented anything; they assimilated all the elements of their civilization from without."
During the Twelfth Dynasty, therefore, Palestine came under the sway of a people who had attained a high degree of culture. But they could not have been either Assyrian or Babylonian, and Egypt exercised no control beyond its frontier. The great extending Power at the time was the Hittite in the north. Little is known regarding the early movements of its conquering peoples, who formed small subject states which were controlled by the central government in Asia Minor. That they penetrated into southern Palestine as traders, and effected, at least, a social conquest, is certain, because they were known to Amenemhet I, although he never crossed the Delta frontier. The northern war god was established at an early period in Syria and in Mitanni, and Biblical references indicate that the Hittites were prominent land owners. They were probably the people who traded with Egypt at Gezer, and with whom the Twelfth-Dynasty Pharaohs arrived at some understanding. It is unlikely that the influential foreign princesses who were worthy to be introduced into the royal harem were the daughters of rough desert dwellers. The Dashur jewellery suggests that the ladies were of refined tastes and accustomed to luxurious living.
We have no means of ascertaining why Senusert III, the son of one of the alien wives, invaded Syria and fought a battle at Gezer. It may be that the Hittites had grown restless and aggressive and it is also possible that he co-operated with them to expel a common enemy--perhaps Semites from Arabia.
Some time prior to the Hyksos invasion the Hittites raided Babylon and overthrew the Hammurabi Dynasty. But they were unable to enjoy for long the fruits of conquest. An army of Kassites pressed down from the mountains of Elam and occupied northern Babylonia, apparently driving the Hittites before them. The Kassites are a people of uncertain origin, but associated with them were bands of Aryans on horseback and in chariots. This is the first appearance in history of the Indo-European people.
A westward pressure of tribes followed. The Kassites and Aryans probably waged war against the Hittites for a period, and the Hyksos invasion of Egypt may have been an indirect result of the migrations from the Iranian plateau and the conquest of Babylonia. At any rate it is certain that the Aryans continued to advance, for, prior to the close of the Hyksos period, they had penetrated Asia Minor and reached the Syrian coastland. Whether or not they entered Egypt we have no means of knowing. All foreigners were Hyksos to the Egyptians at this time, as all northern barbarians were Celts to the Greeks at a later period. Some change occurred, however, for there was a second Hyksos Dynasty. What we know for certain is that a military aristocracy appeared in Mitanni, where Tushratta, who had an Aryan name, subsequently paid tribute to Egypt in the time of Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. He is believed to have been educated in the land of the Pharaohs, and his ancestors must have been the expellers from Mesopotamia of the Hittite rulers; the Mitanni rulers were for a period overlords of Assyria. In addition to the Hittite Sutekh-Teshub, the Mitanni Pantheon then included Indra, Mithra, and Varuna, the well-known Iranian gods. These had been introduced into the Punjab by an earlier Aryan "wave" which swept towards India about the beginning of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty.
It may also be noted here that when the Egyptians expelled the weakened Hyksos army of occupation they possessed horses and chariots. They afterwards pressed into Syria, but the danger of subsequent invasion was not secured until Thutmose III overcame the Mitanni Power, which apparently was not unconnected with the later "Hyksos" overlordship of Egypt.
During the Hyksos period the children of Israel appear to have settled in Egypt.
