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BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED 



THE DAWN OF CONSCIENCE 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION AND 
THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT 

A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

A HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 




THE COLONNADED HALL OF THE TEMPLE OF ESNEH. 

The temple is of the Graco-Roraan age, but this colonnade is a fine example of the later rich and ornate 

which owe their origin to the earlier architects of the Saitic acre 



plant-columns. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE 
PERSIAN CONQUEST 



BY 

JAMES HENRY BREASTED, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY AND ORIENTAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY Of 

CHICAGO; DIRECTOR OF HASKELL ORIENTAL MUSEUM; CORRESPONDING 

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF BERLIN 



WITH TWO HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 



SECOND EDITION, FULLY REVISED 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



COPYRIGHT 1909 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS; RENEWAL-COPYRIGHT 1937 IMOGEN BREASTED 
1 3 S 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 V/C 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 

ISBN 0-684-14510-3 
Printed in the United States of America 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-24108 



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REFERENCE 



TO 



MY MOTHER 



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PREFACE 

THE ever increasing number of those who visit the 
Nile Valley with every recurring winter should alone 
form, it would seem, a sufficiently numerous public to 
call for the production of a modern history of Egypt. 
Besides these fortunate travellers, however, there is 
another growing circle of those who are beginning to 
realize the significance of the early East in the history 
of man. As the Nile poured its life-giving waters into 
the broad bosom of the Mediterranean, so from the 
civilization of the wonderful people who so early emerged 
from barbarism on the Nile shores, there emanated and 
found their way to southern Europe rich and diversified 
influences of culture to which we of the western world 
are still indebted. Had the Euphrates flowed into the 
Mediterranean likewise, our debt to Babylon would have 
been correspondingly as great as that which we owe the 
Nile Valley. It is to Egypt that we must look as the 
dominant power in the Mediterranean basin, whether 
by force of arms or by sheer weight of superior civiliza- 
tion throughout the earliest career of man in southern 
Europe, and for long after the archaic age had been 
superseded by higher culture. To us who are in civiliza- 
tion the children of early Europe, it is of vital interest 
to raise the curtain and peer beyond into the ages which 
bequeathed our forefathers so precious a legacy. Finally, 



viii PREFACE 

there is a third and possibly the most numerous class 
of those who desire an acquaintance with the history of 
Egypt, viz., the students of the Old Testament. All of 
these readers have been remembered in the composition 
of this book. 

The plan adopted in the production of this history 
is one which will in some measure also condition its 
use. The sources from which our knowledge of the early 
career of the Nile Valley peoples is drawn are of the 
meagerest extent, and most inadequate in character. 
They will be found further discussed herein (pp. 23 f.), 
and in the author's Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, 
pp. 3-22. As used at the present day, in the historical 
workshop of the scholar, they are accessible chiefly in 
published form. These publications were in the vast 
majority of cases edited before the attainment of such 
epigraphic accuracy and care as are now deemed in- 
dispensable in the production of such work. 1 To copy 
an inscription of any kind with accuracy is not easy. 
So close and fine an observer of material documents as 
Ruskin could copy a short Latin inscription with sur- 
prising inaccuracy. In his incomparable Mornings in 
Florence he reproduces the brief inscription on the marble 
slab covering the tomb which he so admired in the 
church of Santa Croce; and in his copy of these eight 
short lines, which I compared with the original, he mis- 
spells ons word, and omits two entire words ("et magister"} 
of the medieval Latin. This experience of the great 
art critic is not infrequently that of the schooled and 
careful paleographer as well. The best known of the 

1 The remainder of this paragraph is taken from the author's Ancient 
Records of Egypt, Vol. I, 27-8. 



ix 



Politarch inscriptions appeared in eight different publica- 
tions, each of which diverges in some more or less im- 
portant respect fiom all the rest, before a correct copy 
was obtained. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on the 
bronze crab from the base of the New York Obelisk 
were long incorrectly read, and the mistake in the date 
led Mommsen to a false theory of the early Roman 
prefects of Egypt. In the early days of Egyptology, 
when a reading knowledge of hieroglyphic was still 
necessarily elementary, it required a copyist of ex- 
ceptional ability to produce a copy upon which much 
reliance can be placed at the present day. Had the 
science of Egyptology rapidly outgrown this early in- 
sufficiency, all would now be well; but such methods 
have continued down to the present day, and although 
many exhaustively accurate publications of hieroglyphic 
documents now appear with every year, it is neverthe- 
less true that the large majority of standard Egyptian 
documents accessible in publications exhibit a degree 
of incompleteness and inaccuracy not, in the author's 
judgment, to be found in any other branch of epigraphic 
science. 

Under these circumstances the author's first obliga- 
tion has been to go behind the publications to the original 
monument itself in every possible instance. This task 
has consumed years and demanded protracted sojourn 
among the great collections of Europe. In this work 
a related enterprise has been of the greatest assistance. 
A mission to the museums of Europe to collect their 
Egyptian monuments for a Commission of the four 
Royal Academies of Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Goettingen, 
and Munich) , in order to make these documents available 



t PREFACE 

for a great Egyptian Dictionary endowed by the German 
Emperor, enabled the author to copy from the originals 
practically all the historical monuments of Egypt in 
Europe. For those still in Egypt, the author has been 
able to employ his own copies of many, especially at 
Thebes and Amarna, where he copied all the historical 
inscriptions in the tombs there; and in the museum at 
Gizeh (now Cairo). Of monuments in Egypt not in- 
cluded in the author's copies, squeezes were in most 
instances found in the enormous collection made by 
Lepsius and now in the Berlin Museum. For others the 
author was given access to the extensive collations 
made for the Dictionary above referred to; now and 
then a colleague furnished the necessary collation; and 
where all other sources failed, I was able in all important 
cases to secure large-scale photographs of the originals. 
The final remainder of monuments for which the author 
was dependent upon the publications alone is very small, 
and in most cases the publication was one made on 
modern methods, and almost as good as the original 
itself. In general, therefore, it may be fairly claimed 
that this account of the historical career of the Egyptians 
rests upon the surviving original records themselves. 

The immense progress in our knowledge of the 
language achieved during the last twenty years cannot 
be said to have been applied as yet to the comprehensive 
study of the historical documents as a whole. Hence, 
in order to utilize historically the materials thus collected, 
it was essential, in the light of our improved philological 
equipment, to begin the study of the documents ab ovo, 
irrespective of earlier studies and results, and it was in 
almost all cases only after such unbiased study that 



PREFACE xl 

any older translation or account of a document was 
consulted. The combined results of the revised copies 
from the originals and the new grammatical study of 
the documents have been embodied in a series of trans- 
lations of the historical documents, arranged in chrono- 
logical order, beginning with the earliest surviving 
records and continuing to the final loss of Egyptian 
national independence at the conquest by the Persians 
in 525 B.C. Supplied with historical introductions and 
explanatory notes, the original documents, otherwise 
scattered through hundreds on hundreds of inaccessible 
publications, are thus accessible in English to the reader 
who desires to know upon what documentary evidence a 
particular assertion of fact rests. The numerals I, II, 
III, and IV in the foot-notes in this history refer to the 
volumes of these translations, 1 and the Arabic numerals 
following the four Romans designate the numbered 
paragraphs into which the translations are divided, 
unless the "p.," indicating "page," is inserted between. 
It is hoped that, by this means of keeping all technical 
discussion of sources in the four volumes of translated 
documents, the author has succeeded in unburdening 
this history of the workshop debris, which would other- 
wise often encumber it; while at the same time the 
advantage of close contact with the sources for every 
fact adduced is not sacrificed. For the average reader, a 
running fire of foot-note references to technical and 
out-of-the-way publications, known only to the inner 

1 See Ancient Records of Egypt: The Historical Documents, by James 
Henry Breasted, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1905. Volume I, 
The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties. Volume II, The Eighteenth Dynasty. 
Volume III, The Nineteenth Dynasty. Volume IV, The Twentieth to the 
Twenty-sixth Dynasties. Volume V, Indices 



xi: PEEFACE 

circle of initiates in the science of Egyptology, would 
mean absolutely nothing. On the other hand, the other 
extreme, of divorcing the statements in this book from 
all connection with the sources from which they are 
drawn, is, in the author's opinion, almost as bad; even 
though but a vanishing proportion of its readers ever 
should turn to verify the references adduced. To that 
small number such references are invaluable, for the 
author recalls with what difficulty in his student days he 
was able to trace the currently accepted facts of the sci- 
ence to the original sources from which they had come. 
If these studies shall be considered to have made any 
contribution to modern knoAvledge in this field, it will be 
in the reexamination of the originals, the collection and 
focussing of all related materials with each document, 
and the assembly and translation of these materials 
complete in convenient form for reference. Any new 
results in this volume are due to this process and method. 
On the other hand, in the immense field of material 
documents as contrasted with written documents, this 
work has made no attempt at a reexamination of the vast 
sources available. Egyptian archeology is in its infancy, 
and but few of the fundamental studies and researches 
already completed in classical archeology have been 
made in this province. Now and again the written 
documents have thrown new and unexpected light in 
this direction which I have not failed to utilize. The 
man with the enviable combination of archeological 
and philological capacity would find a rich field to 
cultivate, in working for the production of an Egypto- 
logical Overbeck. Again in the realm of religion the 
mere quantity alone of the materials made any attempt 



PREFACE xiii 

at an exhaustive reexamination of the documents im- 
possible. The study of Egyptian religion has but begun, 
and decades will pass before even the preliminary special 
studies shall have been completed, which shall enable 
the student to go forward for a general survey and 
symmetrical reconstruction of the phenomena in one 
comprehensive presentation, which shall be in some 
measure final . Only the Amarna period and the solar 
faith have been made the object of the author's special 
attention. All the documents on the unparalleled religious 
revolution of Ikhnaton, and all the known hymns to the 
Sun, throughout Egyptian histor}^ were collected and 
examined in the case of the former from the originals. 
For Egyptian religion as a whole, however, the author 
would acknowledge deep obligation to Erman's admirable 
Handbuch, an obligation often indicated in the foot-notes, 
and elsewhere frequently evident to the technical reader. 
Although over twenty years old, Erman's Aegypten is 
still the standard vade mecum on Egyptian life. It has 
often been of invaluable service in the production of this 
work. To Eduard Meyer's exhaustive and final Chron- 
ologic I am, of course, indebted, especially in the earlier 
period. I would also gratefully acknowledge the clarify- 
ing influence of his incisive treatment of the Saitic age 
in his Geschichte des alien Aegyptens. To the colossal 
labors of Maspero and Wiedemann I have been indebted, 
especially in the bibliography, as indicated in the Preface 
to my Ancient Records, but I would gratefully indicate 
the obligation here also. Like all who work in Egyp- 
tian history, I also owe a debt to Winckler's invaluable 
version of the Amarna Letters. 

For the illustrative materials, besides the published 



xiv PREFACE 

plates, frequently severally indicated, and his own 
photographs, the author would express his thanks to 
many friends and colleagues to whom he is indebted for 
photographs, drawings, or restorations. He is particu- 
larly indebted to his friend Schaefer, of Berlin; also to 
Borchardt, Steindorff, Petrie, Zahn, Messerschmidt, 
Rev. W. MacGregor of Tamworth, and Dr. Caroline 
Ransom, for the unqualified use of photographs and 
reconstructions. To Messrs. Underwood & Underwood 
for permission to use a number of their superb stereo- 
graphs of Egyptian monuments in situ, I desire to express 
particular obligation. At the same time, may I add for 
the benefit of those to whom a journey through the Nile 
Valley is an impossibility, that the system of travel 
represented in these beautiful stereographs makes possible 
to every one a voyage up the Nile which falls little short 
of the actual experience itself. Finally, I am not a little 
indebted to the great kindness of Mr. John Ward, of 
Lenoxvale, Belfast, for a magnificent series of photographs 
made specially for him, of recent excavations at Karnak, 
from which I was privileged to select a number, like the 
avenue of rams (Fig. 129). 

To Herr Karl Baedeker, of Leipzig. I owe the privilege 
of inserting two maps (Nos. 6 and 11) from his un- 
equalled guide-book of Egypt, deservedly the inseparable 
companion of all tourists on the Nile. To the authorities 
of the European museums at Berlin, London (British 
Museum, University College, Petrie Collections), Paris 
(Louvre, Bibliotheque Nationale, Musee Guimet), Vienna 
(Hof museum), Leyden, Munich, Rome (Vatican and 
Capitoline), Florence, Bologna, Naples, Turin, Pisa, 
Geneva, Lyons, Liverpool, and some others, I would here 



PREFACE xv 

express deep appreciation of the courtesies and privileges 
uniformly extended to me during the prosecution of this 
work among them. I am indebted to Mr. E. S. Padan 
and Miss Imogen Hart for assistance in proofreading. 
My wife has constantly rendered me indispensable cleri- 
cal aid, and never-failing assistance in reading of proof. 
It is a great pleasure here also gratefully to recognize 
the cooperation and unfailing readiness of the publishers 
to do all in their power to make the typographical and 
illustrative side of the work all that it should be. Of 
this the appearance of the finished volume is ample 
evidence. 

JAMES HENRY BREASTED. 
WILLIAMS BAY, WISCONSIN, 
September 1, 1905. 



The Branch Libraries 

The New York 
Public Library | 

ASTOft. LENOX AMD TILOEN FOUNDATIONS 

| 

DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK 

FROM THE LIBRARY. CONTENTS 



BOOK ONE 



INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE LAND 3 

II. PRELIMINARY SURVEY, CHRONOLOGY AND DOCU- 
MENTARY SOURCES 13 

III. EARLIEST EGYPT 25 

BOOK TWO 

THE OLD KINGDOM 

TV. EARLY RELIGION 53 

V. THE OLD KINGDOM: GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY, 

INDUSTRY AND ART 74 

VI. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 11] 

VII. THE SIXTH DYNASTY: THE DECLINE OF THE OLD 

KINGDOM 131 

BOOK THREE 

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM : THE FEUDAL AGE 

VIII. THE DECLINE OF THE NORTH AND THE RISE OF 

THEBES ... 147 

IX. THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, THE FEUDAL AGE: STATE, 

SOCIETY AND RELIGION 157 

X. THE TWELFTH DYNASTY . . . 177 



xviii CONTENTS 



BOOK FOUR 
THE HYKSOS: THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. THE FALL OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM : THE HYKSOS . 211 

XII. THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS AND THE TRIUMPH 

OF TKEBES 223 



BOOK FIVE 

THE EMPIRE : FIRST PERIOD 

XIII. THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION . . 233 

XIV. THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM: THE RISE 

OF THE EMPIRE 253 

XV. THE FEUD OF THE THUTMOSIDS AND THE REIGN 

OF HATSHEPSUT 266 

XVI. THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE EMPIRE: THUTMOSE 

III 284 

XVII. THE EMPIRE . 322 

XVIII. THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF IKHNATON . . 355 

XIX. THE FALL OF IKHNATON AND THE DISSOLUTION OF 

THE EMPIRE 379 

BOOK SIX 

THE EMPIRE : SECOND PERIOD 

XX. THE TRIUMPH OF AMON AND THE REORGANIZATION 

OF THE EMPIRE . 399 

XXI. THE WARS OF RAMSES II 423 

XXII. THE EMPIRE OF RAMSES II 442 

XXIII. THE FINAL DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE: MERNEPTAH 

AND RAMSES III 464 



CONTENTS xix 



BOOK SEVEN 

THE DECADENCE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV. THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE 505 

XXV. PRIESTS AND MERCENARIES: THE SUPREMACY OF 

THE LIBYANS 522 

XXVI. THE ETHIOPIAN SUPREMACY AND THE TRIUMPH 

OF ASSYRIA . 537 



BOOK EIGHT 

THE RESTORATION AND THE END 

XXVII. THE RESTORATION 565 

XXVIII. THE FINAL STRUGGLES: BABYLON AND PERSIA . 582 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF KINGS .... 597 
INDEX . ... 603 



EXPLANATION OF FOOT-NOTES AND ABBREVIATIONS 

The Roman numerals I, II, III, IV followed by Arabics refer to 
the volumes and paragraphs of the author's Ancient Records of 
Egypt. See Preface, p. xi. 

BT = Brugsch, Thesaurus. 

Rec. = Recueil de Travaux, edited by Maspero. 

RIH = de Rouge, Inscriptions hieroylyphiqnes. 

All other abbreviations are sufficiently full to be intelligible 
without further explanation. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE COLONNADED HALL OF THE TEMPLE OF ESNEH . Frontispiece 

FIG. PAGE 

1. ONE OF THE CHANNELS OF THE FIRST CATARACT . . 6 

2. THF INUNDATION SEEN FROM THE ROAD TO THE PYRAMIDS 

OF GIZEH 6 

3. LOOKING ACROSS THE NILE TO THE WESTERN CLIFFS 

NEAR THEBES 10 

4. THE HUTS AND PALM GROVES OF KARNAK, THEBES . 10 

5. THE NILE VALLEY, VIEWED ACROSS THE MODERN TOWN 

OF EDFTJ 14 

6. A TRIPLE SHADUF 18 

7. THE CLIFFS OF THE NILE CANON ..... 18 

8. THE EARLIEST KNOWN PAINTING 27 

9. FLINT KNIFE OF THE PREDYNASTIC AGE .... 29 

10. PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH INCISED DECORATION . 30 

11. PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH PAINTED DESIGNS OF BOATS, 

ANIMALS, MEN AND WOMEN 30 

12. A PREDYNASTIC GRAVE 34 

13. GOLD BAR BEARING MENES' NAME 34 

14. ALABASTER VESSELS OF THE FIRST DYNASTY. . . 34 

15. CHAIR LEGS, CARVED IVORY, EARLY DYNASTIES . . 34 

16. COPPER VESSELS, FIRST DYNASTY 34 

17. FOUR BRACELETS ON LADY'S ARM, FIRST DYNASTY . 36 

18. THE KING BREAKS GROUND FOR A NEW CANAL, FIRST 

DYNASTY 36 



xxii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG. PAUE 

19. MAGNIFICENT CARVED CEREMONIAL PALETTE OF SLATE 36 

20. PORTRAIT HEAD OF KING KHASEKHEM: FROM Two 

DIFFERENT ANGLES 38 

21. STATUE OF KING KHASEKHEM: HEAD IN FIG. 20 . .38 

22. BRICK-LINED WOODEN FLOORED TOMB CHAMBER OF 

KING ENEZIB 38 

23. BRICK TOMB OF KING USEPHAIS 42 

24. SEALED JARS OF FOOD AND DRINK 42 

25. EARLIEST STONE STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD . . 42 

26. IVORY TABLET OF KING USEPHAIS 42 

27. EBONY TABLET OF MENES, FIRST DYNASTY, ABYDOS, 

3400 B.C 43 

28. KING SEMERKHET (FIRST DYNASTY) SMITES THE 

BEDUIN OF SINAI 43 

29. THE PALERMO STONE 46 

30. THE CELESTIAL Cow 55 

31. THE GODDESS OF THE HEAVENS 55 

32. THE CELESTIAL BARQUE OF THE SuN-Goo ... 57 

33. RESTORATION OF A GROUP OF OLD KINGDOM " MAST- 
ABAS," OR MASONRY TOMBS 57 

34. GROUND PLAN OF A "MASTABA" OR MASONRY TOMB . 68 

35. RESTORATION OF THE PYRAMIDS OF ABUSIR AND CON- 
NECTED BUILDINGS 72 

36. COLLECTION OF TAXES BY TREASURY OFFICIALS . . 79 

37. VILLA AND GARDEN OF AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE 

OLD KINGDOM 90 

38. A NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM HUNTING WILD FOWL 
WITH THE THROW-STICK FROM A SKIFF OF REEDC IN 

THE PAPYRUS MARSHES 91 

39. AGRICULTURE IN THE OLD KINGDOM 92 



ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii 

FIG. PAGE 

40. A HERD IN THE OLD KINGDOM, FORDING A CANAL . 93 
41. METALWORKERS' WORKSHOP IN THE OLD KINGDOM . 94 
42. SHIPBUILDING IN THE OLD KINGDOM . . 95 

43. WORKMEN DRILLING OUT STONE VESSELS, OLD KING- 
DOM 96 

44. PAPYRUS HARVEST IN THE OLD KINGDOM . . .97 

45. Two COLUMNS FROM AN OLD KINGDOM LEGAL DOCU- 
MENT . . . 98 

46. SCENES AT AN OLD KINGDOM MARKET .... 98 

47. THIRD DYNASTY ARCH 100 

48. DIORITE STATUE OF KHEPHREN 100 

49. LIMESTONE STATUE OF RANOFER 100 

50. LIMESTONE STATUE OF HEMSET 102 

51. HEAD OF THE WOODEN STATUE OF THE SHEKH EL- 

BELED 102 

52. LIMESTONE STATUE OF AN OLD KINGDOM SCRIBE . 102 

53. LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF PEPI I, WITH FIGURE OF His SON; 

BOTH OF BEATEN COPPER 104 

54. HEAD OF THE COPPER STATUE OF PEPI I, SHOWING 

EYES OF INLAID ROCK CRYSTAL 104 

55. PAINTING OF GEESE FROM AN OLD KINGDOM TOMB 

AT MEDUM 104 

56. RELIEFS FROM THE INTERIOR OF AN OLD KINGDOM 

MASTABA CHAPEL, DEPICTING HERDS AND FLOCKS. 106 

57. DECORATIVE HEAD OF LION, IN GRANITE . . . 106 

58. GOLDEN HAWK OF HIERACONPOLIS 106 

59. WOODEN PANEL OF HESIRE 106 

60. FIFTH DYNASTY COLUMNS. CLUSTER OF PAPYRUS STEMS 

AND PALM CAPITAL . 106 



xxiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG. PAGE 

61. ELEVATION OF PART OF THE COLONNADE SURROUNDING 

THE COURT OF THE PYRAMID TEMPLE OF NUSERRE, 
FIFTH DYNASTY ........ 108 

62. BRICK MASTABA OF ZOSER'S REIGN AT BET KHALLAF . 110 

63. THE "TERRACED PYRAMID" OF ZOSER AT SAKKARA . 11C, 

64. PYRAMID ATTRIBUTED TO SNEFRU AT MEDUM . . .110 

65. ROCK INSCRIPTIONS OF AMENEMHET III, IN WADI 

MAGHARA, SINAI, INCLUDING SNEFRU AMONG THE 
LOCAL GODS . . ....... 114 

66. CASING BLOCKS AT THE BASE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

JOINTS OTHERWISE UNDISCERNABLE INDICATED BY 
CHARCOAL LINES ........ 114 

67. THE GREAT PYRAMID OF KHUFU (CHEOPS) AT GIZEH . 116 

68. THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH ....... 118 

69. A GRANITE HALL IN THE GREAT MONUMENTAL GATE 

OF KHAFRE ......... 118 

70. THE GREAT SPHINX OF GIZEH ...... 122 

71. RESTORATION OF THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT 

ABUSIR .......... 



72. RELIEF SCENES FROM THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT 

ABUSIR .......... 125 

73. RUINED PYRAMID OF UNIS (FIFTH DYNASTY) AT SAK- 

KARA ........... 128 

74. ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE, THE HOME OF THE LORDS OF 

THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER ...... 128 

75. STATUE OF AN OLD EMPIRE DWARF ..... 140 

76. TOMB OF HARKHUF AT ASSUAN ..... 142 

77. HEAD OF KING MERNERE ....... 142 

78. WESTERN CLIFFS OF SIUT ....... 142 

79. OFFICES OF THE NOMARCH KNUMHOTEP AT BENIHASAN 15 P 



ILLUSTRATIONS xsv 

FIG. PAGE 

80. A COLOSSUS OF ALABASTER ABOUT TWENTY-TWO FEET 
HIGH TRANSPORTED ON A SLEDGE BY ONE HUNDRED 
AND SEVENTY-TWO MEN IN FOUR DOUBLE LINES AT 
THE ROPES . 159 

81. A MIDDLE KINGDOM COFFIN AND MORTUARY FURNITURE 170 
82. MORTUARY BOAT OF SESOSTRIS III 170 

83. RESTORATION OF THE FORTRESS OF SEMNEH AND KUM- 

MEH 185 

84. THE NUBIAN NILE FROM THE RUINED MOSLEM STRONG- 
HOLD ON THE HEIGHTS OF IBRIM .... 186 

85. RUINS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MINING SETTLEMENT AT 

SARBUT EL-KHADEM, SINAI 186 

86. VIEW ACROSS THE BIRKET EL-KURUN IN THE NORTH- 
WESTERN FAYUM 192 

87. OBELISK OF SESOSTRIS I AT HELIOPOLIS . . . 192 
88. WOODEN STATUE OF PRINCE EWIBRE .... 192 

89. HEAD OF AMENEMHET III, FROM A SPHINX FOUND AT 

TANIS .196 

90. BUST OF A STATUE OF AMENEMHET III ... 196 
91. BRICK PYRAMID OF SESOSTRIS II, AT ILLAHUN . . 196 

92. SECTION OF THE BURIAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF 

HAWARA . . 199 

93. LOOKING DOWN THE Axis OF THE TEMPLE AT TANIS . 202 

94. CAPSTONE OF THE PYRAMID OF AMENEMHET III, AT 

DASHUR . 202 

95. THREE OF THE TEN STATUES OF AMENEMHET I, FOUND 

AT His PYRAMID OF LISHT . .... 202 

96. THE HARPER SINGING TO THE BANQUETERS . . . 208 

97. DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS FOUND IN 

HER TOMB AT DASHUR 208 

98. DIADEM OF A TWELFTH DYNASTY PRINCESS, FOUND us 

HER TOMB AT DASHUR 208 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG. PAGE 

9 9. EXCAVATION OF STATUE OP JSTEFERKHERE-SEBEKHO- 

TEP, ON ISLAND OF ARKO, ABOVE THIRD CATARACT . 216 

100. BODY OF ONE OF THE SEKENENRES, SHOWING WOUND IN 

SKULL 216 

101. FRAGMENT OF A SITTING COLOSSUS OF KHIAN, IN GRAN- 
ITE 216 

102. WALLED CITY OF EL KAB, SEEN THROUGH A TOMB DOOR 

IN THE EASTERN CLIFFS FLANKING THE TOWN . 226 

103. BRONZE WEAPONS OF AHMOSE I 226 

104. A BODY OF SPEARMEN OF THE EMPIRE .... 234 

105. A CHARIOT OF THE EMPIRE 234 

106. "USHEBTI" OR RESPONDENT STATUETTES . . . 250 

107. HEART SCARAB OF THE u FIRST OF THE SACRED WOMEN 

OF AMON, ISIMKHEB" 250 

108. PART OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS' TOMBS, THEBES . 250 
109. GROUND PLAN OF THE TOMB OF SETI I ... 251 
110. ENTRANCE GALLERY OF THE TOMB OF RAMSES V, THEBES 260 

111. SITTING STATUE OF SENMUT, THE FAVOURITE OF HAT- 

SHEPSUT 260 

112. SCENES FROM THE GREAT SERIES OF RELIEFS IN THE DER 

EL BAHRI TEMPLE AT THEBES 275 

113. NORTHERN COLONNADES ON THE MIDDLE TERRACE OF 
HATSHEPSUT'S TERRACED TEMPLE OF DER EL BAHRI, 
THEBES 280 

114. OBELISKS OF HATSHEPSUT AT KARNAK .... 280 
115. VIEW ACROSS THE AMON-OASIS, OR SIWA . < . 294 

116. OBELISK OF THUTMOSE III 294 

117. LISTS OF TOWNS IN ASIA TAKEN BY THUTMOSE III . 294 

118. A PHARAOH OF THE EMPIRE RECEIVING ASIATIC ENVOYS 

BEARING TRIBUTE 300 



ILLUSTKATIONS xxvii 

FIG. PAGE 

119. ASIATIC PRISONERS IN EGYPT UNDER THE EMPIRE . 308 

120. HEAD OF THUTMOSE III 326 

121. HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, SON OF THUTMOSE III . . 326 
122. HEAD OF THUTMOSE IV, SON OF AMENHOTEP II . 326 

123. AMARNA LETTER, No. 296 326 

124. COSTUMES OF THE EMPIRE 340 

125. THE PERIPTERAL CELLA-TEMPLE 341 

126. PERSPECTIVE AND SECTION OF A TYPICAL PYLON TEMPLE 

OF THE EMPIRE 342 

127. FRAGMENT OF CARVED STONE VASE FOUND IN CRETE . 342 

128. AMENHOTEP Ill's COURT OF CLUSTERED PAPYRUS BUD 

COLUMNS 342 

129. AVENUE OF RAM-SPHINXES BEFORE THE GREAT KARNAK 

TEMPLE 346 

130. COLUMNS OF THE NAVE OF AMENHOTEP Ill's UNFIN- 
ISHED HALL 350 

131. COLOSSAL GRITSTONE STATUES OF AMENHOTEP III (MEM- 

NON COLOSSI) 354 

132. PART OF A FUNERAL PROCESSION OF A HIGH PRIEST OF 

MEMPHIS . 358 

133. LION FROM AMENHOTEP Ill's TEMPLE AT SOLEB . . 362 

134. A STOOL OF THE EMPIRE 362 

135. FRONT OF THE STATE CHARIOT OF THUTMOSE IV . . 362 

136. ROYAL PORTRAIT OF THE EMPIRE 366 

137. PORTRAIT OF AMENHOTEP, SON OF HAPI . . . 366 

138. DUCKS SWIMMING AMONG LOTUS FLOWERS . . 366 

139. IKHNATON AND His QUEEN DECORATE THE PRIEST EYE 

AND His WIFE 368 

140. GREAT BOUNDARY STELA OF AMARNA . . . 370 

141. IKHNATON RECEIVING FLOWERS FROM HIS QUEEN . 370 



xxviii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG. PAQE 

142. LIMESTONE TORSO OF IKHNATON'S DAUGHTER . . 376 

143. HEAD OF IKHNATON 376 

144. MARSH LIFE 376 

145. HITTITE SOLDIER ARMED WITH AN AXE . . 382 

146. HITTITE KING BEARING SPEAR AND SCEPTER . . 382 
147. EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL RECEIVING SEMITIC IMMIGRANTS . 382 

148. HARMHAB AS AN OFFICIAL REWARDED WITH GOLD BY 

THE KING 386 

149. SOUTHERN PYLONS OF HARMHAB AT KARNAK . . 390 
150. HARMHAB AS A PEASANT IN THE HEREAFTER . . 390 

151. BUST OF KHONSU 390 

152. BATTLE RELIEFS OF SETI I AT KARNAK . . . 396 
153. SETI I OFFERING AN IMAGE OF TRUTH TO Osmis . . 402 
154. SETI I AS A YOUTH OFFERING THE IMAGE OF TRUTH . 406 

155. CATTLE INSPECTION . 412 

156. SWAMP HUNTING IN A REED BOAT 418 

157. SECTION OF ONE OF SETI I's RELIEFS AT KARNAK . 419 

158. HEAD OF SETI I 424 

159. STEL.E OF RAMSES II AND ESARHADDON IN PHOENICIA . 424 
160. SCENE FROM THE RELIEFS OF THE BATTLE OF KADESH . 434 
161. FRAGMENTS OF THOUSAND-TON COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II 442 
162. STORE CHAMBERS AT PITHOM 442 

163. HEAVY-ARMED SHERDEN OF RAMSES II's MERCENARY 

BODYGUARD 448 

164. RESTORATION OF THE GREAT HALL AT KARNAK . . 448 
165. NAVE OF THE GREAT HALL OF KARNAK . . . 448 
166. THE RAMESSEUM, MORTUARY TEMPLE OF RAMSES II . 450 
167. THE CLIFF TEMPLE OF ABU SIMBEL 450 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



XXIX 



no. PACE 

168. BLACK GRANITE STATUE OF RAMSES II . . . . 450 

169. BATTLE SCENE FROM THE GREAT SERIES OF RELIEFS OF 

RAMSES II ON THE WALLS OF THE RAMESSEUM . . 452 

170. HEAD OF RAMSES II 464 

171. VICTORIOUS HYMN OF MERNEPTAH 464 

172. PELESET OR PHILISTINE PRISONERS OF RAMSES III . 464 

173. NAVAL VICTORY OF RAMSES III OVER NORTHERN MEDI- 
TERRANEAN PEOPLES 480 

174. RAMSES Ill's MEDINET HABU TEMPLE .... 492 
175. RAMSES Ill's MEDINET HABU TEMPLE .... 492 
176. RAMSES III HUNTING THE AViLD BULL .... 492 

177. THE HIGH PRIEST OF AMON AMENHOTEP DECORATED BY 

RAMSES IX 510 

178. SCRIBE'S NOTES ON COFFIN OF SETI I .... 510 

179. THE DER EL BAHRI HIDING-PLACE 510 

ISO. "THE FIELD OF ABRAM" 536 

181. SENJIRLI STELA OF ESARHADDON 536 

182. SERAPEUM STELA OF PSAMTIK I 536 

183. GENERAL VIEW OF KARNAK FROM THE SOUTH . . 560 

184. ALABASTER STATUE OF AMENARDIS, SISTER OF PIANKHI 576 

185. BRONZ IBEX FROM THE PROW OF A SHIP . . . 590 

186. PORTRAIT HEAD OF THE SAITE AGE .... 590 



MAPS 

M I AGE 

1. --!HE TOWN OF ILLAHUN, SHOWING THE CROWDED QUAR- 
TERS OF THE POOR 87 

2. THE FOURTH DYNASTY CEMETERY AT GIZEH . . . 122 

3. THE FAYUM ... 192 

4. THE CARMEL RIDGE, SHOWING MEGIDDO .... 286 
5. THE MODERN TELL-NEBI-MINDOH, ANCIENT KADESH . 300 
6. THEBES . . . .348 

7. THE ASIATIC EMPIRE OF EGYPT . .... 384 

8. THE VICINITY OF KADESH . 426 

9. THE BATTLE OF KADESH 428 

10. THE BATTLE OF KADESH 430 

11. PLAN OF THE KARNAK TEMPLES 444 

12. EGYPT AND THE ANCIENT WORLD 47C 

13. GENERAL MAP OF EGYPT AND NUBIA . At end of Vdumi 



BOOK I 



INTRODUCTION 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

CHAPTER I 
THE LAND 

THE roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in 
the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into 
power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern 
Mediterranean, and the adjacent regions on the east of it. 
Had the Euphrates finally found its way into the Mediter- 
ranean, toward which, indeed, it seems to have started, both 
the early civilizations, to which we refer, might then have 
been included in the Mediterranean basin. As it is, the scene 
of early oriental history does not fall entirely within that 
basin, but must be designated as the eastern Mediterranean 
region. It lies in the midst of the vast desert plateau, which, 
beginning at the Atlantic, extends eastward across the entire 
northern end of Africa, and continuing beyond the depres- 
sion of the Red Sea, passes northeastward, with some inter- 
ruptions, far into the heart of Asia. Approaching it, the 
one from the south and the other from the north, two great 
river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro- 
Euphrates valley ; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these 
two valleys that the career of man may be traced from 
the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than 
anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of 
the human race that the influences which emanated from 
their highly developed but differing cultures, can now be 
more and more clearly traced as we discern them converging 
upon the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern 

Europe. 

3 



4 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

The Nile, which created the valley home of the early 
Egyptians, rises three degrees south of the equator, and 
flowing into the Mediterranean at over thirty one and a half 
degrees north latitude, it attains a length of some four thou- 
sand miles, and vies with the greatest rivers of the world in 
length, if not in volume. In its upper course the river, 
emerging from the lakes of equatorial Africa, is known as the 
White Nile. Just south of north latitude sixteen at Khar- 
tum, about thirteen hundred and fifty miles from the sea, 
it receives from the east an affluent known as the Blue Nile, 
which is a considerable mountain torrent, rising in the lofty 
highlands of Abyssinia. One hundred and forty miles 
below the union of the two Niles the stream is joined by its 
only other tributary, the Atbara, which is a freshet not 
unlike the Blue Nile. It is at Khartum, or just below it, 
that the river enters the table land of Nubian sandstone, 
underlying the Great Sahara. Here it winds on its tortuous 
course between the desert hills (Fig. 84), where it returns 
upon itself, often flowing due south, until after it has finally 
pushed through to the north, its course describes a vast S. 

In six different places throughout this region the current 
has hitherto failed to erode a perfect channel through the 
stubborn stone, and these extended interruptions, where the 
rocks are piled in scattered and irregular masses in the 
stream, are known as the cataracts of the Nile; although 
there is no great and sudden fall such as that of our cataract 
at Niagara (Fig. 1). These rocks interfere with navigation 
most seriously in the region of the first, second and fourth 
cataracts ; otherwise the river is navigable almost throughout 
its entire course. At Elephantine it passes the granite bar- 
rier which there thrusts up its rough shoulder, forming the 
first cataract, and thence emerges upon an unobstructed 
course to the sea. 

It is the valley below the first cataract which constituted 
Egypt proper. The reason for the change which here gives 
the river a free course is the disappearance of the sandstone, 
sixty eight miles below the cataract, at Edfu, where the num- 



THE LAND 5 

mulitic limestone which forms the northern desert plateau, 
offers the stream an easier task in the erosion of its bed. It 
has thus produced a vast canon or trench (Figs. 3 and 7), 
cut across the eastern end of the Sahara to the northern sea. 
From cliff to cliff, the valley varies in width, from ten or 
twelve, to some thirty one miles. The floor of the canon is 
covered with black, alluvial deposits, through which the 
river winds northward. It cuts a deep channel through the 
alluvium, flowing with a speed of about three miles an hour ; 
in width it only twice attains a maximum of eleven hundred 
yards. On the west the Bahr Yusuf, a second, minor chan- 
nel some two hundred miles long, leaves the main stream 
near Siut and flows into the Fayum. In antiquity it flowed 
thence into a canal known as the ''North,'' which passed 
northward west of Memphis and reached the sea by the site 
of later Alexandria. 1 A little over a hundred miles from the 
sea the main stream enters the broad triangle, with apex 
at the south, which the Greeks so graphically called the 
" Delta. ' ; This is of course a bay of prehistoric ages, which 
has been gradually filled up by the river. The stream once 
divided at this point and reached the sea through seven 
mouths, but in modern times there are but two main 
branches, straggling through the Delta and piercing the 
coast-line on either side of the middle. The western branch 
is called the Kosetta mouth ; the eastern that of Damiette. 

The deposits which have formed the Delta, are very deep, 
and have slowly risen over the sites of the many ancient 
cities which once flourished there. The old swamps which 
must once have rendered the regions of the northern Delta 
a vast morass, have been gradually filled up, and the fringe 
of marshes pushed further out. They undoubtedly occupied 
in antiquity a much larger proportion of the Delta than they 
do now. In the valley above the depth of the soil varies 
from thirty three to thirty eight feet, and sometimes reaches 
a maximum of ten miles in width. The cultivable area thus 
formed, between the cataract and the sea, is less than ten 

1 IV, 224, 1. 8, note. 



6 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

thousand square miles in extent, being roughly equal to the 
area of the state of Maryland, or about ten per cent less than 
that of Belgium. The cliffs on either hand are usually but a 
few hundred feet in height, but here and there they rise into 
almost mountains of a thousand feet (Fig. 3). They are of 
course flanked by the deserts through which the Nile has 
cut its way. On the west the Libyan Desert or the Great 
Sahara rolls in illimitable, desolate hills of sand, gravel and 
rock, from six hundred and fifty to a thousand feet above 
the Nile. Its otherwise waterless expanse is broken only 
by an irregular line of oases, or watered depressions, roughly 
parallel with the river, and doubtless owing their springs 
and wells to infiltration of the Nile waters. The largest of 
these depressions is situated so close to the valley that the 
rock wall which once separated them has broken down, pro- 
ducing the fertile Fayum, watered by the Bahr Yusuf. 
Otherwise the western desert held no economic resources for 
the use of the early Nile-dwellers. The eastern or Arabian 
Desert is somewhat less inhospitable, and capable of yield- 
ing a scanty subsistence to wandering tribes of Ababdeh. 
A range of granite mountains parallel with the coast of the 
Red Sea contains gold-bearing quartz veins, and here and 
there other gold-producing mountains lie between the Nile 
and the Red Sea. Deposits of alabaster and extensive 
masses of various fine, hard igneous rocks led to the exploit- 
ation of quarries here also, while the Red Sea harbours 
could of course be reached only by traversing this desert, 
through which established routes thither were early traced. 
Further north similar mineral resources led to an acquaint- 
ance with the peninsula of Sinai and its desert regions, at 
a very remote date. 

The situation afforded by this narrow valley was one of 
unusual isolation ; on either hand vast desert wastes, on the 
north the harbourless coast-line of the Delta, and on the south 
the rocky barriers of successive cataracts, preventing fusion 
with the peoples of inner Africa. It was chiefly at the two 
northern corners of the Delta, that outside influences and 




FIG. 1. ONE OF THE CHANNELS OF THE FIRST CATARACT. 
Looking northward from the Island of Philae ; ruins on Philas in the foreground. 




FIG. 2. THE INUNDATION SEEN FROM THE ROAD TO THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 

The road is on the right; in the distance the desert plateau on which the pyramids stand. Before them the villag* 

of K-fr 



THE LAND 7 

foreign elements, which were always sifting into the Nile 
valley, gained access to the country. Through the eastern 
corner it was the prehistoric Semitic population of neigh- 
bouring Asia, who forced their way in across the dangerous 
intervening deserts; while the Libyan races, of possibly 
European origin, found entrance at the western corner. The 
products of the south also, in spite of the cataracts, filtered 
in ever increasing volume into the regions of the lower river 
and the lower end of the first cataract became a trading 
post, ever after known as "Suan"' (Assuan) or "market," 
where the negro traders of the south met those of Egypt. 
The upper Nile thus gradually became a regular avenue of 
commerce with the Sudan. The natural boundaries of 
Egypt, however, always presented sufficiently effective bar- 
riers to would-be invaders, to enable the natives slowly to 
assimilate the new comers, without being displaced. 

It will be evident that the remarkable shape of the country 
must powerfully influence its political development. Except 
in the Delta it was but a narrow line, some seven hundred 
and fifty miles long. Straggling its slender length along the 
river, and sprawling out into the Delta, it totally lacked the 
compactness necessary to stable political organization. A 
given locality has neighbours on only two sides, north and 
south, and these their shortest boundaries ; local feeling was 
strong, local differences were persistent, and a man of the 
Delta could hardly understand the speech of a man of the 
first cataract region. It was only the ease of communication 
afforded by the river which in any degree neutralized the 
effect of the country's remarkable length. 

The wealth of commerce which the river served to carry, 
it was equally instrumental in producing. While the climate 
of the country is not rainless, yet the rare showers of the 
south, often separated by intervals of years, and even the 
more frequent rains of the Delta, are totally insufficient to 
maintain the processes of agriculture. The marvellous pro- 
ductivity of the Egyptian soil is due to the annual inundation 
of the river, which is caused by the melting of the snows, 



8 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

and by the spring rains at the sources of the Blue Nile. 
Freighted with the rich loam of the Abyssinian highlands, 
the rushing waters of the spring freshet hurry down the 
Nubian valley, and a slight rise is discernible at the first 
cataract in the early part of June. The flood swells rapidly 
and steadily, and although the increase is usually inter- 
rupted for nearly a month from the end of September on, 
it is usually resumed again, and. the maximum level con- 
tinues until the end of October or into November. The 
waters in the region of the first cataract are then nearly fifty 
feet higher than at low water; while at Cairo the rise is 
about half that at the cataract. A vast and elaborate system 
of irrigation canals and reservoirs first receives the flood, 
which is then allowed to escape into the fields as needed. 
Here it rests long enough to deposit its burden of rich, black 
earth from the upper reaches of the Blue Nile. At such 
times the appearance of the country is picturesque in the 
extreme, the glistening surface of the waters being dotted 
here and there by the vivid green of the waving palm groves, 
which mark the villages, now accessible only along the dykes 
belonging to the irrigation system (Fig. 2). Thus year by 
year, the soil which would otherwise become impoverished 
in the elements necessary to the production of such prodi- 
gious harvests, is invariably replenished with fresh resources. 
As the river sinks below the level of the fields again, it is 
necessary to raise the water from the canals by artificial 
means, in order to carry on the constant irrigation of the 
growing crops in the outlying fields, which are too high to 
be longer refreshed by absorption from the river (Fig, 6). 1 
Thus a genial and generous, but exacting soil, demanded 
for its cultivation the development of a high degree of skill 

x The device used ^called a "shadtif") resembles the well-sweep of our 
grandfathers. Fig. 6 shows the leathern bucket suspended from one end of the 
sweep, while at the other end a huge lump of dried mud serves as a counter- 
poise. When the water is very low, as many as three or even four such 
" shadufs " are necessary to raise the water from level to level until that of 
the field is reached. A single crop requires the lifting of 1,600 to 2,000 tons 
of water per acre in a hundred days. 



LAND 9 

in the manipulation of the life-giving waters, and at a very 
early day the men of the Nile valley had attained a sur- 
prising command of the complicated problems involved in 
the proper utilization of the river. If Egypt became the 
mother of the mechanical arts, the river will have been one 
of the chief natural forces to which this fact was due. With 
such natural assets as these, an ever replenished soil, and 
almost unfailing waters for its refreshment, the wealth of 
Egypt could not but be chiefly agricultural, a fact to which 
we shall often recur. Such opulent fertility of course sup- 
ported a large population in Roman times some seven mil- 
lion souls 1 while in our own day it maintains over nine 
million, a density of population far surpassing that to be 
found anywhere in Europe. The other natural resources of 
the valley we shall be better able to trace as we follow their 
exploitation in the course of the historical development. 

In climate Egypt is a veritable paradise, drawing to its 
shores at the present day an ever increasing number of 
winter guests. The air of Egypt is essentially that of the 
deserts within which it lies, and such is its purity and 
dryness, that even an excessive degree of heat occasions but 
slight discomfort, owing to the fact that the moisture of the 
body is dried up almost as fast as it is exhaled. The mean 
temperature of the Delta in winter is 56 Fahrenheit, and 
in the valley above it is ten degrees higher. In summer the 
mean in the Delta is 83 ; and although the summer tempera- 
ture in the valley is sometimes as high as 122, the air is 
far from the oppressiveness accompanying the same degree 
of heat in other lands. The nights even in summer are 
always cool, and the vast expanses of vegetation appreciably 
reduce the temperature. In winter just before dawn the 
extreme cold is surprising, as contrasted with the genial 
warmth of midday at the same season. To the absence of 
rain we have already adverted. The rare showers of upper 
Egypt occur only when cyclonic disturbances in the southern 
Mediterranean or northern Sahara force undischarged 

1 Diodorus I, 31. 



10 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

clouds into the Nile valley from the west ; from the east they 
can not reach the valley, owing to the high mountain ridge 
along the Bed Sea, which forces them upward and discharges 
them. The lower Delta, however, falls within the zone of 
the northern rainy season. In spite of the wide extent of 
marshy ground, left stagnating by the inundation, the dry 
airs of the desert, blowing constantly across the valley, 
quickly dry the soil, and there is never any malarial infection 
in Upper Egypt. Even in the vast morass of the Delta, 
malaria is practically unknown. Thus, lying just outside 
of the tropics, Egypt enjoyed a mild climate of unsurpassed 
salubrity, devoid of the harshness of a northern winter, but 
at the same time sufficiently cool to escape those enervating 
influences inherent in tropical conditions. 

The prospect of this contracted valley spread out before 
the Nile dweller, was in antiquity, as it is to-day, somewhat 
monotonous. The level Nile bottoms, the gift of the river, 
clad in rich green, shut in on either hand by the yellow cliffs, 
are unrelieved by any elevations or by any forests, save the 
occasional groves of graceful palms, which fringe the river 
banks or shade the villages of sombre mud huts (Fig. 4), 
with now and then a sycamore, a tamarisk or an acacia. A 
network of irrigation canals traverses the country in every 
direction like a vast arterial system. The sands of the deso- 
late wastes which lie behind the canon walls, drift in athwart 
the cliffs, and often invade the green fields so that one 
may stand with one foot in the verdure of the valley, and 
the other in the desert sand. Thus sharply defined was the 
Egyptian's world: a deep and narrow valley of unparalleled 
fertility, winding between lifeless deserts, furnishing a 
remarkable environment, not to be found elsewhere in all 
the world. Such surroundings reacted powerfully upon the 
mind and thought of the Egyptian, conditioning and deter- 
mining his idea of the world and his notion of the mysterious 
powers which ruled it. The river, the dominant feature of 
his valley, determined his notion of direction : his words for 
north and south were "down-stream" and "up-stream"; 




FIG. 3. LOOKING ACROSS THE NILE TO THE WESTERN CLIFFS NEAR THEBES. 

The low shores mark the level of the alluvium extending back to the cliffs. 




FIG. 4. THE HUTS AND PALM GROVES OF KARNAK, THEBES. 

Seen from the roof of the temple of Khonsu. In the foreground is the gate or propylon of F.uergetes I (Ptolemy 
III, 247-222 B.C.). Leading up to it is the avenue of sphinxes made by Amenhotep III, connecting Karnak and 
Luxor. 



' > 
> > 



THE LAND 11 

and when he broke through the barriers which separated 
him from Asia, and reached the Euphrates, he called it "that 
inverted water which goes down stream in going up stream" 
(southward). 1 For him the world consisted of the "Black 
Land" and the "Bed Land," the black soil of the Nile valley 
and the reddish surface of the desert ; or again of the ' i plain 
and the "highlands/ 1 meaning the level Nile "bottoms 
and the high desert plateau. ' ' Highlander ' ' was synonymous 
with foreigner, to "go up" was to leave the valley, while to 
' ' descend ' ' was the customary term for returning home from 
abroad. The illimitable solitudes of the desert, which thrust 
itself thus insistently upon his vision and his whole economy 
of life, and formed his horizon toward both suns, tinctured 
with sombreness his views of the great gods who ruled such 
a world. 

Such was in brief the scene in which developed the people 
of the Nile, whose culture dominated the basin of the eastern 
Mediterranean in the age when Europe was emerging into 
the secondary stages of civilization, and coming into intimate 
contact with the culture of the early east. Nowhere on earth 
have the witnesses of a great, but now extinct civilization, 
been so plentifully preserved as along the banks of the Nile. 
Even in the Delta, where the storms of war beat more fiercely 
than in the valley above, and where the slow accumulations 
from the yearly flood have gradually entombed them, the 
splendid cities of the Pharaohs have left great stretches, 
cumbered with enormous blocks of granite, limestone and 
sandstone, shattered obelisks, and massive pylon bases, to 
proclaim the wealth and power of forgotten ages; while an 
ever growing multitude of modern visitors are drawn to the 
upper valley by the colossal ruins that greet the wondering 
traveller almost at every bend in the stream. Nowhere else 
in the ancient world were such massive stone buildings 
erected, and nowhere else has a dry atmosphere, coupled 
with an almost complete absence of rain, permitted the sur- 
vival of such a wealth of the best and highest in the life of 

a ll, 72. 



12 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

an ancient people, in so far as that life found expression in 
material form. In the plenitude of its splendour, much of it 
thus survived into the classic age of European civilization, 
and hence it was, that as Egypt was gradually overpowered 
and absorbed by the western world, the currents of life from 
west and east commingled here, as they have never done else- 
where. Both in the Nile valley and beyond it, the west 
thus felt the full impact of Egyptian civilization for many 
centuries, and gained from it all that its manifold culture 
had to contribute. The career which made Egypt so rich a 
heritage of alien peoples, and a legacy so valuable to all later 
ages, we shall endeavour to trace in the ensuing chapters. 



CHAPTER II 

PRELIMINARY SURVEY, CHRONOLOGY AND 
DOCUMENTARY SOURCES 

A RAPID survey of the purely external features which serve 
to demark the great epochs in the career of the Nile valley 
people, will enable us the more intelligently to study those 
epochs in detail, as we meet them in the course of our 
progress. In such a survey, we sweep our eyes down a 
period of four thousand years of human history, from a time 
when the only civilization known in the basin of the Mediter- 
ranean is slowly dawning among a primitive people on the 
shores of the Nile. We can cast but a brief glance at the 
outward events which characterized each great period, espe- 
cially noting how foreign peoples are gradually drawn within 
the circle of Egyptian intercourse from age to age, and 
reciprocal influences ensue; until in the thirteenth century 
B. C. the peoples of southern Europe, long discernible in 
their material civilization, emerge in the written documents 
of Egypt for the first time in history. It was then that the 
fortunes of the Pharaohs began to decline, and as the civili- 
zation and power, first of the East and then of classic 
Europe, slowly developed, Egypt was finally submerged in 
the great world of Mediterranean powers, first dominated 
by Persia, and then by Greece and Rome. 

The career of the races which peopled the Nile valley falls 
into a series of more or less clearly marked epochs, each of 
which is rooted deeply in that which preceded it, and itself 
contains the germs of that which is to follow. A more or 
less arbitrary and artificial but convenient sub-division of 
these epochs, beginning with the historic age, is furnished 

by the so-called dynasties of Manetho. This native historian 

is 



14 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

of Egypt, a priest of Sebennytos, who flourished under 
Ptolemy I (305-285 B. C.), wrote a history of his country 
in the Greek language. The work has perished, and we only 
know it in an epitome by Julius Africanus and Eusebius, 
and extracts by Josephus. The value of the work was slight, 
as it was built up on folk-tales and popular traditions of the 
early kings. Manetho divided the long succession of Phar- 
aohs as known to him, into thirty royal houses or dynas- 
ties, and although we know that many of his divisions are 
arbitrary, and that there was many a dynastic change where 
he indicates none, yet his dynasties divide the kings into 
convenient groups, which have so long been employed in 
modern study of Egyptian history, that it is now impossible 
to dispense with them. 

After an archaic age of primitive civilization, and a period 
of small and local kingdoms, the various centres of civiliza- 
tion on the Nile gradually coalesced into two kingdoms : one 
comprising the valley down to the Delta; and the other 
made up of the Delta itself. In the Delta, civilization rap- 
idly advanced, and the calendar year of 365 days was intro- 
duced in 4241 B. C., the earliest fixed date in the history of 
the world as known to us. 1 A long development, as the 
"Two Lands, ' : which left their imprint forever after, on 
the civilization of later centuries, preceded a united Egypt, 
which emerged upon our historic horizon at the consoli- 
dation of the two kingdoms into one nation under Menes 
about 3400 B. C. His accession marks the beginning of the 
dynasties, and the preceding, earliest period may be conve- 
niently designated as the predynastic age. In the excava- 
tions of the last ten years, the predynastic civilization has 
been gradually revealed in material documents exhibiting 
the various stages in the slow evolution which at last pro- 
duced the dynastic culture. 

A uniform government of the whole country was the secret 
of over four centuries of prosperity under the descendants 
of Menes at Thinis, near Abydos, close to the great bend of 

1 I, 44-45. 




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w -5 

J c 

5 I 



H -o 
16 oj 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 15 

the Nile below Thebes, and probably also at or near later 
Memphis. The remarkable development of these four cen- 
turies in material civilization led to the splendour and power 
of the first great epoch of Egyptian history, the Old King- 
dom. The seat of government was at Memphis, where four 
royal houses, the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, 
ruled in succession for five hundred years (2980-2475 B. C.). 
Art and mechanics reached a level of unprecedented excel- 
lence never later surpassed, while government and adminis- 
tration had never before been so highly developed. Foreign 
enterprise passed far beyond the limits of the kingdom ; the 
mines of Sinai, already operated in the First Dynasty, were 
vigourously exploited; trade in Egyptian bottoms reached 
the coast of Phoenicia and the Islands of the North, while in 
the south, the Pharaoh's fleets penetrated to the Somali coast 
on the Red Sea ; and in Nubia his envoys were strong enough 
to exercise a loose sovereignty over the lower country, and 
by tireless expeditions to keep open the trade routes leading 
to the Sudan. In the Sixth Dynasty (2625-2475 B. C.) 
the local governors of the central administration, who had 
already gained hereditary hold upon their offices in the 
Fifth Dynasty (2750-2625 B. C.), were able to assert them- 
selves as landed barons and princes, no longer mere func- 
tionaries of the crown. They thus prepared the way for 
an age of feudalism. 

The growing power of the new landed nobility finally 
caused the fall of the Pharaonic house, and after the close 
of the Sixth Dynasty, about 2400 B. C., the supremacy of 
Memphis waned. In the internal confusion which followed, 
we can discern nothing of Manetho's ephemeral Seventh 
and Eighth Dynasties at Memphis, which lasted not more 
than thirty years ; but with the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties 
the nobles of Heracleopolis gained the throne, which was 
occupied by eighteen successive kings of the line. It is now 
that Thebes first appears as the seat of a powerful family 
of princes, by whom the Heracleopolitans and the power of 
the North are gradually overcome till the South triumphs. 



16 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

The exact lapse of time from the fall of the Old Kingdom 
to the triumph of the South is at present indeterminable, but 
it may be estimated roughly at two hundred and seventy five 
to three hundred years, 1 with a margin of uncertainty of 
possibly a century either way. 

With the restoration of a united Egypt under the Theban 
princes of the Eleventh Dynasty about 2160 B. C., the issue 
of the tendencies already discernible at the close of the Old 
Kingdom is clearly visible. Throughout the land the local 
princes and barons are firmly seated in their domains, and 
with these hereditary feudatories the Pharaoh must now 
reckon. The system was not fully developed until the 
advent of a second Theban family, the Twelfth Dynasty, the 
founder of which, Amenemhet I, probably usurped the 
throne. For over two hundred years (2000-1788 B. C.) this 
powerful line of kings ruled a feudal state. This feudal 
age is the classic period of Egyptian history. Literature 
flourished, the orthography of the language was for the first 
time regulated, poetry had already reached a highly artistic 
structure, the earliest known literature of entertainment was 
produced, sculpture and architecture were rich and prolific, 
and the industrial arts surpassed all previous attainments. 
The internal resources of the country were elaborately devel- 
oped, especially by close attention to the Nile and the inun- 
dation. Enormous hydraulic works reclaimed large tracts 
of cultivable domain in the Fayum, in the vicinity of which 
the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Anienemhets and the 
Sesostrises, lived. Abroad the exploitation of the mines in 
Sinai was now carried on by the constant labour of permanent 
colonies there, with temples, fortifications and reservoirs for 
the water supply. A plundering campaign was carried into 
Syria, trade and intercourse with its Semitic tribes were con- 
stant, and an interchange of commodities with the early 
Mycenaean centres of civilization in the northern Mediter- 
ranean is evident. Traffic with Punt and the southern coasts 
of the Bed Sea continued, while in Nubia the country between 

l l 53. 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 17 

the first and second cataracts, loosely controlled in the Sixth 
Dynasty, was now conquered and held tributary by the 
Pharaoh, so that the gold mines on the east of it were a con- 
stant resource of his treasury. 

The fall of the Twelfth Dynasty in 1788 B. C. was followed 
by a second period of disorganization anc 1 obscurity, as the 
feudatories struggled for the crown. Now and then an 
aggressive and able ruler gained the ascendency for a brief 
reign, and under one of these the subjugation of Upper 
Nubia was carried forward to a point above the third cat- 
aract; but his conquest perished with him. After possibly 
a century of such internal conflict, the country was entered 
and appropriated by a line of rulers from Asia, who had 
Seemingly already gained a wide dominion there. These 
foreign usurpers, now known as the Hyksos, after Manetho 's 
designation of them, maintained themselves for perhaps a 
century. Their residence was at Avaris in the eastern Delta, 
and at least during the later part of their supremacy, the 
Egyptian nobles of the South succeeded in gaining more or 
less independence. Finally the head of a Theban family 
boldly proclaimed himself king, and in the course of some 
years these Theban princes succeeded in expelling the 
Hyksos from the country, and driving them back from the 
Asiatic frontier into Syria. 

It was under the Hyksos and in the struggle with them 
that the conservatism of millennia was broken up in the 
Nile valley. The Egyptians learned aggressive war for the 
first time, and introduced a well organized military system, 
including chariotry, which the importation of the horse by 
the Hyksos now enabled them to do. Egypt was trans- 
formed into a military empire. In the struggle with the 
Hyksos and with each other, the old feudal families perished, 
or were absorbed among the partisans of the dominant 
Theban family, from which the imperial line sprang. The 
great Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty thus became 
emperors, conquering and ruling from northern Syria and 
the upper Euphrates, to the fourth cataract of the Nile on 
2 



18 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the south. Amid unprecedented wealth and splendour, they 
ruled their vast dominions, which they gradually welded 
together into a compact empire, the first known in the early 
world. Thebes grew into a great metropolis, the earliest mon- 
umental city. Extensive trade relations with the East and the 
Mediterranean world developed; Mycenaean products were 
common in Egypt, and Egyptian influences are clearly dis- 
cernible in Mycenaean art. For two hundred and thirty years 
(1580-1350 B. C.) the Empire flourished, but was wrecked at 
last by a combination of adverse influences both within and 
without. A religious revolution by the young and gifted 
king Ikhnaton, caused an internal convulsion such as the 
country had never before experienced; while the empire in 
the north gradually disintegrated under the aggressions of 
the Hittites, who pushed in from Asia Minor. At the same 
time in both the northern and southern Asiatic dominions 
of the Pharaoh, an overflow of Beduin immigration, among 
which were undoubtedly some of the tribes which later 
coalesced with the Israelites, aggravated the danger, and 
together with the persistent advance of the Hittites, finally 
resulted in the complete dissolution of the Asiatic empire of 
Egypt, down to the very frontier of the northeastern Delta. 
Meanwhile the internal disorders had caused the fall of the 
Eighteenth Dynasty, an event which terminated the First 
Period of the Empire (1350 B. C.). 

Harmhab, one of the able commanders under the fallen 
dynasty, survived the crisis and finally seized the throne. 
Under his vigourous rule the disorganized nation was grad- 
ually restored to order, and his successors of the Nineteenth 
Dynasty (1350-1205 B. C.) were able to begin the recovery 
of the lost empire in Asia. But the Hittites were too 
firmly entrenched in Syria to yield to the Egyptian onset. 
The assaults of Seti I, and half a generation of persistent 
campaigning under Ramses II, failed to push the northern 
frontier of the Empire far beyond the limits of Palestine. 
Here it remained and Syria was never permanently recov- 
ered. Semitic influences now powerfully affected Egypt. 



- ' v "-'.' 

_4*-^, 



-.*7fJ&'. 
- ..iStjS^?' '" '-> 



'A 1 '; ' * 







, 

.^S^yl 




FIG. 6. A TRIPLE SHADUF. 

A device for raising the Nile water in order to irrigate the fields (see p. 8) 
(Stereograph copyright Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.) 




FIG. 7. THE CLIFFS OF THE NILE CANON. 

Looking down the valley from a point west of Thebes. (Stereograph 

copyright Underwood & UnderwooQ, N. Y.) 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 19 

At this juncture the peoples of southern Europe emerge 
for the first time upon the arena of oriental history and 
together with Libyan hordes, threaten to overwhelm the 
Delta from the west. They were nevertheless beaten back 
by Merneptah. After another period of internal confusion 
and usurpation, during which the Nineteenth Dynasty fell 
(1205 B. C.), Ramses III, whose father, Setnakht founded 
the Twentieth Dynasty (1200-1090 B. C.), was able to main- 
tain the Empire at the same limits, against the invasions of 
restless northern tribes, who crushed the Hittite power ; and 
also against repeated immigrations of the Libyans. With 
his death (1167 B. C.) the empire, with the exception of 
Nubia which was still held, rapidly fell to pieces. Thus, 
about the middle of the twelfth century B. C. the Second 
Period of the imperial age closed with the total dissolution 
of the Asiatic dominions. 

Under a series of weak Ramessids, the country rapidly 
declined and fell a prey first to the powerful high priests of 
Amon, who were obliged almost immediately to yield to 
stronger Eamessid rivals in the Delta at Tanis, forming 
the Twenty First Dynasty (1090-945 B. C.). By the middle 
of the tenth century B. C. the mercenaries, who had formed 
the armies of the second imperial period, had founded pow- 
erful families in the Delta cities, and among these the 
Libyans were now supreme. Sheshonk I, a Libyan mercenary 
commander, gained the throne as the founder of the Twenty 
Second Dynasty in 945 B. C. and the country enjoyed 
transient prosperity, while Sheshonk even attempted the 
recovery of Palestine. But the family was unable to control 
the turbulent mercenary commanders, now established as 
dynasties in the larger Delta towns, and the country grad- 
ually relapsed into a series of military principalities in 
constant warfare with each other. Through the entire 
Libyan period of the Twenty Second, Twenty Third and 
Twenty Fourth Dynasties (945-712 B. C.) the unhappy 
nation groaned under such misrule, constantly suffering 
economic deterioration. 



20 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

Nubia had now detached itself and a dynasty of kings, 
probably of Theban origin had arisen at Napata, below the 
fourth cataract. These Egyptian rulers of the new Nubian 
kingdom now invaded Egypt, and although residing at 
Napata, maintained their sovereignty in Egypt with varying 
fortune for two generations (722-663 B. C.). But they were 
unable to suppress and exterminate the local dynasts, who 
ruled on, while acknowledging the suzerainty of the Nubian 
overlord. It was in the midst of these conflicts between the 
Nubian dynasty and the mercenary lords of Lower Egypt, 
that the Assyrians finally entered the Delta, subdued the 
country and placed it under tribute (670-662 B. C.). At this 
juncture Psamtik I, an able dynast of Sais, in the western 
Delta, finally succeeded in overthrowing his rivals, expelled 
the Ninevite garrisons, and as the Nubians had already been 
forced out of the country by the Assyrians, he was able to 
found a powerful dynasty, and usher in the Restoration. 
His accession fell in 663 B. C., and the entire period of 
nearly five hundred years from the final dissolution of the 
Empire about 1150 to the dawn of the Restoration in 663 B. 
C., may be conveniently designated the Decadence. After 
1100 B. C. the Decadence may be conveniently divided into 
the Tanite-Amonite Period (1090-945 B. C.), the Libyan 
Period (945-712 B. C.), the Ethiopian Period (722-663 B. 
C.), and the Assyrian Period, which is contemporary with 
the last years of the Ethiopian Period. 

Of the Restoration, like all those epochs in which the seat 
of power was in the Delta, where almost all monuments have 
perished, we learn very little from native sources; and all 
too little also from Herodotus and later Greek visitors in 
the Nile valley. It was outwardly an age of power and 
splendour, in which the native party endeavoured to restore 
the old glories of the classic age before the Empire ; while the 
kings depending upon Greek mercenaries, were modern poli- 
ticians, employing the methods of the new Greek world, 
mingling in the world-politics of their age, and showing little 
sympathy with the archaizing tendency. But their combi- 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 21 

nations failed to save Egypt from the ambition of Persia, 
and its history under native dynasties, with unimportant 
exceptions, was concluded with the conquest of the country 
by Cambyses in 525 B. C. 

Such, in mechanical review, were the purely external 
events which marked the successive epochs of Egypt's his- 
tory as an independent nation. With their dates, these 
epochs may be summarized thus : 

Introduction of the Calendar, 4241 B. C. 

Predynastic Age, before 3400 B. C. 

The Accession of Menes, 3400 B. C. 

The first Two Dynasties, 3400-2980 B. C. 

The Old Kingdom: Dynasties Three to Six, 2980-2475 
B.C. 

Eighteen Heracleopolitans, 2445-2160 B. C. 

The Middle Kingdom: Dynasties Eleven and Twelve, 
2160-1788 B. C. 

Internal Conflicts of the Feudatories, 



,, , 1788-1580 B. C. 

The Hyksos, 

The Empire : First Period, The Eighteenth Dynasty, 1580- 
1350 B. C. 

The Empire : Second Period, The Nineteenth and part of 
the Twentieth Dynasty, 1350-1150 B. C. 

Last Two Generations of Twentieth Dy- 
nasty, about 1150 to 1090 B. C. 
Tanite-Amonite Period, Twenty First Dy- 
nasty, 1090-945 B. C. 
The Decadence -j Libyan Period, Dynasties Twenty Two to 

Twenty Four, 945-712 B. C. 
Ethiopian Period, 722-663 B. C. (Twenty 

Fifth Dynasty, 712-663 B. C.). 
Assyrian Supremacy, 670-662 B. C. 
The Restoration, Saite Period, Twenty Sixth Dynasty, 
663-525 B. C. 

Persian Conquest, 525 B. C. 

The reader will find at the end of the volume a luller 
table of reigns. The chronology of the above table is 



22 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

obtained by two independent processes : first by ' ' dead reck- 
oning, ' ' and second by astronomical calculations based on the 
Egyptian calendar. By "dead reckoning" we mean simply 
the addition of the known minimum length of all the kings' 
reigns, and from the total thus obtained, the simple compu- 
tation (backward from a fixed starting point) of the date 
of the beginning of the series of reigns so added. Employ- 
ing all the latest dates from recent discoveries, it is mathe- 
matically certain that from the accession of the Eighteenth 
Dynasty to the conquest of the Persians in 525 B. C. the 
successive Pharaohs reigned at least 1052 years in all. 1 The 
Eighteenth Dynasty therefore began not later than 1577 B. 
C. Astronomical calculations based on the date of the rising 
of Sirius, and of the occurrence of new moons, both in terms 
of the shifting Egyptian calendar, place the date of the 
accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty with fair precision in 
1580 B. C. 2 For the periods earlier than the Eighteenth 
Dynasty, we can no longer employ the method of dead reck- 
oning alone, because of the scantiness of the contemporary 
documents. Fortunately another date of the rising of 
Sirius, fixes the advent of the Twelfth Dynasty at 2000 B. 
C., with a margin of uncertainty of not more than a year 
or two either way. From this date the beginning of the 
Eleventh Dynasty is again only a matter of "dead reckon- 
ing.' 1 The uncertainty as to the duration of the Heracleo- 
politan supremacy makes the length of the period between 
the Old and Middle Kingdoms very uncertain. If we give the 
eighteen Heracleopolitans sixteen years each, which, under 
orderly conditions, is a fair average in the orient, they will 
have ruled 288 years. 3 In estimating their duration at 285 
years, we may err possibly as much as a century either way. 
The computation of the length of the Old Kingdom is based 
on contemporary monuments and early lists, in which the 
margin of error is probably not more than a generation or 
two either way, but the uncertain length of the Heracleo- 
politan rule affects all dates back of that age, and a shift 

I, 47-51. I, 38-46. "I, 53. 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 23 

of a century either way in the years B. C. is not impossible. 
The ancient annals of the Palermo Stone establish the length 
of the first two dynasties at roughly 420 years, 1 and the date 
of the accession of Menes and the union of Egypt as 3400 
B. C. ; but we carry back with us, from the Heracleopolitan 
age, the same wide margin of uncertainty as in the Old 
Kingdom. The reader will have observed that this system 
of chronology is based upon the contemporary monuments 
and lists dating not later than 1200 B. C. The extremely 
high dates for the beginning of the dynasties current in 
some histories are inherited from an older generation of 
Egyptologists; and are based upon the chronology of 
Manetho, a late, careless and uncritical compilation, which 
can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in 
the vast majority of cases, where such monuments have sur- 
vived. Its dynastic totals 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 contem- 
porary monuments, and they will not stand the slightest 
careful criticism. Their accuracy is now maintained only 
by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern 
scholars. 

Like our chronology our knowledge of the early history 
of Egypt must be gleaned from the contemporary native 
monuments. 2 Monumental sources even when full and com- 
plete are at best but insufficient records, affording data for 
only the meagrest outlines of great achievements and impor- 
tant epochs. While the material civilization of the country 
found adequate expression in magnificent works of the artist, 
craftsman and engineer, the inner life of the nation, or even 
the purely external events of moment could find record only 
incidentally. Such documents are sharply differentiated 
from the materials with which the historian of European 
nations deals, except of course in his study of the earliest 
ages. Extensive correspondence between statesmen, jour- 
nals and diaries, state documents and reports such mate- 

i I, 84-85. * I, 1-37. 



24 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

rials as these are almost wholly wanting in monumental 
records. Imagine writing a history of Greece from the few 
Greek inscriptions surviving. Moreover, we possess no his- 
tory of Egypt of sufficiently early date by a native Egyptian ; 
the compilation of puerile folk-tales by Manetho, in the third 
century B. C. is hardly worthy of the name history. But 
an annalist of the remote ages with which we are to deal, 
could have had little conception of what would be important 
for future ages to know, even if he had undertaken a full 
chronicle of historical events. Scanty annals were indeed 
kept from the earliest times, but these have entirely perished 
with the exception of two fragments, the now famous 
Palermo Stone, 1 which once bore the annals of the earliest 
dynasties from the beginning down into the Fifth Dynasty; 
and some extracts from the "records of Thutmose III 's cam- 
paigns in Syria. Of the other monuments of incidental 
character, but the merest fraction has survived. Under 
these circumstances we shall probably never be able to offer 
more than a sketch of the civilization of the Old and Middle 
Kingdoms, with a hazy outline of the general drift of events. 
Under the Empire the available documents, both in quality 
and quantity for the first time approach the minimum, which 
in European history would be regarded as adequate to a 
moderately full presentation of the career of the nation. 
Scores of important questions, however, still remain unan- 
swered, in whatever direction we turn. Nevertheless a 
rough frame-work of the governmental organization, the 
constitution of society, the most important achievements of 
the emperors, and to a limited extent the spirit of the age, 
may be discerned and sketched in the main outlines, even 
though it is only here and there that the sources enable us 
to fill in the detail. In the Decadence and the Restoration, 
however, the same paucity of documents, so painfully appar- 
ent in the older periods, again leaves the historian with a 
long series of hypotheses and probabilities. For the reserve 
with which the author has constantly treated such periods, 
he begs the reader to hold the scanty sources responsible. 

'See Fig. 29 and I, 76-167. 



CHAPTER III 

EAELIEST EGYPT 

ON the now bare and windswept desert plateau, through 
which the Nile has hollowed its channel, there once dwelt a 
race of men. Plenteous rains, now no longer known there, 
rendered it a ferti'e and productive region. The geological 
changes which have> since made the country almost rainless, 
denuded it of vegetation and soil, and made it for the most 
part uninhabitable, took place many thousands of years 
before the beginning of the Egyptian civilization, which we 
are to study; but the prehistoric race, who before these 
changes, peopled the plateau, left behind them as the sole 
memorial of their existence vast numbers of rude flint imple- 
ments, now lying scattered about upon the surface of the 
present desert exposed by the denudation. These men of 
the paleolithic age were the first inhabitants of whom we 
have any knowledge in Egypt. They can not be connected 
in any way with the historic or prehistoric civilization of 
the Egyptians, and they fall exclusively within the province 
of the geologist and anthropologist. 

The forefathers of the people with whom we shall have 
to deal were related to the Libyans or north Africans on the 
one hand, and on the other to the peoples of eastern Africa, 
now known as the Galla, Somali, Bega and other tribes. An 
invasion of the Nile valley by Semitic nomads of Asia, 
stamped its essential character unmistakably upon the lan- 
guage of the African people there. The earliest strata of 
the Egyptian language accessible to us, betray clearly this 
composite origin. While still coloured by its African ante- 
cedents, the language is in structure Semitic. It is more- 
over a completed product as observable in our earliest pre- 
served examples of it; but the fusion of the Libyans and 

25 



26 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

east Africans with the Nile valley peoples continued far into 
historic times, and in the case of the Libyans may be traced 
in ancient historical documents for three thousand years or 
more. The Semitic immigration from Asia, examples of 
which are also observable in the historic age, occurred in an 
epoch that lies far below our remotest historical horizon. 
We shall never be able to determine when, nor with cer- 
tainty through what channels it took place, although the 
most probable route is that along which we may observe a 
similar influx from the deserts of Arabia in historic times, 
the isthmus of Suez, by which the Mohammedan invasion 
entered the country. While the Semitic language which 
they brought with them, left its indelible impress upon the 
old Nile valley people, the nomadic life of the desert which 
the invaders left behind them, evidently was not so persis- 
tent, and the religion of Egypt, that element of life which 
always receives the stamp of its environment, shows no trace 
of desert life. The affinities observable in the language are 
confirmed in case of the Libyans, by the surviving products 
of archaic civilization in the Nile valley, such as some of the 
early pottery, which closely resembles that still made by the 
Libyan Kabyles. Again the representations of the early 
Puntites, or Somali people, on the Egyptian monuments, 
show striking resemblances to the Egyptians themselves. 
The examination of the bodies exhumed from archaic burials 
in the Nile valley, which we had hoped might bring further 
evidence for the settlement of the problem, has, however, 
produced such diversity of opinion among the physical 
anthropologists, as to render it impossible for the historian 
to obtain decisive results from their researches. The conclu- 
sion once maintained by some historians, that the Egyptian 
was of African negro origin, is now refuted ; and evidently 
indicated that at most he may have been slightly tinctured 
with negro blood, in addition to the other ethnic elements 
already mentioned. 

As found in the earliest burials to-day, the predynastic 
Egyptians were a dark-haired people, already possessed of 



EARLIEST EGYPT 




27 



the rudiments of civili- 
zation. The men wore a 
skin over the shoulders, 
sometimes skin drawers, 
and again only a short 
white linen kilt; while 
the women were clothed 
in long garments of 
some textile, probably 
linen, reaching from the 
shoulders to the ankles. 
Statuettes of both sexes 
without clothing what- 
ever are, however, very 
common. Sandals were 
not unknown. They oc- 
casionally tattooed their 
bodies, and they also 
wrought ornaments such 
as rings, bracelets and 
pendants of stone, ivory 
and bone ; with beads of 
flint, quartz, carnelian, 
agate and the like. The 
women dressed their 
hair with ornamented 
ivory combs and pins. 
For the eye- and face- 
paint necessary for the 
toilet, they had palettes 
of carved slate on which 
the green colour was 
ground. They were able 
to build dwellings of 
wattle,sometimes smear- 
ed with mud, and prob- 
ably later of sun-dried 



28 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

brick. In the furnishing of these houses they displayed con- 
siderable mechanical skill, and a rudimentary artistic taste. 
They ate with ivory spoons, sometimes even richly carved with 
figures of animals in the round, marching along the handle. 
Although the wheel was at first unknown to them, they pro- 
duced fine pottery of the most varied forms in vast quan- 
tities. The museums of Europe and America are now filled 
with their polished red and black ware, or a variety with in- 
cised geometrical designs, sometimes in basket patterns, while 
another style of great importance to us is painted with rude 
representations of boats, men, animals, birds, fish or trees 
(Fig. 11). While they made no objects of glass, they under- 
stood the art of glazing beads, plaques and the like. Crude 
statuettes in wood, ivory, or stone, represent the beginnings 
of that plastic art, which was to achieve such triumphs in 
the early dynastic age; and three large stone statues of 
Min, found by Petrie at Coptos, display the rude strength 
of the predynastic civilization of which we are now speak- 
ing. The art of the prolific potter was obliged to give way 
slowly to the artificer in stone, who finally produced excel- 
lent stone vessels, which he gradually improved toward the 
end of predynastic period, when his bowls and jars in the 
hardest stones, like the diorites and porphyries, display mag- 
nificent work. The most cunningly wrought flints that have 
ever been found among any people belong to this age. The 
makers were ultimately able to affix carved ivory hafts, and 
with equal skill they put together stone and flint axes, flint- 
headed fish-spears and the like. The war mace with pear- 
shaped head, as found also in Babylonia, is characteristic of 
the age. Side by side with such weapons and implements 
they also produced and used weapons and implements of 
copper. It is indeed the age of the slow transition from 
stone to copper. Gold, silver and lead, while rare, were 
in use. 

In the fruitful Nile valley we can not think of such 
a people as other than chiefly agricultural; and the fact 
that they emerge into historical times as agriculturalists, 





FIG. 9. FLINT KNIFE OF THE PREDYNASTIC AGE. 
Sheet Gold Handle, ornamented with Designs in Repoussee. 
(Aftrr de Morgan.) 29 



30 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

with an ancient religion of vastly remote prehistoric origin, 
whose symbols and outward manifestations clearly betray 
the primitive fancies of an agricultural and pastoral peo- 
pleall this would lead to the same conclusion. In the 
unsubdued jungles of the Nile, animal life was of course 
much more plentiful at that time than now; for example, 
the great quantities of ivory employed by this people, and 
the representations upon their pottery, show that the 
elephant was still among them; likewise the giraffe, the 
hippopotamus and the strange okapi, which was deified as 
the god Set, wandered through the jungles, though all these 
animals were later extinct. These early men were therefore 
great hunters, as well as skillful fishermen. They pursued 
the most formidable game of the desert, like the lion, or 
the wild ox with bows and arrows ; and in light boats they 
attacked the hippopotamus and the crocodile with harpoons 
and lances. They commemorated these and like deeds in 
rude graffiti on the rocks, which are still found in the Nile 
valley, covered with a heavy brown patina of weathering, 
such as historic sculptures never display ; thus showing their 
vast age. 

Their industries may have resulted in rudimentary com- 
merce, for besides their small hunting-boats they built vessels 
of considerable size on the Nile, apparently propelled by 
many oars and guided by a large rudder. Sailing ships 
were rare, but they were not unknown. Their vessels bore 
standards, probably indicating the place from which each 
hailed, for among them appear what may be the crossed 
arrows of the goddess Neit of Sais, while an elephant imme- 
diately suggests the later Elephantine, which may, even 
before the extinction of the elephant in Egypt, have been 
known for the great quantities of ivory from the south 
marketed there. These ensigns are, in some cases, strikingly 
similar to those later employed in hieroglyphic as the stan- 
dards of the local communities, and their presence on the 
early ships suggests the existence of such communities in 
those prehistoric days. Hence traces of these prehistoric 




FIG. 10. PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH INCISED DECORATION. 

(Photograph by Petrie.) 




FIG. 11. PREDYNASTIC POTTERY WITH PAINTED DESIGNS OF BOATS, ANIMALS, 

MEN AND WOMEN. 

(From de Morgan, Orjgines, I, pi. X.) 



EARLIEST EGYPT 31 

petty states should perhaps be recognized in the said admin- 
istrative or feudal divisions of the country in historic times, 
the nomes, as the Greeks called them, to which we shall often 
have occasion to refer. If this be true, there were probably 
some twenty such states distributed along the river in Upper 
Egypt. However this may be, these people were already at a 
stage of civilization where considerable towns appear and 
city-states, as in Babylon, must have developed, each with its 
chief or dynast, its local god, worshipped in a crude sanc- 
tuary ; and its market to which the tributary, outlying coun- 
try was attracted. The long process by which such commu- 
nities grew up can be only surmised from the analogy of 
similar developments elsewhere, but the small kingdoms and 
city-states, out of which the nation was ultimately consoli- 
dated, do not fall within the historic age, as in Babylon. 

The gradual fusion which finally merged these petty states 
into two kingdoms : one in the Delta, and the other com- 
prising the states of the valley above, is likewise a process 
of which we shall never know the course. Of its heroes 
and its conquerors, its wars and conquests, not an echo will 
ever reach us; nor is there the slightest indication of the 
length of time consumed by this process. It will hardly 
have been concluded, however, before 4000 B. C. Our 
knowledge of the two kingdoms which emerged at the end 
of this long prehistoric age, is but slightly more satisfactory. 
The Delta was, throughout the historic age, open to inroads 
of the Libyans who dwelt upon the west of it; and the 
constant influx of people from this source gave the western 
Delta a distinctly Libyan character which it preserved even 
down to the time of Herodotus. At the earliest moment 
when the monuments enable us to discern the conditions in 
the Delta, the Pharaoh is contending with the Libyan 
invaders, and the earlier kingdom of the North will there- 
fore have been strongly Libyan, if indeed it did not owe its 
origin to this source. The temple at Sais, in the western 
Delta, the chief centre of Libyan influence in Egypt, bore 
the name ''House of the King of Lower Egypt" (the Delta), 



32 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

and the emblem of Neit, its chief goddess was tattooed by 
the Libyans upon their arms. It may possibly therefore 
have been an early residence of a Libyan king of the Delta, 
Reliefs recently discovered in Sahure's pyramid-temple 
at Abusir show four Libyan chiefs wearing on their brows 
the royal uneus serpent of the Pharaohs, to whom it there- 
fore descended from some such early Libyan king of the 
Delta. As its coat of arms or symbol the Northern Kingdom 
employed a tuft of papyrus plant, which grew so plentifully 
in its marshes as to be distinctive of it. The king himself was 
designated by a bee, and wore upon his head a red crown, 
both in colour and shape peculiar to his kingdom. All of 
these symbols are very common in later hieroglyphic. Bed 
was the distinctive colour of the northern kingdom and its 
treasury was called the "Red House.' 1 

Unfortunately the Delta is so deeply overlaid with deposits 
of Nile mud, that the material remains of its earliest civili- 
zation are buried forever from our reach. That civiliza- 
tion was probably earlier and more advanced than that of 
the valley above. Already in the forty third century B. C. 
the men of the Delta had discovered the year of three hun- 
dred and sixty five days and they introduced a calendar 
year of this length beginning on the day when Sirius rose 
at sunrise, as determined in the latitude of the southern 
Delta, where these earliest astronomers lived, in 4241 B. C. 
It is the civilization of the Delta, therefore, which furnishes 
us with the earliest fixed date in the history of the world. 
The invention and introduction of this calendar is surprising 
evidence of the advanced culture of the age and locality to 
which it belongs. No nation of antiquity, from the earliest 
times through classic European history, was able to devise 
a calendar which should evade the inconvenience resulting 
from the fact that the lunar month and the solar year are 
incommensurable quantities, the lunar months being incon- 
stant and also not evenly dividing the solar year. This 
earliest known calendar, with an amazingly practical insight 
into the needs to be subserved by a calendar, abandoned the 



EARLIEST EGYPT 33 

lunar month altogether and substituted for it a conventional 
month of thirty days. Its devisers were thus the first people 
to perceive that a calendar must be an artificial device, en- 
tirely divorced from nature save in the acceptance of the day 
and the year. They therefore divided the year into twelve of 
these thirty day months, and a sacred period of five feast- 
days, intercalated at the end of the year. The year began 
on that day when Sirius first appeared on the eastern horizon 
at sunrise, which in our calendar was on the nineteenth of 
July. 1 But as this calendar year was in reality about a 
quarter of a day shorter than the solar year, it therefore 
gained a full day every four years, thus slowly revolving 
on the astronomical year, passing entirely around it once in 
fourteen hundred and sixty years, only to begin the revolu- 
tion again. An astronomical event like the heliacal rising 
of Sirius, when dated in terms of the Egyptian calendar, 
may therefore be computed and dated within four years in 
terms of our reckoning, that is, in years B. C. This remark- 
able calendar, already in use at this remote age, is the one 
introduced into Borne by Julius Caesar, as the most con- 
venient calendar then known, and by the Romans it was 
bequeathed to us. It has thus been in use uninterruptedly 
over six thousand years. We owe it to the men of the 
Delta kingdom, who lived in the forty third century B. C. ; 
and we should notice that it left their hands in much more 
convenient form, with its twelve thirty-day months, than 
after it had suffered irregular alteration in this respect at 
the hands of the Romans. 

The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more distinctively 
Egyptian than that of the Delta. It had its capital at 
Nekheb, modern El Kab, and its standard or symbol was 
a lily plant, while another southern plant served as the 
ensign of the king, who was further distinguished by a tall 
white crown, white being the colour of the Southern Kingdom. 
Its treasury was therefore known as the " White House." 
There was a royal residence across the river from Nekheb. 
called Nekhen, the later Hieraconpolis. while corresponding 

3 1 Julian, 



34 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



to it in the northern kingdom was a suburb of Buto, called 
Pe. Each capital had its patroness or protecting goddess: 
Buto, the serpent-goddess, in the North; and in the South 
the vulture-goddess, Nekhbet. But at both capitals the 
hawk-god Horus was worshipped as the distinctive patron 
deity of both kings. The people of the time believed in a 
life hereafter, subject to wants of the same nature as those 
of the present life. Their cemeteries are widely distributed 
along the margin of the desert in Upper Egypt, and of late 
years thousands of interments have been excavated. The 
tomb is usually a flat bottomed oval or rectangular pit, in 
which the body, doubled into the "contracted" or "embry- 
onic" posture, lies on its 
side (Fig. 12). In the 
earliest burials it is wrap- 
ped in a skin, but later 
also in woven fabric; 
there is no trace of em- 
balmment. Beneath the 
body is frequently a mat 
of plaited rushes ; it often 
has in the hand or at the 
breast a slate palette for 
grinding face-paint, the 
green malachite for which 
lies near in a small bag. 
The body is besides ac- 
companied by other arti- 
cles of toilet or of adorn- 
ment and is surrounded by jars of pottery or stone con- 
taining ash or organic matter, the remains of food, drink 
and ointment for the deceased in the hereafter. Not only 
were the toilet and other bodily wants of the deceased thus 
provided for, but he was also given his flint weapons or 
bone tipped harpoons that he might replenish his larder 
from the chase. Clay models of objects which he might 
need were also given him, especially boats. The pits are 




FIG. 12. A PBEDYNASTIC GRAVE. 







FIG. 13.-GOI.D BAR BEARING MEXE'S NAME. 
(3400 B.C.) 

Earliest known inscribed piece of jewelry. Haskell 
Museum. 




FIG. 14.-AT.ABASTKR VESSELS. 
First Dynasty. (Petrie, Royal Tombs.) 









FIG. 15 CHAIR I.F.GS. CARVKD IVORY. 

Early Dynasties. Berlin Museum. 



FIG. 16. COPPER VESSELS. 
First Dynasty. (Petrie, Royal Tombs.) 



EARLIEST EGYPT 35 

sometimes roughly roofed over with branches, covered with 
a heap of desert sand and gravel, forming rudimentary 
tombs, and later they came to be lined with crude, sun- 
dried brick. Sometimes a huge, roughly hemispherical bowl 
of pottery was inverted over the body as it lay in the pit. 
These burials furnish the sole contemporary material for 
our study of the predynastic age. The gods of the here- 
after were appealed to in prayers and magical formulae, 
which eventually took conventional and traditional form in 
writing. A thousand years later in the dynastic age frag- 
ments of these mortuary texts are found in use in the pyra- 
mids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. Pepi I, a king of 
the Sixth Dynasty, in his rebuilding of the Dendereh temple, 
claimed to be reproducing a plan of a sanctuary of the pre- 
dynastic kings on that spot. Temples of some sort they 
therefore evidently had. 

While they thus early possessed all the rudiments of 
material culture, the people of this age developed a system 
of writing also. The computations necessary for the dis- 
covery and use of the calendar show a use of writing in the 
last centuries of the fifth millennium B. C. It is shown also 
by the fact that nearly a thousand years later the scribes of 
the Fifth Dynasty were able to copy a long list of the kings 
of the North, and perhaps those of the South also (Fig. 29) ; 
while the mortuary texts to which we have referred will not 
have survived a thousand years without having been com- 
mitted to writing in the same way. The hieroglyphs for the 
Northern Kingdom, for its king, and for its treasury can not 
have arisen at one stroke with the first king of the dynastic 
age; but must have been in use long before the rise of the 
First Dynasty; while the presence of a cursive linear hand 
at the beginning of the dynasties is conclusive evidence that 
the system was not then a recent innovation. 

Of the deeds of these remote kings of the North and South, 
who passed away before three thousand four hundred B. C. 
we know nothing. Their tombs have never been discovered, 
a fact which accounts for the lack of any written monuments 



36 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

among the contemporary documents, all of which come from 
tombs of the poorer classes, such as contain no writing even 
in the dynastic age. Seven names of the kings of the Delta, 
like Seka, Khayu, or Thesh, alone of all the line have sur- 
vived; but of the southern kingdom not even a royal name 
has descended to us, unless it be that of the Scorpion, which, 
occurring on some few remains of this early age, has been 
conjectured to be that of one of the powerful chieftains of the 
South. 1 The scribes of the Fifth Dynasty who drew up this 
list of kings, some eight hundred years after the line had 
passed away, seem to have known only the royal names, and 
were unable to, or at least did not record, any of their 
achievements. 2 As a class these kings of the North and 
South were known to their posterity as the "worshippers of 
Horus ' ' ; and as ages passed they became half mythic figures, 
gradually to be endowed with semi-divine attributes, until 
they were regarded as the demi-gods who succeeded the 
divine dynasties, the great gods who had ruled Egypt in the 
beginning. Their original character as deceased kings, as 
known to the earlier dynasties, led to their being considered 
especially as a line of the divine Dead, who had ruled over 
the land before the accession of human kings ; and in the his- 
torical work of Manetho they appear simply as ' ; the Dead. ' : 
Thus their real historical character was finally completely 
sublimated, then to merge into unsubstantial myth, and the 
ancient kings of the North and the South were worshipped 
in the capitals where they had once ruled. 

The next step in the long and slow evolution of national 
unity was the union of the North and South. The tradition 
which was still current in the days of the Greeks in Egypt, to 
the effect that the two kingdoms were united by a king 
named Menes, is fully confirmed by the evidence of the early 
monuments. The figure of Menes, but a few years since 
as vague and elusive as those of the "worshippers of Horus, ' : 
who preceded him, has now been clothed with unmistakable 

1 Another possibly on the Palermo Stone and in the tomb of Methen ; see 
I, 166. il, 90. 




FIG. 17. -FOUR BRACELETS ON LADY'S ARM. 

First Dynasty. Found at Abydos by Petrie. Cairo 
Museum. (See p. 50.) 



FIG. 18. -THE KING BREAKS GROUND FOR 
A NEW CANAL. 

tarly Dynasties. (From Quibell, Hieraconpolis, I, 260, 4.) 





FIG. 19. MAGNIFICENT CARVED CEREMONIAL PALETTE OF SLATE. 

Dedicated by King Narmer (First Dynasty) in the temple of Hieraconpolis. See pp. 40 and 47. 

(Quibell, Hieraconpolis, I, 29.) 



EARLIEST EGYPT 37 

reality, and he at last steps forth into history to head the 
long line of Pharaohs, who have yet to pass us in review. 
It must have been a skilful warrior and a vigour ous admin- 
istrator, who thus gathered the resources of the Southern 
Kingdom so well in hand that he was able to invade and 
conquer the Delta, and thus merge the two kingdoms into 
one nation, completing the long process of centralization 
which had been going on for many centuries. His native 
city was Thinis, an obscure place in the vicinity of Abydos, 
which was not near enough to the centre of his new kingdom 
to serve as his residence, and we can easily credit the nar- 
rative of Herodotus that he built a great dam, diverting the 
course of the Nile above the site of Memphis that he might 
gain room there for a city. This stronghold, perhaps not yet 
called Memphis, was probably known as the "White Wall," 
in reference of course to the White Kingdom, whose power it 
represented. If we may believe the tradition of Herodotus' 
time, it was from this place, situated so favourably on the 
border between the two kingdoms, that Menes probably gov- 
erned the new nation which he had created. He carried his 
arms also southward against northern Nubia, 1 which then ex- 
tended below the first cataract as far northward as the nome 
of Edfu. According to the tradition of Manetho, he was 
blessed with a long reign, and the memory of his great 
achievement was imperishable, as we have seen. He was 
buried in Upper Egypt, either at Abydos near his native 
Thinis, or some distance above it near the modern village 
of Negadeh, where a large brick tomb, probably his, still 
survives. In it and similar tombs of his successors at 
Abydos, written monuments of his reign have been found, 
and the reader may see in the accompanying illustration, 
even a piece of his royal adornments, bearing his name, which 
this ancient founder of the Egyptian state wore upon his 
person (Fig. 13). 

The kings of this remote protodynastic age are no longer 
merely a series of names as but a few years since they still 

1 Newberry-Garstang, History, 20 (from unpublished evidence?). 



38 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

were. As a group at least, we know much of their life and 
its surroundings ; although we shall never be able to discern 
them as possessed of distinguishable personality. They 
blend together without distinction as children of their age. 
The outward insignia which all alike employed were now 
accommodated to the united kingdom. The king's favourite 
title was "Horus, " by which he identified himself as the 
successor of the great god, who had once ruled over the 
kingdom. Everywhere, on royal documents, seals and the 
like, appeared the Horus-hawk as the symbol of royalty. He 
was mounted upon a rectangle representing the facade of a 
building, probably the king's palace, within which was 
written the king's official name. The other or personal 
name of the ruler was preceded by the bee of the North 
and the plant of the southern king, to indicate that he had 
now absorbed both titles; while with these two symbols 
there often appeared also Nekhbet, the vulture-goddess of 
El Kab, the southern capital, side by side with Buto, the 
serpent-goddess of the northern capital. On the sculptures 
of the time, the protecting vulture hovers with outspread 
wings over the head of the king, but as he felt himself 
still as primarily king of Upper Egypt, it was not until 
later that he wore the serpent of the North, the sacred 
urasus upon his forehead. Similarly Set sometimes appears 
with Horus, preceding the king's personal name, the two 
gods thus representing the North and the South, dividing 
the land between them in accordance with the myth which 
we shall later have occasion to discuss. The monarch wore 
the crown of either kingdom, and he is often spoken of as 
the ' ' double lord. ' ' Thus his dominion over a united Egypt 
was constantly proclaimed. We see the king on ceremonious 
occasions appearing in some state, preceded by four stan- 
dard-bearers and accompanied by his chancellor, personal 
attendants, or a scribe, and two fan-bearers. He wore the 
white crown of Upper or the red crown of Lower Egypt, or 
even a curious combination of the crowns of both kingdoms, 
and a simple garment suspended by a strap over one 




FIG. 20 PORTRAIT HEAD OF KING 
KHASF.KHEM; FROM TWO DIF- 
FERENT ANGLES. 
Early Dynasties (Quibell, Hierac., 1, 39). 




FIG. 21. -STATUE OF KING KHASEKHEM. 
HEAD IN FIG. 20. 

Early Dynasties (ibid.). See translation, p. 47. 




FIG. 22. BRICK-LINED WOODEN FLOORED TOMB CHAMBER OF KING 

ENEZIB. 
[First Dynpsty, Abydos. From Petrie. Royal 'Jombs, I, 66. i.\ 



EARLIEST EGYPT 39 

shoulder, to which a lion's tail was appended behind. So 
dressed and so attended he conducted triumphant celebra- 
tions of his victories, or led the ceremonies at the opening of 
canals (Fig. 18), or the inauguration of public works. On 
the thirtieth anniversary of his appointment by his father as 
crown-prince to the heirship of the kingdom, the king cele- 
brated a great jubilee called the ''Feast of Sed, " a word 
meaning "tail," and perhaps commemorating his assump- 
tion of the royal lion's tail at his appointment thirty years 
before. He was a mighty hunter, and recorded with pride 
an achievement like the slaying of a hippopotamus. His 
weapons were costly and elaborate as we shall see. His sev- 
eral palaces each bore a name, and the royal estate possessed 
gardens and vineyards, the latter being also named and 
carefully administered by officials who were responsible for 
the income therefrom. The furniture of such a palace, even 
in this remote age was magnificent and of fine artistic 
quality. Among it were vessels exquisitely wrought in some 
eighteen or twenty different varieties of stone, especially 
alabaster (Fig. 14) ; even in such refractory material as 
diorite, superb bowls were ground to translucent thinness, 
and jars of rock crystal were carved with matchless precision 
to represent natural objects. The pottery, on the other hand, 
perhaps because of the perfection of the stone vessels, is 
inferior to that of the predynastic age. The less substantial 
furniture has for the most part perished, but chests of ebony 
inlaid with ivory and stools with legs of ivory magnificently 
carved to represent bull's legs (Fig. 15), have survived in 
fragments. Glaze was now more thoroughly mastered than 
before, and incrustation with glazed plaques and ivory 
tablets was practiced. The coppersmith furnished the pal- 
ace with finely wrought bowls, ewers and other vessels of 
copper (Fig. 16) ; while he materially aided in the perfec- 
tion of stone vase-making by the production of excellent 
copper tools. The goldsmith combined with a high degree 
of technical skill also exquisite taste, and produced for the 
king's person and for the ladies of the royal household mag- 



40 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

nificent regalia in gold and precious stones (Figs, 13, 17 ), 1 
involving the most delicate soldering of the metal, a process 
accomplished with a skill of which even a modern workman 
would not be ashamed. While the products of the industrial 
craftsman had thus risen to a point of excellence, such that 
they claim a place as works of art, we find that the rude 
carvings and drawings of the predynastic people have now 
developed into reliefs and statues which clearly betray the 
professional artist. The kings dedicated in the temples, 
especially in that of Horus at Hieraconpolis, ceremonial 
slate palettes, maces and vessels, bearing reliefs which dis- 
play a sure and practiced hand (Fig. 19 ). 2 The human and 
animal figures are done with surprising freedom and vigour, 
proclaiming an art long since conscious of itself and cen- 
turies removed from the naive efforts of a primitive people. 
By the time of the Third Dynasty the conventions of civi- 
lized life had laid a heavy hand upon this art ; and although 
finish and power of faithful delineation had reached a level 
far surpassing that of the Hieraconpolis slates, the old 
freedom had disappeared. In the astonishing statues of 
king Khasekhem at Hieraconpolis (Figs. 20-21), the rigid 
canons which ruled the art of the Old Kingdom are already 
clearly discernible. 

The wreck of all this splendour, amid which these antique 
kings lived, has been rescued by Petrie with the most con- 
scientious and arduous devotion, from their tombs at Abydos. 
These tombs are the result of a natural evolution from the 
pits in which the predynastic people buried their dead. The 

1 The bracelets of Fig. 17 are of amethyst and turquoise mounted in gold. 
The uppermost has a rosette of gold, of exquisite workmanship. The purpose 
of the gold bar (Fig. 13) is unknown. 

2 Fig. 19 shows both sides of the greatest of these palettes. In the top 
row (left) the king, followed by his sandal bearer and preceded by four 
standard bearers and his vizier, inspects the decapitated bodies of his fallen 
enemies. The middle row contains two fantastic animals of uncertain 
meaning, and in the bottom row, the king as a bull, breaches a walled city, 
and tramples down his enemy. The other side (right) shows the king 
smiting a fallen foe, while as a Horus hawk he also leads captive the sign of 
the North, bearing a head with the rope in its mouth. At the bottom are 
fallen foes. 



EARLIEST EGYPT 41 

pit has now been elaborated and enlarged and has become 
rectangular. It is brick lined and also frequently has a 
second lining of wood; while the surrounding jars of food 
and drink have developed into a series of small chambers 
surrounding the central room or pit, in which doubtless the 
body lay, although the tombs had been so often plundered 
and wasted that no body has ever been found in them (Figs. 
22-25). The whole was roofed with heavy timbers and 
planking, probably surmounted by a heap of sand, and on 
the east front were set up two tall narrow stelae bearing 
the king's name. Access to the central chamber was had 
by a brick stairway descending through one side (Fig. 23). 
The king's toilet furniture, a rich equipment of bowls, jars 
and vessels, metal vases and ewers, his personal ornaments, 
and all that was necessary for the maintenance of royal state 
in the hereafter were deposited with his body in this tomb; 
while the smaller surrounding chambers were filled with a 
liberal supply of food and wine in enormous pottery jars, 
sealed with huge cones of Nile mud mixed with straw, and 
impressed while soft with the name of the king, or of the 
estate or vineyard from which they came. The revenue in 
food and wine from certain of the king's estates was diverted 
and established as permanent income of the tomb to maintain 
for all time the table supply of the deceased king and of his 
household and adherents, whose tombs to the number of one 
or two hundred were grouped about his own. Thus he was 
surrounded in death by those who had been his companions 
in life; his women, his body-guard, and even the dwarf, 
whose dances had diverted his idle hours, all sleep beside 
their lord that he may continue in the hereafter the state 
with which he had been environed on earth. Thus early 
began the elaborate arrangements of the Egyptian upper 
classes for the proper maintenance of the deceased in the 
life hereafter. 

This desire to create a permanent abiding place for the 
royal dead exerted a powerful influence in the development 
of the art of building. Already in the First Dynasty we find 



42 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

a granite floor in one of the royal tombs, that of Usephais, 
and toward the end of the Second Dynasty the surrounding 
brick chambers of king Khasekhemui 's tomb enclose a 
chamber built of hewn limestone, the earliest stone masonry 
structure known in the history of man (Fig. 25). His pred- 
ecessor, probably his father, had already built a stone temple 
which he recorded as a matter of note, 1 and Khasekhemui 
himself built a temple at Hieraconpolis, of which a granite 
doorpost has survived. 

Such works of the skilled artificer and builder (for a 
number of royal architects were already attached to the 
court) indicate a well-ordered and highly organized state; 
but of its character little can be discerned from the scanty 
materials at our command. The king's chief assistant and 
minister in government seems to have been a chancellor, 
whom we have seen attending him on state occasions. The 
officials whom we later find as nobles with judicial functions, 
attached to the two royal residences of the North and South, 
Pe and Neldien, already existed under these earliest dynas- 
ties, indicating an organized administration of judicial and 
juridical affairs. There was a body of fiscal officials, whose 
seals we find upon payments of naturalia to the royal tombs, 
impressed upon the clay jar-sealings ; while a fragment of 
a scribe's accounts evidently belonging to such an adminis- 
tration, was found in the Abydos royal tombs. The endow- 
ment of these tombs with a regularly paid income clearly 
indicates an orderly and effective fiscal organization, of 
which several offices, like the " provision office, "' are men- 
tioned on the seals. This department of the state was but 
a union of the two treasuries of the old kingdoms of the 
North and South, the "Bed House" and the "White 
House"; hence we find among the seals in the royal tombs 
the " Vineyard of the Bed House of the King's Estate." 
Evidently the union of the two kingdoms consisted only in 
the person of the king. The "Bed House," however, soon 
disappeared, the double administration became one of termi- 

1 T, 134. 





Q if 



2 

a "S^ 

x 8 A 

i-l ' >T 



U x -g 
3^2, 

-X V 

PH bt te 

r- B 

in ' <o 



<S O OH 

2 ^ I 

- II 



s >, 

B J3 



i g 

UO O 
N tn 



i j 




FIG. 27. EBONY TABLET OF MENES, FIRST DYNASTY, ABYDOS, 3400 B. C. 

One of the earliest known examples of hieroglyphics. Top row: At the 
left the royal hawk of Menes; on the right a chapel with the symbols of the 
goddess Neit in the court, over which is a boat. Second row: At the left the 
king holds a vessel marked " Electrum " (silver-gold alloy), and offers a 
libation "4 times"; on the right a bull is caught in an enclosure before a 
shrine bearing a phoenix. Third row: The Nile w r ith boats, towns, and 
islands. Fourth row: Unintelligible archaic hieroglyphs. 






FIG. 28. KING SEMERKHET. ( FIRST DYNASTY.) SMITES THE BEDUIN OF SINAI. 

Relief on the rocks of the Wadi Maghara, Sinai, the earliest monument 
there, and the earliest known large sculpture. (From Weill, Sinai.) 

(43) 



44 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

nology and theory only, and the "White House' 1 of the 
southern kingdom survived throughout Egyptian history as 
the sole treasury of the united kingdom. This history of 
the early treasury is instructive as showing that the amalga- 
mation of the administrative machinery of the two kingdoms 
was a slow process which Menes was unable to complete. 
In all probability the land all belonged to the estate of the 
king, by whom it was entrusted to a noble class. There were 
large estates conducted by these nobles, as in the period 
which immediately followed; but on what terms they were 
held we can not now determine. The people, with the pos- 
sible exception of a free class of artificers and tradesmen, 
will have been slaves on these estates. They lived also in 
cities protected by heavy walls of sun-dried brick, and under 
the command of a local governor. The chief cities of the 
time were the two capitals, El Kab and Buto, with their 
royal suburbs of Nekhen or Hieraconpolis, and Pe; the 
"White Wall,' 1 the predecessor of Memphis; Thinis, the 
native city of the first two dynasties; the neighbouring 
Abydos ; Heliopolis, Heracleopolis and Sais ; while a number 
of less importance appear in the Third Dynasty. 

Every two years a "numbering" of the royal possessions 
was made throughout the land by the officials of the treas- 
ury, and these "numberings" served as a partial basis for 
the chronological reckoning. The years of a king's reign 
were called, "Year of the First Numbering," "Year after 
the First Numbering," "Year of the Second Numbering" 
and so on. An earlier method was to name the year after 
some important event which occurred in it, thus: "Year of 
Smiting the Troglodytes," a method found also in early 
Babylonia. But as the "numberings" finally became an- 
nual, they formed a more convenient basis for designating the 
year, as habit seemed to have deterred the scribes from num- 
bering the years themselves. Side by side with this official 
year, there was doubtless a civil year which followed the sea- 
sons, and the lunar months continued to be the basis of tem- 
ple payments and of many business transactions, although 



EARLIEST EGYPT 45 

it is not probable that a lunar year had ever existed. Such 
a system of government and administration as this of course 
could not operate without a method of writing, which we find 
in use both in elaborate hieroglyphics (Fig. 27) and in the 
rapid cursive hand of the accounting scribe. It already pos- 
sessed not only phonetic signs representing a whole syllable 
or group of consonants but also the alphabetic signs, each 
of which stood for one consonant; true alphabetic letters 
having thus been discovered in Egypt two thousand five 
hundred years before their use by any other people. Had 
the Egyptian been less a creature of habit, he might have 
discarded his syllabic signs 3,500 years before Christ, and 
have written with an alphabet of twenty four letters. In 
the documents of these early dynasties the writing is in such 
an archaic form that many of the scanty fragments which 
we possess from this age are as yet unintelligible to us. 
Yet it was the medium of recording medical and religious 
texts, to which in later times a peculiar sanctity and effect- 
iveness were attributed. The chief events of each year were 
also recorded in a few lines under its name, and a series of 
annals covering every year of a king's reign and showing 
to a day how long he reigned, was thus produced. A small 
fragment only of these annals has escaped destruction, the 
now famous Palermo Stone, 1 so called because it is at present 
in the museum of Palermo (Fig. 29). 2 

Already a state form of religion was developing, and it 
is this form alone of which we know anything; the religion 
of the people having left little or no trace. Even in the 
later dynasties we shall find little to say of the folk-religion, 
which was rarely a matter of permanent record. The royal 
temple of Menes's time was still a simple structure, being 
little more than a shrine or chapel of wood, with walls of 

*I, 76-167. 

2 The front of the fragment is shown in Fig. 29. After the first row, each 
rectangle contains a year, and in the space over each row, was written the 
name of the king to whom the row of years belonged. The front contained 
the predynastic kings (top row) and dynasties one to three; the rest extending 
into the Fifth Dynasty was on the back. 



46 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

plaited wattle (Fig. 27). There was an enclosed court before 
it, containing a symbol or emblem of the god mounted on a 
standard ; and in front of the enclosure was a pair of poles, 
perhaps the forerunners of the pair of stone obelisks which in 
historic times were erected at the entrance of a temple. By 
the second half of the Second Dynasty, however, stone tem- 
ples were built, 1 as we have seen. The kings frequently 
record in their annals 2 the draughting of a temple plan, or 
their superintendence of the ceremonious inauguration of 
the work when the ground was measured and broken. The 
great gods were those familiar in later times, whom we shall 
yet have occasion briefly to discuss; we notice particularly 
Osiris and Set, Horus and Anubis, Thoth, Sokar, Min, and 
Apis a form of Ptah; while among the goddesses, Hathor 
and Neit are very prominent. Several of these, like Horus, 
were evidently the patron gods of prehistoric kingdoms, pre- 
ceding the kingdoms of the North and South, and thus going 
back to a very distant age. Horus, as under the predynastic 
kings, was the greatest god of the united kingdom, and occu- 
pied the position later held by Re. His temple at Hiera- 
conpolis was especially favoured, and an old feast in his 
honour, called the ' * Worship of Horus, ' ' celebrated every two 
years, is regularly recorded in the royal annals (Fig. 29) . 2 
The kings therefore continued without interruption the tra- 
ditions of the " Worshippers of Horus," as the successors of 
whom they regarded themselves. As long as the royal suc- 
cession continued in the Thinite family the worship of Horus 
was carefully observed; but with the ascendancy of the 
Third Dynasty, a Memphite family, it gradually gave way 
and was neglected. The priestly office was maintained of 
course as in the Old Kingdom by laymen, who were divided, 
as later, into four orders or phyles. 

The more than four hundred years during which the first 
two dynasties ruled must have been a period of constant 
and vigourous growth. Of the seven kings of Menes's line, 
who followed him during the first two centuries of that devel- 

1 1. 134. * I, 91-167 




FIG. 29. THE PALERMO STONE. 

Fragment of a copy of the annals of the earliest kings, from predynastic times to the middle of the Fifth Dynasty. 

when the copy was made. See pp. 35, 36, 109. 



EARLIEST EGYPT 47 

cpmeiit, we can identify only two with certainty: Miebis 
and Usephais ; but we have contemporary monuments from 
twelve of the eighteen kings who ruled during this period. 
The first difficulty which confronted them was the reconcilia- 
tion of the Northern Kingdom and its complete fusion with 
the larger nation. We have seen how, in administration, the 
two kingdoms remained distinct, and hinted that the union 
was a merely personal bond. The kings on ascending the 
throne celebrated a feast called "Union of the Two Lands," 1 
by which the first year of each king's reign was character- 
ized and named. This union, thus shown to be so fresh in 
their minds, could not at first be made effectual. The North 
rebelled again and again. King Narmer, who probably 
lived near the beginning of the dynastic age, was obliged 
to punish the rebellious Libyan nomes in the western Delta. 
He took captives to the number of ' ' one hundred and twenty 
thousand, ' ' which deed must have involved the deportation 
of a whole district, whence he also plundered no less than 
"one million four hundred and twenty thousand small, and 
four hundred thousand large cattle. ' ' In the temple at Hiera- 
conpolis he left a magnificent slate palette (Fig. 19) accom- 
panied by a ceremonial mace-head, both of which bear scenes 
commemorating his victory. Later king Neterimu smote the 
northern cities of Shemre and "House of the North." 2 As 
late as the Third Dynasty a war with the North gave king 
Khasekhem occasion to name a year of his reign the "Year 
of Fighting and Smiting the North," a war in which he 
took captive "forty seven thousand two hundred and nine 
rebels." He likewise commemorated his victory in the 
temple of Horus at Hieraconpolis, dedicating there a great 
alabaster vase 3 bearing his name and that of the triumphant 
year, besides two remarkable statues 4 (Figs. 20-21) of him- 
self, inscribed with the number of the captives. The later 
mythology attributed a lasting reconciliation of the two king- 
doms to Osiris. 5 

1 I, 140. 2 I, 124. 'Hierac. I, pi. XXXVI-VHI. 

4 Ibid., pi. XXXIX-XLI. Louvre Stela C. 2. 



48 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

While the severe methods employed against the North 
must have seriously crippled its economic prosperity, that 
of the nation as a whole probably continued to increase. 
The kings were constantly laying out new estates and build- 
ing new palaces, temples and strongholds. Public works, 
like the opening of irrigation canals (Fig. 18) or the wall 
of Menes above Memphis, show their solicitude for the eco- 
nomic resources of the kingdom, as well as a skill in engi- 
neering and a high conception of government such as we 
can not but greatly admire in an age so remote. They were 
able also to undertake the earliest enterprises of which 
we know in foreign lands. King Semerkhet, early in the 
dynastic age, and probably during the First Dynasty, car- 
ried on mining operations in the copper regions of the 
Sinaitic peninsula, in the Wadi Maghara. His expedition 
was exposed to the depredations of the wild tribes of 
Beduin, who already in this remote age, peopled those dis- 
tricts; and he recorded his punishment of them in a relief 
upon the rocks of the Wadi (Fig. 28). 1 Usephais, of the 
First Dynasty, must have conducted similar operations 
there; for he has left a memorial of his victory over the 
same tribes in a scene carved upon an ivory tablet, showing 
him striking down a native whom he has forced to the knees 
(Fig. 26). It is accompanied by the inscription: "First 
occurrence of smiting the Easterners.' 1 This designation 
of the event as the "first occurrence" would indicate that it 
was a customary thing for the kings of the time to chastise 
these barbarians, and that therefore he was expecting a 
"second occurrence," as a matter of course. A "smiting 
of the Troglodytes," the same people, recorded on the Pa- 
lermo Stone 2 in the First Dynasty, doubtless falls in the 
reign of king Miebis. Indeed there are indications that the 
kings of this time maintained foreign relations with far 
remoter peoples. In their tombs have been found fragments 
of a peculiar, non-Egyptian pottery, closely resembling the 

>Weill, Rev. Arch., 1903, II, p. 231; and Recueil des Inscr. figypt. du 
Sinai, p. 96. 2 I., 104. 



EARLIEST EGYPT 49 

ornamented ./Egean ware produced by the island peoples 
of the northern Mediterranean in pre-Mycenaean times. If 
this pottery was placed in these tombs at the time of the 
original burials, there were commercial relations between 
Egypt and the northern Mediterranean peoples in the fourth 
millennium before Christ. Besides the aggressive foreign 
policy in the east, and this foreign connection in the north, 
we find that an occasional campaign was necessary to 
restrain the Libyans on the west. In the temple at Hiera- 
conpolis Narmer left an ivory cylinder 1 commemorating his 
victory over them, an event which is doubtless to be con- 
nected with the same king's chastisement of the Libyan 
nomes in the western Delta, to which we have already 
adverted. In the south at the first cataract, where, as late 
as the Sixth Dynasty, the Troglodyte tribes of the neigh- 
bouring eastern desert made it dangerous to operate the quar- 
ries there, king Usephais of the First Dynasty was able to 
maintain an expedition for the purpose of securing granite 
to pave one of the chambers of his tomb at Abydos. 

Thus this strong Thinite line gradually built up a vig- 
ourous nation of rich and prolific culture and consolidated its 
power within and without. Scanty as are its surviving mon- 
uments, we see now gradually taking form the great state 
which is soon to emerge as the Old Kingdom. These earliest 
Pharaohs were buried, as we have seen, at Abydos or in the 
vicinity, where nine of their tombs are known. A thousand 
years after they had passed away, these tombs of the 
founders of the kingdom were neglected and forgotten, and 
as early as the twentieth century before Christ that of king 
Zer was mistaken for the tomb of Osiris. 2 When found in 
modern times it was buried under a mountain of potsherds, 
the remains of votive offerings left there by centuries of 
Osiris-worshippers. Its rightful occupants had long been 
torn from their resting places, and their limbs, heavy with 
gold and precious stones, had been wrenched from the 
sockets to be carried away by greedy violators of the dead. 

i Hierac. I, pi. XV. No. 7. * I, 662. 

4 



50 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

It was on some such occasion that one of these thieves 
secreted in a hole in the wall of the tomb the desiccated arm 
of Zer's queen, still bearing under the close wrappings its 
splendid regalia (Fig. 17). Perhaps slain in some brawl, 
the robber, fortunately for us, never returned to recover his 
plunder, and it was found there and brought to Petrie intact 
by his well trained workmen in 1902. 



BOOK II 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



CHAPTER IV 

EAELY RELIGION 

THERE is no force in the life of ancient man, the influence 
of which so pervades all his activities as does that of the 
religious faculty. Its fancies explain for him the world 
about him, its fears are his hourly master, its hopes his con- 
stant Mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward 
usages are to a large extent the education and the motive 
toward the gradual evolution of art, literature and science. 
As among all other early peoples, it was in his surroundings 
that the Egyptian saw his gods. The trees and springs, the 
stones and hill-tops, the birds and beasts were creatures like 
himself, or possessed of strange and uncanny powers of 
which he was not master. Among this host of spirits ani- 
mating everything around him, some were his friends, ready 
to be propitiated and to lend him their aid and protection; 
while others with craft and cunning lowered about his path- 
way, awaiting an opportunity to strike him with disease and 
pestilence, and there was no misfortune in the course of 
nature but found explanation in his mind as coming from 
one of these evil beings about him. Such spirits as these 
were local, each known only to the dwellers in a given 
locality, and the efforts to serve and propitiate them were of 
the humblest and most primitive character. Of such worship 
we know little or nothing in the Old Kingdom, but during 
the Empire we shall be able to gain fleeting glimpses into 
this naive and long forgotten world. But the Egyptian peo- 
pled not merely the local circle about him with such spirits ; 
the sky above him and earth beneath his feet were equally 
before him for explanation. Long ages of confinement to 
his elongated valley, with its monotonous, even if sometimes 

53 



54 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

grand scenery, had imposed a limited range upon his imagi- 
nation; neither had he the qualities of mind which could 
be stirred by the world of nature to such exquisite fancies 
as those with which the natural beauties of Hellas inspired 
the imagination of the Greeks. In the remote ages of that 
earliest civilization, which we have briefly surveyed in the 
preceding chapter, the shepherds and plowmen of the Nile 
valley saw in the heavens a vast cow, which stood athwart 
the vault, with head in the west, the earth lying between 
fore and hind feet, while the belly of the animal, studded 
with stars, was the arch of heaven. The people of another 
locality however, fancied they could discern a colossal female 
figure standing with feet in the east and bending over the 
earth, till she supported herself upon her arms in the far 
west. To others the sky was a sea, supported high above 
the earth, with a pillar at each of its four corners. As these 
fancies gained more than local credence and came into 
contact with each other, they mingled in inextricable con- 
fusion. The sun was born every morning as a calf or as a 
child according to the explanation of the heavens as a cow 
or a woman, and he sailed across the sky in a celestial 
barque, to arrive in the west and descend as an old man tot- 
tering into the grave. Again the lofty flight of the hawk, 
which seemed a very comrade of the sun, led them to believe 
that the sun himself must be such a hawk, taking his daily 
flight across the heavens, and the sun-disk, with the out- 
spread wings of the hawk, became the commonest symbol 
of their religion. 

The earth, or as they knew it, their elongated valley, was 
to their primitive fancy, a man lying prone, upon whose 
back the vegetation grew, the beasts moved and man lived. 
If the sky was a sea upon which the sun and the heavenly 
lights sailed westward every day, there must then be a water- 
way by which they could return ; so there was beneath the 
earth another Nile, flowing through a long dark passage with 
successive caverns, through which the celestial barque took 
its way at night, to appear again in the east at early morn- 




FIG. 30. THE CELESTIAL Cow. 

Various genii support her limbs, while in the middle, Shu, the god of the 
atmosphere upholds her. Along her belly which forms the heavens, and 
bears the stars, moves the celestial barque of the sun-god, who wears the sun- 
disk on his head. 




FIG. 31. THE GODDESS OF THE HEAVENS. 

Her body is studded with stars, Shu, the god of the air, supports her, while 
prone beneath her is the earth-god, Keb. 

(55) 



56 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

ing. This subterranean stream was connected with the Nile 
at the first cataract, and thence issued from two caverns, 
the waters of their life-giving river. It will be seen that 
for the people among whom this myth arose, the world 
ended at the first cataract; all that they knew beyond 
was a vast sea. This was also connected with the Nile 
in the south, and the river returned to it in the north, 
for this sea, which they called the "Great Circle" 1 sur- 
rounded their earth. It is the idea inherited by the Greeks, 
who called the sea Okeanos, or Ocean. In the beginning 
only this ocean existed, upon which there then appeared 
an egg, or as some said a flower, out of which issued the 
sun-god. From himself he begat four children, Shu and 
Tefnut, Keb and Nut. All these, with their father, lay 
upon the ocean of chaos, when Shu and Tefnut, who repre- 
sent the atmosphere, thrust themselves between Keb and 
Nut. They planted their feet upon Keb and raised Nut on 
high, so that Keb became the earth and Nut the heavens. 
Keb and Nut were the father and mother of the four divin- 
ities, Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys; together they 
formed with their primeval father the sun-god, a circle of 
nine deities, the "ennead" of which each temple later pos- 
sessed a local form. This correlation of the primitive divin- 
ities as father, mother and son, strongly influenced the 
theology of later times until each temple possessed an arti- 
ficially created triad, of purely secondary origin, upon which 
an "ennead" was then built up. Other local versions of 
this story of the world's origin also circulated. One of 
them represents Re as ruling the earth for a time as king 
over men, who plotted against him, so that he sent a god- 
dess, Hathor, to slay them, but finally repented and by a 
ruse succeeded in diverting the goddess from the total exter- 
mination of the human race, after she had destroyed them 
in part. The cow of the sky then raised Re upon her back 
that he might forsake the ungrateful earth and dwell in 
heaven. 

1 II, 661. 



EARLY RELIGION 



57 




FIG. 32. THE CELESTIAL BARQUE OF THE SUN-GOD. 



The ram-headed god, wearing the sun-disk is enthroned in a chapel; the 
ibis-headed Thoth, his vizier, stands in the royal presence and addresses him 
like an earthly king. 




FIG. 33. RESTORATION OF A GROUP OF OLD KINGDOM " MASTABAS," OR 
MASONRY TOMBS. (After Perrot-Chipiez.) 

The door of the chapel is visible in front, and on the roof may be seen the 
top of the shaft which descends through the superstructure to the subter- 
ranean sepulchre chamber containing the mummy. 



58 EARLY RELIGION 

Besides these gods of the earth, the air and the heavens, 
there were also those who had as their domain the nether 
world, the gloomy passage, along which the subterranean 
stream carried the sun from west to east. Here, according 
to a very early belief, dwelt the dead, whose king was Osiris. 
He had succeeded the sun-god as king on earth, aided in 
his government by his faithful sister-wife, Isis. A bene- 
factor of men, and beloved as a righteous ruler, he was 
nevertheless craftily misled and slain by his brother Set. 
When, after great tribulation, Isis had gained possession 
of her lord's body, she was assisted in preparing it for burial 
by one of the old gods of the nether world, Anubis, the 
jackal-god, who thereafter became the god of embalmment. 
So powerful were the charms now uttered by Isis over the 
body of her dead husband that it was reanimated, and 
regained the use of its limbs; and although it was impos- 
sible for the departed god to resume his earthly life, he 
passed down in triumph as a Jiving king, to become lord of 
the nether world. Isis later gave birth to a son, Horus, 
whom she secretly reared among the marshy fastnesses of 
the Delta as the avenger of his father. Grown to manhood, 
the youth pursued Set and in the ensuing awful battle, 
which raged from end to end of the land, both were fear- 
fully mutilated. But Set was defeated, and Horus tri- 
umphantly assumed the earthly throne of his father. There- 
upon Set entered the tribunal of the gods, and charged that 
the birth of Horus was not without stain, and that his claim 
to the throne was not valid. Defended by Thoth, the god 
of letters, Horus was vindicated and declared "true in 
speech," or "triumphant.'' According to another version 
it was Osiris himself who was thus vindicated. 

Not all the gods who appear in these tales and fancies 
became more than mythological figures. Many of them con- 
tinued merely in this role, without temple or form of wor- 
ship; they had but a folk-lore or finally a theological exist- 
ence. Others became the great gods of Egypt. In a land 
where a clear sky prevailed and rain was rarely seen, the 



EARLY RELIGION 59 

incessant splendour of the sun was an insistent fact, which 
gave him the highest place in the thought and daily life of 
the people. His worship was almost universal, but the chief 
centre of his cult was at On, the Delta city, which the Greeks 
called Heliopolis. Here he was known as Be, which was the 
solar orb itself; or as Atum, the name of the decrepit sun, 
as an old man tottering down the west; again his name 
Khepri, written with a beetle in hieroglyphic, designated him 
in the youthful vigour of his rising. He had two barques 
with which he sailed across the heavens, one for the morning 
and the other for the afternoon, and when in this barque he 
entered the nether world to return to the east he brought 
light and joy to its disembodied denizens. The symbol of 
his presence in the temple at Heliopolis was an obelisk, while 
at Edfu, on the upper river, which was also an old centre 
of his worship, he appeared as a hawk, under the name 
Horus. 

The Moon as the measurer of time furnished the god of 
reckoning, of letters, and of wisdom, whose chief centre was 
at Shmun, or Hermopolis, as the Greeks who identified him 
with Hermes, called the place. He was identified with the 
ibis. The Sky, whom we have seen as Nut, was worshipped 
throughout the land, although Nut herself continued to play 
only a mythological role. The sky-goddess became the type 
of woman and of woman's love and joy. At the ancient 
shrine of Dendereh she was the cow-goddess, Hathor ; at Sais 
she was the joyous Neit; at Bubastis, in the form of a cat, 
she appeared as Bast; while at Memphis her genial aspects 
disappeared and she became a lionness, the goddess of storm 
and terror. The myth of Osiris, so human in its incidents 
and all its characteristics, rapidly induced the wide propa- 
gation of his worship, and although Isis still remained chiefly 
a figure in the myth, she became the type of wife and mother, 
upon which the people loved to dwell. Horus also, although 
he really belonged originally to the sun-myth and had 
nothing to do with Osiris, was for the people the embodi- 
ment of the qualities of a good son, and in him they constantly 



^A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

saw the ultimate triumph of the just cause. The immense 
influence of the Osiris-worship on the life of Egypt we shall 
have occasion to notice further in discussing mortuary 
beliefs. The original home of Osiris was at Dedu, called 
by the Greeks Busiris, in the Delta; but Abydos, in Upper 
Egypt, early gained a reputation of peculiar sanctity, 
because the head of Osiris was buried there. He always 
appeared as a closely swathed figure, enthroned as a 
Pharaoh or merely a curious pillar, a fetish surviving from 
his prehistoric worship. Into the circle of nature-divinities 
it is impossible to bring Ptah of Memphis, who was one of 
the early and great gods of Egypt. He was the patron of 
the artisan, the artificer and artist, and his High Priest was 
always the chief artist of the court. Such were the chief 
gods of Egypt, although many another important deity pre- 
sided in this or that temple, whom it would be impossible 
for us to notice here, even with a word. 

The external manifestations and the symbols with which 
the Egyptian clothed these gods are of the simplest char- 
acter and they show the primitive simplicity of the age in 
which these deities arose. They bear a staff like a Beduin 
native of to-day, or the goddesses wield a reed-stem; their 
diadems are of woven reeds or a pair of ostrich feathers, or 
the horns of a sheep. In such an age, the people frequently 
saw the manifestations of their gods in the numerous ani- 
mals with which they were surrounded, and the veneration 
of these sacred beasts survived into an age of high civiliza- 
tion, when we should have expected it to disappear. But 
the animal-worship, which we usually associate with ancient 
Egypt, as a cult, is a late product, brought forward in the 
decline of the nation at the close of its history. In the 
periods with which we shall have to deal, it was unknown; 
the hawk, for example, was the sacred animal of the sun-god, 
and as such a living hawk might have a place in the temple, 
where he was fed and kindly treated, as any such pet might 
be ; but he was not worshipped, nor was he the object of an 
elaborate ritual as later. 1 

V 

1 Erman, Handbuch, p. 25 



EARLY RELIGION 61 

In their elongated valley the local beliefs of the earliest 
Egyptians could not but differ greatly among themselves, 
and although for example there were many centres of sun- 
worship, each city possessing a sun-temple regarded the sun 
as its particular god, to the exclusion of all the rest; just 
as many a town of Italy at the present day would not for a 
moment identify its particular Madonna with the virgin of 
any other town. As commercial and administrative inter- 
course were increased by political union, these mutually con- 
tradictory and incompatible beliefs could not longer remain 
local. They fused into a complex of tangled myth, of which 
we have already offered some examples and shall yet see 
more. Neither did the theologizing priesthoods ever reduce 
this mass of belief into a coherent system; it remained as 
accident and circumstance brought it together, a chaos of 
contradictions. Another result of national life was, that as 
soon as a city gained political supremacy its gods rose with 
it to the dominant place among the innumerable gods of 
the land. 

The temples in which the earliest Egyptian worshipped 
we have already had occasion to notice. He conceived the 
place as the dwelling of his god, and hence its arrangement 
probably conformed with that of a private house of the pre- 
dynastic Egyptian. We have seen how the gradual evolu- 
tion of a nation has left the prehistoric temple of woven 
wattle far behind, putting in its place at last a structure of 
stone in which doubtless the main features of the primitive 
arrangement survived. It was still the house of the god, 
although the Egyptian himself may have long since for- 
gotten its origin. Behind a forecourt open to the sky rose 
a colonnaded hall, beyond which was a series of small cham- 
bers containing the furniture and implements for the temple 
services. Of the architecture and decoration of the building 
we shall later have occasion to speak further (pp. 106 f.). 
The centre of the chambers in the rear was occupied by a 
small room, the holy of holies, in which stood a shrine hewn 
from one block of granite. It contained the image of the god, 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

a small figure of wood from one and a half to six feet high, 
elaborately adorned and splendid with gold, silver and costly 
stones. The service of the divinity who dwelt here consisted 
simply in furnishing him with those things which formed 
the necessities and luxuries of an Egyptian of wealth and 
rank at that time: plentiful food and drink, fine clothing, 
music and the dance. The source of these offerings was the 
income from an endowment of lands established by the 
throne, as well as various contributions from the royal rev- 
enues in grain, wine, oil, honey and the like. 1 These contribu- 
tions to the comfort and happiness of the lord of the temple, 
while probably originally offered without ceremony, gradually 
became the occasion of an elaborate ritual which was essen- 
tially alike in all temples. Outside in the forecourt was the 
great altar, where the people gathered on feast days, when 
they were permitted to share the generous food offerings, 
which ordinarily were eaten by the priests and servants of 
the temple, after they had been presented to the god. These 
feasts, besides those marking times and seasons, were fre- 
quently commemorations of some important event in the 
story or myth of the god, and on such occasions the priests 
brought forth the image in a portable shrine, having the 
form of a small Nile boat. 

The earliest priesthood was but an incident in the duties 
of the local noble, who was the head of the priests in the 
community; but the exalted position of the Pharaoh as the 
nation developed, made him the sole official servant of the 
gods, and there arose at the beginning of the nation's his- 
tory a state form of religion, in which the Pharaoh played 
the supreme role. In theory, therefore, it was he alone who 
worshipped the gods ; in fact, however, he was of necessity 
represented in each of the many temples of the land by a 
high priest, by whom all offerings were presented "for the 
sake of the life, prosperity and health" of the Pharaoh. 
Some of these high priesthoods were of very ancient origin : 
particularly that of Heliopolis, whose incumbent was called 

'I, 153-167; 213. 



EARLY RELIGION 63 

-'Great Seer"; while he of Ptah at Memphis was called 
1 1 Great Chief of Artificers. ' ' Both positions demanded two 
incumbents at once and were usually held by men of high 
rank. The incumbents of the other high priesthoods of 
later origin all bore the simple title of "overseer or chief 
of priests. " It was the duty of this man not merely to 
conduct the service and ritual of the sanctuary, but also to 
administer its endowment of lands, from the income of which 
it lived, while in time of war he might even command the 
temple contingent. He was assisted by a body of priests, 
whose sacerdotal service was with few exceptions merely 
incidental to their worldly occupations. They were laymen, 
who from time to time served for a stated period in the 
temple; thus in spite of the fiction of the Pharaoh as the 
sole worshipper of the god, the laymen were represented in 
its service. In the same way the women of the time were 
commonly priestesses of Neit or Hathor; their service con- 
sisted in nothing more than dancing and jingling a sistrum 
before the god on festive occasions. The state fiction had 
therefore not quite suppressed the participation of the indi- 
vidual in the service of the temple. In harmony with the 
conception of the temple as the god's dwelling the most fre- 
quent title of the priest was "servant of the god.' : 

Parallel with this development of a state religion, with its 
elaborate equipment of temple, endowment, priesthood and 
ritual, the evolution of the provision for the dead had kept 
even pace. In no land, ancient or modern, has there ever 
been such attention to the equipment of the dead for their 
eternal sojourn in the hereafter. The beliefs which finally 
led the Egyptian to the devotion of so much of his wealth 
and time, his skill and energy to the erection and equipment 
of the "eternal house" are the oldest conceptions of a real 
life hereafter of which we know. He believed that the body 
was animated by a vital force, which he pictured as a coun- 
terpart of the body, which came into the world with it, 
passed through life in its company, and accompanied it into 
the next world. This he called a "ka," and it is often 



64 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

spoken of in modern treatises as a "double," though this 
designation describes the form of the ka as represented on 
the monuments, rather than its real nature. Besides the ka 
every person possessed also a soul, which he conceived in 
the form of a bird flitting about among the trees; though 
it might assume the outward semblance of a flower, the lotus, 
a serpent, a crocodile sojourning in the river, or of nuiny 
other things. Even further elements of personality seemed 
to them present, like the shadovr possessed by every one, 
but the relations of all these to each other were very vague 
and confused in the mind of the Egyptian; just as tho 
average Christian of a generation ago, who accepted the 
doctrine of body, soul and spirit, would have been unable to 
give any lucid explanation of their interrelations. Like the 
varying explanations of the heavens and the world there were 
many once probably local notions of the place to which the 
dead journeyed; but these beliefs, although mutually irrec- 
oncilable, continued to enjoy general acceptance, and no one 
was troubled by their incompatibility, even if it ever 
occurred to them. There was a world of the dead in the 
west, where the sun-god descended into his grave every 
night, so that "westerners" was for the Egyptian a term 
for the departed; and wherever possible the cemetery was 
located on the margin of the western desert. There was 
also the nether world where the departed lived awaiting the 
return of the solar barque every evening, that they might 
bathe in the radiance of the sun-god, and seizing the bow- 
rope of his craft draw him with rejoicing through the long 
caverns of their dark abode. In the splendour of the nightly 
heavens the Nile-dweller also saw the host of those who had 
preceded him; thither they had flown as birds, rising above 
all foes of the air, and received by Ee as the companions 
of his celestial barque, they now swept across the sky as 
eternal stars. Still more commonly the Egyptian told of 
a field in the northeast of the heavens, which he called the 
"field of food," or the "field of Yaru," the lentil field, 
where the grain grew taller than any ever seen on the banks 



EARLY RELIGION 65 

of the Nile, and the departed dwelt in security and plenty. 
Besides the bounty of the soil he received too, from the 
earthly offerings presented in the temple of his god: bread 
and beer and fine linen. It was not every one who suc- 
ceeded in reaching this field of the blessed; for it was sur- 
rounded by water. Sometimes the departed might induce 
the hawk or the ibis to bear him across on their pinions; 
again friendly spirits, the four sons of Horus, brought him 
a craft upon which he might float over; sometimes the sun- 
god bore him across in his barque; but by far the majority 
depended upon the services of a ferryman called "Turn- 
face" or "Look-behind," because his face was ever turned 
to the rear in poling his craft. He will not receive all into 
his boat, but only him of whom it was said, "there is no 
evil which he has done," or "the just who hath no boat," 
or him who is "righteous before heaven and earth and before 
the isle," 1 where lies the happy field to which they go. 
These are the earliest traces in the history of man of an 
ethical test at the close of life, making the life hereafter 
dependent upon the character of the life lived on earth. It 
was at this time, however, chiefly ceremonial rather than 
moral purity which secured the waiting soul passage across 
the waters. Yet a noble of the Fifth Dynasty desires it 
known that he has never defrauded ancient tombs, and says 
in his mastaba, ' ' I have made this tomb as a just possession, 
and never have I taken a thing belonging to any person. . . . 
Never have I done aught of violence toward any person." 2 
Another, perhaps a private citizen, says, "Never was I 
beaten in the presence of any official since my birth; never 
did I take the property of any man by violence ; I was doer 
Df that which pleased all men." 3 Nor was it always nega- 
tive virtues which they claimed; a noble of Upper Egypt 
at the close of the Fifth Dynasty says, "I gave bread to the 
hungry of the Cerastes-Mountain (the district he governed) ; 

Pyramid of Pepi I, 400; Mernere 570, Erman, Zeitschrift fiir Aegyptische 
Sprache, XXXI, 76-77. 

2 I, 252. 3 I, 279. 

5 



66 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

I clothed him who was caked therein. ... I never oppressed 
one in possession of his property, so that he complained of 
me because of it to the god of my city; never was there 
one fearing because of one stronger than he, so that he com- 
plained because of it to the god. ' ' l 

Into these early beliefs, with which Osiris originally had 
nothing to do, the myth which told of his death and depar- 
ture into the nether world, now entered, to become the 
dominating element in Egyptian mortuary belief. He had 
become the " first of those in the west" and "king of the 
glorified"; every soul that suffered the fate of Osiris might 
also experience his restoration to life ; might indeed become 
an Osiris. So they said: "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." 2 As the limbs 
of Osiris were again imbued with life, so shall the gods 
raise him up and put him among the gods. "The door of 
heaven is open to thee, and the great bolts are drawn back 
for thee. Thou findest Ee standing there; he takes thee by 
the hand and leads thee into the holy place of heaven, and 
sets thee upon the throne of Osiris, upon this thy brazen 
throne, that thou mayest reign over the glorified. . . .The 
servants of the god stand behind thee and the nobles of 
the god stand before thee and cry, 'Come thou god! Come 
thou god! Come thou possessor of the Osiris throne!' Isis 
speaks with thee, and Nephthys salutes thee. The glorified 
come to thee and bow down, that they may kiss the earth 
at thy feet. So art thou protected and equipped as a god, 
endowed with the form of Osiris, upon the throne of the 
'First of the Westerners.' Thou doest what he did among 
the glorified and imperishable. . . . Thou makest thy house 
to flourish after thee, and protectest thy children from sor- 
row." 3 Believing thus that all might share the goodly des- 
tinv of Osiris, or even become Osiris himself, they contem- 



plated death without dismay, for they said of the dead, 

1 1 ; 281. z Pyramids, Chap. 15. 

s Erman, Handbuch, pp. 96-99. 



EARLY RELIGION 67 

"They depart not as those who are dead, but they depart 
as those who are living." 1 Here there entered, as a salutary 
influence also the incident of the triumphant vindication 
of Osiris when accused; for there is a hint of a similar justi- 
fication for all, which, as we shall yet see, was the most fruit- 
ful germ in Egyptian religion. The myth of Osiris thus in- 
troduced an ultimately powerful ethical element, which, while 
not altogether lacking before, needed the personal factor 
supplied by the Osiris myth to give it vital force. Thus sev- 
eral nobles of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties threaten those 
who in the future would appropriate their tombs, that "judg- 
ment shall be had with them for it by the great god"; 2 and 
another says that he never slandered others, for "I desired 
that it might be well with me in the great god 's presence. ' ' 3 

These views are chiefly found in the oldest mortuary liter- 
ature of Egypt which we possess, a series of texts supposed 
to be effective in securing for the deceased the enjoyment 
of a happy life, and especially the blessed future enjoyed 
by Osiris. They were engraved upon the passages of the 
Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids, where they have been 
preserved in large numbers, and it is largely from them that 
the above sketch of the early Egyptian's notions of the 
hereafter has been taken. 4 From the place in which they 
are found, they are usually called the "Pyramid Texts." 
Many of these texts grew up in the predynastic age and 
some have therefore been altered to accommodate them to 
the Osiris faith, with which they originally had no connec- 
tiona process which has of course resulted in inextricable 
confusion of originally differing mortuary beliefs. 

So insistent a belief or set of beliefs in a life beyond the 
grave necessarily brought with it a mass of mortuary usages 
with which in the earliest period of Egypt's career we have 
already gained some acquaintance. It is evident that how- 
ever persistently the Egyptian transferred the life of the 
departed to some distant region, far from the tomb where 

1 Ibid. " I, 253, 330, 338, 357. 

8 1, 331. 'See Erman, Handbuch. 



68 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the body lay, he was never able to detach the future life 
entirely from the body. It is evident that he could conceive 
of no survival of the dead without it. Gradually he had 
developed a more and more pretentious and a safer repos- 
itory for his dead, until, as we have seen, it had become a 
vast and massive structure of stone. In all the world no such 
colossal tombs as the pyramids are to be found; while the 
tombs of the nobles grouped about have in the Old Kingdom 
become immense masonry structures, which but a few cen- 
turies before, a king would have been proud to own. Such a 
tomb as that of Pepi I 's vizier in the Sixth Dynasty contained 
no less than thirty one rooms. The superstructure of such 




FIG. 34. GROUND PLAN OF A " MASTABA " OB MASONRY TOMB. 

a is the chapel; 6 is the " s^rdab " (cellar), the secret chamber containing 
the portrait statue; c is the shaft leading down to the subterranean chamber 
containing the mummy. For the elevation see Fig. 33. 

a tomb was a massive rectangular oblong of masonry, the 
sides of which slanted inward at an angle of roughly 
seventy five degrees. It was, with the exception of its room 
or rooms, solid throughout, reminding the modern natives 
of the "mastaba," the terrace, area or bench on which they 
squat before their houses and shops. Such a tomb is there- 
fore commonly termed a "mastaba." The simplest of such 
mastabas has no rooms within, and only a false door in the 
east side, by which the dead, dwelling in the west, that is, 
behind this door, might enter again the world of the living. 



EARLY RELIGION 69 

This false door was finally elaborated into a kind of chapel- 
chamber in the mass of the masonry, the false door now 
being placed in the west wall of the chamber. The inner 
walls of this chapel bore scenes carved in relief, depicting 
the servants and slaves of the deceased at their daily tasks 
on his estate (Figs. 44, 56) ; they plowed and sowed and 
reaped; they pastured the herds and slaughtered them for 
the table, they wrought stone vessels or they built Nile boats 
-in fact they were shown in field and workshop producing 
all those things which were necessary for their lord's welfare 
in the hereafter, while here and there his towering figure 
appeared superintending and inspecting their labours as he 
had done before he "departed into the West." It is these 
scenes which are the source of our knowledge of the life and 
customs of the time. Far below the massive mastaba was a 
burial chamber in the native rock reached by a shaft which 
passed down through the superstructure of masonry. On the 
day of burial the body, now duly embalmed, was subjected to 
elaborate ceremonies embodying occurrences in the history of 
Osiris. It was especially necessary by potent charms to open 
the mouth and ears of the deceased that he might speak and 
hear in the hereafter. The mummy was then lowered down 
the shaft and laid as of old upon its left side in a fine rec- 
tangular cedar coffin, which again was deposited in a massive 
sarcophagus of granite or limestone. Food and drink were 
left with it, besides some few toilet articles, a magic wand 
and a number of amulets for protection against the enemies 
of the dead, especially serpents. The number of serpent- 
charms in the Pyramid Texts, intended to render these foes 
harmless, is very large. The deep shaft leading to the burial 
chamber was then filled to the top with sand and gravel, 
and the friends of the dead now left him to the life in the 
hereafter, which we have pictured. 

Yet their duty toward their departed friend had not yet 
lapsed. In a tiny chamber beside the chapel they masoned 
up a portrait statue of the deceased, sometimes cutting small 
channels, which connected the two rooms, the chapel and 



70 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the statue-chamber, or "serdab, ' : as the modern natives 
call it. As the statue was an exact reproduction of the 
deceased's body, his ka might therefore attach itself to this 
counterfeit, and through the connecting channels enjoy the 
food and drink placed for it in the chapel. The offerings to 
the dead, originally only a small loaf in a bowl, placed by 
a son, or wife, or brother on a reed mat at the grave, have 
now become as elaborate as the daily cuisine once enjoyed 
by the lord of the tomb before he forsook his earthly house. 
But this labour of love, or sometimes of fear, has now 
devolved upon a large personnel, attached to the tomb, some 
of whom, as its priests, constantly maintained its ritual. 
Very specific contracts 1 were made with these persons, 
requiting them for their services with a fixed income drawn 
from endowments legally established and recorded for this 
purpose by the noble himself, in anticipation of his death. 
The tomb of Prince Nekure, son of king Khafre of the 
Fourth Dynasty, was endowed with the revenues from 
twelve towns. 2 A palace-steward in Userkaf's time ap- 
pointed eight mortuary priests for the service of his tomb ; 3 
and a nomarch of Upper Egypt endowed his tomb with 
income from eleven villages and settlements. 4 The income 
of a mortuary priest in such a tomb was in one instance 
sufficient to enable him to endow the tomb of his daughter 
in the same way. 5 Such endowments and the service thus 
maintained were intended to be permanent, but in the course 
of a few generations the accumulated burden was intol- 
erable, and ancestors of a century before, with rare excep- 
tions, were necessarily neglected in order to maintain those 
whose claims were stronger and more recent. Or, as in the 
temples the offerings after having been presented to the 
gods were employed in the maintenance of the people 
attached to the temple, so now a favourite noble of the king 
might be rewarded by the diversion to his tomb of a certain 
portion of the plentiful income which had already been pre- 

1 I, 200-209, 231-5. * I, 191. 

8 1, 226-7. I, 379. 

6 Erman, Handbuch, p. 123. 



EARLY RELIGION 71 

sented at the tornb of some royal ancestor or other relative 
of the king's house. 1 It had now become so customary for 
the king to assist his favourite lords and nobles in this way 2 
that we find a frequent mortuary prayer beginning "An 
offering which the king gives," and as long as the number 
of those whose tombs were thus maintained was limited to 
the noble and official circle around the king, such royal 
largesses to the dead were quite possible. But in later 
times, when the mortuary practices of the noble class had 
spread to the masses, they also employed the same prayer, 
although it is impossible that the royal bounty could have 
been so extended. Thus this prayer is to-day the most fre- 
quent formula to be found on the Egyptian monuments, 
occurring thousands of times on the tombs or tomb-stones 
of people who had no prospect of enjoying such royal dis- 
tinction; and in the same tomb it is always repeated over 
and over again. In the same way the king also assisted his 
favourites in the erection of their tombs, and the noble often 
records with pride that the king presented him with the 
false door, or the sarcophagus, or detailed a body of royal 
artificers to assist in the construction of his tomb. 3 

If the tomb of the noble had now become an endowed 
institution, we have seen that that of the king was already 
such in the First Dynasty. In the Third Dynasty, at least, 
the Pharaoh was not satisfied with one tomb, but in his 
double capacity as king of the Two Lands he erected two, 
just as the palace was double for the same reason. We find 
the monarch's tomb now far surpassing that of the noble 
in its extent and magnificence. The moii:uary service of 
the Pharaoh's lords might be conducted in the chapel in 
the east side of the mastaba ; but that of the Pharaoh himself 
required a separate building, a splendid mortuary temple 
on the east side of the pyramid. A richly endowed priest- 
hood was here employed to maintain its ritual and to fur- 

1 I, 173, 1. 5, 241. 

2 1, 204, 207, 209, 213-227, 242-249, 274-7, 370. 

8 I, 210-212, 237-40, 242-9, 274-7, 308- 



72 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 




FIG. 35. RESTORATION OF THE PYRAMIDS OF ABUSIR AND CONNECTED BUILD- 
INGS. (After Borchardt.) 

Close to each pyramid on the hither side is the pyramid-temple. From 
two of these, covered masonry causeways lead down to the edge of the desert 
plateau, where each terminates in a monumental gate of massive masonry 
(see Fig. 69). Before the gate is a landing platform with steps leading 
down to the water, where boats may land during the inundation. 

nish the food, drink and clothing of the departed king. Its 
large personnel demanded many outbuildings, and the whole 
group of pyramid, temple and accessories was surrounded 
by a wall. All this was on the edge of the plateau overlook- 
ing the valley, in which, below the pyramid, there now grew 
up a walled town. Leading up from the town to the pyramid 
enclosure was a massive causeway of stone which terminated 
at the lower or townward end in a large and stately struc- 
ture of granite or limestone sometimes with floors of alabas- 
ter, the whole forming a superb portal, a worthy entrance 
to so impressive a tomb (Figs. 35, 69). Through this portal 
passed the white-robed procession on feast days, moving from 
the town up the long white causeway to the temple, above 



EARLY RELIGION 73 

which rose the mighty mass of the pyramid. The populace 
in the city below probably never gained access to the pyra- 
mid-enclosure. Over the town wall, through the waving 
green of the palms, they saw the gleaming white pyramid, 
where lay the god who had once ruled over them; while 
beside it rose slowly year by year another mountain of 
stone, gradually assuming pyramid form, and there, would 
some time rest his divine son, of whose splendour they had 
now and then on feast days caught a fleeting glimpse. While 
the proper burial of the Pharaoh and his nobles had now 
become a matter seriously affecting the economic conditions 
of the state, such elaborate mortuary equipment was still 
confined to a small class, and the common people continued 
to lay away their dead without any attempt at embalmment 
in the pit of their prehistoric ancestors on the margin of the 
western desert. 



CHAPTER V 

THE OLD KINGDOM: GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY, 

INDUSTRY AND ART 

THE origins of the kingship and of the customs which 
made it so peculiar in ancient Egypt, as the reader has 
already observed, are rooted in a past so remote that we can 
discern but faint traces of the evolution of the office. With 
the consolidation under Menes it was already an institu- 
tion of great age, and over four centuries of development 
which then followed, had at the dawn of the Old Kingdom 
already brought to the office a prestige and an exalted 
power, demanding the deepest reverence of the subject 
whether high or low. Indeed the king was now officially a 
god, and one of the most frequent titles was the "Good 
God"; such was the respect due him that there was reluc- 
tance to refer to him by name. The courtier might desig- 
nate him impersonally as "one, ' and "to let one know' 1 
becomes the official phrase for "report to the king. " His 
government and ultimately the monarch personally were 
called the ' ' Great House, ' ' in Egyptian Per-o, a term which 
has descended to us through the Hebrews as " Pharaoh.' 1 
There was also a number of other circumlocutions, which 
the fastidious courtier might employ in referring to his 
divine lord. When he died he was received into the circle 
of the gods, to be worshipped like them ever after in the 
temple before the vast pyramid in which he slept. 

Court customs had gradually developed into an elaborate 
official etiquette, for the punctilious observance of which, 
already in this distant age, a host of gorgeous marshals and 
court chamberlains were in constant attendance at the palace. 
There had thus grown up a palace life, not unlike that of 

74 



THE OLD KINGDOM 75 

modern times in the East, a life into which we gain obscure 
glimpses in the numerous titles borne by the court lords of 
the time. With ostentatious pride they arrayed these titles- 
on the walls of their tombs, mingled with sounding predi- 
cates indicating their high duties and exalted privileges in 
the circle surrounding the king. There were many ranks, 
and the privileges of each, with all possible niceties of pre- 
cedence, were strictly observed and enforced by the court 
marshals at all state levees and royal audiences. Every 
need of the royal person was represented by some palace 
lord, whose duty it was to supply it, and who bore a corre- 
sponding title, like the court physician or the leader of the 
court music. Although the royal toilet was comparatively 
simple, yet a small army of wig-makers, sandal-makers, per- 
fumers, launderers, bleachers and guardians of the royal 
wardrobe, filled the king's chambers. They record their 
titles upon their tomb-stones with visible satisfaction. Thus 
to take an example at random, one of them calls himself 
"Overseer of the cosmetic box . . . doing in the matter of 
cosmetic art to the satisfaction of his lord; overseer of the 
cosmetic pencil, sandal-bearer of the king, doing in the 
matter of the king's sandals to the satisfaction of his lord." 1 
The king's favourite wife became the official queen, whose 
eldest son usually received the appointment as crown prince 
to succeed his father. But as at all oriental courts, there 
was also a royal harem with numerous inmates. Many sons 
usually surrounded the monarch, and the vast revenues of 
the palace were liberally distributed among them. A son 
of king Khafre in the Fourth Dynasty left an estate of 
fourteen towns, besides a town house and two estates at 
the royal residence, the pyramid city. Besides these, the 
endowment of his tomb comprised twelve towns more. 2 But 
these princes assisted in their father's government, and did 
not live a life of indolence and luxury. "We shall find them 
occupying some of the most arduous posts in the service of 
the state. 

1 Cairo stela, 1787. 2 1, 190-9. 



76 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

However exalted may have been the official position of the 
Pharaoh as the sublime god at the head of the state, he never- 
theless maintained close personal relations with the more 
prominent nobles of the realm. As a prince he had been 
educated with a group of youths from the families of these 
nobles, and together they had been instructed in such 
manly arts as swimming. 1 The friendships and the inti- 
macies thus formed in youth must have been a powerful 
influence in the later life of the monarch. We see the 
Pharaoh giving his daughter in marriage to one of these 
youths with whom he had been educated, 2 and the severe 
decorum of the court was violated in behalf of this favour- 
ite, who was not permitted on formal occasions to kiss 
the dust before the Pharaoh, but enjoyed the unprec- 
edented privilege of kissing the royal foot. 3 On the part 
of his intimates such ceremonial was purely a matter of 
official etiquette; in private the monarch did not hesitate to 
recline familiarly in complete relaxation beside one of his 
favourites, while the attending slaves anointed them both. 4 
The daughter of such a noble might become the official queen 
and mother of the next king. 5 We see the king inspecting 
a public building with his chief architect, the vizier. As 
he admires the work and praises his faithful minister, he 
notices that the latter does not hear the words of royal 
favour. The king's exclamation alarms the waiting cour- 
tiers, the stricken minister is quickly carried to the palace 
itself, where the Pharaoh hastily summons the priests and 
chief physicians. He sends to the library for a case of 
medical rolls, but all is in vain. The physicians declare 
his condition hopeless. The king is smitten with sorrow 
and retires to his chamber to pray to Re. He then makes 
all arrangements for the deceased noble's burial, ordering 
an ebony coffin, and having the body anointed in his own 
presence. The eldest son of the dead was then empowered 
to build the tomb, the king furnishing and endowing it. 6 

1 I, 256. I, 254 ff. "I, 260. 

I, 270. !, 344. !, 242-9. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 77 

It is evident that the most powerful lords of the kingdom 
were thus bound to the person of the Pharaoh by close per- 
sonal ties of blood and friendship. These relations were 
carefully fostered by the monarch, and in the Fourth and 
early Fifth Dynasty, there are aspects of this ancient state 
in which its inner circle at least reminds one of a great 
family, so that, as we have observed, the king assisted all 
its members in the building and equipment of their tombs, 
and showed the greatest solicitude for their welfare, both 
here and in the hereafter. 

At the head of government there was theoretically none 
to question the Pharaoh's power. In actual fact he was as 
subject to the demands of policy toward this or that class, 
powerful family, clique or individual, or toward the harem, 
as are his successors in the oriental despotisms of the present 
day. These forces, which more or less modified his daily 
acts, we can follow at this distant day only as we see the 
state slowly moulded in its larger outlines by the impact 
of generation after generation of such influences from the 
Pharaoh's environment. In spite of the luxury evident in 
the organization of his court, the Pharaoh did not live the 
life of a luxurious despot, such as we frequently find among 
the Mamlukes of Moslem Egypt. In the Fourth Dynasty 
at least, he had as prince already seen arduous service in the 
superintendence of quarrying and mining operations, or he 
had served his father as vizier or prime minister, gaining 
invaluable experience in government before his succession 
to the throne. He was thus an educated and enlightened 
monarch, able to read and write, and not infrequently taking 
his pen in hand personally to indite a letter of thanks and 
appreciation to some deserving officer in his government. 1 
He constantly received his ministers and engineers to dis- 
cuss the needs of the country, especially in the conservation 
of the water supply and the development of the system of 
irrigation. His chief architect sent in plans for laying out 
the royal estates, and we see the monarch discussing with 

1 l, 268-270, 271. 



78 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

him the excavation of a lake two thousand feet long in one 
of them. 1 He read many a weary roll of state papers, or 
turned from these to dictate dispatches to his commanders 
in Sinai, Nubia and Punt, along the southern Bed Sea. The 
briefs of litigating heirs reached his hands and were prob- 
ably not. always a matter of mere routine to be read by sec- 
retaries. When such business of the royal offices had been 
settled the monarch rode out in his palanquin, accompanied 
by his vizier and attendants, to inspect his buildings and 
public works, and his hand was everywhere felt in all the 
important affairs of the nation. 

The location of the royal residence was largely determined 
by the pyramid which the king was building. As we have 
remarked, the palace and the town formed by the court and 
all that was attached to it, probably lay in the valley below 
the margin of the western desert-plateau, on which the pyr- 
amid rose. From dynasty to dynasty, or sometimes from 
reign to reign, it followed the pyramid, the light construc- 
tion of the palaces and villas not interfering seriously with 
such mobility. After the Third Dynasty the residence was 
always in the vicinity of later Memphis. The palace itself 
was double, or at least it possessed two gates in its front, 
corresponding to the two ancient kingdoms, of which it was 
now the seat of government. Each door or gate had a 
name indicating to which kingdom it belonged; thus Snefru 
named the two gates of his palace "Exalted is the White 
Crown of Snefru upon the Southern Gate," and "Exalted 
is the Red Crown of Snefru upon the Northern Gate." 2 
Throughout Egyptian history the facade of the palace was 
called the ' ' double front, ' ' and in writing the word "palace ' ' 
the scribe frequently placed the sign of two houses after it. 
The royal office was also termed the "double cabinet,' 1 
although it is not likely that there were two such bureaus, 
one for the South and one for the North ; the division prob- 
ably went no further than the purely external symbolism of 
the two palace gates. The same was doubtless true of the 

ilbid. 21, 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



79 



central administration as a whole. We thus hear of a 
"double granary" and a "double white house" as depart- 
ments of the treasury. These doubtless no longer corre- 
sponded to existing double organizations ; they have become 
a fiction surviving from the first two dynasties; but such 
double names were always retained in the later terminology 
of the government. Adjoining the palace was a huge court, 
connected with which were the "halls" or offices of the cen- 
tral government. The entire complex of palace and adjoin- 
ing offices was known as the "Great House," which was 






FIG. 36. COLLECTION OF TAXES BY TREASURY OFFICIALS. 

On the right the scribes and fiscal officers keep record, while deputies with 
staves bring in the taxpayers. Over these are the words : " Seizing the town- 
rulers for a reckoning." 

thus the centre of administration as well as the dwelling of 
the royal household. Here was focussed the entire system 
of government, which ramified throughout the country. 

For purposes of local government, Upper Egypt was 
divided into some twenty administrative districts, and later 
we find as many more in the Delta. These "nomes" were 
presumably the early principalities, from which the local 
princes who ruled them in prehistoric days, had long dis- 
appeared. At the head of such a district or nome there was 
in the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties an official appointed by 
the crown, and known as "First under the King." Besides 
his administrative function as "local governor" of the nome, 
he also served in a judicial capacity, and therefore bore also 
the title of "judge.' 7 In Upper Egypt these "local gov- 
ernors" were also sometimes styled "magnates of the 



80 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

Southern Ten," as if there were a group among them enjoy- 
ing higher rank and forming a college or council of ten. 
While we are not so well informed regarding the government 
of the North, the system there was evidently very similar, 
although there were perhaps fewer local governors. Within 
the nome which he administered the ''local governor" had 
under his control a miniature state, an administrative unit 
with all the organs of government: a treasury, a court of 
justice, a land-office, a service for the conservation of the 
dykes and canals, a body of militia, a magazine for their 
equipment ; and in these offices a host of scribes and record- 
ers, with an ever growing mass of archives and local records. 
The chief administrative bond which coordinated and cen- 
tralized these nomes was the organization of the treasury, 
by the operation of which there annually converged upon the 
magazines of the central government the grain, cattle, poul- 
try and industrial products, which in an age without coinage, 
were collected as taxes by the local governors. The local 
registration of land, or the land-office, the irrigation service, 
the judicial administration, and other administrative func- 
tions were also centralized at the Great House; but it was 
the treasury which formed the most tangible bond between 
the palace and the nomes. Over the entire fiscal adminis- 
tration there was a " Chief Treasurer,' 1 ' residing of course 
at the court. In a state in which buildings and extensive 
public works demanded so much attention, the labour of 
obtaining such enormous quantities of materials from the 
mines and quarries required the oversight of two important 
treasury officials, whom we would call assistant treasurers. 
These the Egyptian styled "Treasurers of the God," mean- 
ing of the king. They were the men who superintended the 
quarrying and transportation of the stone for the temples 
and the massive pyramids of the Old Kingdom; besides 
leading many an expedition into Sinai to exploit the mines 
there. 

As the reader may have already inferred, the judicial 
functions of the local governors were merely incidental to 



THE OLD KINGDOM 81 

their administrative labours. There was therefore no clearly 
defined class of professional judges, but the administrative 
officials were learned in the law and assumed judicial duties. 
Like the treasury, the judicial administration also converged 
in one person, for the local judges were organized into six 
courts and these in turn were under a chief justice of the 
whole realm. Many of the judges bore the additional pred- 
icate "attached to Nekhen" (Hieraconpolis), an ancient 
title descended from the days when Nekhen was the royal 
residence of the Southern Kingdom. There was a body of 
highly elaborated law, which has unfortunately perished 
entirely. The local governors boast of their fairness and 
justice in deciding cases, often stating in their tombs: 
"Never did I judge two brothers in such a way that a son 
was deprived of his paternal possession." 1 The system of 
submitting all cases to the court in the form of written 
briefs, a method so praised by Diodorus, 2 seems to have 
existed already in this remote age, and the Berlin Museum 
possesses such a legal document pertaining to litigation 
between an heir and an executor. 3 It is the oldest document 
of the kind in existence. Special cases of private nature 
were "heard" by the chief justice and a judge "attached 
to Nekhen," 4 while in a case of treason in the harem, the 
accused queen was tried before a court of two judges 
"attached to Nekhen, " especially appointed by the crown 
for that purpose, the chief justice not being one of them. 5 
It is a remarkable testimony to the Pharaoh's high sense of 
justice, and to the surprisingly judicial temper of the time, 
that in this distant age such a suspected conspirator in the 
royal harem was not immediately put to death without more 
ado. Summary execution, without any attempt legally to 
establish the guilt of the accused, would not have been con- 
sidered unjustifiable in times not a century removed from 
our own in the same land. Under certain circumstances, 
not yet clear to us, appeal might be made directly to the 

'I, 331, 357. 2 Book I, 75-76. 

*Pap. des Kgl. Mus., 82-3. !, 307. "I, 310. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

king, and briefs in the case submitted to him. Such a brief 
is the document from the Old Kingdom now in Berlin, above 
noticed (Fig. 45). 

The immediate head of the entire organization of govern- 
ment was the Pharaoh's prime minister, or as he is more 
commonly called in the east, the vizier. At the same time 
he also regularly served as chief justice; he was thus the 
most powerful man in the kingdom, next to the monarch 
himself, and for that reason the office was held by the crown 
prince in the Fourth Dynasty. His "hall" or office served 
as the archives of the government, and he was the chief 
archivist of the state. The state records were called "king's 
writings." 1 Here all lands were registered, and all local 
archives centralized and coordinated; here wills were re- 
corded, and when executed the resulting new titles were 
issued. 2 The will of a king's son in the Fourth Dynasty 
has been preserved practically complete, 3 and another from 
the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty, 4 both having been cut 
in hieroglyphs on the stone wall of the tomb-chapel, where 
they could defy the lapse of nearly five thousand years, 
while the papyrus archives of the vizier perished thousands 
of years ago. Several other similar mortuary enactments 
have also survived. 5 All lands presented by the Pharaoh 
were conveyed by royal decree, recorded in the "king's 
writings" at the vizier's offices. 6 

All administration like the palace was in theory at least 
twofold: a fiction surviving from the predynastic times, 
before the union of the two kingdoms. We thus hear of 
a "double granary" in the treasury, or a "double cabinet, " 
the office of the king. And these terms, which perhaps cor- 
respond to existing realities in some cases, were retained in 
the later terminology of the government, long after such 
division into two departments had ceased to exist. Over 
the vast army of scribes and officials of all possible ranks 

'I, 268 ff.; 273. 2 1, 175 11. 14-16. 

I, 190-199. I, 213-217. 

B I, 231 ff. and others thioughout Fifth and Sixth Dynasty records. 
I, 173. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 83 

from high to low, who transacted the business of the Great 
House, the vizier was supreme. When we add, that besides 
some minor offices, he was also often the Pharaoh's chief 
architect, or as the Egyptian said, "Chief of all Works of 
the King," we shall understand that this great minister 
was the busiest man in the kingdom. All powerful as he 
was, the people appealed to him in his judicial capacity, as 
to one who could right every wrong, and the office was tradi- 
tionally the most popular in the long list of the Pharaoh's 
servants. 5 It was probably this office which was held by the 
great wise man, Imhotep, under king Zoser, and the wisdom 
of two other viziers of the Third Dynasty, Kegemne and 
Ptah-hotep, committed to writing, survived for many cen- 
turies after the Old Kingdom was a memory. Such was the 
reverence with which the incumbents of this exalted office 
were regarded, that the words, "Life, Prosperity, Health, " 
which properly followed only the name of the king or a 
royal prince| were sometimes added to that of the vizier. 

Such was the organization of this remarkable state, as 
we are able to discern it during the first two or three cen- 
turies of the Old Kingdom. In the thirtieth century 
before Christ it had reached an elaborate development of 
state functions under local officials, such as was not found 
in Europe until far down in the history of the Roman 
Empire. It was, to sum up briefly, a closely centralized body 
of local officials, each a centre for all the organs of the local 
government, which in each nome were thus focussed in the 
local governor before converging upon the palace. A 
Pharaoh of power, force and ability, and loyal governors in 
the nomes, meant a strong state ; but let the Pharaoh betray 
signs of weakness and the governors might gain an inde- 
pendence which would threaten the dissolution of the whole. 
It was the maintenance of the nomes each as a separate unit 
of government, and the interposition of the governor at its 
head between the Pharaoh and the nome, which rendered 
the system dangerous. These little states within the state, 
each frequently having its own governor, might too easily 



84 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

become independent centres of political power. How this 
process actually took place we shall be able to observe as 
we follow the career of the Old Kingdom in the next chapter. 
Such a process was rendered the more easy because the 
government did not maintain any uniform or compact mili- 
tary organization. Each nome possessed its militia, com- 
manded by the civil officials, who were not necessarily 
trained soldiers ; there was thus no class of exclusively mili- 
tary officers. The temple estates likewise maintained a body 
of such troops. They were for the most part employed in 
mining and quarrying expeditions, supplying the hosts nec- 
essary for the transportation of the enormous blocks often 
demanded by the architects. In such work they were under 
the command of the "treasurer of the God.' : In case of 
serious war, as there was no standing army, this militia from 
all the nomes and temple estates, besides auxiliaries levied 
among the Nubian tribes, were brought together as quickly 
as possible and the command of the motley host, without 
any permanent organization, was entrusted by the monarch 
to some able official. As the local governors commanded 
the militia of the nomes, they held the sources of the 
Pharaoh's dubious military strength in their own hands. 

The land which was thus administered must to a large 
extent have belonged to the crown. Under the oversight 
of the local governors ' subordinates it was worked and made 
profitable by slaves or serfs, who formed the bulk of the 
population. They belonged to the ground and were be- 
queathed with it. 1 We have no means of determining how 
large this population was, although, as we have before 
stated, it had reached the sum of seven million by Eoman 
times. 2 The descendants of the numerous progeny of older 
kings, with possible remnants of the prehistoric landed 
nobility, had created also a class of land-holding nobles, 
whose great estates must have formed a not inconsiderable 
fraction of the available lands of the kingdom. Such lords 
did not necessarily enter upon an official career or partici- 

1 I. 171. 2 Diodorus I, 31. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 85 

pate in the administration. But the nobles and the peasant 
serfs, as the highest and the lowest, were not the only classes 
of society. There was a free middle class, in whose hands 
the arts and industries had reached such a high degree of 
excellence; but of these people we know almost nothing. 
They did not build imperishable tombs, such as have fur- 
nished us with all that we know of the nobles of the time; 
and they transacted their business with documents written 
on papyrus, which have all perished, in spite of the enormous 
mass of such materials which must have once existed. Later 
conditions would indicate that there undoubtedly was a class 
of industrial merchants in the Old Kingdom who produced 
and sold their own wares. That there were free land- 
holders not belonging to the ranks of the nobles is also highly 
probable. 

The social unit was as in later human history, the family. 
A man possessed but one legal wife^ who was the mother of 
his heirs. She was in every respect his equal, was always 
treated with the greatest consideration, and participated in 
the pleasures of her husband and her children ; the affection- 
ate relations existing between a noble and his wife are con- 
stantly and noticeably depicted on the monuments of the time. 
Such relations had often existed from the earliest childhood 
of the pair ; for it was customary in all ranks of society for 
a youth to marry his sister. Besides the legitimate wife, 
the head of his household, the man of wealth possessed also 
a harem, the inmates of which maintained no legal claim 
upon their lord. The harem was already at this early day a 
recognized institution in the East, and nothing immoral was 
thought of in connection with it. The children of the time 
show the greatest respect for their parents, and it was the 
duty of every son to maintain the tomb of his father. The 
respect and affection of one 's parents and family were highly 
valued, and we often find in the tombs the statement, ' ' I was 
one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, whom his 
brothers and sisters loved- ' n As among many other peoples, 

L 357. 



86 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the natural line of inheritance was through the eldest daugh- 
ter, though a will might disregard this. The closest ties of 
blood were through the mother, and a man's natural pro- 
tector, even in preference to his own father, was the father of 
his mother. The debt of a son to the mother who bore and 
nourished him, cherished and cared for him while he was 
being educated, is dwelt upon with emphasis by the wise men 
of the time. While there was probably a loose form of mar- 
riage which might be easily dissolved, a form presumably 
due to the instability of fortune among the slaves and the 
poorer class, yet immorality was strongly condemned by the 
best sentiment. The wise man warns the youth, " Beware 
of a woman from abroad, who is not known in her city. Look 
not upon her when she comes, and know her not. She is like 
the vortex of deep waters, whose whirling is unfathomable. 
The woman, whose husband is far away, she writes to thee 
every day. If there is no witness with her she arises and 
spreads her net. deadly crime, if one hearkens!" 1 To 
all youths marriage and the foundation of a household are 
recommended as the only wise course. Yet there is no 
doubt that side by side with these wholesome ideals of the 
wise and virtuous, there also existed wide-spread and gross 
immorality. 

The outward conditions of the lower class were not such as 
would incline toward moral living. In the towns their low 
mud-brick, thatch-roofed houses were crowded into groups 
and masses, so huddled together that the walls were often 
contiguous. A rough stool, a rude box or two, and a few 
crude pottery jars constituted the furniture of such a hovel. 
The barracks of the workmen were an immense succession of 
small mud-brick chambers under one roof, with open pas- 
sages between long lines of such rooms. Whole quarters for 
the royal levies of workmen were erected on this plan, in the 
pyramid-towns, and near the pyramids. On the great 
estates, the life of the poor was freer, less congested and 
promiscuous, and undoubtedly more stable and wholesome. 

, de Boulaq I, 16, 13 ff.; Erman, Aegypten, 223. 



I I mA 



.* 




West 



87 



88 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

The houses of the rich, the noble and official class were 
large and commodious. Methen, a great noble of the third 
dynasty, built a house over three hundred and thirty feet 
square. 1 The materials were wood and sun-dried brick, and 
the construction was light and airy as suited the climate. 
There were many latticed windows, on all sides the walls of 
the living rooms were largely a mere skeleton, like those of 
many Japanese houses. Against winds and sandstorms, 
they could be closed by dropping gaily coloured hangings. 
Even the palace of the king, though of course fortified, was 
of this light construction ; hence the cities of ancient Egypt 
have disappeared entirely or left but mounds containing a 
few scanty fragments of ruined walls. Beds, chairs, stools 
and chests of ebony, inlaid with ivory in the finest workman- 
ship, formed the chief articles of furniture. Little or no use 
was made of tables, but the rich vessels of alabaster, and 
other costly stones, of copper, or sometimes of gold and 
silver, were placed upon bases and standards which raised 
them from the floor. The floors were covered with heavy 
rugs, upon which guests, especially ladies, frequently sat, in 
preference to the chairs and stools. The food was rich and 
varied; we find that even the dead desired in the hereafter, 
" ten different kinds of meat, five kinds of poultry, sixteen 
kinds of bread and cakes, six kinds of wine, four kinds of 
beer, eleven kinds of fruit, besides all sorts of sweets and 
many other things." 2 The costume of these ancient lords 
was simple in the extreme; it consisted merely of a white 
linen kilt, secured above the hips with a girdle or band, and 
hanging often hardly to the knees, or again in another style, 
to the calf of the leg. The head was commonly shaven, and 
two styles of wig, one short and curly, the other with long 
straight locks parted in the middle, were worn on all state 
occasions. A broad collar, often inlaid with costly stones, 
generally hung from the neck, but otherwise the body was 
bare from the waist up. With long staff in hand, the gentle- 

i I, 173. 

2 Dumichen Grabpalast, 18-26; Erman, Aegypten, 265. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 89 

man of the day was ready to receive his visitors, or to make 
a tour of inspection about his estate. His lady and her 
daughters all appeared in costumes even more simple. They 
were clothed in a thin, close-fitting, sleeveless, white linen gar- 
ment hanging from the breast to the ankles, and supported 
by two bands passing over the shoulders. The skirt, as a 
modern modiste would say ' ' lacked fullness, ' ' and there was 
barely freedom to walk. A long wig, a collar and necklace, 
and a pair of bracelets completed the lady's costume. 
Neither she nor her lord was fond of sandals ; although they 
now and then wore them. While the adults thus dispensed 
with all unnecessary clothing, as we should expect in such a 
climate, the children were allowed to run about without any 
clothing whatever. The peasant wore merely a breech-clout, 
which he frequently cast off when at work in the fields ; his 
wife was clad in the same long close-fitting garment worn by 
the wife of the noble; but she too when engaged in heavy 
work, such as winnowing grain, cast aside all clothing. 

The Egyptian was passionately fond of nature and of out- 
door life. The house of the noble was always surrounded by 
a garden, in which he loved to plant figs and palms and 
sycamores, laying out vineyards and arbours, and excavating 
before the house a pool, lined with masonry coping, and filled 
with fish. A large body of servants and slaves were in at- 
tendance, both in house and garden; a chief steward had 
charge of the entire house and estate, while an upper 
gardener directed the slaves in the care and culture of the 
garden. This was the noble's paradise; here he spent his 
leisure hours with his family and friends, playing at 
draughts, listening to the music of harp, pipe and lute, watch- 
ing his women in the slow and stately dance of the time, while 
his children sported about among the trees, splashed in the 
pool, or played with ball, doll or jumping- jack. Again in a 
light boat of papyrus reeds, accompanied by his wife and 
sometimes by one of his children, the noble delighted to float 
about in the shade of the tall rushes, in the inundated marshes 
and swamps. The myriad life that teemed and swarmed all 



90 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 






wllPir% 







FIG. 37. VILLA AND GARDEN OF AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM. 

(After Perrot and Chipiez.) 

about his frail craft gave him the keenest pleasure. While 
the lady plucked water-lilies and lotus flowers, and the lad 
could try his skill at catching hoopoe birds, my lord launched 
his boomerang among the flocks of wild fowl that fairly 
darkened the sky above him, finding his sport in the use of 
the difficult weapon, which for this reason, he preferred to 
the more effective and less difficult bow. Or again he seized 
his double-pointed fish-spear, and tried his skill in the stream, 
endeavouring if possible to transfix two fish at once, one on 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



91 



each of the two prongs. Sometimes an aggressive hippo- 
potamus, or a troublesome crocodile demanded the long har- 
poon with rope attached, and the fishers and hunters of the 
marshes were summoned to assist in dispatching the dan- 
gerous brute. Not infrequently the noble undertook the 
more arduous sport of the desert, where he might bring 
down the huge wild ox with his long bow; capture alive 
numbers of antelopes, gazelles, oryxes, ibexes, wild oxen, wild 




FIG. 38. A NOBLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM HUNTING WILD FOWL WITH THE 
THROW-STICK FROM A SKIFF OF REEDS IN THE PAPYRUS MARSHES. 

asses, ostriches and hares ; or catch fleeting glimpses of the 
strange beasts, with which his fancy peopled the wilderness : 
the gryphon, a quadruped with head and wings of a bird, 
or the Sag, a lioness with the head of a hawk, and a tail 
which terminated in a lotus flower! In this lighter side of 
the Egyptian's life, his love of nature, his wholesome and 
sunny view of life, his never failing cheerfulness in spite 
of his constant and elaborate preparation for death, we find 
a pervading characteristic of his nature, which is so evident 



92 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



in his art, as to raise it far above the sombre heaviness that 
pervades the contemporary art of Asia. 

Some five centuries of uniform government, with central- 
ized control of the inundation, in the vast system of dykes 
and irrigation canals, had brought the productivity of the 
nation to the highest level; for the economic foundation of 
this civilization in the Old Kingdom, as in all other periods 
of Egyptian history, was agriculture. It was the enormous 




FIG. 39. AGRICULTURE IN THE OLD KINGDOM. 

Above: are plowing, breaking clods, and sowing; below: the sheep are being 
driven across the sown fields in order to trample in the seed. As the leading 
shepherd wades through the marshy field he sings to the sheep: " The shepherd 
is in the water among the fish; he talks with the nar-fish, he passes the time 
of day with the west-fish. . . . 



The song is written over his flock. 



harvests of wheat and barley gathered by the Egyptian 
from the inexhaustible soil of his valley, which made pos- 
sible the social and political structure which we have been 
sketching. Besides grain, the extensive vineyards and wide 
fields of succulent vegetables, which formed a part of every 
estate, greatly augmented the agricultural resources of the 
land. Large herds of cattle, sheep, goats, droves of donkeys 
(for the horse was unknown), and vast quantities of poultry, 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



93 



wild fowl, the large game of the desert already noticed and 
innumerable Nile fish, added not inconsiderably to the pro- 
duce of the field, in contributing to the wealth and prosperity 
which the land was now enjoying. It was thus in field and 
pasture that the millions of the kingdom toiled to produce 
the annual wealth by which its economic processes continued. 
Other sources of wealth also occupied large numbers of 
workmen. There were granite quarries at the first cataract, 
sandstone was quarried at Silsileh, the finer and harder 
stones chiefly at Hammamat between Coptos and the Bed 
Sea. Alabaster at Hatnub behind Amarna, and limestone 
at many places, particularly at Ayan or Troia opposite Mem- 



Im^m^u^M^ 

FIG. 40. A HERD IN THE OLD KINGDOM, FORDING A C 






A HERD IN THE OLD KINGDOM, FORDING A CANAL. 

phis. They brought from the first cataract granite blocks 
twenty or thirty feet long and fifty or sixty tons in weight. 
They drilled the toughest of stone, like diorite, with tubular 
drills of copper, and the massive lids of granite sarcophagi 
were sawn with long copper saws which, like the drills, were 
reinforced by sand or emery. Miners and quarrymen were 
employed in large numbers during the expeditions to Sinai, 
for the purpose of procuring copper, the green and blue 
malachite used in fine inlays, the turquoise and lapis-lazuli. 
The source of iron, which was already used for tools to a 
limited extent, is uncertain. Bronze was not yet in use. 
The smiths furnished tools of copper and iron : bolts, nails, 
hinges and mountings of all sorts for artisans of all classes ; 



94 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



they also wrought fine copper vessels for the tables of the 
rich, besides splendid copper weapons. They achieved mar- 
vels also in the realm of plastic art, as we have yet to see. 
Silver came from abroad, probably from Cilicia in Asia 
Minor; it was therefore even more rare and valuable than 
gold. The quartz-veins of the granite mountains along the 
Eed Sea were rich in gold, and it was taken out in the Wadi 
Foakhir, on the Coptos road. It was likewise mined largely 
by foreigners and obtained in trade from Nubia, in the east- 
ern deserts of which it was also found. Of the jewelry worn 
by the Pharaoh and his nobles, in the Old Kingdom, almost 




FIG. 41. METALWORKERS' WORKSHOP IN THE OLD KINGDOM. 

Above: at the left, weighing of precious metals and malachite; in the 
middle, the furnace with men at blow-pipes; at the right, casting and hammer- 
ing. Below: putting together necklaces and costly ornaments. Note the 
dwarves employed on this work. 

nothing has survived, but the reliefs in the tomb-chapels 
often depict the gold-smith at his work, and his descendants 
in the Middle Kingdom have left works which show that the 
taste and cunning of the first dynasty had developed without 
cessation in the Old Kingdom. 

For the other important industries the Nile valley fur- 
nished nearly all materials indispensable to their develop- 
ment. In spite of the ease with which good building stone 
was procured, enormous quantities of sun-dried bricks were 
turned out by the brick-yards, as they still are at the present 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



95 



day, and, as we have seen, the masons erected whole quarters 
for the poor, villas of the rich, magazines, store-houses, forts 
and city walls of these cheap and convenient materials. In 
the forestless valley the chief trees were the date palm, the 
sycamore, tamarisk and acacia, none of which furnished 
good timber. Wood was therefore scarce and expensive, but 
the carpenters, joiners and cabinet makers flourished never- 
theless, and those in the employ of the palace or on the 
estates of the nobles wrought wonders in the cedar, imported 
from Syria, and the ebony and ivory which came in from 
the south. In every town and on every large estate ship- 
building was constant. There were many different styles of 
craft from the heavy cargo-boat for grain and cattle, to the 







FIG. 42. SHIPBUILDING IN THE OLD KINGDOM. 

gorgeous many-oared ' l dahabiyeh, ' ' of the noble, with its 
huge sail. We shall find these shipwrights building the 
earliest known sea-going vessels, on the shores of the Bed 
Sea. 

While the artistic craftsman in stone still produced mag- 
nificent vessels, vases, jars, bowls and platters in alabaster, 
diorite, porphyry and other costly stones, yet his work was 
gradually giving way to the potter, whose rich blue- and 
green-glazed fayence vessels could not but win their way. 
He produced also vast quantities of large coarse jars for 
the storage of oils, wines, meats and other foods in the 
magazines of the nobles and the government; while the use 
of smaller vessels among the millions of the lower classes 



96 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



made the manufacture of pottery one of the chief indus- 
tries of the country. The pottery of the time is without 
decoration, and is hardly a work of art. Glass was still 
chiefly employed as glaze and had not yet been developed 
as an independent material. In a land of pastures and 
herds, the production of leather was of course understood. 
The tanners had thoroughly mastered the art of curing the 
hides, and produced fine soft skins, which they dyed in all 
colours, covering stools and chairs, beds and cushions, and 
furnishing gay canopies and baldachins. Flax was plen- 
tifully cultivated, and the Pharaoh's harvest of flax was 
under the control of a noble of rank. 1 The women of the 




FIG. 43. WORKMEN DRILLING OUT STONE VESSELS. 

One says, " This is a very beautiful vessel " ; his comrade replies, " It is in- 
deed." Their conversation is recorded before them. 

serfs on the great estates were the spinners and weavers. 
Even the coarser varieties for general use show good quality, 
but surviving specimens of the royal linens are of such 
exquisite fineness that the ordinary eye requires a glass to 
distinguish them from silk, and the limbs of the wearer could 
be discerned through the fabric. Other vegetable fibres fur- 
nished by the marshes supported a large industry in coarser 
textiles. Among these, the papyrus was the most useful. 

>I, 172, 1. 5. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 



97 



Broad, light skiffs were made of it by binding together long 
bundles of these reeds ; rope was twisted from them, as also 
from palm-fibre; sandals were plaited, and mats woven of 
them; but above all, when split into thin strips, it was pos- 
sible to join them into sheets of tough paper. That the 
writing of Egypt spread to Phoenicia and furnished the 
classic world with an alphabet, is in a measure due to this 
convenient writing material, as well as to the method of 
writing upon it with ink. While a royal dispatch in cunei- 
form on clay often weighed eight or ten pounds, and could 
not be carried on the person of the messenger, a papyrus-roll 
of fifty times the surface afforded by the clay tablet might 




FIG. 44. PAPYRUS HARVEST IN THE OLD KINGDOM. 

On the left the stalks are plucked by two men; next two more bind them in 
bundles, and four men then carry the bundles away. 

be conveniently carried about in the bosom, employed in 
business, or used as a book. That its importation into Phoe- 
nicia was already in progress in the twelfth century B. C. 1 
is therefore quite intelligible. The manufacture of papyrus- 
paper had already grown into a large and flourishing indus- 
try in the Old Kingdom. 

The Nile was alive with boats, barges, and craft of all 
descriptions, bearing the products of these industries, and 
of field and pasture, to the treasury of the Pharaoh, or to 
the markets where they were disposed of. Here barter was 
the common means of exchange: a crude pot for a fish, a 
bundle of onions for a fan; a wooden box for a jar of oint- 
ment (Fig. 46). In some transactions, however, presumably 
those involving larger values, gold and copper in rings of 
a fixed weight, circulated as money, and stone weights were 

*IV, 582; see below p. 517. 



98 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



already marked with their equivalence in such rings. This 
ring-money is the oldest currency known. Silver was rare 

and more valuable than gold. Business 
had already reached a high degree ot 
development; books and accounts were 
kept; orders and receipts were given; 
wills and deeds were made; and written 
contracts covering long periods of time 
were entered upon. Every noble had his 
corps of clerks and secretaries and the 
exchange of letters and official documents 
with his colleagues was incessant. Under 
the scanty remnants of the sun-dried 
brick houses on the island of Elephan- 
tine, inhabited by the nobles of the south- 
ern border in the twenty sixth century B. 
C., the modern peasants recently found 
the remnants of the household papers 
and business documents which were once 
filed in the great man's office. But the 
ignorant finders so mutilated the pre- 
cious records that only fragments have 
now survived (Fig. 45). The letters, 
records of legal proceedings, and memo- 
randa, still recognizable among them, are 
now being published by the Berlin Mu- 
seum, where the papyri are preserved. 
Under such circumstances, an education in the learning 
of the time was indispensable to an official career. Con- 
nected with the treasury, for whose multifold records so 
many skilled scribes were necessary, there were schools 
where lads received the education and the training which 
fitted them for the scribal offices. Learning possessed but 
one aspect for the Egyptian, namely: its practical useful- 
ness. An ideal pleasure in the search for truth, the pursuit 
of science for its own sake, were unknown to him. The 
learned equipment was an advantage which lifted a youtfr 




FIG. 45. Two COL- 
UMNS FROM AN 
OLD KINGDOM 
LEGAL DOCU- 
MENT. 

Written in Hier- 
atic on Papyrus. 
See p. 81. (Orig- 
inal in Berlin.) 




H 

w 



- 





o 



C/3 < 

fcd - 



u 
tn 

I 



THE OLD KINGDOM 99 

above all other classes in the opinion of the scribe, and for 
that reason, the boy must be early put into the school and 
diligently kept to his tasks. While precept was incessantly 
in the lad 's ears, the master did not stop with this ; his prin- 
ciple was, "A boy's ears are on his back, and he hearkens 
when he is beaten." 1 The content of the instruction, besides 
innumerable moral precepts, many of them most wholesome 
and rational, was chiefly the method of writing. The elabo- 
rate hieroglyphic with its numerous animal and human 
figures, such as the reader has doubtless often seen on the 
monuments in our museums, or in works on Egypt, was too 
slow and labourious a method of writing for the needs of 
everyday business. The attempt to write these figures rap- 
idly with ink upon papyrus had gradually resulted in reduc- 
ing each sign to a mere outline, much rounded off and abbre- 
viated. This cursive business hand, which we call "hier- 
atic," had already begun under the earliest dynasties, and 
by the rise of the Old Kingdom, it had developed into a 
graceful and rapid system of writing, which showed no 
nearer resemblance to the hieroglyphic than does our own 
hand-writing to our print. The introduction of this system 
into the administration of government and the transaction 
of every day business, produced profound changes in gov- 
ernment and society, and created for all time the class dis- 
tinction between the illiterate and the learned, which is still 
a problem of modern society. It was the acquirement of 
this method of writing which enabled the lad to enter upon 
the coveted official career as a scribe or overseer of a maga- 
zine, or steward of an estate. Hence the master put before 
the boy model-letters, proverbs, and literary compositions, 
which he labouriously copied into his roll, the copy-book of 
this ancient school-boy. A large quantity of these copy- 
books from the Empire, some fifteen hundred years after the 
fall of the Old Kingdom, has been found ; and many a com- 
position which would otherwise have been lost, has thus sur- 
vived, in the uncertain hand of a pupil in the scribal schools 

1 Pap. Anast. 3.3 = Ibid. 5, 8. 



-100 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

They can easily be identified by the corrections of the master 
on the margin. When he could write well, the lad was 
placed in charge of some official, in whose office he assisted, 
gradually learning the routine and the duties of the scribe's 
life, until he was himself competent to assume some office at 
the bottom of the ladder. 

Education thus consisted solely of the practically useful 
equipment for an official career. Knowledge of nature and 
of the external world as a whole was sought only as necessity 
prompted such search. As we have already intimated, it never 
occurred to the Egyptian to enter upon the search for truth 
for its own sake. Under these circumstances, the science 
of the time, if we may speak of it as such at all, was such a 
knowledge of natural conditions as enabled the active men 
of this age to accomplish those practical tasks with which 
they were daily confronted. They had much practical ac- 
quaintance with astronomy, developed out of that knowl- 
edge which had enabled their ancestors to introduce a 
rational calendar nearly thirteen centuries before the rise of 
the Old Kingdom. They had already mapped the heavens, 
identified the more prominent fixed stars, and developed a 
system of observation with instruments sufficiently accurate 
to determine the positions of stars for practical purposes; 
but they had produced no theory of the heavenly bodies as 
a whole, nor would it ever have occurred to the Egyptian 
that such an attempt was useful or worth the trouble. In 
mathematics all the ordinary arithmetical processes were 
demanded in the daily transactions of business and govern- 
ment, and had long since come into common use among the 
scribes. Fractions, however, caused difficulty. The scribes 
could operate only with those having one as the numerator, 
and all other fractions were of necessity resolved into a 
series of several, each with one as the numerator. The only 
exception was two thirds, which they had learned to use 
without so resolving it. Elementary algebraic problems were 
also solved without difficulty. In geometry they were able 
w master the simpler problems, though the area of a trape- 



THE OLD KINGDOM 101 

zoid caused some difficulties and errors, while the area of 
the circle had been determined with close accuracy. The 
necessity of determining the content of a pile of grain had 
led to a roughly approximate result in the computation of 
the content of the hemisphere, and a circular granary to 
that of the cylinder. But no theoretical problems were dis- 
cussed, and the whole science attempted only those problems 
which were continually met in daily life. The laying out 
of a ground-plan like the square base of the Great Pyramid 
could be accomplished with amazing accuracy, and the 
orientation displays a nicety that almost rivals the results of 
modern instruments. A highly developed knowledge of me- 
chanics was thus at the command of the architect and crafts- 
man. The arch was employed in masonry and can be dated 
as far back as the thirtieth century B. C., the oldest dated 
arches known (Fig. 47). In the application of power to the 
movement of great monuments, only the simplest devices 
were employed; the pulley was unknown and probably the 
roller also. Medicine was already in possession of much 
empirical wisdom, displaying close and accurate observa- 
tion; the calling of the physician already existed and the 
court physician of the Pharaoh was a man of rank and in- 
fluence. His recipes were many of them rational and useful ; 
others were naively fanciful, like the prescription of a decoc- 
tion of the hair of a black calf to prevent gray hair. They 
had already been collected and recorded in papyrus rolls, 1 
and the recipes of this age were famous for their virtue in 
later times. Some of them finally crossed with the Greeks 
to Europe, where they are still in use among the peasantry 
of the present day. That which precluded any progress 
toward real science was the belief in magic, which later 
began to dominate all the practice of the physician. There 
was no great distinction between the physician and the 
magician. All remedies were administered with more or 
less reliance upon magical charms; and in many cases the 
magical "hocus pocus" of the physician was thought to be 

1 I, 246. 



102 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

of itself more effective than any remedy that could be admin- 
istered. Disease was due to hostile spirits, and against 
these only magic could avail. 

Art flourished as nowhere else in the ancient world. Here 
again the Egyptian's attitude of mind was not wholly that 
which characterized the art of the later Greek world. Art 
as the pursuit and the production exclusively of the ideally 
beautiful, was unknown to him. He loved beauty as found 
in nature, his spirit demanded such beauty in his home and 
surroundings. The lotus blossomed on the handle of his 
spoon, and his wine sparkled in the deep blue calyx of the 
same flower; the muscular limb of the ox in carved ivory 
upheld the couch upon which he slept, the ceiling over his 
head was a starry heaven resting upon palm trunks, each 
crowned with its graceful tuft of drooping foliage ; or papy- 
rus-stems rose from the floor to support the azure roof upon 
their swaying blossoms; doves and butterflies flitted across 
his in-door sky; his floors were frescoed with the opulent 
green of rich marsh-grasses, with fish gliding among their 
roots, where the wild ox tossed his head at the birds twit- 
tering on the swaying grass-tops, as they strove in vain to 
drive away the stealthy weasel creeping up to plunder their 
nests. Everywhere the objects of every day life in the 
homes of the rich showed unconscious beauty of line and fine 
balance of proportion, while the beauty of nature and of 
out-of-door life which spoke to the beholder in the decora- 
tion on every hand, lent a certain distinction even to the 
most commonplace objects. The Egyptian thus sought to 
beautify and to make beautiful all objects of utility, but all 
such objects served some practical use. He was not inclined 
to make a beautiful thing solely for its beauty. In sculpture, 
therefore, the practical dominated. The splendid statues 
of the Old Kingdom were not made to be erected in the 
market place, but solely to be masoned up in the mastaba- 
tomb, that they might be of practical advantage to the de- 
ceased in the hereafter, as we have seen in the preceding 
chapter. It was this motive chiefly to which the marvellous 




FIG. 50. LIMESTONE STATUE OF HEMSET. 

(Louvre; after Capart, Recutil des Monuments.) 




CQ 

5 

u 

en 



o 

Q 

O 



^ 3 

w 



en 

W 

O 

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CO 

fcd 




a 
^ 

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O 



H ~ 

en . g 

Q 



o 
^ 

CJ 



THE OLD KINGDOM 103 

development of portrait sculpture in the Old Kingdom was 
due. 

The sculptor might either model his subject with faith- 
ful delineation, an intimate, personal style; or again depict 
him as a conventional type, a formal, typical style. Both 
styles, representing the same man, though strikingly dif- 
ferent, may appear in the same tomb. Every device was 
adopted to increase the resemblance to life. The whole 
statue was colored in the natural hues, the eyes were inlaid 
in rock-crystal, and the vivacity with which these Memphite 
sculptures were instinct, has never been surpassed. The 
finest of the sitting statues is the well-known portrait of 
Khafre (Fig. 48), the builder of the second pyramid of 
Gizeh. The sculptor has skilfully met the limitations im- 
posed upon him by the intensely hard and refractory material 
(diorite), and while obliged, therefore, to treat the subject 
summarily, has slightly emphasized salient features, lest the 
work should lack pronounced character. The unknown mas- 
ter, who must take his place among the world's great sculp- 
tors, while contending with technical difficulties which no 
modern sculptor attempts, has here given a real king imper- 
ishable form, and shown us with incomparable skill the 
divine and impassive calm with which the men of the time 
had endued their sovereign. In softer material, the sculptor 
gained a freer hand, of which one of the best examples is the 
sitting figure of Hernset in the Louvre (Fig. 50). It is 
surprisingly vivacious, in spite of the summarization of the 
body, an insufficiency which is characteristic of all Old King- 
dom sculpture in the round. It is the head which appeals 
to the artist as the most individual element in his model, and 
on the head therefore he exhausts all his skill. These forms 
of kings and nobles show little variety in attitude; indeed 
there is but one other posture in which a person of rank 
could be depicted. Perhaps the best example of it is the 
figure of the priest Ranofer, a speaking likeness of the proud 
noble of the time (Fig. 49). While the character of the 
subject does not appeal to us, nevertheless one of the most 
remarkable portraits of the Old Kingdom is the sleek, well- 



104 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

fed, self-satisfied old overseer, whose wooden statue, like all 
those that we have thus far noticed, is in the Cairo Museum 
(Fig. 51). As every one now knows, he has been dubbed 
the "Shekh el-beled" or "Sheik of the village," because the 
natives who excavated the figure, discovered in the face such 
a striking resemblance to the sheik of their village, that they 
all cried out with one accord, ' ' Shekh el-beled ! ' : In depict- 
ing the servants, who were to accompany the deceased noble 
into the hereafter, the sculptor was freed from the most 
tyrannical of the conventions which governed the posture of 
the noble himself. With great life-likeness he has wrought 
the miniatures of the household servants, as they continue in 
the tomb the work which they had been accustomed to do 
for their lord in his home. Even the noble 's secretary must 
accompany him into the next world, and such is the vivacity 
with which the sculptor has fashioned the famous "Louvre 
scribe'' (Fig. 52), that as one looks into the shrewd, hard- 
featured countenance, it would hardly be a surprise if the 
reed pen should begin to move nimbly across the papyrus- 
roll upon his knees, as he resumes the dictation of his master, 
interrupted now these five thousand years. Superb animal 
forms, like the granite lion's-head from the sun-temple of 
Nuserre (Fig. 57) were also wrought in the hardest stone. 
It had never been supposed that the artists of this remote 
age would attempt so ambitious a task as the production of 
a life-size statue in metal; but the sculptors and copper- 
smiths of the court of Pepi I, in celebration of the king's 
first jubilee, accomplished even this (Figs. 53-54). Over a 
wooden core they wrought the face and figure of the king, 
in beaten copper, inserting eyes of obsidian and white lime- 
stone. In spite of the ruinous state in which it now is, in 
spite of fracture and oxidation, the head is still one of the 
strongest portraits which have survived from antiquity. 
The gold-smith also invaded the realm of plastic art. In 
the "gold-house' 5 as his workshop was called, he turned 
sculptor, and produced for the temples such cultus-statues 
of the gods as the magnificent figure of the sacred hawk of 




FIG. 53. LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF PEPI I, WITH FIGURE OF HIS SON; BOTH OF BEATEN 

COPPER. 

(Cairo Museum.) 




FIG. 54.-HL;AD OF THE COPPER STATUE OF PEPI I, 
SHOWING EYES OF INLAID ROCK CRYSTAL. 

(Cairo Museum.) 




FIG. 55. PAINTING OF GEESE FROM AN OLD KINGDOM TOMB AT MED^M. 

(The panel has been cut in the middle : the two ^eese eating should face each other. Cairo Museum.) 



THE OLD KINGDOM 105 

Hieraconpolis (Fig. 58), of which Quibell found the head 
in the temple at that place. The body of beaten copper had 
perished; but the head, crowned with a circlet and sur- 
mounted by two tall feather-plumes, the whole wrought in 
beaten gold, was practically intact. The head is of one piece 
of metal, and the eyes are the two polished ends of a single 
rod of obsidian, which passes through the head from eye 
to eye. 

In relief, now greatly in demand for temple decoration, 
and the chapel of the mastaba-tomb, the Egyptian was con- 
fronted by the problem of foreshortening and perspective. 
He must put objects having roundness and thickness, upon 
a flat surface. How this should be done had been deter- 
mined for him before the beginning of the Old Kingdom. A 
conventional style had already been established before the 
third dynasty, and that style was now sacred and inviolable 
tradition. While a certain freedom of development sur- 
vived, that style in its fundamentals persisted throughout 
the history of Egyptian art, even after the artist had learned 
to perceive its shortcomings. The age which produced it 
had not learned to maintain one point of view in the drawing 
of any given scene or object; two different points of view 
were combined in the same figure : in drawing a man a front 
view of the eyes and shoulders was regularly placed upon a 
profile of the trunk and legs. This unconscious incongruity 
was afterward also extended to temporal relations, and suc- 
cessive instants of time were combined in the same scene. 
Accepting these limitations, the reliefs of the Old Kingdom, 
which are really slightly modelled drawings, are often sculp- 
tures of rare beauty (Fig. 56). It is from the scenes which 
the Memphite sculptor placed on the walls of the mastaba- 
chapels that we learn all that we know of the life and cus- 
toms of the Old Kingdom. The exquisite modelling, of 
which such a sculptor was capable, is perhaps best exhib- 
ited in the wooden doors of Hesire (Fig. 59). All such 
reliefs were coloured, so that when completed, we may call 
them raised and modelled paintings; at least they do not 



106 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

fall within the domain of plastic art, as do Greek reliefs. 
Painting was also practiced independently, and the familiar 
line of geese from a tomb at Medum (Fig. 55) well illustrates 
the strength and freedom with which the Memphite of the 
time could depict the animal forms with which he was famil- 
iar. The characteristic poise of the head, the slow walk, 
the sudden droop of the neck as the head falls to seize the 
worm, all these are the work of a strong and confident 
draughtsman, long schooled in his art. 

The sculpture of the Old Kingdom may be characterized 
as a natural and unconscious realism, exercised with a tech- 
nical ability of the highest order. In the practice of this 
art, the sculptor of the Old Kingdom compares favourably 
even with modern artists. He was the only artist in the 
early orient who could put the human body into stone, and 
living in a society such that he was daily familiarized with 
the nude form, he treated it with sincerity and frankness. I 
cannot forbear quoting the words of an unprejudiced clas- 
sical archaeologist, M. Charles Perrot, who says of the Mem- 
phite sculptors of the Old Kingdom, "It must be acknowl- 
edged that they produced works which are not to be sur- 
passed in their way by the greatest portraits of modern 
Europe." 1 The sculpture of the Old Kingdom, however, 
was superficial; it was not interpretative, did not embody 
ideas in stone, and shows little contemplation of the emotions 
and forces of life. It is characteristic of the age that we must 
speak of this Memphite art as a whole. We know none of its 
greatest masters, and only the names of an artist or two 
during the whole period of Egyptian history. 

It is only very recently that we have been able to discern 
the fundamentals of Old Kingdom architecture. Too little 
has been preserved of the house and palace of the time to 
permit of safe generalizations upon the light and airy style 
of architecture which they represent. It is only the mas- 
sive stone structures of this age which have been preserved. 
Besides the mastabas and pyramids, which we have already 

1 Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, II, p. 194. 



/ ..< .""/, 1 

":}. / v . * ; 
\; 



*sff -'''' 






' r-- 1 ,/J :j;\ . j . :\i 

!r . ' M 




FIG. 56.-RELIEFS FROM THE INTERIOR OF AN OLD KINGDOM MASTABA CHAPEL, 
DEPICTING HERDS AND FLOCKS. (Berlin Museum) 





FIG. 57. DECORATIVE HF.AO OF LION, IN 
GRANITE. (Cairo Museum.) 



FIG. 58. GOLDEN HAWK OF 
HIERACONPOLIS. (Cairo 
Museum.) 




FIG. 59. WOODEN PANEL OF HESIRE. 
(Cairo Museum.) 




.tf, 
'' 




FIG. 60.-FIFTH DYNASTY COi 
UMNS. CLUSTER OF PAPYRUb 
STEMS (left) AND PALM CAPI- 
TAL (right). Berlin Museum. 



THE OLD KINGDOM 107 

briefly noticed, the temple is the great architectural achieve- 
ment of the Old Kingdom. Its arrangement has been 
touched upon in the preceding chapter. The architect em- 
ployed only straight lines, these being perpendiculars and 
horizontals, very boldly and felicitously combined. The arch, 
although known, was not employed as a member in archi- 
tecture. In order to carry the roof across the void, either 
the simplest of stone piers, a square pillar of a single block 
of granite was employed, or an already elaborate and beau- 
tiful monolithic column of granite supported the architrave. 
These columns, the earliest known in the history of archi- 
tecture, must have been employed before the Old Kingdom, 
for they are fully developed in the Fifth Dynasty. They 
represent a palm-tree (Fig. 60), the capital being the crown 
of foliage; or they are conceived as a bundle of papyrus 
stalks, bearing the architrave upon the cluster of buds at the 
top, which form the capital (Figs. 60, 61). The proportions 
are faultless, and surrounded with such exquisite colonnades 
as these, flanked by brightly coloured reliefs, the courts of 
the Old Kingdom temples belong to the noblest architectural 
conceptions bequeathed to us by antiquity. Egypt thus 
became the source of columned architecture. While the 
Babylonian builders displayed notable skill in giving varied 
architectural effect to great masses, they were limited to this, 
and the colonnade was unknown to them; whereas the 
Egyptian already at the close of the fourth millennium before 
Christ had solved the fundamental problem of great architec- 
ture, developing with the most refined artistic sense and the 
greatest mechanical skill the treatment of voids, and thus 
originating the colonnade. 

The age was dealing with material things and developing 
material resources, and in such an age literature has little 
opportunity; it was indeed hardly born as yet. The sages 
of the court, the wise old viziers, Kegemne, Imhotep, and 
Ptahhotep, had put into proverbs the wholesome wisdom of 
life, which a long career had taught them, and these were 
probably already circulating in written form, although the 




FIG. 61. ELEVATION OF PART OF THE COLONNADE SURROUNDING THE COURT OF 
THE PYRAMID TEMPLE OF NUSERRE (Fifth Dynasty). (After Borchardt. ) 



108 



THE OLD KINGDOM 109 

oldest manuscript of such lore which we possess, dates from 
the Middle Kingdom. The priestly scribes of the Fifth 
Dynasty compiled the annals of the oldest kings, from the 
bare names of the kings, who ruled the two prehistoric king- 
doms, to the Fifth Dynasty itself ; but it was a bald catalogue 
of events, achievements and temple donations, without lit- 
erary form. It is the oldest surviving fragment of royal 
annals. As the desire to perpetuate the story of a dis- 
tinguished life increased, the nobles began to record in their 
tombs simple narratives characterized by a primitive direct- 
ness, in long successions of simple sentences, each showing 
the same construction, but lacking expressed connectives. 1 
Events and honours common to the lives of the leading nobles 
were related by them all in the identical words, so that con- 
ventional phrases had already gained place in literature not 
unlike the inviolable canons of their graphic art. There is no 
individuality. The mortuary texts in the pyramids display 
sometimes a rude force, and an almost savage fire. They 
contain scattered fragments of the old myths but whether 
these had then enjoyed more than an oral existence we 
do not know. Mutilated religious poems, exhibiting in form 
the beginnings of parallelism, are imbedded in this literature, 
and are doubtless examples of the oldest poetry of earliest 
Egypt. All this literature, both in form and content, betrays 
its origin among men of the early world. Folk songs, the 
offspring of the toiling peasant's flitting fancy, or of the per- 
sonal devotion of the household servant, were common then 
as now, and in two of them which have survived, we hear 
the shepherd talking with the sheep, 2 or the bearers of the 
sedan-chair assuring their lord in song that the vehicle is 
lighter to them when he occupies it, than when it is empty. 3 
Music also was cultivated; and there was a director of the 
royal music at the court. The instruments were a small 
harp, on which the performer played sitting, and two kinds 
of flute, a larger and a smaller. Instrumental music was 

1 1, 292-4, 306-315, 319-324. 2 See infra, Fig. 39. 

3 Zeitschrift 38, 65 ; Davies, Der el-GebrSwi, II, pi. VIII. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

always accompanied by the voice, reversing modern custom, 
and the full orchestra consisted of two harps and two flutes, 
a large and a small one. Of the character and nature of 
the music played or to what extent the scale was understood, 
we can say nothing. 

Such, in so far as we have been able to condense our 
present knowledge, was the active and aggressive age which 
unfolds before us, as the kings of the Thinite dynasties give 
way to those of Memphis. It now remains for us to trace 
the career of this, the most ancient state, whose constitution 
is still discernible. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 

AT the close of the so-called Second Dynasty, early in the 
thirtieth century B. C., the Thinites were finally dislodged 
from the position of power which they had maintained so 
well for over four centuries, according to Manetho, and a 
Memphite family, whose home was the i ' White Wall ' ' gained 
the ascendancy. But there is evidence that the sharp dynas- 
tic division recorded by Manetho never took place, and this 
final supremacy of Memphis may have been nothing more 
than a gradual transition thither by the Thinites themselves. 
In any case the great queen, Nemathap, the wife of King 
Khasekheinui, who was probably the last king of the Second 
Dynasty, was evidently the mother of Zoser, with whose 
accession the predominance of Memphis becomes apparent. 
During this Memphite supremacy, the development which 
the Thinites had pushed so vigourously, was skilfully and 
ably fostered. For over five hundred years the kingdom 
continued to flourish, but of these five centuries only the last 
two have left us even scanty literary remains, and we are 
obliged to draw our meagre knowledge of its first three cen- 
turies almost entirely from material documents, the monu- 
ments which it has left us. In some degree such a task is 
like attempting to reconstruct a history of Athens in the age 
of Pericles, based entirely upon the temples, sculptures, vases, 
and other material remains surviving from his time. While 
the rich intellectual, literary, and political life which was 
then unfolding in Athens involved a mental endowment and 
a condition of state and society which Egypt, even at her 
best, never knew, yet it must not be forgotten that, tremen- 
dous as is the impression whifih we receive from the monu- 

111 



112 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

ments of the Old Kingdom, they are but the skeleton, upon 
which we might put flesh, and endue the whole with life, if 
but the chief literary monuments of the time had survived. 
It is a difficult task to see behind these Titanic achievements, 
the busy world of commerce, industry, administration, so- 
ciety, art, and literature out of which they grew. Of half a 
millennium of political change, of overthrow and usurpation, 
of growth and decay of institutions, of local governors, help- 
less under the strong grasp of the Pharaoh, or shaking off 
the restraint of a weak monarch, and developing into inde- 
pendent barons, so powerful at last as to bring in the final 
dissolution of the state; of all this we gain but fleeting and 
occasional glimpses, where more must be guessed than can 
be known. 

The first prominent figure in the Old Kingdom is that of 
Zoser, with whom as we have said the Third Dynasty arose. 
It was evidently his forceful government which firmly estab- 
lished Memphite supremacy. He continued the exploitation 
of the copper mines in Sinai, while in the south he extended 
the frontier. If we may credit a late tradition of the priests, 
the turbulent tribes of northern Nubia, who for centuries 
after Zoser 's reign continued to make the region of the first 
cataract unsafe, were so controlled by him that he could grant 
to Khnum, the god of the cataract at least nominal posses- 
sion of both sides of the river from Elephantine at the lower 
end of the cataract up to Takompso, some seventy five or 
eighty miles above it. As this tradition was put forward 
by the priests of Isis in Ptolemaic times as legal support of 
certain of their claims, it is not improbable that it contains 
a germ of fact. 1 

The success of Zoser 's efforts was perhaps in part due to 
the counsel of the great wise man, Iinhotep, who was one of 
his chief advisers. In priestly wisdom, in magic, in the 
formulation of wise proverbs, in medicine and architecture, 
this remarkable figure of Zoser 's reign left so notable a 
reputation that his name was never forgotten. He was the 

1 Sethe, Untersuchungen, II, 22-26. 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS H3 

patron spirit of the later scribes, to whom they regularly 
poured out a libation from the water jar of their writing- 
outfit before beginning their work. 1 The people sang of his 
proverbs centuries later, and two thousand five hundred years 
after his death he had become a god of medicine, in whom 
the Greeks who called him Imouthes, recognized their own 
Asklepios. 2 A temple was erected to him near the Serapeum 
at Memphis, and at the present day every museum possesses 
a bronze statuette or two of this apotheosized wise man, the 
proverb-maker, physician and architect of Zoser. The 
priests who conducted the rebuilding of the temple of Edfu 
under the Ptolemies, claimed to be reproducing the structure 
formerly erected there after plans of Imhotep; and it may 
therefore well be that Zoser was the builder of a temple there. 
Manetho records the tradition that stone building was first 
introduced by Zoser, whom he calls Tosorthros, and although, 
as we have seen, stone structures of earlier date are now 
known, yet the great reputation as a builder ascribed to 
Zoser 's counsellor Imhotep is no accident, and it is evident 
that Zoser 's reign marked the beginning of extensive build- 
ing in stone. Until his reign the royal tombs were built of 
sun-dried bricks, only containing in one instance a granite 
floor and in another a chamber of limestone. This brick 
tomb was greatly improved by Zoser, in whose time there 
was built at Bet Khallaf, near Abydos, a massive brick mas- 
taba (Fig. 62), through one end of which a stairway de- 
scended, and passing into the gravel beneath the superstruc- 
ture, merged into a descending passage, which terminated 
in a series of mortuary chambers. 3 The passage was closed 
in five places by heavy portcullis stones. This was the 
first of the two royal tombs now usually erected (see p. 71). 
In all probability Zoser himself never used this tomb, built 
so near those of his ancestors ; but assisted by Imhotep under- 
took the construction of a mausoleum on a more ambitious 

^chaefer, Zeitschrift, 1898, 147-8; Gardiner, ibid., 40, 146. 

2 Sethe, Untersuchungen, II. 

3 Garstang, Mahasna and Bet Khallaf, London, 1902. 

8 



114 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

plan than any of his ancestors had ever attempted. In the 
desert behind Memphis he laid out a tomb (Fig. 63), very 
much like that at Bet Khallaf, but the mastaba was now 
built of stone ; it was nearly thirty eight feet high, some two 
hundred and twenty seven feet wide, and an uncertain 
amount longer from north to south. As his reign continued 
he enlarged it upon the ground, and increased its height also 
by building five rectangular additions superimposed upon 
its top, each smaller than its predecessor. The result was a 
terraced structure, one hundred and ninety five feet high, 
in six stages, the whole roughly resembling a pyramid. It 
is often called the "terraced pyramid, ' ; and does indeed 
constitute the transitional form between the flat-topped rec- 
tangular superstructure or mastaba first built by Zoser at 
Bet Khallaf and the pyramid of his successors, which imme- 
diately followed. It is the first large structure of stone 
known in history. 

The wealth and power which enabled Zoser to erect so 
imposing and costly a tomb were continued by the other 
kings of the dynasty, whose order and history it is as yet 
impossible to reconstruct. We now know that we should 
attribute to them the two great stone pyramids of Dashur. 
These vast and splendid monuments, the earliest pyramids, 
are a striking testimony to the prosperity and power of this 
Third Dynasty. Such colossal structures make a powerful 
appeal to the imagination, but we cannot picture to our- 
selves save in the vaguest terms the course of events that 
produced them. They leave a host of questions unan- 
swered. At the close of the dynasty, the nation was enjoy- 
ing wide prosperity under the vigourous and far-seeing 
Snefru. He built vessels nearly one hundred and seventy 
feet long, for traffic and administration upon the river; 1 
he continued the development of the copper mines in Sinai, 
where he defeated the native tribes and left a record of his 
triumph. 2 He placed Egyptian interests in the peninsula 
upon such a permanent basis that he was later looked upon 
as the founder and establisher of Egyptian supremacy there j 

H, 146-7. a l, 168-9. 




FIG. 65. ROCK INSCRIPTIONS OF AMENEMHET III, IN WADI MAGHARA, SINAI, 
INCLUDING SNEFRU AMONG THE LOCAL GODS. 

(Ordnance Survey Photo.) 







FIG. 66.-CASING BLOCKS AT THE BASE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. JOINTS OTHER- 
WISE UNDISCERNIBI.E INDICATED BY CHARCOAL LINES. 

(Photograph by L. D. Covington.) 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 115 

one of the mines was named after him; 1 a thousand years 
later it is his achievements in this region, with which the 
later kings compared their own, boasting that nothing like 
it had been done there "since the days of Snefru"; 2 and 
together with the local divinities, Hathor and Soped, his 
protection was invoked as a patron god of the region by the 
venturesome officials who risked their lives for the Pharaoh 
there 3 (Fig. 65). He regulated the eastern frontier, and it 
is not unlikely that we should attribute to him the erection 
of the fortresses at the Bitter Lakes in the Isthmus of Suez, 
which existed already in the Fifth Dynasty. Roads and 
stations in the eastern Delta still bore his name fifteen hun- 
dred years after his death. 4 In the west it is not improb- 
able that he already controlled one of the northern oases. 5 
More than all this, he opened up commerce with the north 
and sent a fleet of forty vessels to the Phoenician coast to 
procure cedar logs from the slopes of Lebanon. 6 Following 
the example of Zoser, he was equally aggressive in the south, 
where he conducted a campaign against northern Nubia, 
bringing back seven thousand prisoners, and two hundred 
thousand large and small cattle. 7 

Snefru, powerful and prosperous, as *'Lord of the Two 
Lands," also erected two tombs. The earlier is situated at 
Medum, between Memphis and the Fayum. It was begun, 
like that of Zoser, as a mastaba of limestone, with the tomb 
chamber beneath it. Following Zoser, the builder enlarged 
it seven times to a terraced structure, the steps in which 
were then filled out in one smooth slope from top to bottom 
at a different angle, thus producing the first pyramid (Fig. 
64). Snefru 's other pyramid, far larger and more impos- 
ing, now dominates the group at Dashur. It was the great- 
est building thus far attempted by the Pharaohs and is an 
impressive witness to the rapid progress made by the 
Third Dynasty in the arts. A newly found inscription 

iLD, II, 137 g. =1, 731. si } 722. 

*I, 165, 5; 312, 1. 21. 

5I > 174,1. 9. 61,146. 7 I, 146. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

shows that Snefru 's mortuary endowments here were still 
respected three hundred years later. 

With Snefru the rising tide of prosperity and power has 
reached the high level which made the subsequent splendour 
of the Old Kingdom possible. With him there had also 
grown up the rich and powerful noble and official class, 
whose life we have already sketched, a class who are no 
longer content with the simple brick tombs of their ancestors 
at Abydos and vicinity. Their splendid mastabas of hewn 
limestone are still grouped as formerly about the tomb of 
the king whom they served. It is the surviving remains in 
these imposing cities of the dead, dominated by the towering 
mass of the pyramid which has enabled us to gain a picture 
of the life of the great kingdom, the threshold of which we 
have now crossed. Behind us lies the long slow develop- 
ment which contained the promise of all that is before us; 
but that development also we were obliged to trace in the 
tomb of the early Egyptians, as we have followed him from 
the sand-heap that covered his primitive ancestor to the 
colossal pyramid of the Pharaoh. 

The passing of the great family of which Snefru was the 
most prominent representative, did not, as far as we can now 
see, effect any serious change in the history of the nation. 
Indeed Khufu, the great founder of the so-called Fourth 
Dynasty, may possibly have been a scion of the Third. He 
had in his harem at least a lady who had also been a favourite 
of Snefru. But it is evident that Khufu was not a Mem- 
phite. He came from a town of middle Egypt near modern 
Beni Hasan, which was afterward, for this reason, called 
' ' Menat-Khufu, ' : ' "Nurse of Khufu"; and his name in its 
full form, 1 1 Khnum-khufu, ' ' which means ' ' Khnum protects 
me, " is a further hint of his origin, containing as it does the 
name of Khnum, the ram-headed god of Menat-Khufu. 
Likewise, after his death, one of his mortuary priests was 
also priest of Khnum of Menat-Khufu. 1 We have no means 
of knowing how the noble of a provincial town succeeded in 

1 Mariette, Les Mastabas B 1 = Roug, Inscriptions Hierogl., 78. 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 117 

supplanting the powerful Snefru and becoming the founder 
of a new line. We only see him looming grandly from the 
obscure array of Pharaohs of his time, his greatness pro- 
claimed by the noble tomb which he erected at Gizeh, oppo- 
site modern Cairo. It has now become the chief project of 
the state to furnish a vast, impenetrable and indestructible 
resting place for the body of the king, who concentrated upon 
this enterprise the greatest resources of wealth, skill and 
labour at his command. How strong and effective must have 
been the organization of Khufu's government we appreciate 
in some measure when we learn that his pyramid contains 
some two million three hundred thousand blocks, each weigh- 
ing on the average two and a half tons. 1 The mere organiza- 
tion of labour involved in the quarrying, transportation and 
proper assembly of this vast mass of material is a task which 
in itself must have severely taxed the public offices. Herod- 
otus relates a tradition current in his time that the pyramid 
had demanded the labour of a hundred thousand men during 
twenty years, and Petrie has shown that these numbers are 
quite credible. The maintenance of this city of a hundred 
thousand labourers, who were non-producing and a constant 
burden on the state, the adjustment of the labour in the quar- 
ries so as to ensure an uninterrupted accession of material 
around the base of the pyramid, will have entailed the devel- 
opment of a small state in itself. The blocks were taken 
out of the quarries on the east side of the river south of 
Cairo, and at high water, when the flats were flooded, they 
were floated across the valley to the base of the pyramid hill. 
Here an enormous stone ramp or causeway had been erected, 
a labour of ten years if we may believe Herodotus, and up this 
incline the stones were dragged to the plateau on which the 
pyramid stands. Not merely was this work quantitatively 
so formidable but in quality also it is the most remarkable 
material enterprise known to us in this early world, for the 
most ponderous masonry in the pyramid amazes the modern 
beholder by its fineness. It was but five centuries since the 

1 Petrie, Gizeh. 



118 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

crude granite floor of the tomb of Usephais at Abydos was 
laid, and perhaps not more than a century since the earliest 
stone structure now known, the limestone chamber in the 
tomb of Khasekhemui at the same place was erected. The 
pyramid is or was about four hundred and eighty one feet 
high, and its square base measured some seven hundred and 
fifty five feet on a side, but the average error is ' ' less than a 
ten thousandth of the side in equality, in squareness and in 
level"; 1 although a rise of ground on the site of the monu- 
ment prevented direct measurements from corner to corner. 
Some of the masonry finish is so fine that blocks weighing 
tons are set together with seams of considerable length, show- 
ing a joint of one ten thousandth of an inch, and involving 
edges and surfaces " equal to optician's work of the present 
day, but on a scale of acres instead of feet or yards of mate- 
rial." 2 The entire monument is of limestone, except the 
main sepulchral chamber and the construction chambers 
above it, where the workmanship distinctly deteriorates. 
The latter part, that is the upper portion, was evidently built 
with greater haste than the lower sections. The passages 
were skilfully closed at successive places by plug-blocks and 
portcullisses of granite; while the exterior, clothed with an 
exquisitely fitted casing of limestone (Fig. 66), which has 
since been quarried away, nowhere betrayed the place of 
entrance, located in the eighteenth course of masonry above 
the base near the centre of the north face. It must have 
been a courageous monarch who from the beginning planned 
this the greatest mass of masonry ever put together by 
human hands, and there are evidences in the pyramid of at 
least two changes of plan. Like all the pyramidoid monu- 
ments which precede it, it was therefore probably projected 
on a smaller scale, but before the work had proceeded too 
far to prevent, by complication of the interior passages, the 
plan was enlarged to the present enormous base, covering 
an area of thirteen acres. Three small pyramids, built for 
members of Khufu's family, stand in a line close by on the 

1 Petrie, History of Egypt, I, p. 40. 2 Ibid. 




FIG. 68. THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
From the desert on the southwest: Khufu (right) ; Khafre (middle) : Menkure (left). 




FIG. 69. A GRANITE HALL IN THE GREAT MONUMENTAL GATE OF KHAFRE. 

The entrance of the causeway (see Fig. 37) leading up to Khafre's (the second) Pyramid at Gizeh (see p. 120). 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 119 

east. The pyramid was surrounded by a wide pavement of 
limestone, and on the east front was the temple for the mor- 
tuary service of Khufu, of which all but portions of a splen- 
did basalt pavement has disappeared. The remains of the 
causeway leading up from the plain to the temple still rise 
in sombre ruin, disclosing only the rough core masonry, 
across which the modern village of Kafr is now built. 
Further south is a section of the wall which surrounded the 
town on the plain below, probably the place of Khufu 's resi- 
dence, and perhaps the residence of the dynasty. In leaving 
the tomb of Khufu our admiration for the monument, 
whether stirred by its vast dimensions or by the fineness of 
its masonry should not obscure its real and final significance ; 
for the great pyramid is the earliest and most impressive 
witness surviving from the ancient world to the final emer- 
gence of organized society from prehistoric chaos and Iccal 
conflict, thus coming for the first time completely under 
the power of a far-reaching and comprehensive centraliza- 
tion effected by one controlling mind. 

Khufu 's name has been found from Desuk in the north- 
western and Bubastis in the eastern Delta, to Hieraconpolis 
in the south, but we know almost nothing of his other 
achievements. He continued operations in the peninsula of 
Sinai; 1 perhaps opened for the first time, and in any case 
kept workmen in the alabaster quarry of Hatnub ; and Ptole- 
maic tradition also made him the builder of a Hathor temple 
at Dendera. 2 It will be evident that all the resources of the 
nation were completely at his disposal and under his control ; 
his eldest son, as was customary in the Fourth Dynasty, 
was vizier and chief judge; while the two " treasurers of 
the God," who were in charge of the work in the quarries, 
were undoubtedly also sons of the king, as we have seen. 
The most powerful offices were kept within the circle of the 
royal house, and thus a great state was swayed at the mon- 
arch's slightest wish, and for many years held to its chief 
task, the creation of his tomb. An obscure king, Dedefre or 

1 1, 176. z Diimichen Dendera, p. 15. 



120 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

Radedef, whose connection with the family is entirely uncer- 
tain, seems to have succeeded Khufu. His modest pyramid 
has been found at Aburoash, on the north of Gizeh, but 
Dedefre himself remains with us only a name, and it is pos- 
sible that he belongs near the close of the dynasty. 

It is uncertain whether his successor, Khafre, was his son 
or not. But the new king's name, which means "His Shin- 
ing is Be, ' ' like that of Dedefre, would indicate the political 
influence of the priests of Re at Heliopolis. He built a 
pyramid (Figs. 68, 70) beside that of Khufu, but it is some- 
what smaller and distinctly inferior in workmanship. It was 
given a sumptuous appearance by making the lowermost 
section of casing of granite from the first cataract. Scanty 
remains of the pyramid-temple on the east side are still in 
place, from which the usual causeway leads down to the 
margin of the plateau and terminates in a splendid granite 
building (Fig. 69), which served as the gateway to the cause- 
way and the pyramid enclosure above. Its interior surfaces 
are all of polished red granite and translucent alabaster. In 
a well in one hall of the building seven statues of Khafre 
were found by Mariette. We have had occasion to examine 
the best of these in the preceding chapter. 1 This splendid 
entrance stands beside the Great Sphinx, and is still usually 
termed the ' ' temple of the sphinx, ' ' with which it had, how- 
ever, nothing to do. Whether the sphinx itself is the work 
of Khafre is not yet determined. In Egypt the sphinx is 
an oft recurring portrait of the king, the lion's body sym- 
bolizing the Pharaoh's power. The Great Sphinx is there- 
fore the portrait of a Pharaoh, and an obscure reference to 
Khafre in an inscription between its forepaws dated fourteen 
hundred years later in the reign of Thutmose IV, 2 perhaps 
shows that in those times he was considered to have had 
something to do with it. Beyond these buildings we know 
nothing of Khafre's deeds, but these show clearly that the 
great state which Khufu had done so much to create was 
still firmly controlled by the Pharaoh. 

'Fig. 48 and p. 103. II, 815., 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 121 

Under Khafre's successor, Menkure, however, if the size 
of the royal pyramid is an adequate basis for judgment, the 
power of the royal house was no longer so absolute. Moreover, 
the vast pyramids which his two predecessors had erected 
may have so depleted the resources of the state that Menkure 
was not able to extort more from an exhausted nation. The 
third pyramid of Gizeh which we owe to him, is less than 
half as high as those of Khufu and Khaf re ; its ruined temple 
recently excavated by Eeisner, unfinished at his death, was 
faced with sun-dried brick, instead of sumptuous granite, 
by his successor. Of his immediate successors, we possess 
contemporary monuments only from the reign of Shepse- 
skaf. Although we have a record that he selected the site 
for his pyramid in his first year, 1 he was unable to erect a 
monument sufficiently large and durable to survive, and we 
do not even know where it was located ; while of the achieve- 
ments of this whole group of kings at the close of the 
Fourth Dynasty, including several interlopers, who may 
now have assumed the throne for a brief time, we know 
nothing whatever. 

The century and a half during which the Fourth Dynasty 
maintained its power was a period of unprecedented splen- 
dour in the history of the Nile valley people, and as we have 
seen, the monuments of the time were on a scale of grandeur 
which was never later eclipsed. It reached its climacteric 
point in Khufu, and after probably a slight decline in the 
reign of Khafre, Menkure was no longer able to command the 
closely centralized power which the family had so success- 
fully maintained up to that time. It passed away, leaving 
the group of nine pyramids at Gizeh as an imperishable 
witness of its greatness and power. They were counted in 
classic times among the seven wonders of the world, and 
they are to-day the only surviving wonder of the seven. 
The cause of the fall of the Fourth Dynasty, while not clear 
in the details, is in the main outlines tolerably certain. The 
priests of Be at Heliopolis, whose influence is also evident 

1 I, 151. 



122 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 







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MAP 2. THE FOURTH DYNASTY CEMETERY AT GIZEH. 

in the names of the kings following Khufu, had succeeded 
in organizing their political influence, becoming a clique of 
sufficient power to overthrow the old line. The state theol- 
ogy had always represented the king as the successor of 
the sun-god and he had borne the title "Horns," a sun-god, 
from the beginning; but the priests of Heliopolis now de- 
manded that he be the bodily son of Re, who henceforth 
would appear on earth to become the father of the Pharaoh. 
A folk-tale of which we have a copy 1 some nine hundred 
years later than the fall of the Fourth Dynasty, relates how 

1 Papyrus Westcar. 




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THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 123 

Khufu was enjoying an idle hour with his sons, while they 
narrated wonders wrought by the great wise men of old. 
When thereupon prince Harzozef told the king that there 
still lived a magician able to do marvels of the same kind, 
the Pharaoh sent the prince to fetch the wise man. The 
latter, after he had offered some examples of his remarkable 
powers, reluctantly told the king in response to questions, 
that the three children soon to be born by the wife of a cer- 
tain priest of Ke were begotten of Re himself, and that they 
should all become kings of Egypt. Seeing the king 's sadness 
at this information the wise man assured him that there was 
no reason for his melancholy, saying, ' ' Thy son, his son, and 
then one of them, ' ' meaning l ' Thy son shall reign ; then thy 
grandson, and after that one of these three children. ' : The 
conclusion of the tale is lost, but it undoubtedly went on 
to tell how the three children finally became Pharaohs, for 
it narrates with many picturesque details and remarkable 
prodigies how the children were born wearing all the insignia 
of royalty. The names given these children by the disguised 
divinities who assisted at their birth were : Userkaf, Sahure 
and Kakai, the names of the first three kings of the Fifth 
Dynasty. Although the popular tradition knew of only two 
kings of the Fourth Dynasty after Khufu, having never 
heard of Dedefre, Shepseskaf and others whose reigns had 
left no great pyramids, it nevertheless preserved the essen- 
tial contention of the priests of Re and in kernel at least the 
real origin of the Fifth Dynasty. In this folk-tale we have 
the popular form of what is now the state fiction: every 
Pharaoh is the bodily son of the sun-god, a belief which was 
thereafter maintained throughout the history of Egypt 1 

The kings of the Fifth Dynasty, who continued to reside in 
the vicinity of Memphis, began to rule about 2750 B. C. 
They show plain traces of the origin ascribed to them by the 
popular tradition; the official name which they assume at 
the coronation must invariably contain the name of Re, a 
custom which the Heliopolitan priests had not been able 

II, 187-212. 



124 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



strictly to enforce in the Fourth Dynasty. Before this name 
must now be placed a new title, "Son of Re." Besides the 
old "Horus" title and a new title representing Horus tram- 
pling upon the symbol of Set, this new designation "Son of 
Re" was the fifth title peculiar to the Pharaohs, later produc- 
ing the complete Pharaonic titulary as it remained through- 
out their history. Their adherence to the cult of Re as the 
state religion par excellence found immediate and practical 



^> 




FIG. 71. RESTORATION OF THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSEBBE AT ABUSIB. 

(After Borchardt. ) 

expression in the most splendid form. By the royal residence 
near later Memphis each king erected a magnificent temple 
to the sun, each bearing a name like ' ' Favourite place of Re, ' ' 
or "Satisfaction of Re.' : These sanctuaries are all of the 
same essential plan : a large fore-court with cultus chambers 
on each side, and a huge altar ; while in the rear, rising from 
a mastaba-like base was a tall obelisk (Fig. 71). This was 
the symbol of the god, standing exposed to the sky, and there 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 



125 



was therefore no holy of holies. There are reasons for sup- 
posing that the obelisk and connected portions of the build- 
ing were but an enlargement of the holy of holies in the 
temple at Heliopolis. The interior of the walls was covered 
with sculptured representations of the production of life, 
with scenes from the river, swamps and marshes, the fields 
and the desert, and ceremonies from the state cult (Fig. 72) ; 
while the outside of the temple bore reliefs depicting the 
warlike achievements of the Pharaoh. On either side of 




FIG. 72. RELIEF SCENES FROM THE SUN-TEMPLE OF NUSERRE AT ABUSIE. 
In the upper right hand corner, the anointing of the Pharaoh's foot. 

the sanctuary on a brick foundation were set up two ships 
representing the two celestial barques of the sun-god, as he 
sailed the heavens morning and evening. The sanctuary 
was richly endowed 1 and its service was maintained by a 
corps of priests of five different ranks, besides an "over- 
seer" who had charge of the temple property. As the line 
of kings grew, and with it the number of temples increased, 

'I, 159, 8. 



126 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the priesthood of the old temple assumed functions likewise 
in the new one. We can follow these temples one for each 
king at least into the reign of Isesi, the eighth monarch of 
the line. 1 Enjoying wealth and distinction such as had been 
possessed by no official god of earlier times, Be gained a 
position of influence which he never again lost. Through 
him the forms of the Egyptian state began to pass over into 
the world of the gods, and the myths from now on were domi- 
nated and strongly coloured by him, if indeed some of them 
did not owe their origin to the exalted place which Ee now 
occupied. In the sun-myth he became king of Upper and 
Lower Egypt and, like a Pharaoh, he had ruled Egypt with 
Thoth as his vizier. 

The change in the royal line is also evident in the organi- 
zation of the government. The eldest son of the king is 
no longer the most powerful officer in the state, but the posi- 
tion which he held in the Fourth Dynasty as vizier and chief 
judge is now the prerogative of another family, with whom 
it remains hereditary. Each incumbent, through five gen- 
erations, bore the name Ptahhotep. It would almost seem 
as if the priests of Ptah and the priests of Heliopolis had 
made common cause, dividing the power between them, so 
that the high priest of Ee became Pharaoh, and the followers 
of Ptah received the viziership. In any case the Pharaoh 
was now obliged to reckon with a family of his lords as 
successive viziers. This hereditary succession, so striking 
in the highest office of the central government, was now com- 
mon in the nomes, and the local governors were each gaining 
stronger and stronger foothold in his nome as the generations 
passed, and son succeeded father in the same nome. That 
the new dynasty was obliged to consider the nobles who had 
assisted in its rise to power, is also to be discerned in the 
appointment by Userkaf, the first of the line, of his palace 
steward to the governorship of a district in middle Egypt 
called the "New Towns," 2 to which office he added the 
income of two priesthoods in the vicinity, which had been 

*Borchardt, Festschr. f. Ebers, p. 13. *I, 213 ff. 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 127 

established by Menkure, and probably previously held by a 
favourite of the Fourth Dynasty But the endowment estab- 
lished by the Fourth Dynasty was respected. 

While Userkaf, as the founder of the new dynasty, may 
have had enough to do to make secure the succession of his 
line, he has left his name 1 on the rocks at the first cataract, 
the earliest of the long series of rock-inscriptions there, which 
from now on will furnish us many hints of the career of the 
Pharaohs in the south. Sahure, who followed Userkaf, con- 
tinued the development of Egypt as the earliest known naval 
power in history. He dispatched a fleet against the Phoeni- 
cian coast, and a relief just discovered in his pyramid 
temple at Abusir, shows four of the ships with Phoenician 
captives among the Egyptian sailors. This is the earliest 
surviving representation of sea-going ships (c. 2750 B. C.), 
and the oldest known picture of Semitic Syrians. Another 
fleet was sent by Sahure to still remoter waters, on a voy- 
age to Punt, as the Egyptian called the Somali coast at 
the south end of the Eed Sea, and along the south side 
of the gulf of Aden. From this region, which like the 
whole east, he termed the "God's-Land, " he obtained the 
fragrant gums and resins so much desired for the incense 
and ointments indispensable in the life of the oriental. 
Voyages to this country may have been made as early as the 
First Dynasty, for at that time the Pharaohs already used 
myrrh in considerable quantities, although this may have 
been obtained in trade with the intermediate tribes who 
brought it overland, down the Blue Nile, the Atbara and the 
Upper Nile. In the Fourth Dynasty a son of Khufu had 
possessed a Puntite slave, 3 but Sahure was the first Pharaoh 
whose records 4 show direct communication with the coun- 
try of Punt for this purpose. His expedition brought back 
80,000 measures of myrrh, probably 6,000 weight of elec- 
trum (gold-silver alloy), besides 2,600 staves of some costly 
wood, presumably ebony. We find his officials 5 at the first 

> Marietta, Mon. div., 54 e. * I, 161, 7; 236. 

LD, II, 23, Erman, Aegypten, 670. * I, 161, 8. 

6 De Morgan, Catalogue de Monuments, I, 88. 



128 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

cataract also, one of whom left the earliest of the long series 
of inscriptions on the rocks, doubtless an indication of expe- 
ditions into Nubia. 

We can only discern enough of the next four reigns to gain 
faint impressions of a powerful and cultured state, conserv- 
ing all its internal wealth and reaching out to distant regions 
around it for the materials which its own natural resources 
do not furnish. Toward the end of the dynasty, in the 
second half of the twenty seventh century B. C., Isesi 
opened the quarries of the Wadi Hammamat in the eastern 
desert three days' journey from the Nile. These quarries 
had perhaps already furnished the materials for the numer- 
ous breccia vases of the earlier kings, but Isesi was the first 
of the Pharaohs to leave his name 1 there. As the Nile at 
this point approaches most closely to the Bed Sea in all its 
upper course, caravans leaving Coptos and passing by the 
Hammamat quarries, could reach the sea in five days. It 
was therefore the most convenient route to Punt; it was 
probably along this route that the expedition of Sahure, 
already mentioned, had passed, while Isesi, who now also 
sent his " treasurer of the God,' :> Burded, in command of an 
expedition 2 thither, must also have used it. His successor, 
Unis, must have been active in the south, for we find his 
name at the frontier of the first cataract, followed by the 
epithet "lord of countries." 3 

There is now further evidence that the overshadowing 
greatness of the Pharaohs as felt and acknowledged by the 
official class was in some measure paling. To none of the 
earlier victorious records left by the Pharaohs in Sinai had 
the officials who led these expeditions presumed to affix their 
names, or in any way to indicate their connection with the 
enterprise. In relief after relief upon the rocks we see the 
Pharaoh smiting his enemies, as if he had suddenly appeared 
there, like the god they believed he was; and there is not 
the slightest hint that each expedition was in reality led 



, II, 115 1. 21, 351, 353. 

8 Petrie, Season, XII, No. 312. 




/-.ov;-j:,^2K*rT 

_..-i'."-. -;*.. -is, "-*' ~, f-tV, 








. 

. 

g : , 








FIG. 73. RUINED PYRAMID OF UNIS (FIFTH DYNASTY) 
AT SAKKARA. 

Earliest pyramid containing religious inscriptions. 




FIG. 74. ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE, THE HOME OF THE LORDS OF THE SOUTHERN 

FRONTIER. 

Their tombs are in the cliffs on the farther shore. 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 129 

by some noble functionary of the government. Under Isesi, 
however, the self consciousness of the official can no longer 
be completely repressed, and for the first time we find under 
the usual triumphant relief a single line 1 stating that the 
expedition was carried out under the command of a certain 
officer. It is but a hint of the rising power of the officials, 
who from now on never fail to make themselves increasingly 
prominent in all records of the royal achievements. It is a 
power with which the Pharaoh will find more and more diffi- 
culty in dealing as time passes. There is perhaps another 
evidence that the Fifth Dynasty kings no longer possessed 
the unlimited power enjoyed by their predecessors of the 
Fourth Dynasty. Their limestone pyramids ranged along 
the desert margin south of Gizeh, at Abusir and Sakkara, 
are small, less than half as high as the great pyramid, and 
the core is of such poor construction, being largely loose 
blocks, or even rubble and sand, that they are now in com- 
plete ruin, each pyramid being a low mound with little sem- 
blance of the pyramid form. The centralized power of the 
earlier Pharaohs was thus visibly weakening, and it was 
indeed in every way desirable that there should be a reaction 
against the totally abnormal absorption by the Pharaoh's 
tomb of such an enormous proportion of the national wealth. 
The transitional period of the Fifth Dynasty, lasting prob- 
ably a century and a quarter, during which nine kings 
reigned was therefore one of significant political develop- 
ment, and in material civilization one of distinct progress. 
Art and industry flourished as before, and great works of 
Egyptian sculpture were produced; while in literature king 
Isesi 's vizier and chief judge composed his proverbial wis- 
dom, which we have already discussed. The state religion 
received a form worthy of so great a nation, the temples 
throughout the land enjoyed constant attention, and the 
larger sanctuaries were given endowments 3 commensurate 
with the more elaborate daily offerings on the king's behalf. 
It is this period which has preserved our first religious liter- 

1 I, 264, 266. I, 154-167. 

9 



130 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

ature of any extent, as well as our earliest lengthy example 
of the Egyptian language. In the pyramid of Unis (Fig. 
73), the last king of the dynasty, is recorded the collection 
of mortuary ritualistic utterances, the so-called Pyramid 
Texts which we have before discussed. As most of them 
belong to a still earlier age and some of them originated in 
predynastic times, they represent a much earlier form of lan- 
guage and belief than those of the generation to which the 
pyramid of Unis belongs. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SIXTH DYNASTY: THE DECLINE OF THE OLD 

KINGDOM 

IN the fullest of the royal lists, the Turin Papyrus, there 
is no indication that the line of Menes was interrupted until 
the close of the reign of Unis. That a new dynasty arose 
at this point there can be no doubt. As the reader has 
already perceived, the movement which brought in this new 
dynasty was due to a struggle of the local governors for a 
larger degree of power and liberty. The establishment of 
the Fifth Dynasty by the influence of the Heliopolitan party 
had given them the opportunity they desired. They gained 
hereditary hold upon their offices, and the kings of that 
family had never been able to regain the complete control 
over them maintained by the Fourth Dynasty. Gradually 
the local governors had then shaken off the restraint of the 
Pharaoh; and when about 2625 B. C., after the reign of 
Unis, they succeeded in overthrowing the Fifth Dynasty, 
they became landed barons, each firmly entrenched in his 
nome, or city, and maintaining an hereditary claim upon 
it. The old title of " local governor" disappeared as a mat- 
ter of course, and the men who had once borne it now called 
themselves "great chief" or "great lord" of this or that 
nome. They continued the local government as before, but 
as princes with a large degree of independence, not as 
officials of the central government. Yv 7 e have here the first 
example traceable in history of the dissolution of a central- 
ized state by a process of aggrandizement on the part of 
local officials of the crown, like that which resolved the Car- 
lovingian empire into duchies, landgraviates or petty prin- 
cipalities. The new lords were not able to render their 

131 



132 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

tenure unconditionally hereditary, but here the Pharaoh still 
maintained a powerful hold upon them ; for at the death of a 
noble his position, his fief and his title must be conferred upon 
the inheriting son by the gracious favour of the monarch. 
These nomarchs or "great lords" are loyal adherents of the 
Pharaoh, executing his commissions in distant regions, and 
displaying the greatest zeal in his cause; but they are no 
longer his officials merely; nor are they so attached to the 
court and person of the monarch as to build their tombs 
around his pyramid. They now have sufficient indepen- 
dence and local attachment to locate their tombs near their 
homes. We find them excavated in the cliffs at Elephan- 
tine, Kasr-Sayyad, Shekh-Sa'id and Zawiyet el-Metin, or 
built of masonry at Abydos. They devote much attention 
to the development and prosperity of their great domains, 
and one of them even tells how he brought in emigrants from 
neighbouring nomes to settle in the feebler towns and infuse 
new blood into the less productive districts of his own nome. 1 

The chief administrative bond which united the nomes to 
the central government of the Pharaoh will have been the 
treasury as before; but the Pharaoh found it necessary to 
exert general control over the great group of fiefs, which 
now comprised his kingdom, and already toward the end of 
the Fifth Dynasty he had therefore appointed over the whole 
of the valley above the Delta a "governor of the South,' 1 
through whom he was able constantly to exert governmental 
pressure upon the southern nobles ; there seems to have been 
no corresponding "governor of the North, ' ; and we may 
infer that the lords of the North were less aggressive. More- 
over the kings still feel themselves to be kings of the South 
governing the North. 

The seat of government, the chief royal residence, as before 
in the vicinity of Memphis, was still called the "White 
Wall, ' ' but after the obscure reign of Teti II, the first king 
of the new dynasty, the pyramid-city of his successor, the 
powerful Pepi I, was so close to the "White Wall" 1 that 

*I, 281. 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 133 

the name of his pyramid, ' ' Men-nof er, " corrupted by the 
Greeks to Memphis, rapidly became the name of the city and 
" White Wall" survived only as an archaic and poetic desig- 
nation of the place. The administration of the residence 
had become a matter of sufficient importance to demand the 
attention of the vizier himself. He henceforth assumed its 
immediate control, receiving the title "governor of the pyra- 
mid-city' or "governor of the city' merely, for it now 
became customary to speak of the residence as the "city." 
Notwithstanding thorough-going changes, the new dynasty 
continued the official cult maintained by their predeces- 
sors. Be remained supreme and the old foundations were 
respected. 

In spite of the independence of the new nobles, it is evident 
that Pepi I possessed the necessary force to hold them well 
in hand. His monuments, large and small, are found 
throughout Egypt. Now began also the biographies of the 
officials of the time, affording us a picture of the busy life 
of the self-satisfied magnates of that distant age; while to 
these we may fortunately add also their records at the mines 
and in the quarries. Loyalty now demands no more than 
a relief showing the king as he worships his gods or smites 
his enemies ; and this done the vanity of the commander of 
the expedition and his fellows may be gratified in a record 
of their deeds or adventures, which becomes longer and 
longer as time passes. Pepi I sent his chief architect and 
the two ' * treasurers of the God, ' ' besides the master builder 
of his pyramid, and a body of artisans, to the quarries at 
Hammamat to procure the necessary fine stone for his pyra- 
mid, and they left in the quarry, besides two royal reliefs, 
three other inscriptions, giving a full list of their names and 
titles. 1 At the alabaster quarry of Hatnub the governor of 
the South, who was also "great lord of the Hare-nome," 
recorded his execution of a commission there for Pepi I; 2 
while a military commander perpetuates his achievement of 
a similar commission for the same king in the Wadi 

l l, 295-301. *1, 304-5. 



134 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

Maghara in Sinai. 1 The pride of office among the official 
class is undiminished. So many titles have now become 
purely honourary, high sounding predicates worn by nobles, 
who performed none of the duties once devolving upon the 
incumbents, that the actual administrators of many offices 
added the word "real" after such titles. We have a very 
interesting and instructive example of this official class 
under the new regime, in Uni, a faithful adherent of the 
royal house, who has fortunately left us his biography. 
Under king Teti II he had begun his career at the bottom 
as an obscure under-custodian in the royal domains. 2 Pepi 
I now appointed him as a judge, at the same time giving 
him rank at the royal court, and an income as a priest of the 
pyramid-temple. 3 He was soon promoted to a superior cus- 
todianship of the royal domains, and in this capacity he 
had so gained the royal favour that when a conspiracy against 
the king arose in the harem he was nominated with one col- 
league to prosecute the case/ Pepi I thus strove to single 
out men of force and ability with whom he might organize 
a strong government, closely attached to his fortunes and to 
those of his house. In the heart of the southern country he 
set up among the nobles the "great lord of the Hare-nome," 
and made him governor of the South; while he married as 
his official queens the two sisters of the nomarch of Thinis, 
both bearing the same name, Enekhnes-Merire, and they 
became the mothers of the two kings who followed him. 5 

The foreign policy of Pepi I was more vigourous than that 
of any Pharaoh of earlier times. In Nubia he gained such 
control over the negro tribes that they were obliged to con- 
tribute quotas to his army in case of war, and when such war 
was in the north, where safety permitted, these negro levies 
were freely employed. The Bedum tribes of the north, 
having become too bold in their raiding of the eastern Delta, 
or having troubled his mining expeditions in Sinai, Pepi 
commissioned Uni to collect such an army among the negroes, 
supplemented by levies throughout Egypt. The king over- 

> I, 302-3. il, 294. I,307. I, 310. 51,344-9. 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 135 

looked many men of much higher rank, and placing Uni in 
command of this army, sent him against the Beduin. 1 He 
of course scattered them without difficulty, and having devas- 
tated their country, returned home. On four more such 
punitive expeditions Pepi I sent him against the tribes of 
this country; and a final show of hostility on their part 
at last called him further north than the region on the east 
of the Delta. Embarking his force, he carried them in troop- 
ships along the coast of southern Palestine, and punished 
the Beduin as far north as the highlands of Palestine. 2 This 
marks the northernmost advance of the Pharaohs of the Old 
Kingdom, and is in accordance with the discovery of a 
Sixth Dynasty scarab at Gezer below Jerusalem, in strata 
below those dated in the Middle Kingdom. The naive ac- 
count of these wars left by Uni in his biography is one of 
the most characteristic evidences of the totally unwarlike 
spirit of the early Egyptian. 

Having thus firmly established his family at the head of the 
state, the fact that Pepi I's death, after a reign of probably 
twenty years, left his son, Mernere, to administer the king- 
dom as a mere youth, seems not in the least to have shaken 
its fortunes. Mernere immediately appointed Uni, the old 
servant of his house, as governor of the South, 3 under whose 
trusty guidance all went well. The powerful nobles of the 
southern frontier were also zealous in their support of the 
young king. They were a family of bold and adventurous 
barons, living on the island of Elephantine (Fig. 74) just 
below the first cataract. The valley at the cataract was now 
called the "Door of the South" and its defense against the 
turbulent tribes of northern Nubia was placed in their hands, 
so that the head of the family bore the title ' ' Keeper of the 
Door of the South. ' : They made the place so safe that when 
the king dispatched Uni to the granite quarries at the head 
of the cataract to procure the sarcophagus and the finer 
fittings for his pyramid, the noble was able to accomplish 
his errand with "only one warship," an unprecedented feat. 4 

il, 311-313. I, 314-315. I, 320. *I, 322. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

The enterprising young monarch then commissioned Uni to 
establish unbroken connection by water with the granite 
quarries by opening a succession of five canals through the 
intervening granite barriers of the cataract ; and the faithful 
noble completed this difficult task, besides the building of 
seven boats, launched and laden with great blocks of granite 
for the royal pyramid in only one year. 1 

The north was too difficult of access, too distinctly sep- 
arated by natural limits from the valley of the Nile for 
the Pharaohs of this distant age to attempt more in Asia 
than the defense of their frontier and the protection of their 
mining enterprises in Sinai. The only barrier between 
them and the south, however, was the cataract region. Mer- 
nere had now made the first cataract passable for Nile boats 
at high water, and a closer control, if not the conquest of 
northern Nubia was quite feasible. It was not of itself a 
country which the agricultural Egyptian could utilize. The 
strip of cultivable soil between the Nile and the desert on 
either hand was in Nubia so scanty, even in places disap- 
pearing altogether, that its agricultural value was slight. 
But the high ridges and valleys in the desert on the east con- 
tained rich veins of gold-bearing quartz, and iron ore 2 was 
plentiful also, although no workings of it have been found 
there. The country was furthermore the only gateway to 
the regions of the south, with which constant trade was now 
maintained. Besides gold, the Sudan sent down the river 
ostrich feathers, ebony logs, panther skins and ivory; while 
along the same route, from Punt and the countries further 
east, came myrrh, fragrant gums and resins and aromatic 
woods. It was therefore an absolute necessity that the 
Pharaoh should command this route. We know little of the 
negro and negroid tribes who inhabited the cataract region 
at this time. Immediately south of the Egyptian frontier 
dwelt the tribes of Wawat, extending well toward the second 
cataract, above which the entire region of the upper cataracts 

i I, 324. 

2 Rossing. Geschichte der Metalle., pp. 81, 83 sq. 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 137 

was known as Kusb, although the name does not commonly 
occur on the monuments until the Middle Kingdom. In the 
upper half of the huge * ; S " formed by the course of the Nile 
between the junction of the two Niles and the second catar- 
act, was included the territory of the powerful Mazoi, who 
afterward appeared as auxiliaries in the Egyptian army in 
such numbers that the Egyptian word for soldier ultimately 
became "Matoi," a late (Coptic) form of Mazoi. Probably 
on the west of the Mazoi was the land of Yam, and between 
Yam and Mazoi on the south and Wawat on the north were 
distributed several tribes, of whom Irthet and Sethut were 
the most important. The last two, together with Wawat, 
were sometimes united under one chief. 1 All these tribes 
were still in the barbarous stage. They dwelt in squalid 
settlements of mud huts along the river, or beside wells in 
the valleys running up country from the Nile; and besides 
the flocks and herds which they maintained, they also lived 
upon the scanty produce of their small grain-fields. 

Doubtless utilizing his new canal, Mernere now devoted 
special attention to the exploitation of these regions. His 
power was so respected by the chiefs of Wawat, Irthet, Mazoi 
and Yam that they furnished the timber for the heavy cargo- 
boats built by Uni for the granite blocks which he took out 
at the first cataract. 2 In his fifth year Mernere did what 
no Pharaoh before him had ever done, in so far as we are 
informed. He appeared at the first cataract in person to 
receive the homage of the southern chiefs, and left upon the 
rocks a record of the event, a relief 3 depicting the Pharaoh 
leaning upon his staff, while the Nubian chiefs bow down in 
his presence. The unprecedented nature of the event is inti- 
mated in the accompanying inscription : ' ' The coming of the 
king himself, appearing behind the hill-country [of the cat- 
aract], that he might see that which is in the hill 7 country, 
while the chiefs of Mazoi, Irthet and Wawat did obeisance 
and gave great praise." 4 

Mernere now utilized the services of the Elephantine 

1 I, 336. I, 324. "I, 316-318. 4 IbicL 



138 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

nobles in tightening his hold upon the southern chiefs. 
Harkhuf, who was then lord of Elephantine, was also ap- 
pointed governor of the South, 1 perhaps as the successor of 
Uni, who was now too old for active service, or had meantime 
possibly died ; although the title had now become an honour- 
able epithet or title of honour worn by more than one deserv- 
ing noble at this time. It was upon Harkhuf and his relatives, 
a family of daring and adventurous nobles, that the Pharaoh 
now depended as leaders of the arduous and dangerous expe- 
ditions which should intimidate the barbarians on his fron- 
tiers and maintain his prestige and his trade connections in 
the distant regions of the south. These men are the earliest 
known explorers of inner Africa and the southern Ked Sea. 
At least two of the family perished in executing the 
Pharaoh's hazardous commissions in these far off lands, a 
significant hint of the hardships and perils to which they 
were all exposed. Besides their princely titulary as lords 
of Elephantine they all bore the title "caravan-conductor, 
who brings the products of the countries to his lord," which 
they proudly display upon their tombs, excavated high in 
the front of the cliffs facing modern Assuan, where they still 
look down upon the island of Elephantine, the one time home 
of the ancient lords who occupy them. 2 Here Harkhuf has 
recorded how Mernere dispatched him on three successive 
expeditions to distant Yam. 3 On the first, as he was still 
young, he was therefore accompanied by his father Iri. He 
was gone seven months. On the second journey he was 
allowed to go alone and returned in safety in eight months. 
His third expedition was more adventurous and correspond- 
ingly more successful. Arriving in Yam, he found its chief 
engaged in a war with the southernmost settlements of the 
Temehu, tribes related to the Libyans, on the west of Yam. 
Harkhuf immediately went after him and had no difficulty 
in reducing him to subjection. The tribute and the products 
of the south obtained in trade during his stay were loaded 
upon three hundred asses, and with a heavy escort furnished 

i 1, 332. * Fig. 74. I, 333-6. See also Fig. 76. 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 139 

by the chief of Yam, Harkhuf set out for the north. The 
chief of Irthet, Sethu and Wawat, awed by the large force 
of Egyptians, and the escort of Yamites accompanying 
Harkhuf, made no effort to plunder his richly laden train, 
but brought him an offering of cattle and gave him guides. 
He reached the cataract with his valuable cargo in safety, 
and was met there by a messenger of the Pharaoh, with a 
Nile boat full of delicacies and provisions from the court, 
dispatched by the king for the refreshment of the now weary 
and exhausted noble. 

These operations for the winning of the extreme south 
were interrupted by the untimely death of Mernere. He 
was buried behind Memphis in the granite sarcophagus pro- 
cured for him by Uni, in the pyramid for which Uni had 
likewise laboured so faithfully, and here his body survived 
(Fig. 77), in spite of vandals and tomb-robbers, until its 
removal to the museum at Gizeh in 1881. As Mernere 
reigned only four years and died early in his fifth year 
without issue, the succession devolved upon his half-brother, 
who, although only a child, ascended the throne as Pepi II. 
His accession and successful rule speak highly for the sta- 
bility of the family, and the faithfulness of the influential 
nobles attached to it. Pepi II was the son of Enekhnes- 
Merire, the second sister of the Thinite nomarch, whom Pepi 
I first had taken as his queen. Her brother Zau, Pepi II 's 
uncle, who was now nomarch of Thinis, was appointed by 
the child-king as vizier, chief judge and governor of the resi- 
dence city. 1 He thus had charge of the state during his 
royal nephew's minority, and as far as we can now discern, 
the government proceeded without the slightest disturbance. 

Pepi II, or in the beginning, of course, his ministers, imme- 
diately resumed the designs of the royal house in the south. 
In the young king 's second year, Harkhuf was for the fourth 
time dispatched to Yam, whence he returned bringing a 
rich pack train and a dwarf (Figs. 41, 75) from one of the 
pigmy tribes of inner Africa. These uncouth, bandy-legged 

l l, 344-9. 



140 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



creatures were highly prized by the noble class in Egypt ; they 
were not unlike the rnerry genius Bes in appearance, and 
they executed dances in which the Egyptians took the great- 
est delight. The land from which they came was connected 
by the Nile-dwellers with the mysterious region of the west, 
the sojourn of the dead, which they called the "land of 
spirits," and the dwarfs from this sacred land were espe- 
cially desired for the dances 
with which the king 's leisure 
hours were diverted. The 
child-king was so delighted 
on receiving news of Hark- 
huf's arrival at the frontier 
with one of these pigmies 
that he wrote the fortunate 
noble a long letter of instruc- 
tions, cautioning him to have 
it closely watched lest any 
harm should come to it, or 
it should fall into the Nile; 
and promising Harkhuf a 
greater reward than king 
Isesi had given to his "treas- 
urer of the God, ' ; Burded, 
when he brought home a 
dwarf from Punt. Harkhuf 
was so proud of this letter 
that he had it engraved on 
the front of his tomb (Fig. 
76), as an evidence of the 
great favour which he en- 
joyed with the royal house. 1 
Not all of these hardy lords of Elephantine, who adven- 
tured their lives in the tropical fastnesses of inner Africa 
in the twenty sixth century before Christ were as fortunate 
as Harkhuf. One of them, a governor of the South, named 
Sebni, suddenly received news of the death of in? father, 

*I, 350-354. 




FIG. 75. STATUE OF AN OLD EMPIRE 

DWARF. (From Maspero's 

Archaeology. ) 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 141 

prince Mekhu, while on an expedition south of Wawat. 
Sebni quickly mustered the troops of his domain, and with 
a train of a hundred asses marched rapidly southward, pun- 
ished the tribe to whom Mekhu's death was presumably due, 
rescued the body of his father, and loading it upon an ass, 
returned to the frontier. He had before dispatched a mes- 
senger to inform the Pharaoh of the facts, sending a tusk of 
ivory five feet long, and adding that the best one in his cargo 
was ten feet long. On reaching the cataract he found that this 
messenger had returned, bearing a gracious letter from the 
Pharaoh, who had also sent a whole company of royal em- 
balmers, undertakers, mourners and mortuary priests, with 
a liberal supply of fine linen, spices, oils and rich perfumes, 
that they might immediately embalm the body of the de- 
ceased noble and proceed to the interment. Sebni then went 
to Memphis to pay his respects to the Pharaoh and deliver 
the rich cargo which his father had collected in the south. 
He was shown every mark of royal favour for his pious deed 
in rescuing his father 's body. Splendid gifts and the ' ' gold 
of praise " were showered upon him, and later an official 
communication from the vizier conveyed to him a parcel 
of land. 1 

A loose sovereignty was now extended over the Nubian 
tribes, and Pepinakht, one of the Elephantine lords, was 
placed in control with the title "governor of foreign coun- 
tries." 2 In this capacity Pepi II sent him against Wawat 
and Irthet, whence he returned after great slaughter among 
the rebels, with numerous captives and children of the chiefs 
as hostages. 3 A second campaign there was still more suc- 
cessful, as he captured the two chiefs of these countries them- 
selves, besides their two commanders and plentiful spoil 
from their herds. 4 Expeditions were pushed far into the 
upper cataract region, which is once called Kush in the Ele- 
phantine tombs, 5 and, in general, the preliminary work was 
done which made possible the complete conquest of lower 
Nubia in the Middle Kingdom. Indeed that conquest would 

1 I, 362-74. 2 I, 356. I, 358. I, 359. 6 I, 361. 



142 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

now have been begun had not internal causes produced the 
fall of the Sixth Dynasty. 

The responsibility for the development of Egyptian com- 
merce with the land of Punt and the region of the southern 
Red Sea also fell upon the lords of Elephantine. Evidently 
they had charge of the whole south from the Eed Sea to the 
Nile. Not less dangerous than their exploits in Nubia were 
the adventures of the Elephantine commanders who were 
sent to Punt. There was no water way connecting the Nile 
with the Red Sea, and these leaders were obliged to build 
their ships at the eastern terminus of the Coptos caravan 
route from the Nile, on the shore of the sea in one of the 
harbours like Koser or Leucos Limen. Sailing vessels were 
much improved in the Sixth Dynasty by the mounting of the 
ancient steering oar on a kind of rudder post and the attach- 
ment of a tiller. While so engaged, Enenkhet, Pepi II 's 
naval commander, was fallen upon by the Beduin, who slew 
him and his entire command. Pepinakht was immediately 
dispatched by the Pharaoh to rescue the body of the unfor- 
tunate noble. He accomplished his dangerous errand suc- 
cessfully, and having punished the Beduin, he returned in 
safety. 1 In spite of these risks, the communication with 
Punt was now active and frequent. A subordinate official 
of the Elephantine family boasts in his lord's tomb that he 
accompanied him to Punt no less than probably eleven times 
and returned in safety. 2 It will be seen that the usually 
accepted seclusion of the Old Kingdom can no longer be 
maintained. Far from allowing himself to be isolated by 
the deserts which enveloped his land on east and west, or 
the cataract which had once formed his southern boundary, 
the Pharaoh was now maintaining an active and flourishing 
commerce with the south ; while the royal fleets brought cedar 
from the heights of Lebanon on the north. Under these cir- 
cumstances direct commercial intercourse with the distant 
island civilization which preceded the Mycensan culture in 

X I, 360. I, 361. 



'' ' '%*-"" 

'' 




FIG. 76. TOMB OF HARKHUF AT ASSUAN. 

The end of the letter of p. 140 is discernible on the right edge. (From 
stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.) 







FIG. 77. HEAD OF KING MERNERE. 
(Cairo Museum.) 







~ :.'*::. I 

& fftf&%0&4 - 

. -. . ' -m. * . -af . ; I 




FIG. 78. WESTERN CLIFFS OF SIUT. 

Containing tombs of Ninth and Tenth Dynasty Nom- 
archs. (From stereograph copyright by Underwood 
& Underwood, N. Y.) 



THE DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM 143 

the north would have been nothing remarkable, and archaeo- 
logical evidence now shows that it existed. 

Pepi II, having ascended the throne as a mere child, doubt- 
less born just before his father's death, enjoyed the longest 
reign yet recorded in history. The tradition of Manetho 
states that he was six years old when he began to reign, and 
that he continued until the hundredth year, doubtless mean- 
ing of his life. The list preserved by Eratosthenes avers 
that he reigned a full century. The Turin Papyrus of kings 
supports the first tradition, giving him over ninety years, 
and there is no reason to doubt its truth. His was thus the 
longest reign in history. Several brief reigns followed, 
among them possibly that of the queen Nitocris, to whose 
name were attached the absurdest legends. Two kings, Iti 
and Imhotep, whose officials visited Hammamat to secure 
the stone for their pyramids and statues, 1 may possibly 
belong in this time, though they may equally well have ruled 
at the close of the Fifth Dynasty; but after the death of 
Pepi II all is uncertain, and impenetrable obscurity veils 
the last days of the Sixth Dynasty. When it had ruled some- 
thing over one hundred and fifty years the power of 
the landed barons became a centrifugal force, which the 
Pharaohs could no longer withstand, and the dissolution of 
the state resulted. The nomes gained their independence, 
the Old Kingdom fell to pieces, and for a time was thus 
resolved into the petty principalities of prehistoric times. 
Nearly a thousand years of unparalleled development since 
the rise of a united state, thus ended, in the twenty fifth 
century B. C., in political conditions like those which had pre- 
vailed in the beginning. 

It had been a thousand years of inexhaustible fertility 
when the youthful strength of a people of boundless energy 
had for the first time found the organized form in which it 
could best express itself. In every direction we see the 
products of a national freshness and vigour which are never 
spent ; the union of the country under a single guiding hand 
which had quelled internal dissensions and directed the com- 
bined energies of a great people toward harmonious effort, 

i I, 386-390. 



144 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

had brought untold blessing. The Pharaohs to whom the 
unparalleled grandeur of this age was due not only gained 
a place among the gods in their own time, but two thousand 
years later, at the close of Egypt's history as an independent 
nation, in the Twenty Sixth Dynasty, we still find the priests 
who were appointed to maintain their worship. And at the 
end of her career, when the nation had lost all that youthful 
elasticity and creative energy which so abounded in the Old 
Kingdom, the sole effort of her priests and wise men was 
to restore the unsullied religion, life and government which 
in their fond imagination had existed in the Old Kingdom, 
as they looked wistfully back upon it across the millennia. 
To us it has left the imposing line of temples, tombs and 
pyramids, stretching for many miles along the margin of the 
western desert, the most eloquent witnesses to the fine intel- 
ligence and titanic energies of the men who made the Old 
Kingdom what it was; not alone achieving these wonders 
of mechanics and internal organization, but building the 
earliest known sea-going ships and exploring unknown 
waters, or pushing their commercial enterprises far up the 
Nile into inner Africa. In plastic art they had reached the 
highest achievement; in architecture their tireless genius 
had created the column and originated the colonnade; in 
government they had elaborated an enlightened and highly 
developed state, with a large body of law; in religion they 
were already dimly conscious of a judgment in the hereafter, 
and they were thus the first men whose ethical intuitions 
made happiness in the future life dependent upon character. 
Everywhere their unspent energies unfolded in a rich and 
manifold culture which left the world such a priceless heri- 
tage as no nation had yet bequeathed it. It now remains to 
be seen, as we stand at the close of this remarkable age, 
whether the conflict of local with centralized authority shall 
exhaust the elemental strength of this ancient people; or 
whether such a reconciliation can be effected as will again 
produce harmony and union, permitting the continuance of 
the marvellous development of which we have witnessed the 
first fruits. 



BOOK III 

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM 



THE FEUDAL AGE 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DECLINE OF THE NORTH AND THE RISE OF 

THEBES. 

THE internal struggle which caused the fall of the Old 
Kingdom developed at last into a convulsion, in which the 
destructive forces were for a time completely triumphant. 
Exactly when and by whom the ruin was wrought is not now 
determinable, but the magnificent mortuary works of the 
greatest of the Old Kingdom monarchs fell victims to a car- 
nival of destruction in which many of them were annihilated. 
The temples were not merely pillaged and violated, but their 
finest works of art were subjected to systematic and deter- 
mined vandalism, which shattered the splendid granite and 
diorite statues of the kings into bits, or hurled them into the 
well in the monumental gate of the pyramid-causeway. 
Thus the foes of the old regime wreaked vengeance upon 
those who had represented and upheld it. The nation was 
totally disorganized. From the scanty notes of Manetho it 
would appear that an oligarchy, possibly representing an 
attempt of the nobles to set up their joint rule, assumed 
control for a brief time at Memphis. Manetho calls them 
the Seventh Dynasty. He follows them with an Eighth 
Dynasty of Memphite kings, who are but the lingering 
shadow of ancient Memphite power. Their names as pre- 
served in the Abydos list show that they regarded the Sixth 
Dynasty as their ancestors ; but none of their pyramids has 
ever been found, nor have we been able to date any tombs 
of the local nobility in this dark age. In the mines and 
quarries of Sinai and Hammamat, where records of every 
prosperous line of kings proclaim their power, not a trace 
of these ephemeral Pharaohs can be found. It was a period 

147 



148 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

of such weakness and disorganization that neither king nor 
noble was able to erect monumental works which might have 
survived to tell us something of the time. How long this 
unhappy condition may have continued it is now quite impos- 
sible to determine. In the alabaster quarries at Hatnub 
quantities of inscriptions nevertheless record work there by 
the lords of the Hare-nome, thus indicating the gathering 
power of the noble houses who disregard the king and date 
events in years of their own rule. One of these dynasts even 
records with pride his repulse of the king's power, saying: 
''I rescued my city in the day of violence from the terrors 
of the royal house." 1 A generation after the fall of the 
Sixth Dynasty a family of Heracleopolitan nomarchs wrested 
the crown from the weak Memphites of the Eighth Dynasty, 
who may have lingered on, claiming royal honours for nearly 
another century. 

Some degree of order was finally restored by the triumph 
of the nomarchs of Heracleopolis. This city, just south of 
the Fayum, had been the seat of a temple and cult of Horus 
from the earliest dynastic times, and the princes of the town 
now succeeded in placing one of their number on the throne. 
Akhthoes, who, according to Manetho, was the founder of 
the new dynasty, must have taken grim vengeance on his 
enemies, for all that Manetho knows of him is that he was 
the most violent of all the kings of the time, and that, having 
been seized with madness, he was slain by a crocodile. The 
new house is known to Manetho as the Ninth and Tenth 
Dynasties, but its kings were still too feeble to leave any 
enduring monuments; neither have any records contem- 
porary with the family survived except during the last three 
generations when the powerful nomarchs of Siut were able to 
excavate cliff -tombs (Fig. 78) in which they fortunately left 
records 2 of the active and successful career of their family. 
They offer us a hint of what the state of the country had 
been when the Heracleopolitan princes restored order, for 
the nobles of Siut say of their own domains: "Every official 

'I, 690. I, 391-414. 



DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OF THEBES 149 

was at his post, there was no one fighting, nor any shooting 
an arrow. The child was not smitten beside his mother, nor 
the citizen beside his wife. There was no evil-doer . . . 
nor any one doing violence against his house." 1 "When 
night came, he who slept on the road gave me praise, for he 
was like a man in his house ; the fear of my soldier was his 
protection. ' ' 2 

These Siut nomarchs enjoyed the most intimate relations 
with the royal house at Heracleopolis ; we first find the king 
attending the burial of the head of their noble house; and 
while the daughter of the deceased prince ruled in Siut, her 
son, Kheti, then a lad, was placed with the children of the 
royal household to be educated. 3 When old enough, he 
relieved his mother of the regency, and if we may judge of 
the entire country from the administration of this Siut noble, 
the land must have enjoyed prosperity and plenty. He dug 
canals, reduced taxation, reaped rich harvests, and main- 
tained large herds ; while he had always in readiness a body 
of troops and a fleet. Such was the wealth and power of 
these Siut nobles that they soon became a buffer state on 
the south of inestimable value to the house of Heracleopolis, 
and Kheti was made military "commander of Middle 
Egypt." 4 

Meantime among the nobles of the South a similar pow- 
erful family of nomarchs was slowly rising into notice. 
Come four hundred and forty miles above Memphis, and 
less than one hundred and forty miles below the first cat- 
aract, along the stretch of Nile about forty miles above the 
great bend, where the river approaches most closely to the 
Red Sea before turning abruptly away from it, the scanty 
margin between river and cliffs expands into a broad and 
fruitful plain in the midst of which now lie the mightiest 
ruins of ancient civilization to be found anywhere in the 
world. They are the wreck of Thebes, the world 's first great 
monumental city. At this time it was an obscure provincial 
town and the neighbouring Hermonthis was the seat of a 

1 1, 404. * I, 395, 1. 10. I, 413. I, 410. 



150 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

family of nomarchs, the Intefs and Mentuhoteps. Toward 
the close of the Heracleopolitan supremacy, Thebes had 
gained the leading place in the South, and its nomarch, Intef, 
was "keeper of the Door of the South." 1 The South stood 
together and in time of scarcity we see the nomes aiding each 
other with grain and provisions. 2 Intef was soon able to 
organize the whole South in rebellion, mustering his forces 
from the cataract northward at least as far as Thebes. He 
and his successors finally wrenched the southern confedera- 
tion from the control of Heracleopolis, and organized an 
independent kingdom, with Thebes at its head. This Intef 
was ever after recognized as the ancestor of the Theban line, 
and the monarchs of the Middle Kingdom set up his statue 
in the temple at Thebes among those of their royal prede- 
cessors who were worshipped there. 3 

At this juncture, the unshaken fidelity of the Siut princes 
was the salvation of the house of Heracleopolis; for Tefibi 
of Siut, perhaps a son of the nomarch Kheti, whom we first 
found there, now placed his army in the field against the 
aggression of Thebes. He marched southward to stem an 
invasion of the southerners, and meeting them on the west 
shore of the river, drove them back, recovering lost territory 
as far south as "the fortress of the Port of the South," prob- 
ably Abydos. 4 A second army which was advancing to meet 
him on the east shore was likewise defeated ; the ships of a 
southern fleet were forced ashore, their commander driven 
into the river and the ships apparently captured by Tefibi. 5 
His son Kheti was now appointed as "military commander 
of the whole land, " and " great lord of Middle Egypt. ' ' 6 He 
continued loyal support of his sovereign, Merikere of Hera- 
cleopolis, and was the veritable "king-maker" of that now 
tottering house. He suppressed an insurrection on the 
southern frontier, and brought the king southward, appar- 
ently to witness the submission of the rebellious districts. 
Returning northward with the king, Kheti narrates with 

*I, 420. I, 457-9. I, 419. 

I, 396. "Ibid. !, 398, 403, 1, 23. 



DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OF THEBES 

pride how his (Kheti's) enormous fleet stretched for miles 
up the river as he passed his home. At Heracleopolis, where 
they landed in triumph, Kheti says, 1 "the city came, rejoic- 
ing over her lord . . . women mingled with men, old men 
and children. ' : Thus in the tomb inscriptions (Fig. 78) of 
these Siut lords we gain a fleeting glimpse of the Heracle- 
opolitan kings, just as they are about to disappear finally 
from the scene. 

Meanwhile the fortunes of Thebes have been constantly 
rising. Intef, the nomarch, had been succeeded (whether 
immediately or not is uncertain) by another Intef, who was 
the first of the Thebans to assume royal honours and titles, 
thus becoming Intef I, the first king of the dynasty. He 
pressed the Heracleopolitans vigourously, pushed his frontier 
northward, and captured Abydos and the entire Thinite 
nome. He made its northern boundary the "Door of the 
North," 2 that is, the northern frontier of his kingdom, as 
Elephantine at the first cataract was the ' ' Door of the South. ' ; 
His "Door of the North" was in all probability Tefibi of 
Siut's "fortress of the Port of the South." 3 His long reign 
of over fifty years ended, he was followed by his son, Intef 
II, of whom we know little beyond the fact of his succes- 
sion. 4 It was now that the accession of a line of Mentuho- 
teps, probably a collateral branch of the Theban family, 
established the universal supremacy of Thebes. Mentuho- 
tep II evidently brought the war with the North to a trium- 
phant close. He boasted with impunity of his victories over 
his countrymen and on the walls of his temple at Gebelen 
he depicted himself striking down Egyptian and foreigner 
together, while the accompanying inscription designates the 
scene as the "binding of the chiefs of the Two Lands, cap- 
turing the South and Northland, the foreign countries and 
the two regions [Egypt], the Nine Bows [foreigners], and 
the Two Lands" [Egypt]. 5 About the middle of the twenty 
second century B. C., therefore, the Heracleopolitan power, 

'I, 401. I, 422, 423 D, 1. 4. 

8 See above, p. 150. * I, 423 G. I, 423 H. 



152 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

never very vigourous, completely collapsed, the supremacy 
passed from the North to the South, and thus, perhaps nearly 
three centuries after the fall of the Sixth Dynasty and the 
close of the Old Kingdom, Egypt was reunited under a 
strong and vigourous line of princes, capable of curbing in 
a measure the powerful and refractory lords, who are now 
firmly entrenched in the nomes all over the land. Nothing 
is certainly known of the family relations of this new Theban 
house. The kingship presumably passed from father to son, 
but there are clear evidences of rival claims to the sceptre, 
nor is the order of the kings entirely certain. 

Eoyal expeditions abroad, long interrupted, were now 
resumed. Nibtowere-Mentuhotep Ill's vizier, Amenemhet 
left a series of very interesting inscriptions in the Hamma- 
mat quarries, telling of his twenty five days' sojourn there 
for the purpose of procuring the blocks for the king's 
sarcophagus and lid, with an expedition of ten thousand 
men, the largest thus far known in the history of Egypt. 
Min, the god of the region, granted them the greatest mar- 
vels in furthering their work ; a gazelle ran before the work- 
men and dropped her young upon the very block which 
they were able to use for the sarcophagus-lid; and later a 
rain-storm filled the neighbouring well to the brim. The 
work was thus speedily completed, and Amenemhet boasts 
4 'My soldiers returned without loss; not a man perished, 
not a troop was missing, not an ass died, not a workman 
was enfeebled." 1 The men for these expeditions were 
drawn from all parts of the kingdom; it is thus evident 
that the last three Mentuhoteps controlled the whole coun- 
try, and that they had restored the power and prestige 
of the Pharaoh's office. Its relation to the local lords and 
nomarchs we shall soon be able to discern more clearly, as 
the Theban family known as the Twelfth Dynasty presently 
emerges into view. 

The forces of expansion, latent for several centuries, now 
found opportunity in Nubia again, as in the Sixth Dy- 

I, 434-453. 



DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OP THEBES 153 

nasty, before the fall of the Old Kingdom. Nibhepetre- 
Mentuhotep IV was so fully in control of the country 
that he could resume the designs of the Sixth Dynasty 
for the conquest of Nubia, and dispatched his treasurer 
Kheti with a fleet into Wawat 1 in his forty-first year. 
Building enterprises, so long interrupted, were again under- 
taken, and on the western plain of Thebes Mentuhotep IV 
erected a small terraced temple under the cliffs, which after- 
ward served as the model for queen Hatshepsut's beautiful 
sanctuary beside it at Der el-Bahri. Its ruins, recently dis- 
covered, constitute the oldest building at Thebes. It was 
evidently of mortuary character, and the reliefs on the walls 
depicted foreign peoples bringing tribute to the Pharaoh. 
Mentuhotep IV 's long reign of at least forty six years gave 
him ample opportunity to solidify and organize his power, 
and he was regarded in after centuries as the great founder 
and establisher of Theban supremacy. His successor, Men- 
tuhotep V, was also able to continue the long interrupted 
foreign enterprises of the Old Kingdom Pharaohs. He 
united the responsibility for all commerce with the southern 
countries in the hands of a powerful official, already exist- 
ent in the Sixth Dynasty, under the old title "keeper of the 
Door of the South." Mentuhotep V's chief treasurer, 
Henu, who bore this important office, was dispatched to the 
Red Sea by the Hammamat road with a following of three 
thousand men. Such was the efficiency of his organization 
that each man received two jars of water and twenty small 
biscuit-like loaves daily, involving the issuance of six thou- 
sand jars of water and sixty thousand such loaves by the 
commissary every day* during the desert march and the stay 
in the quarries of Hammamat. Everything possible was 
done to make the desert route thither safe and passable. 
Henu dug fifteen wells and cisterns, 3 and settlements of colo- 
nists were afterward established at the watering stations. 4 
Arriving at the Red Sea end of the route, Henu built a ship 
which he dispatched to Punt, while he himself returned by 

'I. 426. I, 430. I, 431. !, 456. 



154 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

way of Hamniamat, where he secured and brought back with 
him fine blocks for the statues in the royal temples. 1 Men- 
tuhotep V ruled at least eight years. 2 

After this succession of five Mentuhoteps, we find that 
the Eleventh Dynasty was then displaced by a new and 
vigourous Theban family with an Amenemhet at its head. 
We have already seen one powerful Amenemhet at Thebes 
as the vizier of Mentuhotep III. This new Amenemhet was 
able to supplant the last son of the Eleventh Dynasty, and 
assume the throne as first king of the Twelfth Dynasty. 
It is very probable also that the new king had royal blood 
in his veins; in any case his family always regarded the 
nomarch Intef as their ancestor ; they paid him honour and 
placed his statue in the Karnak temple of Thebes. 3 After 
a rule of a little over one hundred and sixty years 4 the 
Eleventh Dynasty was thus brought to a close about 2000 
B. C. They left few monuments ; their modest pyramids of 
sun-dried brick on the western plain of Thebes were in a 
perfect state of preservation a thousand years later, 5 but 
they barely survived into modern times and their vanish- 
ing remains were excavated by Mariette. Nevertheless they 
laid the foundations of Theban power and prepared the 
way for the vigourous development which now followed 
under their successors. 

It was not without hostilities that Amenemhet gained his ex- 
alted station. We hear of a campaign on the Nile with a fleet 
of twenty ships of cedar, 8 followed by the expulsion of some 
unknown enemy from Egypt. Victorious in these conflicts, 
Amenemhet was confronted by a situation of the greatest 
difficulty. Everywhere the local nobles, the nomarchs whose 
gradual rise we witnessed in the Old Kingdom, were now 
ruling their great domains like independent sovereigns. 
They looked back upon a long line of ancestry reaching 
into the generations of their fathers, whose power had caused 
the fall of the Old Kingdom; and we find them repairing 

'I, 432-433. I, 418. I, 419. 

I. 418. 8 IV, 514. "1, 4G5. 



DECLINE OF NORTH AND RISE OF THEBES 

the fallen tombs of these founders of their houses. 1 While 
the Eleventh Dynasty kings had evidently curbed these am- 
bitious lords to some extent, Amenemhet was obliged to go 
about the country and lay a strong hand upon them one 
after another. Here and there some aggressive nomarch 
had seized the territory and towns of a neighbour, thus gain- 
ing dangerous power and wealth. It was necessary for the 
safety of the crown in such cases to restore the balance of 
power. "He established the southern landmark, perpet- 
uating the northern like the heavens ; he divided the great 
river along its middle; its eastern side of the 'Horizon of 
Horus' was as far as the eastern highland; at the coming 
of his majesty to cast out evil shining like Atum himself; 
when he restored that which he found ruined; that which a 
city had taken from its neighbour; while he caused city to 
know its boundary with city, establishing their landmarks 
like the heavens, distinguishing their waters according to 
that which was in the writings, investigating according to 
that which was of old, because he so greatly loved justice." 2 
Thus the nomarch of the Oryx-nome relates how Amenemhet 
proceeded at the installation of his grandfather as nomarch 
there. 

To suppress the landed nobles entirely and to reestablish 
the bureaucratic state of the Old Kingdom, with its local gov- 
ernors, was however quite impossible. The development 
which had become so evident in the Fifth Dynasty had now 
reached its logical issue; Amenemhet could only accept the 
situation and deal with it as best he might. He had achieved 
the conquest of the country and its reorganization only by 
skilfully employing in his cause those noble families whom 
he could win by favour and fair promises. With these he must 
now reckon, and we see him rewarding Khnumhotep, one 
of his partisans, with the gift of the Oryx-nome, the boun- 
daries of a part of which he established as we have already 
learned from the above record in a famous tomb 3 of the 
family at Benihasan. The utmost that Amenemhet could 

I, 688-9. *I. 625. !, 619-639. 



156 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

accomplish, therefore, was the appointment in the nomes of 
nobles favourably inclined toward his house. The state 
which the unprecedented vigour and skill of this great states- 
man finally succeeded in thus erecting, again furnished 
Egypt with the stable organization, which enabled her about 
2000 B. C. to enter upon her second great period of produc- 
tive development, the Middle Kingdom. 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE: STATE, 

SOCIETY AND RELIGION. 

IT had been but natural that the kings of the Eleventh 
Dynasty should reside at Thebes, where the founders of the 
family had lived during the long war for the conquest of 
the North. But Amenemhet was evidently unable to con- 
tinue this tradition. It is easy to imagine reasons why he 
concluded that his presence was necessary to maintain his 
position among the Northern nomarchs, who may still have 
felt leanings toward the fallen house of Heracleopolis. 
Moreover all the kings of Egypt since the passing of the 
Thinites a thousand years before had lived there, except the 
Eleventh Dynasty which he had supplanted. The location 
which he selected was on the west side of the river some 
miles south of Memphis. The exact spot cannot now be iden- 
tified, but it was probably near the place now called Lisht, 
where the ruined pyramid of Amenemhet has been discov- 
ered. The name given to the residence city was signifi- 
cant of its purpose; Amenemhet named it Ithtowe, which 
means "Captor of the Two Lands.' 1 In hieroglyphic the 
name is always written enclosed within a square fortress 
with battlemented walls; from this stronghold Amenemhet 
swayed the destinies of a state which required all the skill 
and political sagacity of a line of unusually strong rulers 
in order to maintain the prestige of the royal house. 

The nation was made up of an aggregation of small states 
or petty princedoms, the heads of which owed the Pharaoh 
their loyalty, but they were not his officials or his servants. 
Some of these local nobles were "great lords" or nomarchs. 
ruling a whole nome ; others were only "counts" of a smaller 

157 



158 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



domain with its fortified town. It was thus a feudal state 
not essentially different from that of later Europe which 
Amenemhet had organized. It was a state which could exist 
only as long as there was a strong man like himself in the 
palace at Ithtowe; and the slightest evidence of weakness 
meant its rapid dissolution. We are dependent for our 
knowledge of these barons upon their surviving tombs and 
mortuary monuments. All such remains in the Delta have 
perished, so that we can speak with certainty only of the 
conditions in the South, and even here it is only in Middle 
Egypt that we are adequately informed. 

The noble families of the provincial aristocracy, as we 
have seen, could in some cases look back upon a line of an- 
cestry reaching into the Old Kingdom, four or five centuries 
earlier; 1 they had thus gained a strong foothold in their bar- 




FIG. 79. OFFICES OF THE NOMARCH KHNUMIIOTEP AT BENIHASAN. 

On the left is the chief treasurer before whom gold and silver are being 
weighed; in the middle is the steward of the estate, who records the amount 
of grain brought in and deposited in the granary on the right. 

onies and domains. We recall also that under the weak 
Pharaohs of the decadence following the Old Kingdom they 
had ruled as almost independent dynasts, dating events in 
years of their own rule and no longer in those of the reign 
of the Pharaoh, whom in some cases they had defied and 
even successfully resisted. 2 The nomarch had indeed be- 
come a miniature Pharaoh in his little realm, and such he 
continued to be under the Twelfth Dynasty. On a less 
sumptuous scale his residence was surrounded by a personnel 
not unlike that of the Pharaonic court and harem ; while his 
government demanded a chief treasurer, a court of justice, 

I, 688-9. 2 I, 690. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 159 

with offices (Fig. 79), scribes and functionaries, and all the 
essential machinery of government which we find at the 
royal residence. The nomarch by means of this organiza- 
tion himself collected the revenues of his domain, was high 
priest or head of the sacerdotal organization, and com- 
manded the militia of his realm which was permanently 
organized. His power was considerable ; the nomarch of the 
Oryx-nome led four hundred of his own troops into Nubia 
and six hundred through the desert to the gold mines on the 
Coptos road. 1 The nomarch at Coptos was able to send an 







FIG. 80. A COLOSSUS OF ALABASTER ABOUT TWENTY-TWO FEET HIGH TRANS- 
PORTED ON A SLEDGE BY 172 MEN IN FOUR DOUBLE LINES AT THE 
ROPES. (From a Middle Kingdom Tomb at El Bersheh.) 

expedition of his own to the Hammamat quarries which 
brought back two blocks seventeen feet long, and a second 
expedition which returned with a block twenty feet six inches 
long drawn by nearly two hundred men along the desert road 
over fifty miles to the Nile. 2 The people of the nomarch of the 
Hare-nome dragged from the quarry of Hatnub ten miles to 
the river a huge block of alabaster weighing over sixty tons 
and large enough for a statue of the nomarch some twenty 
two feet high. Such lords were able to build temples 4 and 



1 I, 520-521. 
3 1, 694-706. 



* I, p. 225, note c. 

I, 403; 637, and note a. 



160 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

erect public buildings in their principal towns. 1 They taught 
the crafts and encouraged industries and their immediate 
interest and direct personal oversight resulted in a period of 
unprecedented economic development. 2 One of the Siut 
nomarchs of the Heracleopolitan domination furnishes a hint 
of what was to follow, saying : " I was rich in grain. When 
the land was in need I maintained the city with kha and 
heket [grain-measures], I allowed the citizen to fetch for 
himself grain; and his wife, the widow and her son. I 
remitted all imposts [unpaid arrears] which I found counted 
by my fathers. I filled the pastures with cattle, every man 
had many breeds, the cows brought forth twofold, the folds 
were full of calves." 3 A new irrigation canal which he made 
doubtless contributed much to the productivity of his do- 
mains. 4 Faithful officials of the nomarch show the same 
solicitude for the welfare of the community over which they 
were placed ; thus an assistant treasurer in the Theban nome 
residing at Gebelen in the Eleventh Dynasty tells us: "I 
sustained Gebelen during unfruitful years, there being four 
hundred men in distress. But I took not the daughter of 
a man, I took not his field. I made ten herds of goats, with 
people in charge of each herd; I made two herds of cattle 
and a herd of asses. I raised all kinds of small cattle. I 
made thirty ships, then thirty more ships, and I brought 
grain for Esneh and Tuphium, after Gebelen was sustained. 
The nome of Thebes went up stream [to Gebelen for sup- 
plies]. Never did Gebelen send up-stream or down-stream 
to another district [for supplies]." 5 The nomarch thus 
devoted himself to the interests of his people, and was con- 
cerned to leave to posterity a reputation as a merciful and 
beneficent ruler. All the above records are taken from tomb- 
inscriptions, records designed to perpetuate such a memory 
among the people. Still more positive in the same direc- 
tion is a passage in the biography of Ameni, nomarch of the 
Oryx-nome, as inscribed in his tomb at Benihasan: "There 

'I, 637. *I, 638. si, 408. I, 407. * 6 I, 459. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 161 

was no citizen's daughter whom I misused, there was no 
widow whom I oppressed, there was no peasant whom I re- 
pulsed, there was no herdsman whom I repelled, there was no 
overseer of serf-labourers, whose people I took for [unpaid] 
imposts, there was none wretched in my community, there 
was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came 
I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx-nome, as far as its 
southern and northern boundary, preserving its people alive, 
and furnishing its food, so that there was none hungry 
therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband; 
I did not exalt the great above the small in all I gave. 
Then came great Niles, rich in grain and all things, but I did 
not collect the arrears of the field. ' Jl After making all due 
allowance for the natural desire of the nomarch to record 
the most favourable aspects of his government, it is evident 
that the paternal character of his local and personal rule, in 
a community of limited numbers, with which he was ac- 
quainted by almost daily contact, had proved an untold bless- 
ing to the country and population at large. 

The domains over which the nomarch thus ruled were not 
all his unqualified possessions. His wealth consisted of 
lands and revenues of two classes: the ''paternal estate,' 1 
received from his ancestors and entailed in his line ; and the 
"count's estate," 2 over which the dead hand had no control; 
it was conveyed as a fief by the Pharaoh anew at the 
nomarch 's death. It was this fact which to some extent 
enabled the Pharaoh to control the feudatories and to secure 
the appointment of partisans of his house throughout the 
country. Nevertheless he could not ignore the natural line of 
succession, which was through the eldest daughter; and as 
we have observed at Siut, she might even rule the domain 
after the death of her father until her son was old enough 
to assume its government. 3 The magnificent tombs of the 
lords of the Oryx-nome at Benihasan reveal very clearly the 
influence of these customs in the fortunes of this family. At 
the triumph of Amenemhet I, as we have seen, he appointed 

il, 523. I, 536. si, 414. 

11 



162 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

one of his partisans, a certain Khnumbotep, as count of 
Meuet-Khufu, chief city of the "Horizon of Horns," an 
appanage of the Oryx-nome, to which Khnumhotep also soon 
succeeded as nomarch. As a special favour of Sesostris I, 
after Amenemhet I's death, Khnumhotep 's two sons inher- 
ited their father's fiefs, Nakht being appointed count of 
Menet-Khufu, and Ameni, of whose beneficent rule we have 
just read, receiving the Oryx-nome. Their sister Beket 
married a powerful official at the court, the vizier and gov- 
ernor of the residence-city, Nehri, who was nomarch of the 
neighbouring Hare-nome ; and the son of this union, a second 
Khnumhotep, thereupon by succession through his mother, 
was appointed to succeed his uncle Nakht as count of Menet- 
Khufu. Observing the value in the Pharaoh's eyes of being 
the son of a nomarch 's daughter, this second Khnumhotep 
himself married Kheti, the eldest daughter of his neighbour 
on the north, the nomarch of the Jackal-nome. Thus the 
eldest son of Khnumhotep the second had a claim through 
his mother upon the Jackal-nome, to which in due course 
the Pharaoh appointed him ; while the second son of the mar- 
riage, after honours at court, received his father's fief of 
Menet-Khufu. 1 The history of this line through four gen- 
erations thus shows that the Pharaoh could not overlook the 
claims of the heir of a powerful family, and the deference 
which he showed them evidently limited the control which 
he might exert over a less formidable dynasty of nobles. 

To what extent these lords felt the restraint of the royal 
hand in their government and administration it is not now 
possible to determine. A royal commissioner, whose duty 
it was to look to the interests of the Pharaoh, seems to 
have resided in the nome, and there were "overseers of the 
crown-possessions" (probably under him) in charge of the 
royal herds in each nome ; 2 but the nomarch himself was the 
medium through whom all revenues from the nome were con- 
veyed to the treasury. "All the imposts of the king's house 
passed through my hand," says Ameni of the Oryx-nome. 

1 I, 619 ff. I, 522. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 163 

Tlie treasury was the organ of the central government, which 
gave administrative cohesion to the otherwise loose aggre- 
gation of nomarchies. It had its income paying property 
in all the nomes. Some of this property, as we have ob- 
served, seems to have been administered by government 
overseers, while to a large extent it was entrusted to the 
noble, probably as part of the ' ' count 's estate. ' : The ' ' gang- 
overseers of the crown possessions of the Oryx-nome" gave 
to Ameni three thousand bulls, of which he rendered an 
annual account to the Pharaoh, saying, "I was praised on 
account of it in the palace [of the Pharaoh]. I carried all 
their dues to the king 's house ; there were no arrears against 
me in any office of his." 1 Thuthotep, the nomarch of the 
Hare-nome, depicted with great pride in his tomb at El 
Bersheh "great numbers of his cattle from the king and his 
cattle of the [paternal] estate in the districts of the Hare- 
nome. ' ' 2 We have no means of even conjecturing the amount 
or proportion of property held by the crown in the nomes 
and "count's estates," but it is evident that the claims of 
these powerful feudatories must have seriously curtailed the 
traditional revenues of the Pharaoh. He no longer had the 
resources of the country at his unconditional disposal as in 
the Old Kingdom, even though it was officially only by the 
king 's grace that his lords held their fiefs. Other resources 
of the treasury were, however, now available, and if not en- 
tirely new, were henceforth more energetically exploited. 
Besides his internal revenues, including the tribute of the 
nomes and the Residence, the Pharaoh received a regular 
income from the gold-mines of Nubia, and those on the 
Coptos road to the Bed Sea. The traffic with Punt and the 
southern coasts of the Red Sea seems to have been the exclu- 
sive prerogative of the crown, and must have brought in a 
considerable return; while the mines and quarries of Sinai, 
and perhaps also the quarries of Hammamat, had also been 
developed as a regular source of profit. The conquest of 
Nubia, and now and then a plundering expedition into Syria- 

1 I. 522. 21, 522, note a. 



164 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

Palestine, also furnished not unwelcome contributions to 
the treasury. 

The central office of the treasury was still the " White 
House," which through its sub-departments of the granary, 
the herds, the ''double gold-house," the "double silver- 
house,'- and other produce of the country, collected into 
the central magazines and stock-yards the annual revenues 
due the Pharaoh. Whole fleets of transports l upon the river 
were necessary for the conveyance of the great quantities 
of commodities involved. The head of the "White House" 
was as before, the chief treasurer, with his assistant, the 
"treasurer of the God," and the vigourous administration 
of the time is evident in the frequent records of these active 
officials, showing that notwithstanding their rank, they often 
personally superintended the king 's interests in Sinai, Ham- 
mamat, or on the shores of the Bed Sea at the terminus of 
the Coptos road. It is evident that the treasury had become 
a more highly developed organ since the Old Kingdom. The 
army of subordinates, stewards, overseers and scribes filling 
the offices under the heads of sub-departments was obviously 
larger than before. They began to display an array of 
titles, of which many successive ranks, heretofore unknown, 
were being gradually differentiated. Among these appear 
more prominently than heretofore the engineers and skilled 
artisans who were exploiting the mines and quarries under 
the administrative officials. Such conditions made possible 
the rise of an official middle class. 

Justice, as in the Old Kingdom, was still dispensed by 
the administrative officials ; thus a treasurer of the god boasts 
that he was one "knowing the law, discreet in exercising 
it." 2 The six "Great Houses" or courts of justice, with 
the vizier at their head, sat in Ithtowe. 3 There was besides 
a "House of Thirty," which evidently possessed judicial 
functions, and was also presided over by the vizier, but its 
relation to the six "Great Houses" is not clear. There was 

1 Tombstone of a commander of one of these fleets, Cairo, No. 20,143. 
8 1, 618. 8 Sharpe, Eg. laser. I. 100. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 165 

now more than one ' ' Southern Ten, ' ' and ' ' Magnates of the 
Southern Tens" were frequently entrusted with various 
executive and administrative commissions by the king. As 
we shall see, they had the census and tax records in charge ; 
but their connection with the judicial administration cannot 
be determined with clearness. Magistrates with the sole 
title of "judge," whose tomb-stones are occasionally found, 
may have been well-to-do middle class citizens who assumed 
judicial functions within a restricted local jurisdiction. The 
law which they administered, while it has not survived, had 
certainly attained a high development, and was capable of 
the finest distinctions. A nomarch at Siut makes a contract 
between himself as count, and himself as high priest in the 
temple of his city, showing the closest differentiation of the 
rights which he possessed in these two different capacities. 1 
The scanty records of the time throw but little light upon 
the other organs of government, like the administration of 
lands, the system of irrigation and the like. For the pur- 
pose of carrying on public works, as well as for taxation and 
census records, the country was divided into two adminis- 
trative districts of the South and the North, and the ' ' Mag- 
nates of the Southern Tens" served in both districts, showing 
that they were not confined to the South alone. The office 
of the governor of the South had disappeared, and already 
before the close of the Old Kingdom the title had become 
merely an honourable predicate, if used at all. An elaborate 
system of registration was in force. Every head of a family 
was enrolled as soon as he had established an indepen- 
dent household, with all the members belonging to it, includ- 
ing serfs and slaves. His oath to the correctness of the 
registration-list was taken by a "Magnate of the Southern 
Tens" in the land-office, one of the bureaus of the vizier's 
department, where all this registration was filed. These 
enrollments probably occurred at fixed intervals of some 
years and there are some indications that the period may 

4 1, 568 ff. 



166 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

have been fifteen years. 1 The office of the vizier was thus 
the central archives of the government as before, and all 
records of the land-administration with census and tax reg- 
istration were filed in his bureaus. Thus he calls himself 
one "confirming the boundary records, separating a land- 
owner from his neighbour. ' ' 2 As formerly, he was also head 
of the judicial administration, presiding over the six "Great 
Houses" and the "House of Thirty"; and when he also held 
the office of chief treasurer, as did the powerful vizier Men- 
tuhotep under Sesostris I, the account which he could give of 
himself on his tomb-stone read like the declaration of a king's 
powers. 3 That he might prove dangerous to the crown was 
evident in the history of Amenemhet I's probable rise from 
the viziership. His high office brought with it the rank of 
prince and count and in some instances he ruled a nome. 

It was now more necessary than ever that the machinery 
of government should be in the hands of men of unques- 
tioned loyalty. Young men were brought up in the circle 
of the king's house that they might grow up in attachment 
to it. Thus Sesostris III wrote entrusting a commission to 
his chief treasurer, Ikhernofret: "My majesty sendeth thee, 
my heart being certain of thy doing everything according 
to the desire of my majesty; since thou hast been brought 
up in the teaching of my majesty; thou hast been in the 
training of my majesty and the sole teaching of my palace." 4 
Even then the closest surveillance was constantly necessary 
to ensure the king's safety and prevent the ambitious noble 
in the Pharaoh's service from gaining dangerous power. 
We shall discover the officials of Amenemhet I abusing his 
confidence and attempting his life; in far off Nubia Men- 
tuhotep, Sesostris I's commander there, like Cornelius Gallus 
under Augustus, made himself so prominent upon the tri- 
umphal monuments of the king that his figure had to be 
erased, and in all likelihood the noble himself was dismissed 
in disgrace. 5 Discreet conduct toward the Pharaoh was the 

1 Kahun Papyri, pi. IX-X, pp. 19-29. 

'I, 531. *I, 530-534. I, 665. * I, 514. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 167 

condition of a career, and the wise praise him who knows 
how to be silent in the king's service. 1 Sehetepibre, a mag- 
nate of Amenemhet Ill's court, left upon his tomb-stone an 
exhortation to his children that they serve the king with 
faithfulness, saying among many other things : ' ' Fight for 
his name, purify yourselves by his oath, and ye shall be free 
from trouble. The beloved of the king shall be blessed ; but 
there is no tomb for one hostile to his majesty; and his body 
shall be thrown to the waters." 2 

Under such conditions the Pharaoh could not but surround 
himself with the necessary power to enforce his will when 
obliged to do so. A class of military ''attendants" or liter- 
ally "followers of his majesty" therefore arose. They were 
professional soldiers, the first of whom we have any knowl- 
edge in ancient Egypt. In companies of a hundred men 
each they garrisoned the palace and the strongholds of the 
royal house from Nubia to the Asiatic frontier. How numer- 
ous they may have been, it is now impossible to determine. 
They formed at least the nucleus of a standing army, 
although it is evident that they were not as yet in sufficient 
numbers to be dignified by this term. Whence they were 
drawn is also uncertain, but their commanders at least were 
of higher birth than the middle class. We shall find them 
as the most prominent force in all the Pharaoh 's wars, espe- 
cially in Nubia, and also in charge of royal expeditions to 
the mines, quarries and Red Sea ports. Nevertheless the 
great mass of the army employed by the Pharaoh at this 
time was composed of the free born citizens of the middle 
class, forming the militia or the permanent force of the 
nomarch, who at the king's summons placed himself at their 
head and led them in the wars of his liege-lord. The army 
in time of war was therefore made up of contingents fur- 
nished and commanded by the feudatories. In peace they 
were also frequently drawn upon to furnish the intelligent 
power applied to the transportation of great monuments or 
employed in the execution of public works. All free citizens, 

I, 532. I, 748. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

whether priests or not, were organized and enrolled in ' i gen- 
erations," a term designating the different classes of youth, 
which were to become successively liable to draught for mili- 
tary or public service. As in the Old Kingdom, war con- 
tinues to be little more than a series of loosely organized 
predatory expeditions, the records of which clearly display 
the still unwarlike character of the Egyptian. 

The detachment of the nobles from the court since the 
Sixth Dynasty had resulted in the rise of a provincial so- 
ciety, of which we gain glimpses especially at Elephantine, 
Bersheh, Benihasan and Siut, where the tombs of the nom- 
archs are still preserved, and at Abydos, where all other 
classes now desired to be buried or to erect a memorial stone. 
The life of the nobles therefore no longer centred in the 
court, and the aristocracy of the time, being scattered 
throughout the country, took on local forms. The nomarch, 
with his large family circle, his social pleasures, his hunting 
and his sports, is an interesting and picturesque figure of 
the country nobleman, with whom we would gladly tarry if 
space permitted. Characteristic of this age is the promi- 
nence of the middle class. To some extent this prominence 
is due to the fact that a tomb, a tomb-stone and mortuary 
equipment have become a necessity also for a large propor- 
tion of this class, who felt no such necessity and left no such 
memorial of their existence in the Old Kingdom. In the 
cemetery at Abydos, among nearly eight hundred men of the 
time buried there, one in four bore no title either of office or 
of rank. 1 They sometimes designate themselves as "citi- 
zens of the town," 2 but ordinarily the name stands alone 
on the tomb-stone, with no hint of the owner 's station. Some 
of these men were tradesmen, some land-owners, others arti- 
sans and artificers ; but among them were men of wealth and 
luxury. In the Art Institute at Chicago there is a fine coffin 
belonging to such an untitled citizen which he had made of 
costly cedar imported from Lebanon. To such we should 
undoubtedly add those who occasionally prefix to their names 

Catalogue Cairo, Nos. 20.001-20,780. 2 Ibid, passim. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 169 

an indication of their calling, like "master sandal-maker," 
"gold-smith" or " copper-smith, ' : without other designa- 
tion of their station in life. Of the people bearing titles of 
office on these Middle Kingdom tomb-stones of Abydos, the 
vast majority were small office-holders, displaying no title 
of rank and undoubtedly belonging to this same middle class. 
The government service now offered a career to the youth 
of this station in life; the assistant treasurer, who, as the 
reader will recall, was so solicitous for the maintenance of 
the Theban nome in time of famine, 1 expressly refers to 
himself as a "citizen." The inheritance by the son of his 
father 's calling, already not uncommon in the Old Kingdom, 
was now general. The tomb-stones of the time exhort the 
passers-by, as they would that their children should inherit 
their offices, to pray for the deceased. Such a custom must 
necessarily lead to the formation of an official middle class. 
Their ability to read and write also raised them above those 
of their own station who were illiterate. A father bringing 
his son to be educated as a scribe at the court-school exhorts 
him to industry, and taking up calling after calling, shows 
that every handicraft abounds in difficulties and hardships ; 
while that of the scribe alone brings honour, ease and wealth. 2 
Although the state of the arts shows clearly that the crafts- 
men of the time were often men of the finest ability, whose 
station in life could not have been undesirable, the scribal and 
official middle class thus looked down upon them, and exalted 
the calling of the scribe above all others. From this time on 
we shall find the scribe constantly glorying in his knowl- 
edge and his station. While the monuments of the Old 
Kingdom revealed to us only the life of the titled nobility 
at the court and the serfs on their estates, in the Middle 
Kingdom we thus discern a prosperous and often well-to-do 
middle class in the provinces, sometimes owning their own 
slaves and lands and bringing their offerings of first fruits 
to the temple of the town as did the noniarch himself. 3 The 
nomarch showed great concern for the welfare of this class 

'See above, p. 160. 2 Pap. Sallier II. 3 I, 536. 



170 'A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

and the reader will recall his gifts of grain to them in time 
of famine. One of them has left a short record of his pros- 
perity on his tomb-stone, saying: "I was one having goodly 
gardens and tall sycamores ; I built a wide house in my city, 
and I excavated a tomb in my cemetery-cliff. I made a 
canal for my city and I ferried [people] over it in my boat. 
I was one ready [for service], leading my peasants until the 
coming of the day when it was well with me [day of death], 
when I gave it [his wealth] to my son by will." 1 At the 
bottom of the social scale were the unnamed serfs, the "peas- 
ants" of the inscription just read, the toiling millions who 
produced the agricultural wealth of the land, the despised 
class whose labour nevertheless formed the basis of the eco- 
nomic life of the nation. In the nomes they were also taught 
handicrafts and we see them depicted in the tombs at Beni- 
hasan and elsewhere engaged in the production of all sorts 
of handiwork. Whether their output was solely for the use 
of the nomarch's estates or also on a large scale for traffic in 
the markets with the middle class throughout the country, 
is entirely uncertain. 

In no element of their life are there clearer evidences of 
change and development than in the religion of the Middle 
Kingdom Egyptians. Here again we are in a new age. 
The official supremacy of Ee, so marked since the rise of the 
Fifth Dynasty, had continued through the internal conflicts 
which followed at the fall of the Old Kingdom and at the 
rise of the Twelfth Dynasty his triumph was complete. The 
other priesthoods, desirous of securing for their own, per- 
haps purely local deity, a share of the sun-god's glory, grad- 
ually discovered that their god was but a form and name of 
Re; and some of them went so far that their theologizing 
found practical expression in the god's name. Thus, for 
example, the priests of Sobk, a crocodile god, who had no 
connection with the sun-god in the beginning, now called 
him Sobk-Re. In like manner, Amon, hitherto an obscure 
local god of Thebes, who had attained some prominence by 

i Florence, Stela 1774, from my own photograph. 




FIG. 81. A MIDDLE KINGDOM COFFIN AND MORTUARY FURNITURE. 
Including boats, servants preparing food and beer, and a house (in the middle). Berlin Museum. 




FIG. 82. MORTUARY BOAT OF SESOSTRIS III. 

From his pyramid at Dashur. It is 30 feet long, 8 feet wide, 4 feet deep, of cedar of Lebanon. 

Museum, Chicago.) 



(Field Columbian 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 171 

the political rise of the city, was from now on a solar god, 
and was commonly called by his priests Amon-Ee. There 
were in this movement the beginnings of a tendency toward 
a pantheistic solar monotheism, which we shall yet trace to 
its remarkable culmination. 

While the temples had probably somewhat increased in 
size, the official cult was not materially altered, and there 
was still no large class of priests. Sesostris II 's temple of 
Anubis at Kahun by the Fayum had over it only a noble 
with the office of "overseer of the temple," assisted by a 
i l chief lector, ' ' with nine subordinates. Only the ' ' overseer 
of the temple ' : ' and the ' ' lector ' ' were constantly in service 
at the sanctuary, the nine subordinates being laymen, who 
served the temple only one month in the year, giving place 
each month to a new nine, to whom they turned over the 
temple property each time. Besides these, the menial duties 
of the sanctuary demanded six door-keepers and two ser- 
vants. 1 

The triumph of Osiris was not less sweeping than that of 
Ee, although for totally different reasons. The supremacy of 
Ee was largely due to his political prominence, added to the 
prestige which the sun-god had always enjoyed in the Nile 
valley ; while that of Osiris had no connection with the state, 
but was a purely popular victory. That his priests contrib- 
uted to his triumph by persistent propaganda is nevertheless 
probable, but their field of operations will have been among 
the people. At Abydos the Osiris-myth was wrought into 
a series of dramatical presentations in which the chief inci- 
dents of the god's life, death and final triumph were annually 
enacted before the people by the priests. Indeed in the pres- 
entation of some portions of it the people were permitted 
to participate ; and the whole was unquestionably as impres- 
sive in the eyes of the multitude as were the miracle and 
passion plays of the Christian age. We find upon their 
tomb-stones not uncommonly the prayer that in the future 

'Borchardt, Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, 1900, 94. 
* I, 662, 669. 



172 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

they may be able to come forth from the tomb and view these 
festal presentations. Among the incidents enacted was the 
procession bearing the god's body to his tomb for burial. It 
was but natural that this custom should finally result in iden- 
tifying as the original tomb of Osiris the place on the desert 
behind Abydos, which in this scene served as the tomb. 
Thus the tomb of king Zer of the First Dynasty, who had 
ruled over a thousand years before, was in the Middle King- 
dom already regarded as that of Osiris. 1 As veneration for 
the spot increased, it became a veritable holy sepulchre, and 
Abydos gained a sanctity possessed by no other place in 
Egypt. All this wrought powerfully upon the people ; they 
came in pilgrimage to the place and the ancient tomb of Zer 
was buried deep beneath a mountain of jars containing the 
votive offerings which they brought. If possible the Egyp- 
tian was now buried at Abydos within the wall which 
enclosed the god's temple until the tombs began to encroach 
upon the temple area, and the priests found it necessary to 
erect a wall around them, cutting them off from further 
absorption of the sacred enclosure. From the vizier himself 
down to the humblest cobbler, we find them crowding this 
most sacred cemetery of Egypt. Where burial at Abydos 
was impossible, however, as in the case of the nomarch, the 
dead of the noble class were at least carried thither after 
embalmment to associate with the great god and participate 
for a time in his ceremonies; after which they were then 
carried back to be interred at home. But the masses to 
whom even this was impossible erected memorial tablets 
there for themselves and their relatives, calling upon the 
god in prayer and praise to remember them in the here- 
after. Eoyal officials and emissaries of the government, 
whose business brought them to the city, failed not to im- 
prove the opportunity to erect such a tablet, and the date 
and character of their commissions which they sometimes 
add, furnish us with invaluable historical facts, of which we 
should otherwise never have gained any knowledge. 2 

2 E. g. I, 671-2. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 173 

As the destiny of the dead became more and more closely 
identified with that of Osiris, the judgment which he had 
been obliged to undergo was supposed to await also all who 
departed to his realms. Strangely enough it is Osiris him- 
self who presides over the ordeal to which every arrival in 
the nether world was now supposed to be subjected. He 
had already been known as a judge in the Old Kingdom, but 
it was not until the Middle Kingdom that this idea was 
clearly developed and took firm hold upon the mortuary 
beliefs of the time. Before Osiris, enthroned with forty 
two assistant judges, hideous demons, each representing one 
of the nomes into which Egypt was divided, the deceased 
was led into the judgment-hall. Here he addressed his 
judges, and to each one of the forty two assistants he pleaded 
not guilty to a certain sin, while his heart was weighed in 
the balances over against a feather, the symbol of truth, 
in order to test the truth of his plea. The forty two sins, 
of which he says he was not guilty, are those which are con- 
demned as well by the modern conscience of the world. 
They may be summed up as murder, stealing, especially 
robbing minors, lying, deceit, false witness and slander, revil- 
ing, eaves-dropping, sexual impurity, adultery, and trespass 
against the gods or the dead as in blasphemy or stealing of 
mortuary offerings. It will be seen that the ethical standard 
was high; moreover in this judgment the Egyptian intro- 
duced for the first time in the history of man the fully 
developed idea that the future destiny of the dead must 
be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the earthly 
life, the idea of future accountability, of which we found 
the first traces in the Old Kingdom. The whole concep- 
tion is notable; for a thousand years or more after this no 
such idea was known among other peoples, and in Babylonia 
and Israel good and bad alike descended together at death 
into gloomy Sheol, where no distinction was made between 
them. Those who failed to sustain the ordeal before Osiris 
successfully were condemned to hunger and thirst, lying in 
the darkness of the tomb, from which they might not come 



174 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

forth to view the sun. There were also frightful execu- 
tioners, one of which, a hideous combination of crocodile, 
lion and hippopotamus, was present at the judgment, and 
to her the guilty were delivered to be torn in pieces, in 
harmony with the triumph of the notion of judgment, it is 
noticeable in the Middle Kingdom that the desire to enjoy 
at least the reputation of a benevolent and blameless life 
was more general than before. We now more often read 
upon the tomb-stones such words as we noticed in the Old 
Kingdom, ' ' I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, 
clothing to the naked and a ferry-boat to the boatless"; or 
"I was father to the orphan, husband to the widow, and a 
shelter to the shelterless.' 1 We have already referred to 
the benevolence of the feudal lords of the time. 

The blessed dead, who successfully sustained the judgment 
each received the predicate ' ' true of speech, ' ' a term which 
was interpreted as meaning " triumphant, " and from now 
on so employed. Every deceased person, when spoken of 
by the living, received this predicate ; it was always written 
after the names of the dead, and finally also after those of 
the living in anticipation of their happy destiny. The pre- 
vailing notions regarding the future life had not been clari- 
fied by the universal sway of Osiris. On the contrary, all 
the old beliefs were now intermingled in inextricable con- 
fusion, only worse confounded by the effort to accommodate 
them to the Osiris faith, with which in the beginning they 
had had nothing to do. The favourite idea is still that the 
departed sojourn in the field of Yaru, enjoying peace and 
plenty, to which they contribute by cultivating the fruitful 
plains of the isle, which bring forth grain twelve feet high. 
At the same time they may dwell in the tomb or tarry in its 
vicinity; they may mount the heavens to be the comrades 
of Ee ; they may descend to the realm of Osiris in the nether 
world; or they may consort with the noble dead who once 
ruled Egypt at Abydos. 

In one important respect the beliefs of the Egyptian 
regarding his future state have suffered a striking change. 



MIDDLE KINGDOM OR THE FEUDAL AGE 175 

He is now beset with innumerable dangers in the next world, 
against which he must be forewarned and forearmed. Be- 
sides the serpents common in the Pyramid Texts, the most 
uncanny foes await him. There is the crocodile, who may 
rob the deceased of all his potent charms, the foes of the air, 
who may withdraw breath from his nostrils; water may 
burst into flame as he would drink; he may be deprived of 
his mortuary food and drink, and be forced to devour the 
refuse of his own body ; he may be robbed of his throne and 
place; his body may fall into decay; his foes may rob him 
of his mouth, his heart, or even of his head ; and should they 
take his name away, his whole identity would be lost or 
annihilated. None of these apprehensions existed in the 
Pyramid Texts, which have since fallen into disuse ; but, we 
repeat, the deceased must now be forewarned and forearmed 
against all these dangers, and hence a mass of magical formu- 
laries has arisen since the Old Kingdom by the proper utter- 
ance of which the dead may overcome all these foes and 
live in triumph and security. These charms are accom- 
panied by others enabling the dead to assume any form that 
he wishes, to go forth from the tomb at will, or to return and 
rejoin the body. The judgment also is depicted in detail 
with all that the deceased must be prepared to say on that 
occasion. All this was written for the use of the deceased 
on the inside of his coffin, and although no canonical selec- 
tion of these texts yet existed, they formed the nucleus of 
what afterward became the Book of the Dead, or, as the 
Egyptian later called it, "The Chapters of Going Forth by 
Day,'- in reference to their great function of enabling the 
dead to leave the tomb. It will be seen that in this class 
of literature there was offered to an unscrupulous priest- 
hood an opportunity for gain, of which in later centuries 
they did not fail to take advantage. Already they attempted 
what might not inappropriately be termed a ''guide-book' 3 
of the hereafter, a geography of the other world, with a 
map of the two ways along which the dead might journey. 
This ' ' Book of the Two Ways ' ' was probably composed for 



176 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

no other purpose than for gain; and the tendency of which 
it is an evidence will meet us in future centuries as the most 
baleful influence of Egyptian life and religion. 

In the material equipment of the dead, the mastaba, while 
it has not entirely disappeared, has largely been displaced 
by the excavated cliff-tomb, already found so practical and 
convenient by the nobles of Upper Egypt in the Old King- 
dom. The kings, however, continue to build pyramids as 
we shall see. The furniture supposed to accompany the 
dead in the tomb is now frequently painted on the inside of 
his coffin. Besides this an elaborate equipment (Fig. 81) 
was placed beside the coffin, including a model boat with all 
its crew, in order that the deceased might have no difficulty 
in crossing the waters to the happy isles. By the pyramid 
of Sesostris III in the sands of the desert there were even 
buried five large Nile boats (Fig. 82), intended to carry the 
king and his house across these waters. In addition to the 
statue of the noble in his tomb, the king now rewarded 
deserving servants of the state by the gift of another por- 
trait statue, bearing a dedication in the noble's honour, which 
was set up in one of the larger temples, where it shared in 
the offerings, which, after they had been presented to the 
god, were distributed for other use ; and what was even more 
desired, it enabled the deceased noble to participate in all 
the feasts celebrated in the temple, as he had been wont 
to do in life. 



CHAPTER X 

THE TWELFTH DYNASTY. 

WE have seen that under the vigourous and skilful leader- 
ship of Amenemhet I the rights and privileges attained by 
the powerful landed nobles were for the first time properly 
adjusted and subjected to the centralized authority of the 
kingship, thus enabling the country, after a long interval, 
again to enjoy the inestimable advantages accruing from 
a uniform control of the nation's affairs. This difficult and 
delicate task doubtless consumed a large part of Amenemhet 
Ps reign, but when it was once thoroughly accomplished, 
his house was able to rule the country for over two centuries. 
It is probable that at no other time in the history of Egypt 
did the land enjoy such widespread and bountiful prosperity 
as now ensued. Amenemhet himself says of it: 

I was one who cultivated grain and loved the harvest-god; 
The Nile greeted me in every valley ; 
None was hungry in my years, none thirsted then ; 
Men dwelt in peace, through that which I wrought, conversing 
of me. 1 

In the midst of all this, when Amenemhet fancied that he 
had firmly established himself and his line upon the throne 
of the land which owed him so much, a foul conspiracy to 
assassinate him was conceived among the official members 
of his household. It would seem that it even went so far 
as the final attack upon the king's person in the night, and 
that he only escaped with his life after a combat with his 
assailants in his bed-chamber. However this may be, the 
palace halls rang with the clash of arms, and the king's life 

1 I, 483. 
12 177 



178 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

was in danger. 1 In 1980 B. C., probably no long time after 
this incident, and doubtless influenced by it, Amenemhet 
appointed his son Sesostris, the first of the name, to share 
the throne as coregent with him. The prince brought to his 
high office a new fund of energy, and as the internal affairs 
of the country were finally made more and more stable, he 
was able to devote his attention to the winning of the extreme 
South, an enterprise which had been interrupted by the rise 
of the feudal barons and the fall of the Sixth Dynasty. In 
spite of the achievements of that dynasty in the South, the 
country below the first cataract as far north as Edfu was 
still reckoned as belonging to Nubia and still bore the name 
Tapedet, "Bow-Land," 2 usually applied to Nubia. In the 
twenty ninth year of the old king the Egyptian forces pene- 
trated Wawat to Korusko, the termination of the desert 
route cutting off the great westward bend of the Nile, and 
captured prisoners among the Mazoi in the country beyond. 3 
We can hardly doubt that the young Sesostris was the leader 
of this expedition. Work was also resumed in the quarries 
of Hammamat, 4 while in the North "the Troglodytes, the 
Asiatics and Sand-dwellers" on the east of the Delta were 
punished. This eastern frontier was strengthened at the 
eastern terminus of the Wadi Tumilat by a fortification, 
perhaps that already in existence under the Old Kingdom 
Pharaohs ; and a garrison, with its sentinels constantly upon 
the watch towers, was stationed there. 6 Thus in North and 
South alike an aggressive policy was maintained, the fron- 
tiers made safe and the foreign connections of the kingdom 
carefully regarded. 

As the old king felt his end approaching, he delivered to 
his son brief instructions 7 embodying the ripe wisdom which 
he had accumulated during his long career. The reader 
may clearly discern in these utterances the bitterness with 
which the attempt upon his life by his own immediate circle 
had imbued the aged Amenemhet. He says to his son : 

1 1, 479-480. 2 I, 600, 1. 4. I, 472-3, 483. I, 466-8. 

*, 469-71; 483, 1. 3. 6 1, 493, 11. 17-19. I, 474-483. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 179 

Hearken to that which I say to thee, 

That thou mayest be king of the earth. 

That thou mayest be ruler of the lands, 

That thou mayest increase good. 

Harden thyself against all subordinates. 

The people give heed to him who terrorizes them ; 

Approach them not alone. 

Fill not thy heart with a brother, 

Know not a friend, 

Nor make for thyself intimates, 

Wherein there is no end. 

When thou sleepest, guard for thyself thine own heart ; 

For a man has no people, 

In the day of evil. 

I gave to the beggar, 

I nourished the orphan ; 

I admitted the insignificant, 

As well as him who was of great account. 

But he who ate my food made insurrection ; 

He to whom I gave my hand, aroused fear therein. 1 

The story of ingratitude which was finally capable of a 
murderous assault upon him, then follows, in order to en- 
force the embittered counsel of the old king. It was probably 
not long after this that Sesostris was dispatched at the head 
of an army to chastise the Libyans on the western frontier. 
During the absence of the prince on this campaign in 1970 
B. C., Amenemhet died, after a reign of thirty years. Swift 
messengers were dispatched to inform Sesostris of his 
father's demise. Without letting the army know what had 
happened he quickly left the camp that night and hastened 
to the Residence at Ithtowe, where he assumed the throne 
before any pretender among the sons of the harem could 
forestall him. 2 The whole proceeding is characteristic of 
the history of every royal line from the earliest times in the 
orient. Similarly, the news of the old king's death, acciden- 
tally overheard in the royal tent of Sesostris, threw a certain 
Sinuhe, one of the nobles there, into a state of abject terror, 

I, 478-9. I, 491. 



180 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

such that he immediately concealed himself, and watching 
his opportunity fled into Asia, where he remained for many 
years. Whether he had been guilty of some act which in- 
curred the displeasure of the prince coregent, or whether 
he had some indirect claim upon the throne which became 
valid at Amenemhet's death, is uncertain; but his precipi- 
tate flight from Egypt is another striking evidence of the 
dangerous forces which were liberated by the death of a 
Pharaoh. l 

The achievements of the house of Amenenihet outside of 
the limits of Egypt: in Nubia, Hammaniat and Sinai, have 
left more adequate records in these regions than their benefi- 
cent and prosperous rule in Egypt itself; and the progress 
of the dynasty, at least in inscribed records, can be more 
clearly traced abroad than at home. It will therefore be 
easier to follow the foreign enterprises of the dynasty before 
we dwell upon their achievements at home. Profiting by his 
ten years' experience as coregent with his father, Sesostris 
I was able to maintain with undimmed splendour the pres- 
tige of his house. He proved himself quite capable of con- 
tinuing the great enterprises which he had inherited. The 
conquest of Nubia was pushed as before; the feudatories 
were called upon to muster their quotas, and Ameni, later 
nomarch of the Oryx-nome, relates in his Benihasan tomb 
that his father, who had been appointed nomarch by Ame- 
nemhet I, was now too old to undertake such a campaign, 
and that he himself, therefore, as his father's representa- 
tive placed himself at the head of the troops of the Oryx- 
nome, and penetrated Kush under the leadership of his liege, 
Sesostris I. The war was thus carried above the second cat- 
aract into the great region known as Kush, which now 
becomes common in the monumental records, although the 
name occurs but once upon the monuments of the Old King- 
dom. 2 We know nothing of the course of the campaign, 
but it did not involve serious fighting, for Ameni boasts 
that he returned without the loss of a man. 3 The nomarch 

I, 486 ff. I, 361. 91, 519. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 181 

of Elephantine, as in the Sixth Dynasty, also played a prom- 
inent part in the war and it was perhaps upon this expe- 
dition that an elephant was captured, to which he refers 
in his tomb at Assuan. 1 The campaign is notable as the first 
in a foreign country ever led by the Pharaoh personally, in 
so far as we know. The date of the expedition is unknown, 
but it was doubtless earlier than that which occurred eight 
years after the death of the king's father, for Sesostris I 
then no longer regarded it as necessary to lead the conquest 
of the South in person. He therefore dispatched Mentu- 
hotep, one of his commanders, on a further campaign in 
Kush. Mentuhotep left a large stela 2 at Wadi Haifa, just 
below the second cataract, recording his triumph and giving 
us the first list of conquered foreign districts and towns 
which we possess. Unfortunately we know so little of 
Nubian geography in this distant age that only one of the 
ten districts enumerated can be located. It was called Shet, 
and lay above the second cataract some thirty or forty miles 
south of Wadi Haifa, near modern Kummeh. It is thus 
probable that Mentuhotep 's stela was erected close to, if not 
in the region which he conquered. To this stela we have 
already referred as the one on which Mentuhotep made him- 
self so prominent that his figure was erased and that of a 
god placed over it. All appearances would indicate that 
the successful commander was deposed and disgraced. 
The country was now sufficiently subjugated, so that the 
chiefs could be forced to work the mines on the east, in the 
Wadi Alaki and vicinity, and Ameni of the Oryx-nome was 
dispatched to Nubia at the head of four hundred troops of 
his nome to bring back the output of gold. The king im- 
proved the occasion to send with Ameni the young crown- 
prince, who afterward became Amenemhet II, in order that 
he might familiarize himself with the region where he should 
one day be called upon to continue the process of subjuga- 
tion and of incorporation into the Pharaoh's kingdom. 3 
Similarly the gold country on the east of Coptos was now 

I, p. 247, note b. * 1, 510-514. 3 1, 520. 



182 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

exploited, and the faithful Ameni was entrusted with the 
mission of convoying the vizier, who had been sent thither, 
to convey the precious metal safely to the Nile valley. This 
he successfully accomplished with a force of six hundred 
men, mustered from the Oryx-nome. 1 The development of 
Egypt's foreign interests was evidently closely watched by 
Sesostris I, and it is under him that we first hear of inter- 
course with the oases. While the Pharaoh was not yet able 
to take possession of them, it is evident that he was in com- 
munication with their towns. Ikudidi, a steward of Sesos- 
tris I, was dispatched by him to the great oasis of El 
Khargeh on the west of Abydos, whence the caravans 
started thither. His visit in the city of the holy sepulchre 
of Osiris was an opportunity improved by Ikudidi, as by 
so many of his colleagues ; and he erected a memorial stela 
there, praying for the favour of the god. His incidental ref- 
erence on this monument to the occasion of his visit at 
Abydos is our sole source of information regarding his expe- 
dition to the oasis. 2 

It was doubtless the realization of the evident advantage 
which he had enjoyed by the association with his father as 
coregent that induced Sesostris I to appoint his own son in 
the same way. When he died in 1935 B. C., after a reign 
of thirty five years, his son, Amenemhet II had already been 
coregent for three years, 3 and assumed the sole authority 
without difficulty. This policy was also continued by Ame- 
nemhet II and his son Sesostris II had also ruled three 
years* in conjunction with his father before the latter 's 
death. For fifty years under these two kings in succession 
the nation enjoyed unabated prosperity. The mines of 
Sinai were reopened, 5 and the traffic with Punt, resumed by 
Amenemhet II, was continued under his son. 6 The road 
across the desert from Coptos, five days to the Bed Sea, had 
already been supplied with wells and stations by the Theban 

i I, 521. 2 I, 524-8. a I, 460. 

Ibid. I, 602. e i } 604-6, 618. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 183 

kings of the Eleventh Dynasty. 1 The route was north of 
the Hammamat road and terminated in a small harbour at 
the mouth of the modern Wadi Gasiis, some miles north of 
the later harbour of Koser, the Leucos Limen of the Ptole- 
mies. Two of the commanders who sailed from this port 
(Wadi Gasus) left inscriptions 2 there to commemorate their 
safe return. The distant shores of Punt gradually became 
more familiar to Egyptian folk and a popular tale narrates 
the marvellous adventures of a shipwrecked seaman in these 
waters. The Nubian gold-mines continued to be a source 
of wealth to the royal house, and Egyptian interests in 
Nubia were protected by fortresses in Wawat, garrisoned 
and subject to periodical inspection. 3 With the death of 
Sesostris II in 1887 B. C., all was ripe for the complete and 
thorough conquest of the two hundred miles of Nile valley 
that lie between the first and second cataracts. 

Sesostris III was possibly the only one of his house who 
had not enjoyed a period of joint power with his father in 
preparation for the duties of his high office. Nevertheless 
he proved himself worthy of the great line from which he 
sprang. Immediately on his accession he took the prelimi- 
nary steps toward the completion of the great task in Nubia. 
The most important of these measures was the establishment 
of unbroken connection by water with the country above 
the first cataract. It was over six hundred years since the 
excavation of the canal through the cataract by Uni in the 
Sixth Dynasty, and meantime it may have been demolished 
by the action of the powerful current. In any case, we 
hear nothing more of it. At the most difficult .point in the 
granite barrier the engineers of Sesostris III cut a channel 
through the rock some two hundred and sixty feet long, 
nearly thirty four feet wide and nearly twenty six feet deep. 4 
It was named "Beautiful-are-the-Ways-of-Khekure" (the 
throne name of Sesostris III), and many a war-galley of 
the Pharaoh must have been drawn up through it during 

i See above, p. 153. * I, 604-6, 617-18. si, 616. I, 642-4. 



184 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the early campaigns of this king, of which we unfortunately 
have no records. In the eighth year it was found to be 
choked up and had to be cleared for the expedition then 
passing up river. 1 The subjugation of the country had 
then made such progress that Sesostris III was in that year 
able to select a favourable strategic position as his frontier 
at modern Kummeh and Semneh, which are opposite each 
other on the banks of the river just above the second cat- 
aract. This point he formally declared to be the southern 
boundary of his kingdom. He erected on each side of the 
river a stela marking the boundary-line, and one of these 
two important landmarks has survived; it bears the follow- 
ing significant inscription : ' ' Southern boundary made in 
the year eight, under the majesty of the king of Upper and 
Lower Egypt, Sesostris III, who is given life for ever and 
ever:- in order to prevent that any negro should cross it 
by water or by land, with a ship, or any herds of the 
negroes ; except a negro who shall cross it to do trading . . . 
or with a commission. All kind treatment shall be accorded 
them, but without allowing a ship of the negroes to pass 
by Heh [Semneh] going down stream, forever." 2 It was 
of course impossible to maintain the frontier in this way 
without a constant display of force. Sesostris III had there- 
fore erected a strong fortress on each side of the river at 
this point. The stronger and larger of the two, at Semneh, 
on the west side, was called "Mighty is Khekure' ; (Sesos- 
tris III), 3 and within its fortified enclosure he built a temple 
to Dedwen, a native god of Nubia. These two strongholds 
(Fig. 83) still survive, and although in a state of ruin, they 
show remarkable skill in the selection of the site and 
unexpected knowledge of the art of constructing effective 
defenses. 

Four years later disturbances among the turbulent Nubian 
tribes south of the frontier again called the king into Nubia. 
Although Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Kush, the 
country above the second cataract, it was nevertheless nec- 

I, 645-7. 2 I, 652. s I, 752. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 



185 



essary for the Pharaoh to protect the trade-routes leading 
through it to his new frontier, from the extreme south routes, 
along which the products of the Sudan were now constantly 
passing into Egypt. It will be noticed that the declaration 
of the boundary permitted the passage of any negro who 
came to trade, or bore a matter of business from some 
southern chief. From now on it was more often south of 
his frontier that the Pharaoh was obliged to appear in force, 




FIG. S3. RESTORATION OF THE FORTRESSES OF SEMNEII AND KUMMEH. 

(After Perrot and Chipiez.) 

than in the country between the first two cataracts. More- 
over, there was rich plunder to be had on these campaigns 
over the border, so that the maintenance of the southern 
trade routes was not without its compensations. Sesostris 
III was able to send his chief treasurer, Ikhernofret, to 
restore the cultus image of Osiris at Abydos with gold cap- 
tured in Kush ; x it continued to be more plentiful and there- 
fore less valuable than silver. The letter written by the 

1 I, 665. 



186 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

king to the treasurer on this occasion we have already read 
in the preceding chapter. 1 

The Kushite tribes including the barbarians on the east 
of the Nile valley, must have made an unusual raid over 
the border just before the sixteenth year, for in that year 
Sesostris III undertook an extensive campaign against them, 
in which he devastated their country, burnt their harvests 
and carried off their cattle. He then renewed his declara- 
tion of the southern boundary at Semneh, erecting a stela 2 
in the temple there bearing his second proclamation of the 
place of the frontier, and exhorting his descendants to main- 
tain it where he had established it. He also erected on the 
boundary a statue 3 of himself as if to awe the natives of the 
region by his very presence. At the same time he strength- 
ened the frontier defenses by a fortress at Wadi Haifa, prob- 
ably due to him, and another at Matuga, twelve miles further 
south, in which his name was found. He erected also 
another stronghold on the island of Uronarti, just below 
Semneh. Here he placed a duplicate of the second proc- 
lamation. 4 He called this new fort "Repulse of the Troglo- 
dytes," 5 and an annual feast bearing the same name was 
established in the temple of Semneh, where it was main- 
tained with a regular calendar of offerings. This feast 
was still celebrated and its calendar of offerings renewed 
under the Empire. 6 Three years later a campaign, which 
may have been only a journey of inspection, was led into 
Kush by the king himself, and as far as we know this was 
his last expedition thither. 7 He seems to have led all his 
wars there in person; his vigourous policy so thoroughly 
established the supremacy of the Pharaoh in the newly won 
possessions that the Empire regarded him as the real con- 
queror of the region, and he was worshipped already in the 
Eighteenth Dynasty as the god of the land. 8 Thus the 
gradual progress of the Pharaohs southward, which had 
begun in prehistoric times at El Kab (Nekhen) and had 

See above, p. 166. T, 653-660. 3 I, 660. * I, 654. 
s Ibid. II, 167 ff- 7 I, 602. II, 16V ff. 




FIG. 84. THE NUBIAN NILE FROM THE RUINED MOSLEM 
STRONGHOLD ON THE HEIGHTS OF IBRIM. 

(Stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.) 



. f '';~ 
'- *''''*%-, - : : -' '--{*- *&f<*^ " "" -"* 

' *r- >- F^2' "& *J-^ - ''- ' " -'-"s^ ^ ii '' ;- *^*^T^"'x- ; '~ - ' 

-fir^^r^^^^^:^-;' " 




-.^< \'3 




FIG. 85. RUINS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MINING SETTLEMENT AT SARBUT 

EL-KHADEM, SINAI. 
(Ordnance Survey photograph.) 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 187 

absorbed the first cataract by the beginning of the Sixth 
Dynasty, had now reached the second cataract, and had 
added two hundred miles of the Nile valley to the king- 
dom. While this conquest had been already begun in the 
Sixth Dynasty, it was the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty who 
made it an accomplished fact. 

It is under the aggressive Sesostris III also that we hear 
of the first invasion of Syria by the Pharaohs. Sebek-khu, 
one of his military attendants, at that time commandant of 
the residence city, who had also served in Nubia, mentions 
on his memorial stone 1 at Abydos that he accompanied the 
king on a campaign into a region called Sekmem in Retenu 
(Syria). The Asiatics were defeated in battle, and Sebek- 
khu took a prisoner. He narrates with visible pride how 
the king rewarded him: "He gave me a staff of electrum 
into my hand, a bow, and a dagger wrought with electrum, 
together with his [the prisoner's] weapons.' 1 Here is a 
trace of the military enthusiasm, which two centuries and a 
half later achieved the conquest of the Pharaoh's empire in 
the same region. Unfortunately we do not know the loca- 
tion of Sekmem in Syria, but it is evident that in some 
degree the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom were prepar- 
ing the way for the conquest in Asia, as those of the Sixth 
Dynasty had done in Nubia. Already in Sesostris I's time 
regular messengers 2 to and from the Pharaonic court were 
traversing Syria and Palestine: Egyptians and the Egyp- 
tian tongue were not uncommon there, and the dread of the 
Pharaoh's name was already felt. At Gezer, between 
Jerusalem and the sea, the stela of an Egyptian official of 
this age has recently been found 3 within the precincts of 
the "high place" in the "fourth city' 1 from the bottom of 
the Gezer "tell.' : Khnumhotep of Menet-Khufu depicts in 
his well known Beuihasan tomb the arrival of thirty seven 
Semitic tribesmen, who evidently came to trade with the 
nornarch, ottering him the fragrant cosmetics so much used 

il, 67G-687. *I, 496, 1. 94. spEFQS 1903, 37, 125. 



188 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

by the Egyptians. 1 Their leader was a "ruler of the hill- 
country, Absha, ' ' a name well known in Hebrew as Abshai. 2 
The unfortunate noble, Sinuhe, who fled to Syria at the 
death of Amenemhet I, found not far over the border a 
friendly sheik, who had been in Egypt, further north he 
found Egyptians abiding. 3 While a fortress existed at the 
Delta frontier to keep out the marauding Beduin, 4 there can 
be no doubt that it was no more a hindrance to legitimate 
trade and intercourse than was the blockade against the 
negroes maintained by Sesostris III at the second cataract. 
This Suez region and likewise the Gulf of Suez were 
already connected with the eastern arm of the Nile by canal, 
the earliest known connection between the Mediterranean 
and the Red Sea. Fragmentary but massive remains of 
the temple buildings erected by this dynasty in the cities 
of the northeastern Delta, like Tanis and Nebesheh, show 
their activity in this region. The needs of the Semitic 
tribes of neighbouring Asia were already those of highly 
civilized peoples and gave ample occasion for trade. The 
tribesmen in the Benihasan tomb wear garments of finely 
patterned, woven, woolen stuff and sandals of leather, carry 
metal weapons and use a richly wrought lyre. Already the 
red pottery produced by the Hittite peoples in Cappadocia, 
of Asia Minor, was possibly finding its way to the Semites of 
southern Palestine. Doubtless the commerce along this route, 
through Palestine, over Carmel and northward to the trade- 
routes leading down the Euphrates to Babylon, while not yet 
heavy, was already long existent. Commerce with southern 
Europe had also begun. The peoples of the ^Egean, whose 
civilization was now rapidly developing into that of the My- 
cenaean age, were not unknown in Egypt at this time. They 
were called Haunebu, and a treasurer of the Eleventh Dy- 
nasty, whose duty was the maintenance of safe frontier 
ports, boasts of himself as one "who quells the Haunebu." 5 
This shows that their intercourse with Egypt was not always 

il, p. 281, note d. 2 II Sam., 10: 10. s I, 493, ]. 26, 494. 

I, 493, 11. 16-19. I, 428. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 189 

peaceful. A scribe of the time likewise boasts that his pen 
included the Haunebu also in his records. Their pottery has 
been found at Kahun in burials of this age, and the yEgean 
decorative art of the time, especially in its use of spirals, is 
influenced by that of Egypt. Europe thus emerges more 
clearly upon the horizon of the Nile people during the Middle 
Kingdom. 

While Sesostris Ill's campaign into Syria was evidently 
no more than a plundering expedition, as far from achieving 
the conquest of the country as were the expeditions of the 
Sixth Dynasty into Nubia, nevertheless it must have added 
much to the reputation of his house. As the first Pharaoh 
who had personally led a campaign in a foreign land, the 
Nubian wars of Sesostris I had brought undying prestige 
to the name, a prestige which had been greatly increased 
by the achievements of Sesostris III. To the name Sesos- 
tris, therefore, tradition attached the first foreign conquests 
of the Pharaohs. Around this name clustered forever after 
the stories of war and conquest related by the people. In 
Greek times Sesostris had long since become but a legendary 
figure which cannot be identified with any particular king. 
That some of the deeds of Rameses II were possibly also 
interwoven into the Greek legend of Sesostris is not the 
slightest reason for identifying Sesostris with that Nine- 
teenth Dynasty king; nor, we repeat, will the preposterous 
deeds narrated of the legendary Sesostris permit of his iden- 
tification with any particular historical king. 

For thirty eight years Sesostris III continued his vig- 
ourous rule of a kingdom which now embraced a thousand 
miles of Nile valley. He had even succeeded in suppress- 
ing the feudal nobles; and their tombs, as at Beni-Hasan 
and Bersheh, now disappear. As old age drew on, he 
appointed his son as coregent, and an account of the 
appointment was recorded on the walls of the temple at 
Arsinoe in the Fayum. At Sesostris Ill's death in 1849 



190 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

B. C., this coregent son Amenemhet, t!i3 third of the name, 
seems to have assumed the throne without difficulty. 

+> 

A number of peaceful enterprises for the prosperity of 
the country and the increase of the royal rexvimes were suc- 
cessfully undertaken by Amenemhet III. "While operations 
in the mines of Sinai had been resumed as early as the reign 
of Sesostris I, the foreign projects of the dynasty had else- 
where quite surpassed their achievements here. It remained 
for Amenemhet III to develop the equipment of the stations 
in the peninsula, so that they might become more permanent 
than the mere camp of an expedition while working the 
mines for a few months. These expeditions suffered great 
hardships and an official of the time describes the difficulties 
which beset him when some unlucky chance had decreed that 
he should arrive there in summer. He says that "although 
it was not the season for going to this Mine-Land, ' ' he went 
without flinching, and in spite of the fact that "the high- 
lands are hot in summer and the mountains brand the skin, ' : 
he encouraged his workmen who complained of "this evil 
summer season, ' ' and having accomplished the work brought 
back more than had been required of him. He left a stela l 
there telling of his experience and encouraging those of his 
posterity who might find themselves in a similar predica- 
ment. Under such conditions permanent wells and cisterns, 
barracks for the workmen, houses for the directing officials, 
and fortifications against the marauding Beduin were indis- 
pensable. While some of these things may have been 
already furnished by his predecessors, Amenemhet III made 
the station at Sarbut el-Khadem a well equipped colony for 
the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the mountains. He 
excavated a large cistern in the rocks and opened it with 
festival celebrations in his forty fourth year. 2 A temple 
for the local Hathor was erected, and we find an official o2 
the treasury journeying thither with offerings by water, a 
fact which shows that the Gulf of Suez was commonly util- 
ized to avoid the wearisome desert journey. 3 The mines 

i 1, 733-740. 1, 725-727. I, 717-718; similar offerings I, 738. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 191 

were placed each under charge of a foreman, after whom 
it was named, and at periodic visits of the treasury officials 
a fixed amount of ore was expected from each mine. 1 The 
occasional raids of the neighbouring Beduin were doubtless 
of little consequence in view of the troops still controlled by 
the "treasurer of the god,' ;i who could easily disperse the 
plundering bands that might venture too close to the colony. 
Here Egyptians died and were buried in the burning valley 
with all the equipment customary at home, and the ruins still 
surviving (Fig. 85) show that what had before been but an 
intermittent and occasional effort had now become a perma- 
nent and uninterrupted industry, contributing a fixed annual 
amount to the royal treasury. 

It is doubtless true that the circumstances in which these 
kings of the feudal period found themselves forced them to 
seek new sources of wealth outside of the country; but at 
the same time, as we have before intimated, they raised the 
productive capacity of the land to an unprecedented level. 
Unfortunately, the annals or records of these achievements 
have not survived. It was particularly Amenemhet III of 
whom we have evidence of attention to the irrigation system. 
His officials in the fortress of Semneh at the second cataract 
had instructions to record the height of the Nile on the 
rocks there, which thus in a few years became a nilometer, 
recording the maximum level of the high water from year 
to year. These records, 2 still preserved upon the rocks, are 
from twenty five to thirty feet higher than the Nile rises at 
the present day. Such observations, communicated without 
delay to the officials of lower Egypt in the vizier's office, 
enabled them to estimate the crops of the coming season, 
and the rate of taxation was fixed accordingly. 

In Lower Egypt a plan was also devised for extending 
the time during which the waters of the inundation could 
be made available by an enormous scheme of irrigation, 
which was carried out with brilliant success. A glance at the 

I, 731. 

5 LD II, 139; Lepsius, Sitzungsber. der Berliner Akad. 1844, 374 ff. 



192 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 



map (No. 13) will show the reader an opening in the western 
highlands of the Nile valley some sixty five miles above the 
southern apex of the Delta. This gap in the western hills 
leads into the great depression of the Libyan desert known 
as the Fayum, a basin which does not differ from those of 
the western oases, and is indeed an extensive oasis close to 
the Nile valley, with which it is connected by the gap already 







ntmid 

Canals of Inflow 
and Outflow 

i 

cale 719,866 
Dimensions in Metres 



MAP 3. THE FAYUM. (After Maj. R. H. Brown, R.E.) 

mentioned. Shaped like a huge maple-leaf, of which the 
stem, pointing nearly eastward, represents the connection 
with the Nile valley, it is generally speaking about forty 
miles across each way. Its lower tracts in the northwest, 
occupied to-day by the lake called Birket el-Kurun (Fig. 
86), are very much depressed, the surface of the lake ?,t 




FIG. 86. VIEW ACROSS THE BIRKET EL-KURUN IN THE NORTHWESTERN FAVUM. 




FIG. 87.-OBELISK OF SESOSTRIS I AT 
HELIOPOLIS. 

(Stereograph copyright by Underwood & Under- 
wood, N. Y.) 





FIG. 88. -WOODEN STATUE OF PRINCE 
EWIBRE. (Cairo Museum.) 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 

present being over one hundred and forty feet below sea- 
level. In prehistoric times the high Nile had filled the entire 
Fayum basin, producing a considerable lake. The kings of 
the Twelfth Dynasty conceived the plan of controlling the 
inflow and outflow for the benefit of the irrigation system 
then in force. At the same time they undertook vast reten- 
tion walls inside the Fayum at the point where the waters 
entered, in order to reclaim some of the area of the Fayum 
for cultivation. The earlier kings of the Twelfth Dynasty 
began this process of reclamation, but it was especially Ame- 
nernhet III who so extended this vast wall that it was at last 
probably about twenty seven miles long, thus reclaiming 
a final total of twenty seven thousand acres. 1 These enor- 
mous works at the point where the lake was most commonly 
visited gave the impression that the whole body of water 
was an artificial product, excavated, as Strabo says, by king 
"Lamares," in which we recognize with certainty the throne 
name of Amenemhet III. This then was the famous lake 
Moeris of the classic geographers and travellers. Strabo, 
the most careful ancient observer of the lake, supports the 
vaguer description of Herodotus, and states that during the 
time of high Nile, the waters replenished the lake through 
the canal which still flows through the gap; but that when 
the river fell again, they were allowed to escape through 
the same canal, and employed in irrigation. Strabo saw the 
regulators for controlling the inflow and the outflow as well. 
The attention given the Fayum by Amenemhet III would 
indicate that this system of control was at least as old as the 
works near the entrance of the famous lake which gave him 
the reputation of having excavated it. Modern calculations 
have shown that enough water could have been accumulated 
to double the volume of the river below the Fayum during 
the hundred days of low Nile from the first of April on. 2 

The rich and flourishing province recovered from the lake 
was doubtless royal domain, and there are evidences that it 

J Maj. R. H. Brown, R.E. The Fayum and Lake Moeris, London, 1892. 
* Ibid. 

13 



194 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

was a favourite place of abode with the kings of the latter part 
of the Twelfth Dynasty. A prosperous town, known to the 
Greeks as Crocodilopolis, or Arsinoe, with its temple to Sobk, 
the crocodile-god, had already arisen in the new province, 
and an obelisk of Sesostris I lies at Ebgig far out in the 
heart of the reclaimed land. Two colossal statues of Ame- 
nemhet III, or at least of the king reputed to be the maker 
of the lake in Herodotus 's time, stood just outside the great 
wall in the midst of the waters. In the gap, on the north 
bank of the inflowing canal, was a vast building, some eight 
hundred by a thousand feet, which formed a kind of relig- 
ious and administrative centre for the whole country. It 
contained a set of halls for each nome where its gods were 
enshrined and worshipped, and the councils of its govern- 
ment gathered from time to time. It would seem from the 
remarks of Strabo that each set of halls was thus the office 
of the central government pertaining to the administration 
of the respective nome, and the whole building was there- 
fore the Pharaoh's seat of government for the entire coun- 
try. It was still standing in Strabo 's time, when it had 
already long been known as the Labyrinth, one of the 
wonders of Egypt, famous among travellers and historians 
of the Graeco-Koman world, who compared its intricate com- 
plex of halls and passages with the Cretan Labyrinth of 
Greek tradition. It is the only building of this remote age, 
not exclusively a temple, known to have survived so long; 
and Strabo 's description of its construction accounts for its 
durability, for he says: "It is a marvellous fact that each 
of the ceilings of the chambers consists of a single stone, and 
also that the passages are covered in the same way with 
single slabs of extraordinary size, neither wood nor other 
building material having been employed. ' ; The town which 
had grown up around this remarkable building was seen 
by Strabo; but both have now completely disappeared. 
Sesostris II had also founded a town just outside the gap 
called Hotep-Sesostris, "Sesostris is Contented," and he 
later built his pyramid beside it. Under these circum- 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 195 

stances the Fayum had become the most prominent centre of 
the royal and governmental life of this age; and its great 
god Sobk was rivalling Amon in the regard of the dynasty, 
whose last representative bore the name Sobk-nefru-Re, 
which contains that of the god. The name of the god 
also appeared in a whole series of Sobk-hoteps of the next 
dynasty. 

For nearly half a century the beneficent rule of Ame- 
nemhet III maintained peace and prosperity throughout 
his flourishing kingdom. The people sang of him : 

"He makes the Two Lands verdant more than a great Nile. 
He hath filled the Two Lands with strength. 
He is life, cooling the nostrils; 



The treasures which he gives are food for those who are in his 

following; 

He feeds those who tread his path. 
The king is food and his mouth is increase." 1 

Business was on a sound basis, values were determined in 
terms of weight in copper, and it was customary to append 
to the mention of an article the words "of x deben [of 
copper]," a deben being 1404 grains. 2 Throughout the land 
the evidences of this prosperity under Amenemhet III and 
his predecessors still survive in the traces of their extensive 
building enterprises, although these have so suffered from 
the rebuilding under the Empire that they are but a tithe 
of what was once to be seen. Moreover the vandalism of 
the Nineteenth Dynasty, especially under Ramses II, oblit- 
erated priceless records of the Middle Kingdom by the most 
reckless appropriation of its monuments as building mate- 
rial. Probably all the more important towns of the country 
had received modest temples at the hands of the Old King- 
dom Pharaohs, but these have left almost no trace, and we 
can gain no comprehensive picture of what the Twelfth 
Dynasty may have found throughout the country when they 

1 1, 747. * I, 785. 



196 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

began their own works. At Thebes, their home, which was 
only an obscure village in the Old Kingdom, they found but 
a modest chapel, which they replaced with a more preten- 
tious temple of Amon, already begun by Amenemhet I. 1 It 
was continued or enlarged by Sesostris I, who also built a 
dwelling and refectory for the priests of the temple 2 beside 
the sacred lake, a building which was still standing eight 
hundred years later. 3 Amenemhet III erected the great 
brick wall around the ancient capital of El Kab (Nekheb), 4 
which still stands, as the only city wall of such age now sur- 
viving in a condition so nearly intact ( Fig. 102 ) . The ancient 
temple at Edfu was not forgotten ; while at Abydos the wide 
popularity and deep veneration of Osiris demanded a new 
temple, which was surrounded with an enclosure, within 
which for some time the rich and noble were permitted to 
erect their tombs. 5 The vicinity of the Fayum, as well as 
its own traditional sanctity, secured also for the temple of 
Harsaphes at Heracleopolis enlargement and a rich equip- 
ment. 6 Of the Fayum itself we have already spoken. Mem- 
phis and its ancient god Ptah were doubtless not neglected, 
but chance has left little evidence of the activity of the 
Middle Kingdom there. The vicinity of Ithtowe and the 
other royal residences of the time may have detracted some- 
what from its prominence. The supreme god of the state, 
the ancestor and at the same time immediate father of the 
Pharaohs, was of necessity honoured with rich contributions 
from the beginning. Sesostris I held a council at which 
he announced to the court his intention of rebuilding the 
temple of Ee at Heliopolis as soon as the plans could be 
prepared. According to immemorial custom, he himself led 
the ceremonies when the ground plan was staked out and 
the foundations of the building were begun. The dedicatory 
inscription, in which he recorded the history of the building, 
perished long ago, but a scribe's practice copy of it, as it 
stood in the court of the temple some five hundred years 

J I, 484. 2 IV, 488-9. 3 Ibid. 

* I, 741-2. I, 534, note b. 6 I, 674-5. 





FIG. 89. rfEAD OF AMENEMHET III, FROM A 
SPHINX FOUND AT TANIS. 



FIG. 90.-BUST OF A STATUE OI 
AMENEMHET III. 

(St. Petersburg Museum.) 




iS^.".' .~ ' - 
FIG. 91. -BRICK PYRAMID OF SESOSTRIS II, AT TT.T.AHUN. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY I9'< 

after its erection, still survives in a leather roll in the Berlin 
Museum. 1 In exaggerated metaphor Sesostris I boasts of 
the imperishability of his name, as enshrined in the mas 
sive monument, saying : 

"My beauty shall be remembered in his house, 
My name is the pyramidion, and my name is the lake." 2 

The splendid temples of Heliopolis and the great city 
which surrounded them have all vanished, and with them the 
sacred lake to which Sesostris refers, but by a curious chance 
the only surviving monument on the ancient site is one of 
his obelisks (Fig. 87), still surmounted by the pyramidion, 
which, as the king boasted, has indeed perpetuated his name. 
The Delta blossomed under these enlightened rulers, re- 
freshed as it was by the waters of the Fayum lake which 
their foresight stored up for summer use. All the Delta 
cities of all ages, as we have so often mentioned, have per- 
ished, and but little survives to testify to the activity of 
these kings there, but in the eastern part, especially at Tanis 
and Bubastis (Fig. 93), massive remains still show the inter- 
est which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta 
cities. Fragmentary remains of temples built by the mon- 
archs of this line have been found at many of the chief towns 
from the first cataract to the northwestern Delta. Besides 
the great works of the kings, it should not be forgotten that 
the wealthier and more powerful of the nomarchs also 
erected temples 3 and considerable buildings for purposes 
of government. 4 Chapels for their mortuary service were 
built in the towns, 6 and had the various structures due to 
these great lords survived, there is no doubt that they would 
have added materially to our impressions of the solidity and 
splendour with which the economic life of the nation was 
developing on every hand. 

Such impressions are also strengthened by the tombs of 
the time, which are indeed the only buildings which have 
survived from the feudal age; and even these are in a sad 

1 1, 498-506. * 1, 503. I, 637, note a. I, 637. I, 706. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

state of ruin. We have already referred to the survival of 
the mastaba form of tomb, but it was now fast disappearing 
and the nobles were hewing out their burial chambers and 
the shafts descending to them in the cliffs of the valley. 
The chapel-hall connected with such burials, with its scenes 
from the life and activity of the departed noble, are our 
chief source for the history and life of the feudal age. The 
colonnade which sometimes formed the front of such a tomb 
was not without architectural merit. The pyramids of the 
Twelfth Dynasty kings are eloquent testimony to the fact 
that the construction of the royal tomb was no longer the 
chief office of the state. More wholesome views of the func- 
tion of the kingship have now gained the ascendancy and 
the resources of the nation are no longer absorbed in the 
pyramid as in the Old Kingdom. In the Eleventh Dynasty 
the Theban kings had already returned to the original mate- 
rial of the royal tomb and built their unpretentious pyramids 
of brick. Amenemhet I followed their example in the erec- 
tion of his pyramid at Lisht ; the core was of brick masonry 
and the monument was then protected by casing masonry 
of limestone 1 (Fig. 94). The custom was continued by all 
the kings of the dynasty with one exception. Their pyra- 
mids are scattered from the mouth of the Fayum northward 
to Dashur, just south of Memphis. Sesostris I preferred to 
lie at Lisht beside his illustrious father ; Amenemhet II was 
the first to go northward to Dashur, and his son, Sesostris 
II, selected his new town, Kotep-Sesostris, now Illahun, at 
the mouth of the Fayurn, as the site of his pyramid (Fig. 
91). Sesostris III returned to Dashur, where he located his 
pyramid on the north of that of Amenemhet II, while Ame- 
nemhet III (Fig. 94) lies on the south side of Amenemhet II 's 
pyramid. The pyramid of Hawara, in the Fayum beside the 
Labyrinth, formerly supposed to be that of Amenemhet III, 
is not certainly identified, and may possibly belong to Ame- 
nemhet IV, the only king of the dynasty whose pyramid is 

J M^m. sur les Fouilles de Liclit, par J. E. Gautier et G. Jgquier, 
1902. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 



139 



not located with certainty. All these pyramids show the 
most complicated and ingenious arrangements of entrance 
and passages in order to baffle the tomb-robbers. That of 
Hawara is the most notable in this respect. It was some- 
thing over one hundred and ninety feet high and the base 
was nearly three hundred and thirty four feet square. 
The entrance is in the middle of the western half of 




FIG. 92. SECTION OF THE BURIAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF HAWABA. 

(After Petrie.) 

the south side and descending into the rock beneath the 
pyramid it turns four times until it approaches the burial 
chamber from the north side. Three amazing trapdoor- 
blocks of enormous size and weight were intended to with- 
stand the attacks of robbers, while numerous cunning and 
misleading devices were inserted to puzzle the marauders. 
The sepulchre chamber is twenty two feet long, eight feet 
wide and six feet high, but is nevertheless cut from a single 
block of intensely hard quartzite, weighing 110 tons. It had 
no door and the only means of access was through a roofing 



200 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

block weighing some forty five tons. 1 Nevertheless it was 
entered and robbed in antiquity, doubtless with the conni- 
vance of later officials, or even of the later kings themselves. 
The corruption of the officials in charge of the erection of 
the building is evident in the fact that of the three trapdoor- 
blocks they only closed the outer one, knowing full well 
that with this one closed no member of the royal family could 
possibly discover that the inner ones had been left open. 
The failure of these magnificent structures to protect the 
bodies of their builders must have had something to do with 
the gradual discontinuance of pyramid building which now 
ensued. Henceforward, with the exception of a few small 
pyramids at Thebes, we shall meet no more of these remark- 
able tombs, which, stretching in a desultory line along the 
margin of the western desert for sixty five miles above the 
southern apex of the Delta, are the most impressive surviv- 
ing witnesses to the grandeur of the civilization which pre- 
ceded the Empire. 

Unfortunately the buildings of the Middle Kingdom are 
so fragmentary that we can gain little idea of their archi- 
tecture. From the tombs, however, it is evident that the 
architectural elements employed did not differ materially 
from those which we have already found in the Old King- 
dom. The Theban Pharaohs of the Eleventh Dynasty in- 
troduced a new type in the remarkable terraced temple of 
Der el-Bahri, which served as a model to the great architects 
of the Empire. The few traces of the Labyrinth which enabled 
Petrie to determine the extent of its ground-plan, and the 
description furnished by Strabo, are sufficient to establish 
little more than the massiveness of its style. The domestic 
architecture has also completely perished. From the plan 
of the town which Petrie found by the pyramid of Sesostris 
II at Illahun (Map 1) we gain only an impression of the con- 
tracted quarters in which the workmen of the time were 
obliged to live, but of the houses of the rich, in which there 

1 Petrie, Kahun, Gurob and Hawara, pp. 13-17. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 201 

was opportunity for architectural effect, we have very little 
knowledge. 

Art had made a certain kind of progress since the Old 
Kingdom. Sculpture had become much more ambitious 
and attempted works of the most impressive size. The 
statues of Amenemhet III, which overlooked Lake Moeris, 
were probably forty or fifty feet high, and we have already 
referred to the alabaster colossus of Thuthotep, the nomarch 
of the Hare-nome, which was some twenty two feet high. 
These colossi, furthermore, were now produced in greater 
numbers than ever before. Ten such portraits of Ame- 
nemhet I (Fig. 95) were found at his pyramid at Lisht, and 
Sihathor, an assistant treasurer of Amenemhet II, records 
with great pride how he was entrusted with the oversight 
of the work on the sixteen statues of the king for his pyramid 
at Dashur. 1 Fragments of such colossi in massive granite 
are scattered over the ruins of Tanis (Fig. 93) and Bubastis, 
and we recall that Sesostris III erected his statue on the 
southern Nubian border. 2 Under such circumstances the 
royal sculptors could not but betray to some extent the me- 
chanical and imitative spirit in which they worked. Their 
figures rarely possess the striking vivacity and the strong 
individuality which are so characteristic of the Old Kingdom 
sculpture. The long dominant canons are also showing 
their effect in suppressing the individuality of the sculptor's 
work and manner. We find a king searching the ancient 
rolls to ascertain the form of a god, that he might " fashion 
him as he was formerly, when they made the statues in their 
council, in order to establish their monuments upon earth"; 1 
from which it is evident that the gods were supposed to have 
held a council in the beginning, at which they determined 
for all time exactly the form and appearance of each. With 
the form of the king and his nobles the same inviolable tradi- 
tion ruled, and the art of the Middle Kingdom no longer pos- 
sessed the freshness and vigour necessary to accept these con- 
ventions and at the same time to triumph completely over 

'I, 601. I, 660. 31, 756. 



202 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

them as did the sculptors of the Old Kingdom. Neverthe- 
less, there is now and then a portrait of surprising strength 
and individuality, like the superb statue of Ameneinhet III 
(Fig. 90) in St. Petersburg, the head of the same king as a 
sphinx at Tanis (Fig. 89), or the colossal head of Sesostris 
III recently unearthed at Karnak. Such heads are master- 
pieces of Egyptian art, embodying those qualities of super- 
human strength and imperturbable calm, of which the Egyp- 
tian sculptor was so completely master. The flesh-forms 
have been so summarized in the exquisitely hard medium 
that something of the eternal immobility of the stone itself 
has been wrought into the features of the great king. Such 
work contrasts sharply with the soft and effeminate beauty 
of the wooden figure of prince Ewibre (Fig. 88). The 
chapels in the cliff-tombs of the nornarchs were elaborately 
decorated with paintings depicting the life of the deceased 
and the industries on his great estates. It cannot be said that 
these paintings, excellent as many of them unquestionably 
are, show any progress over those of the Old Kingdom, while 
as flat relief they are for the most part distinctly inferior to 
the earlier work. 

The close and familiar oversight of the nomarch lent a 
distinct impetus to the arts and crafts, 1 and the provinces 
developed large numbers of skilled craftsmen throughout 
the country. Naturally the artisans of the court were unsur- 
passed. We discern in their work the result of the devel- 
opment which had been going on since the days of the 
earliest dynasties. The magnificent jewelry (Figs. 97-8) 
of the princesses of the royal house displays both technical 
skill and refined taste, quite surpassing our anticipations. 
Had the tomb robbers of the Dashur necropolis not over- 
looked these burials we should never have rated the capaci- 
ties of the Middle Kingdom so high. Little ever produced 
by the later gold-smiths of Europe can surpass either in 
beauty or in workmanship these regal ornaments worn by 

I, 638. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 203 

the daughters of the house of Amenemhet nearly two thou- 
sand years before Christ. 

Literature also left worthy monuments to witness the rich 
and varied life of this great age. We have seen how the 
art of writing was fostered by the administrative necessities 
of the state. A system of uniform orthography, hitherto 
lacking, was now developed and followed by skilled scribes 
with consistency. A series of model letters 1 studied by the 
school-boys of the twentieth century B. C. has survived, and 
they show with what pains composition was studied. The 
language of this age and its literary products were in later 
times regarded as classic, and in spite of its excessive arti- 
ficialities, the judgment of modern study confirms that of 
the Empire. Although it unquestionably existed earlier, it 
is in Egypt and in this period that we first find a literature 
of entertainment. The unfortunate noble, Sinuhe, who fled 
into Syria on the death of Amenemhet I, returned to Egypt 
in his old age, and the story of his flight, of his life and 
adventures in Asia became a favourite tale, 2 which attained 
such popularity that it was even written on sherds and flags 
of stone to be placed in the tomb for the entertainment of 
the dead in the hereafter. A prototype of Sindebad the 
Sailor, who was shipwrecked in southern waters on the 
voyage to Punt, returned with a tale of marvellous adven- 
tures on the island of the serpent queen where he was res- 
cued, and loaded with wealth and favours, was sent safely 
back to his native land. 3 The life of the court and the nobles 
found reflection among the people in folk-tales, narrating 
the great events in the dynastic transitions and a tale of the 
rise of the Fifth Dynast;^ was now in common circulation, 
although our surviving copy 4 was written a century or two 
after the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty. The most skilled lit- 
erati of the time delighted to employ the popular tale as a 

1 Kahun Papyri, pp. 67-70. 2 I, 486-497. 

3 Unpublished papyrus in St. Petersburg; see Golenischeff, Abh. i6t 
Berliner Or i entalistenkongresses. 

'Papyrus Weatcar, Berlin, P. 3033. 



204 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

medium for the exercise of their skill in the artificial style 
now regarded as the aim of all composition. A story com- 
monly known at the present day as the Tale of the Eloquent 
Peasant was composed solely in order to place in the mouth 
of a marvellous peasant a series of speeches in which he 
pleads his case against an official who had wronged him, with 
such eloquence that he is at last brought into the presence 
of the Pharaoh himself, that the monarch may enjoy the 
beauty of the honeyed rhetoric which flows from his lips. 
Unfortunately much of these speeches consists of figures of 
speech so far fetched, and poetic verbiage so obscure, that 
our modern knowledge of the language has not yet made 
them very intelligible. 1 We have already had occasion to 
notice the instruction left by the aged Amenemhet I for his 
son, which was very popular and has survived in no less than 
seven fragmentary copies. 2 The instruction concerning a 
wise and wholesome manner of life, which was so prized 
by the Egyptians, is represented by a number of composi- 
tions of this age, like the advice of the father to his son on 
the value of the ability to write ; 3 or the wisdom of the viziers 
of the Old Kingdom; although there is no reason why the 
Wisdom of Ptahhotep and Kegemne, 4 preserved in a papyrus 
of the Middle Kingdom, should not be authentic composi- 
tions of these old wise men. A remarkable philosophizing 
treatise represents a man weary of life involved in a long 
dialogue with his reluctant soul as he vainly attempts to per- 
suade it that they should end life together and hope for 
better things beyond this world. 5 A strange and obscure 
composition of the time represents a Sibylline prophet 
named Ipuwer, standing in the presence of the king and 
delivering grim prophecies of coming ruin, in which the 
social and political organization shall be overthrown, the 
poor shall become rich and the rich shall suffer need, foreign 
enemies shall enter and the established order of things shall 
be completely overturned. After predicting frightful calam- 

i Berlin Papyrus 3023 and 3025. * I, 474 ft'. 

s Pap. Sallier II. *Pap. Prisse. 5 Berlin Papyrus 3024. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTS 205 

ities involving all classes, the prophet announces a saviour 
who shall restore the land: "He shall bring cooling to the 
flame. Men shall say, 'he is the shepherd of all the people; 
there is no evil in his heart. If his flocks go astray he will 
spend the day to search them. The thought of men shall 
be aflame; would that he might achieve their rescue . . . 
Verily he shall smite evil when he raises his arm against it. 
. . . Where is he this day! Doth he sleep among you!" 1 
In this strange "Messianic" oracle the prophet proclaims 
the coining of the good king, who, like the David of the 
Hebrew prophets, shall save his people. The motive of the 
composition may be a skilful encomium of the reigning 
family, by representing the prophet as depicting the anarchy 
which had preceded in the dark age before their rise, and 
proclaiming their advent to save the people from destruction. 
Specimens of this remarkable class of literature, of which this 
is the earliest example, may be traced as late as the early 
Christian centuries, and we cannot resist the conclusion that 
it furnished the Hebrew prophets with the form and to a 
surprising extent also with the content of Messianic proph- 
ecy. It remained for the Hebrew to give this old form a 
higher ethical and religious significance. 

So many of the compositions of the Egyptian scribe are 
couched in poetic language that it is difficult to distinguish 
between poetry and prose. All of the works thus far dis- 
cussed are to a large extent poetry; but even among the 
common people there were compositions which are distinc- 
tively poems : the song of the threshers as they drove their 
cattle to and fro upon the threshing-floor, a few simple lines 
breathing the simple and wholesome industry of the people ; 
or the lay of the harper (Fig. 96) as he sings to the ban- 
queters in the halls of the rich, a song burdened with pre- 
monitions of the coming darkness and admonishing to un- 
bridled enjoyment of the present ere the evil day come: 

1 Leyden Papyrus I, 344; see Lange, Sitzungsber. der Berliner Akad. ; 
XXVII, 601-610. 



206 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

How happy is this good prince! 

This goodly destiny is fulfilled : 

The body perishes, passing away, 

"While others abide, since the time of the ancestors. 

The gods who were aforetime rest in their pyramids; 

Likewise the noble and the wise, entombed in their pyramids. 

As for those who built houses, their place is no more; 

Behold what hath become of them. 

I have heard the words of Imhotep and Harzozef, 

Whose utterances are of much reputation; 

Yet how are the places thereof? 

Their walls are in ruin, 

Their places are no more, 

As if they had never been. 

None cometh from thence, 

That he might tell us of their state; 

That he might restore our hearts, 

Until we too depart to the place, 

Whither they have gone. 

Encourage thy heart to forget it, 

And let the heart dwell upon that which is profitable for thee, 

Follow thy desire while thou livest, 

Lay myrrh upon thy head, 

Clothe thee in fine linen, 

Imbued with luxurious perfumes, 

The genuine things of the gods. 

Increase yet more thy delights, 

Let not thy heart be weary, 

Follow thy desire and thy pleasure, 

And mould thine affairs on earth, 

After the mandates of thy heart, 

Till that day of lamentation cometh to thee, 

When the stilled heart hears not their mourning; 

For lamentation recalls no man from the tomb. 

Celebrate the glad day ! 

Rest not therein ! 

For lo, none taketh his goods with him, 

Yea, no man returneth again, that is gone thither. 



THE TWELFTH DYNASTY 207 

The earliest known example of poetry exhibiting rigid 
strophic structure and all the conscious artificialities of lit- 
erary art, is a remarkable hymn to Sesostris III written 
during that king's life time. Of the six strophes, the one 
following may serve to illustrate its character and structure : 

Twice great is the king of his city, above a million arms: as for 

other rulers of men, they are but common folk. 
Twice great is the king of his city : he is as it were a dyke, damming 

the stream in its water flood. 
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a cool lodge, 

letting every man repose unto full daylight. 
Twice great is the king of his city : he is as it were a bulwark, with 

walls built of sharp stones of Kesem. 
Twice great is the king of his city : he is as it were a place of refuge, 

excluding the marauder. 
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were an asylum, 

shielding the terrified from his foe. 
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a shade, the 

cool vegetation of the flood in the season of harvest. 
Twice great is the king of his city: he is as it were a corner warm 

and dry in time of winter. 
Twice great is the king of his city : he is as it were a rock barring 

the blast in time of tempest. 
Twice great is the king of his city : he is as it were Sekhmet to foes 

who tread upon his boundary. 

The dramatic presentation of the life and death of Osiris 
at Abydos undoubtedly demanded much dialogue and reci- 
tation, which must at least have assumed permanent form 
and have been committed to writing. Unfortunately this, 
the earliest known drama, has perished. It is characteristic 
of this early world that in neither the art or the literature, 
of which we have a considerable mass from the Middle King- 
dom, can we discern any individuals to whom these great 
works should be attributed. Among all the literary produc- 
tions which we have enumerated, it is only of the wisdom, 
the ' ' instruction, ' ' that we know the authors. Of the litera- 
ture of the age we may say that it now displays a wealth of 
imagery and a fine mastery of form which five hundred 



208 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

years earlier, at the close of the Old Kingdom, was but just 
emerging. The content of the surviving works does not dis- 
play evidence of constructive ability in the larger sense, in- 
volving both form and content; it lacks general coherence. 
It is possible, however, that the Osirian drama, which offered 
greater constructive opportunity, might have altered this 
verdict if it had survived. 

It was thus over a nation in the fullness of its powers, rich 
and productive in every avenue of life, that Amenemhet III 
ruled; and his reign crowned the classic age which had 
dawned with the advent of his family. He seems to have 
maintained his vifourous grasp of affairs to the end, for he 
completed the reservoir at Sarbut el-Khadem in Sinai and 
the great wall of El Kab in the forty fourth year of his reign. 
But when he passed away in 1801 B. C. the strength of the 
line was waning. This was possibly due to the fact that 
the prince whom he had selected as his successor and ap- 
pointed as coregent did not survive the old king himself. In 
any case he seems to have interred in a tomb beside his 
pyramid a young and handsome prince who already bore the 
royal cartouche, with the throne-name Ewibre (Fig. 88). 
But it should be remarked that the form of the name is quite 
unlike those of the Twelfth Dynasty, and there is a king 
Ewibre of the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Dynasty in the 
Turin list. A fourth Amenemhet, after a short coregency 
with the old king, succeeded at the death of Amenemhet III, 
but his brief reign of a little over nine years has left few 
monuments, and the decline of the house, to whom the nation 
owed two centuries of imperishable splendour, was evident. 
Amenemhet IV left no son, for he was succeeded by the 
princess Sebek-nefru-Re, the Skemiophris of Manetho. 
After struggling on for nearly four years she too, the last 
of her line, disappeared. The family had ruled Egypt two 
hundred and thirteen years, one month and some days. 





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BOOK IV 

THE HYKSOS: 

THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE 



CHAPTER XI 

THE FALL OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM. THE HYKSOS. 

THE transition of authority to another dynasty (the Thir- 
teenth) had seemingly taken place without disturbing the 
tranquil prosperity of the land. In any case the new house 
immediately gained full control, and the first king, Sekhemre- 
Khutowe, ruled from the Delta 1 to the southern frontier at 
the second cataract, where, for the first four years of his 
reign, the annual records of the Nile levels regularly ap- 
pear. 2 The fortresses there were garrisoned under a com- 
mandant as before 3 and the tax and census lists were being 
compiled in the North as usual. 4 But the reign was a short 
one. The Pharaohs who followed regarded themselves as 
successors of the Twelfth Dynasty and assumed the names 
of its greatest rulers; but this brought them none of its 
strength and prestige. The succession may have lasted 
during four reigns, when it was suddenly interrupted, and 
the list of Turin records as fifth king after the Twelfth 
Dynasty one Yufni, a name which does not display the royal 
form, showing that at this point the usurper, that ceaseless 
menace to the throne in the orient, had again triumphed. 

Rapid dissolution followed, as the provincial lords rose 
against each other and strove for the throne. Pretender 
after pretender struggled for supremacy ; now and again one 
more able than his rivals would gain a brief advantage and 
wear his ephemeral honours, only to be quickly supplanted 
by another. Private individuals contended with the rest 
and occasionally won the coveted goal, only to be overthrown 
by a successful rival. Two Sebekemsafs, probably belong- 

il, 751. "I, 751-2. II, 752. 

1 Kahun Papyri, pi. IX, 1. 1 ; p. 86. 

211 



212 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

ing at about this time, left their modest pyramids at Thebes, 
for the pyramid of one of them was examined by the 
Barnessid commissioners and found robbed. 1 The bodies 
of the king and his queen, Nubkhas, which had laid undis- 
turbed for at least five hundred years, were dragged out 
of the coffins, and in a remarkable confession the thieves 
were forced by the commissioners to tell how they had 
despoiled the royal remains of their ornaments and amu- 
lets of gold and costly stones. 2 It is thus certain that at 
least one group of these obscure kings resided at Thebes 
and must have been of Theban origin. At one time a 
usurper named Neferhotep succeeded in overthrowing one 
of the many Sebekhoteps of the time, and established stable 
government. He made no secret of his origin, and on the 
monuments added the names of his untitled parents with- 
out scruple. 3 On a stela at Abydos he left a remarkable 
record of his zeal for the temple of Osiris there 4 and 
another determining certain limits of the necropolis. He 
reigned eleven years when he was succeeded by his son, 
Sihathor, who shortly 5 gave way to his father's brother, 
Neferkhere-Sebekhotep. This Sebekhotep was the greatest 
king of this dark age. He did not however advance the 
Middle Kingdom frontier southward to the Island of Argo^ 
above the Third Cataract, as heretofore supposed. His 
statue on Argo is but life-size, not a colossus, and was 
certainly transported thither by some late Nubian king 
from some point in Egypt. It was but a brief restoration, 
and the monuments which had survived bear no records to 
inform us of its character. 

The darkness which followed is only the more obscure by 
contrast. Foreign adventurers took advantage of the op- 
portunity, and one of the pretenders who achieved a 
brief success may have been a Nubian. In any case he 
placed the word Nehsi, " Negro, r in his royal cartouche. 
Another, whose second royal name was Mermeshu, " Com- 
mander of the Army," was evidently a military aspirant to 
the throne. The country was broken up into petty king- 

'IV, 517. 2 IV, 538. "I, 573. 

"I, 753-772. 6 Turin Pap. Frag. No. 80; Petrie, Scarabs, No. 309. 



FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS 213 

doms, of wliich Thebes was evidently the largest in the 
South. Nubkheprure-Intef, one of a group of three Intefs 
who ruled there, frankly discloses the conditions in a de- 
cree 1 deposing an official at Coptos who had proved a traitor. 
In this document Intef curses any other king or ruler in 
Egypt who may show the culprit mercy, naively declaring 
that no such king or ruler shall become Pharaoh of the 
whole country. These Intefs were buried at Thebes, where 
the pyramids of two of them, still standing toward the close 
of the Twentieth Dynasty, were inspected by the Ramessid 
commissioners, who found that one of them had been tun- 
nelled into by tomb-robbers. 2 But very few of the long list 
of kings in the royal list of Turin can be found mentioned 
upon contemporary monuments. Here and there a frag- 
ment of masonry, a statue, or sometimes only a scarab bear- 
ing a royal name, furnishes contemporary testimony of the 
reign of this or that one among them. There was neither 
power, nor wealth, nor time for the erection of permanent 
monuments; king still followed king with unprecedented 
rapidity, and for most of them our only source of knowl- 
edge is therefore the bare name in the Turin list, the dis- 
ordered fragments of which have not even preserved for us 
the order of these ephemeral rulers except as we find 
groups upon one fragment. The order of the fragments 
themselves remains uncertain, so that the succession of 
the above most important groups is also questionable. 
Where preserved at all the length of the reign is usually 
but a year, or occasionally two or three years, while in 
two cases we find after a king's name but three days. With- 
out any dynastic division which can be discerned, we find 
here the remains of at least one hundred and eighteen 
names of kings, whose ceaseless struggles to gain or to 
hold the throne of the Pharaohs, make up the obscure 
history of this dark century and a half since the fall 
of the Twelfth Dynasty. Evidently some of these kings 
ruled contemporaneously, but even so, such a period of con- 

1 1, 773-780. IV, 514 f. 



214 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

stant struggle and usurpation is almost equalled during 
the days of the Moslem viceroys of Egypt, when, under the 
dynasty of the Abbasids, which lasted one hundred and 
eighteen years (750-868 A. D.), seventy seven viceroys held 
the throne of Egypt. In European history it is paralleled 
by the series of military Emperors after Commodus, when in 
about ninety years probably eighty emperors succeed each 
other. 1 Manetho, who knew nothing of this confused age, 
disposed of its host of kings in two lines, as a Thirteenth 
Dynasty in Thebes, and a Fourteenth from Xois, a city of 
the Delta. 

Economically the condition of the country must have rap- 
idly degenerated. The lack of a uniform administration 
of the irrigation system, which the nation owed to the king- 
ship as an institution, and the generally unstable conditions, 
unavoidably checked the agricultural and industrial produc- 
tivity of the land ; while oppressive taxation and the tyranny 
of warring factions in need of funds sapped the energies and 
undermined the prosperity which had been so ably con- 
served by the house of Amenemhet for two centuries. While 
we possess no monuments which tell us of this ruin, their 
very absence is evidence of it, and the analogy of similar 
periods in Moslem Egypt, particularly under the Mamlukes, 
makes certain the unhappy condition of the nation during 
this period. 

Without centralized resources or organization the hap- 
less nation was an easy prey to foreign aggression. About 
1675 B. C., before the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, there 
poured into the Delta from Asia a possibly Semitic invasion 
such as that, which in prehistoric times, had stamped the 
language with its unmistakable form ; and again in our own 
era, und'er the influence of Islam, overwhelmed the land. 
These invaders, now generally called the Hyksos, after the 
designation applied to them by Josephus (quoting Manetho), 
themselves left so few monuments in Egypt that even their 
nationality is still the subject of much difference of opinion; 

1 Meyer. Aeg. Chron, p. 62. 



FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS 215 

while the length and character of their supremacy, for the 
same reason, are equally obscure matters. The documen- 
tary materials bearing on them are so meagre and limited 
in extent that the reader may easily survey them and judge 
the question for himself, even if this chapter is thereby in 
danger of relapsing into a "laboratory note-book.' 1 The 
late tradition regarding the Hyksos, recorded by Manetho 
and preserved to us in the essay of Josephus against Apion, 
is but the substance of a folk-tale like that narrating the fall 
of the Fourth Dynasty, 1 or many other such tales from which 
their knowledge of Egypt's past was chiefly drawn by the 
Greeks. The more ancient and practically contemporary 
evidence should therefore be questioned first. Two genera- 
tions after the Hyksos had been expelled from the country 
the great queen Hatshepsut thus narrated her restoration 
of the damage which they had wrought : 

I have restored that which was ruins, 

I have raised up that which was unfinished. 

Since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland 

L Delta], 
And the barbarians were in the midst of them [the people of the 

Northland], 

Overthrowing that which had been made, 
While they ruled in ignorance of Re. 2 

The still earlier evidence of a soldier in the Egyptian army 
that expelled the Hyksos shows that a siege of Avaris was 
necessary to drive them from the country ; 3 and further that 
the pursuit of them was continued into southern Palestine 4 
and ultimately into Phoenicia or Coelesyria. 5 Some four 
hundred years after their expulsion a folk-tale, 6 narrating 
the cause of the final war against them, was circulating 
among the people. It gives an interesting account of them : 

* ' Now it came to pass that the land of Egypt was the pos- 
session of the polluted, no lord being king at the time when 
it happened ; but king Sekenenre, he was ruler of the South- 

i Infra, pp. 122-3. 2 II, 303. * II, 8-10, 12. 

4 II, 13. 6 II, 20. * Pap. Sallier I. 



216 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

ern City [Thebes] . . . King Apophis was in Avaris, and 
the whole land was tributary to him; the [Southland] bear- 
ing their impost, and the Northland likewise bearing every 
good thing of the Delta. Now king Apophis made Sutekh 
his lord, serving no other god, who was in the whole land, 
save Sutekh. He built the temple in beautiful and ever- 
lasting work . . ,' 51 

From these earlier documents it is evident that the Hyksos 
were an Asiatic people who ruled Egypt from their strong- 
hold of Avaris in the Delta. The later tradition as quoted 
from Manetho by Josephus in the main corroborates the 
above more trustworthy evidence, and is as follows: 2 

"There was a king of ours whose name was Timaios, in 
whose reign it came to pass, I know not why, that God was 
displeased with us, and there came unexpectedly men of 
ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, who had boldness 
enough to make an expedition into our country, and easily 
subdued it by force without a battle. And when they had 
got our rulers under their power, they afterward savagely 
burnt down our cities and demolished the temples of the 
gods, and used all the inhabitants in a most hostile manner, 
for they slew some and led the children and wives of others 
into slavery. At length they made one of themselves king, 
whose name was Salatis, and he lived at Memphis and made 
both Upper and Lower Egypt pay tribute, and left garrisons 
in places that were most suitable for them. And he made 
the eastern part especially strong, as he foresaw that the 
Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would covet 
their kingdom and invade them. And as he found in the 
Saite [read Sethroite] nome a city very fit for his purpose 
(which lay east of the arm of the Nile near Bubastis, and 
with regard to a certain theological notion was called 
Avaris), he rebuilt it and made it very strong by the walls 
he built around it and by a numerous garrison of two hun- 
dred and forty thousand armed men, whom he put into it to 
keep it. There Salatis went every summer, partly to gather 

1 Pap. Sallier I, I, 11. 1-3- 2 Contra Apion I, 14. 






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FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS 217 

in his corn and pay his soldiers their wages, and partly to 
train his armed men and so to awe foreigners. ' ; 

If we eliminate the absurd reference to the Assyrians and 
the preposterous number of the garrison at Avaris, the tale 
may be credited as in general a probable narrative. The 
further account of the Hyksos in the same essay shows 
clearly that the late tradition was at a loss to identify the 
Hyksos as to nationality and origin. Still quoting from 
Manetho, Josephus says: ''All this nation was styled Hyksos, 
that is, Shepherd Kings; for the first syllable 'hyk' in the 
sacred dialect denotes a king, and 'sos' signifies a shepherd, 
but this is only according to the vulgar tongue ; and of these 
was compounded the term Hyksos. Some say they were 
Arabians." According to his epitomizers, Manetho also 
called them Phoenicians. Turning to the designations of 
Asiatic rulers as preserved on the Middle Kingdom and 
Hyksos monuments, there is no such term to be found as 
" ruler of shepherds,' 1 and Manetho wisely adds that the 
word ''BOS" only means shepherd in the late vulgar dialect. 
There is no such word known in the older language of the 
monuments. "Hyk" (Egyptian Hk'), however, is a com- 
mon word for ruler, as Manetho says, and Khian, one of the 
Hyksos kings, often gives himself this title upon his monu- 
ments, followed by a word for "countries," which by slight 
and very common phonetic changes might become "sos"; 
so that ' ' Hyksos " is a not improbable Greek spelling for the 
Egyptian title ' ' Ruler of Countries. ' ' 

Looking further at the scanty monuments left by the 
Hyksos themselves, we discover a few vague but nevertheless 
significant hints as to the character of these strange invaders, 
whom tradition called Arabians and Phoenicians; and con- 
temporary monuments designated as "Asiatics," "barbar- 
ians," and "rulers of countries." An Apophis, one of their 
kings, fashioned an altar, now at Cairo, and engraved upon 
it the dedication: "He [Apophis] made it as his monument 
for his father Sutekh, lord of Avaris, when he [Sutekh] 



2)8 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

set all lands under his [the king's] feet." 1 General as is 
the statement it would appear that this Apophis ruled over 
more than the land of Egypt. More significant are the mon- 
uments of Khian, the most remarkable of this line of kings. 
They have been found from Gebelen in southern Egypt to 
the northern Delta; but they do not stop here. Under a 
Mycenaean wall in the palace of Cnossos in Crete an alabas- 
ter vase-lid bearing his name was discovered by Mr. Evans ; 2 
while a granite lion with his cartouche upon the breast, 
found many years ago at Bagdad, is now in the British 
Museum. One of his royal names was "Encompasser [liter- 
ally 'embracer'] of the Lands," and we recall that his con- 
stant title upon his scarabs and cylinders is "ruler of coun- 
tries. " Scarabs of the Hyksos rulers have been turned up 
by the excavations in southern Palestine. Meagre as these 
data are, one cannot contemplate them without seeing con- 
jured up before him the vision of a vanished empire which 
once stretched from the Euphrates to the first cataract of 
the Nile, an empire of which all other evidence has perished, 
for the reason that Avaris, the capital of its rulers, was in 
the Delta, where, like so many other Delta cities, it suffered 
a destruction so complete that we cannot even locate the spot 
on which it once stood. There was, moreover, every reason 
why the victorious Egyptians should annihilate all evidence 
of the supremacy of their hated conquerors. In the light 
of these developments it becomes evident why the invaders 
did not set up their capital in the midst of the conquered 
land, but remained in Avaris, on the extreme east of the 
Delta, close to the borders of Asia. It was that they might 
rule not only Egypt, but also their Asiatic dominions. Ac- 
cepting the above probabilities, we can also understand how 
the Hyksos could retire to Asia and withstand the Egyptian 
onset for six years in southern Palestine, as we know from 
contemporary evidence 3 they did. It then becomes clear 

1 Mar. Mon. div., 38. 

2 Annual of British School at Athens, VII, 65, Fig. 21. 

3 II, 13. 



FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS 219 

also how they could retreat to Syria when beaten in southern 
Palestine ; these movements were possible because they con- 
trolled Palestine and Syria. 

If we ask ourselves regarding the nationality, origin and 
character of this mysterious Hyksos empire, we can hazard 
little in reply. Manetho 's tradition that they were Arabians 
and Phoenicians may well be correct. 1 Such an overflow of 
southern Semitic emigration into Syria, as we know has 
since then taken place over and over again, may well have 
brought together these two elements; and a generation or 
two of successful warrior-leaders might weld them together 
into a rude state. We have already seen 2 that the Semitic 
tribes trading with Egypt in the Twelfth Dynasty were pos- 
sessed of considerably more than the rudiments of civiliza- 
tion; while the wars of the Pharaohs in Syria immediately 
after the expulsion of the Hyksos show the presence of civi- 
lized and highly developed states there. Now, such an em- 
pire as we believe the Hyksos ruled could hardly have 
existed without leaving its traces among the peoples of 
Syria-Palestine for some generations after the beginning of 
the succeeding Egyptian supremacy in Asia. It would 
therefore be strange if we could not discern in the records 
of the subsequent Egyptian wars in Asia some evidence of 
the surviving wreck of the once great Hyksos empire which 
the Pharaohs demolished. 

For two generations after the expulsion of the Hyksos we 
can gain little insight into the conditions in Syria. At this 
point the ceaseless campaigns of Thutmose III, as recorded 
in his Annals, enable us to discern which nation was then 
playing the leading role there. The great coalition of the 
kings of Palestine and Syria, with which Thutmose III was 
called upon to contend at the beginning of his wars, was led 
and dominated throughout by the powerful king of Kadesh 
on the Orontes. It required ten years of constant campaign- 
ing by Thutmose III to achieve the capture of the stubborn 
city and the subjugation of the kingdom of which it was 

1 But see Meyer, Aeg. Chron., pp. 95 ff. * Infra, p. 188. 



220 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the head; but with power still unbroken it revolted, and 
Tlmtmose Ill's twenty years of warfare in Syria were only 
crowned with victory when he finally succeeded in again 
defeating Kadesh, after a dangerous and persistent strug- 
gle. The leadership of Kadesh from the beginning to the 
end of Thutmose Ill's campaigns is such as to convey the 
impression that many Syrian and Palestinian kinglets were 
its vassals. It is in this Syrian domination of the king of 
Kadesh that, in the author's opinion, we should recognize 
the last nucleus of the Hyksos empire, finally annihilated 
by the genius of Thutmose III. Hence it was that Thutmose 
III, the final destroyer of the Hyksos empire, became also 
the traditional hero who expelled the invaders from Egypt; 
and as Misphragmouthosis he thus appears in Manetho's 
story as the liberator of his country. That it was a Semitic 
empire we cannot doubt, in view of the Manethonian tra- 
dition and the subsequent conditions in Syria-Palestine. 
Moreover the scarabs of a Pharaoh who evidently belonged 
to the Hyksos time, give his name as Jacob-her or possibly 
Jacob-El, and it is not impossible that some chief of the 
Jacob-tribes of Israel for a time gained the leadership in 
this obscure age. Such an incident would account surpris- 
ingly well for the entrance of these tribes into Egypt, which 
on any hypothesis must have taken place at about this age ; 
and in that case the Hebrews in Egypt will have been but a 
part of the Beduin allies of the Kadesh or Hyksos empire, 
whose presence there brought into the tradition the partially 
true belief that the Hyksos were shepherds, and led Manetho 
to his untenable etymology of the second part of the word. 
Likewise the naive assumption of Josephus, who identifies 
the Hyksos with the Hebrews, may thus contain a kernel of 
truth, however accidental. But such precarious combina- 
tions should not be made without a full realization of their 
hazardous character. 

Of the reign of these remarkable conquerors in Egypt we 
know no more than of their contemporaries, the Egyptian 
dynasts of this age already discussed, who continued to rule 



FALL OF MIDDLE KINGDOM: THE HYKSOS 221 

in Thebes and probably throughout Upper Egypt. Both 
the account in Manetho and the folk-tale above quoted state 
that the Hyksos kings laid the whole country under tribute, 
and we have already observed that Hyksos monuments have 
been found as far south as Gebelen. The beginning of their 
rule may have been a gradual immigration without hostili- 
ties, as Manetho relates. It is perhaps in this epoch that we 
should place one of their kings, a certain Khenzer, who 
seems to have left the affairs of the country largely in the 
hands of his vizier, Enkhu, so that the latter administered 
and restored the temples. 1 As this vizier lived in the period 
of Neferhotep and the connected Sebekhoteps, it is possible 
that we should place the gradual rise of Hyksos power in 
Egypt just after that group of Pharaohs. 

From the contemporary monuments we learn the names 
of three Apophises and of Khian (Fig. 101), besides possibly 
Khenzer and Jacob-her, whom we have already noted. 
Among the six names preserved from Manetho by Josephu? 
we can recognize but two, an Apophis and lannas, who is 
certainly the same as Khian of the contemporary monu- 
ments. The only contemporary date is that of the thirty 
third year of an Apophis, in the mathematical papyrus of 
the British Museum. The Manethonian tradition in which we 
find three dynasties of Shepherds or Hyksos (the Fifteenth 
to Seventeenth) is totally without support from the contem- 
porary monuments in the matter of the duration of the 
Hyksos supremacy in Egypt. A hundred years is ample for 
the whole period. Even if it was actually much longer, this 
fact would not necessarily extend the length of the period 
from the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty to the end of the 
Hyksos rule; for it is evident that many of the numerous 
kings of this period, enumerated in the Turin Papyrus, may 
have ruled in the South as vassals of the Hyksos, like the 
Sekenenre, whom the folk-tale makes the Theban vassal of 
one of the Apophises. 

What occasioned the unquestionable barbarities on the 

1 1, 781-787. 



222 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

part of the conquerors, it is now impossible to discern; but 
it is evident that hostilities must have eventually broken 
out, causing the destruction of the temples, later restored 
by Hatshepsut. Their patron god Sutekh is of course the 
Egyptianized form of some Syrian Baal; Sutekh being an 
older form of the well known Egyptian Set. The Hyksos 
kings themselves must have been rapidly Egyptianized ; they 
assumed the complete Pharaonic titulary, and they appro- 
priated statues of their predecessors in the Delta cities, 
wrought, of course, in the conventional style peculiar to the 
Pharaohs (Fig. 101). Civilization did not essentially suffer; 
a mathematical treatise dated under one of the Apophises is 
preserved in the British Museum. We have already seen one 
of the Apophises building a temple in Avaris, and a frag- 
ment of a building inscription 1 of an Apophis at Bubastis 
says that he made ' ' numerous flag-staves tipped with copper 
for this god, ' ' such flag-staves flying a tuft of gaily coloured 
pennants being used to adorn a temple front. The influence 
upon Egypt of such a foreign dominion, including both 
Syria-Palestine and the lower Nile valley, was epoch making, 
and had much to do with the fundamental transformation 
which began with the expulsion of these aliens. It brought 
the horse into the Nile valley and taught the Egyptians war- 
fare on a large scale. Whatever they may have suffered, 
the Egyptians owed an incalculable debt to their conquerors. 

1 Nav. Bubastis, I, pi. 35c. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS AND THE TRIUMPH 

OF THEBES 

IT must have been about 1600 B. C., nearly two hundred 
years after the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty, that the 
Sekenenre of the folk-tale 1 was ruling in Thebes under the 
suzerainty of a Hyksos Apophis in Avaris. This tale, as 
current four hundred years later in Bamessid days, is our 
only source for the events that immediately followed. After 
its account of the Hyksos, which the reader will recall as 
quoted above, there follows the brief description of a sacred 
feast, and later a council of Apophis and his wise men ; but 
what took place at this council is quite uncertain. It con- 
cerned a plot or design against king Sekenenre, however, 
for the story then proceeds: "Now many days after this, 
king Apophis sent to the prince [king Sekenenre] of the 
Southern City [Thebes] the report which his scribes and 
wise men had communicated to him. Now when the mes- 
senger whom king Apophis had sent reached the prince of 
the Southern City, he was taken to the prince of the Southern 
City. Then said one to the messengers of king Apophis, 
'What brings thee to the Southern City, and wherefore hast 
thou joined them that journey?' The messenger said to 
him, 'It is king Apophis who sends to thee, saying: "One 
[that is the messenger] has come [to thee] concerning the 
pool of the hippopotami, which is in the city [Thebes]. For 
they permit me no sleep, day and night the noise of them 
is in my ear." ' Then the prince of the Southern City 
lamented a [long] time, and it came to pass that he could 
not return [answer] to the messenger of king Apophis." 

i Infra, pp. 215-16. 

223 



224 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

The surviving fragments at this point would indicate that 
Sekenenre now sent gifts to Apophis and promised to do 
all that he demanded, after which, " [the messenger of king] 
Apophis betook himself away, to proceed to the place where 
his lord was. Then the prince of the Southern City caused 
to summon his great princes, likewise his officers and leaders 
. . . , and he recounted to them all the matters concerning 
which king Apophis had sent to him. Then they were with 
one accord silent for a long time, and could not answer him 
either good or bad. Then king Apophis sent to- -," 1 but 
here the tantalizing bit of papyrus is torn off, and we shall 
never know the conclusion of the tale. However, what we 
have in it is the popular and traditional version of an inci- 
dent, doubtless regarded as the occasion of the long war 
between the Theban princes and the Hyksos in Avaris. The 
preposterous ca<s-us belli, the complaint of Apophis in the 
Delta that he was disturbed by the noise of the Theban hip- 
popotami is folk-history, a wave mark among the people, 
left by the tide which the Hyksos war set in motion. 
Manetho corroborates the general situation depicted in the 
tale; for he says that the kings of the Thebaid and other 
parts of Egypt made a great and long war upon the Hyksos 
in Avaris. His use of the plural ' ' kings ' ' immediately sug- 
gests the numerous local dynasts, whom we have met before, 
each contending with his neighbour and effectually prevent- 
ing the country from presenting a united front to the north- 
ern foe. There were three Sekenenres. The mummy of the 
last of the three discovered in the great find at Der el-Bahri, 
and now at the Cairo museum, exhibits frightful wounds in 
the head (Fig. 100), so that he doubtless fell in battle, not 
improbably in the Hyksos war. They were followed by a 
king Kemose who probably continued the war. Their small 
pyramids of brick at Thebes have long since passed away, but 
they were still uninjured when inspected some four hundred 
and fifty years later by the Kamessid commissioners, whose 
investigation 2 of the necropolis we have referred to before. 

1 Pap. Sallier I, II, 1. l-III, 1. 3. * IV, 518-19. 



THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES 225 

jft is evident that this Theban family were gradually thrust- 
ing themselves to the front with more and more successful 
aggressiveness, so that these three Sekenenres and Kemose 
form the latter part of Manetho's Seventeenth Dynasty. 
They were obliged to maintain themselves not merely against 
the Hyksos, but also against numerous rival dynasts, espe- 
cially in the extreme South above El Kab, where, removed 
from the turmoil of northern war, and able to carry on a 
flourishing internal commerce, the local princes enjoyed 
great prosperity, while those of the North had doubtless in 
many instances perished. We shall later find these pros- 
perous dynasts of the South holding out against the rising 
power of Thebes while the latter was slowly expelling the 
Hyksos. 

Following Kemose 's short reign, Ahmose I, possibly his 
son, the first king of Manetho 's Eighteenth Dynasty, assumed 
the leadership of the Theban house, about 1580 B. C., and 
became the deliverer of Egypt from her foreign lords. 
Sekenenre III had already won the friendship of the pow- 
erful princes of El Kab (Fig. 102), and by rich gifts and 
plentiful honours Ahmose I retained the valuable support of 
these princes, against both the Hyksos and the obstinate 
local dynasts of the upper river, who constantly threatened 
his rear. Ahmose thus made El Kab a buffer, which pro- 
tected him from the attacks of his Egyptian rivals south of 
that city. No document bearing on the course of the war 
with the Hyksos in its earlier stages has survived to us, nor 
have any of Ahmose 's royal annals been preserved, but one 
of his El Kab allies, named Ahmose, son of Ebana (his 
mother's name), whose father, Baba, served under Sekenenre 
III, has fortunately left an account of his own military 
career on the walls of his tomb at El Kab. He thus nar- 
rates the story of his service under Ahmose of Thebes: "I 
spent my youth in the city of Nekheb [El Kab], my father 
being an officer of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, 
Sekenenre, triumphant ; Baba, son of Royenet, was his name. 
Then I served as an officer in his stead in the ship [called] 

15 



226 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

'The Offering,' in the time of king Ahmose I, triumphant, 
while I was a young man, not having taken a wife . . . 
Then after I set up a household I was transferred to the 
northern fleet because of my valour.' 1 He was thus taken 
from El Kab and given service against the Hyksos in the 
north. At first, although a naval officer, he was assigned to 
infantry service in attendance upon the king, for his biog- 
raphy proceeds: "I followed the king on foot when he rode 
abroad in his chariot. One [meaning the king] besieged 
the city of Avaris ; I showed valor on foot before his majesty ; 
then I was appointed to the ship [called] ' Shining-in-Mem- 
phis.' One fought on the water in the canal Pazedku of 
Avaris. Then I fought hand to hand, I brought away a 
hand [cut off as a trophy]. It was reported to the royal 
herald. One gave to me the gold of valor [a decoration]. 
There was again fighting in this place ; I again fought hand 
to hand there ; I brought away a hand. One gave to me the 
gold of valor in the second place." 1 The siege of Avaris 
was now interrupted by an uprising of one of the local 
dynasts above El Kab, which was regarded as so serious by 
the king that he himself went south to quell it, and took 
Ahmose, son of Ebana, with him. The latter thus briefly 
narrates the incident: "One fought in this Egypt south of 
this city [El Kab] ; I brought away a living captive, a man, 
I descended into the water; behold he was brought as a 
seizure upon the road of this city, [although] I crossed with 
him over the water. It was announced to the royal herald. 
Then one presented me with gold in double measure." 2 
Having sufficiently quelled his southern rivals, Ahmose 
resumed the siege of Avaris, for at this point our naval 
officer abruptly announces its capture: "One captured 
Avaris ; I took captive there one man and three women, total 
four heads. His majesty gave them to me for slaves." 3 
The city thus fell on the fourth assault after the arrival of 
Ahmose, son of Ebana, but it is quite uncertain how many 
such assaults had been made before his transference thither 

ill, 7-10. 211, 11. II, 12. 





03 



o 



O H 



ef w 

< ta 



E- < 
u w 

O W 

w a 

3 H 
5 s 



<N O 

o O 

rt o 

o 



THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES 227 

for the siege had evidently lasted many years and had been 
interrupted by a rebellion in Upper Egypt. Our naval 
officer does not tell us who were the defenders of Avaris, 
but we do not need to be told in view of what we know from 
Manetho and the folk-tale; likewise as we follow his nar- 
rative a step farther he fails to inform us who were his foes 
in the next encounter ; but it is clear that they can be no other 
than the Hyksos, fleeing into Asia after being driven from 
Avaris, following the fall of which, our biographer says: 
"One besieged Sharuhen for three years and his majesty 
took it. Then I took captive there two women and one hand. 
One gave to me the gold of bravery besides giving me the 
captives for slaves." 1 This is the earliest siege of such 
length known in history, and it is surprising evidence of the 
stubbornness of the Hyksos defense and the tenacity of king 
Ahmose in dislodging them from a stronghold in such dan- 
gerous proximity to the Egyptian frontier. For Sharuhen 
was probably in southern Judah, 2 whence the Hyksos might 
again easily invade the Delta. But Ahmose was not content 
with driving them out of Sharuhen. We find another mem- 
ber of the El Kab family, called Ahmose-Pen-Nekhbet, 
fighting under king Ahmose I in Zahi, 3 which is Phoenicia 
and Syria, and it is therefore evident that Ahmose pur- 
sued the Hyksos northward from Sharuhen, forcing them 
back to at least a safe distance from the Delta frontier. In 
the twenty second year of his reign he was still using in 
his building operations oxen which he had taken from the 
Asiatics, 4 so that this or another campaign of his in Asia 
must have continued to within a few years of that time. 
Returning to Egypt, now entirely free from all fear of its 
former lords, he gave his attention to the recovery of the 
Egyptian possessions in Nubia. 

During the long period of disorganization following the 
Middle Kingdom, the Nubians had naturally taken advan- 
tage of their opportunity and fallen away. How far Ahmose 
penetrated it is impossible to determine, but he evidently met 

i II, 13. 2 Josh. 19 : 6. * II, 20. * II, 26-27. 



228 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

with no serious resistance in the recovery of the old territory 
between the first and second cataracts. 1 But his rule was 
not yet firmly established in Egypt itself, for he was no 
sooner well out of the country on the Nubian campaign than 
his inveterate rivals south of El Kab again arose against 
him. They were totally defeated in a battle on the Nile, 
and our old friend Ahmose, sou of Ebana, was rewarded 
for his valour in the action with five slaves and five stat 
(nearly three and a half acres) of land in El Kab. 2 All the 
sailors engaged in the battle were treated with equal gen- 
erosity. Even then Ahmose was obliged to quell one more 
rebellion before he was left in undisputed possession of the 
throne ; for in closing the narrative of his service under this 
king, Ahmose, son of Ebana, says : ' ' Then came that fallen 
one, whose name was Teti-en; he had gathered to himself 
rebels. His majesty slew him and his servants, annihilating 
them. There were given to me three heads [slaves] and 
five stat of land in my city." 3 We thus see how king 
Ahmose bound his supporters to his cause. He did not stop, 
however, with gold, slaves and land, but in some cases even 
granted the local princes, the descendants of the great feudal 
lords of the Middle Kingdom, high and royal titles like ' ' first 
king 's son, ' ' which, while conveying few or no prerogatives, 
satisfied the vanity of old and illustrious families, like that 
of El Kab, who deserved well at his hands. Similarly we 
find barons who were left in possession of their old titles, 
but evidently the estates of such magnates were taken 
out of their hands and administered by the central govern- 
ment, for they resided at Thebes and were buried there. 
Thus we find there the tombs of the lords of Thinis and of 
Aphroditopolis ; a lord of the former city assisted Queen 
Hatshepsut in the transportation of her obelisks. 4 

There were but few of the local nobles who thus supported 
Ahmose and gained his favour; the larger number opposed 
both him and the Hyksos and perished in the struggle. 
Their more fortunate fellows, being now nothing more than 

1 II, 14. 2 ii ; 15. 3 n, 16. * II, j>. 138, note ?. 



THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES 229 

court and administrative officials, the feudal lords thus prac- 
tically disappeared. The lands which formed their heredi- 
tary possessions were confiscated and passed to the crown, 
where they permanently remained. There was one notable 
exception to the general confiscation; the house of El Kab, 
to which the Theban dynasty owed so much, was allowed 
to retain its lands, and two generations after the expulsion 
of the Hyksos, the head of the house appears as lord, not 
only of El Kab but also Esneh and all the intervening terri- 
tory. Besides this he was given administrative charge, 
though not hereditary possession, of the lands of the south 
from the vicinity of Thebes (Per-Hathor) to El Kab. Yet 
this exception serves but to accentuate more sharply the total 
extinction of the landed nobility, who had formed the sub- 
stance of the governmental organization under the Middle 
Kingdom. All Egypt was now the personal estate of the 
Pharaoh, just as it was after the destruction of the Mamlukes 
by Mohammed Ali early in the nineteenth century. It is 
this state of affairs which in Hebrew tradition was repre- 
sented as the direct result of Joseph's sagacity. 1 

' Gen. 47 : 19-20. 



BOOK V 



THE EMPIRE: FIRST PERIOD 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND EELIGION 

THE task of building up a state, which now confronted 
Ahmose I, differed materially from the reorganization ac- 
complished at the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty by 
Amenemhet I. The latter dealt with social and political 
factors no longer new in his time, and manipulated to his 
own ends the old political units without destroying their iden- 
tity, whereas Ahmose had now to begin with the erection of 
a fabric of government out of elements so completely di- 
vorced from the old forms as to have lost their identity, 
being now in a state of total flux. The course of events, 
which culminated in the expulsion of the Hyksos, determined 
for Ahmose the form which the new state was to assume. 
He was now at the head of a strong army, effectively organ- 
ized and welded together by long campaigns and sieges pro- 
tracted through years, during which he had been both general 
in the field and head of the state. The character of the gov- 
ernment followed involuntarily out of these conditions. 
Egypt became a military state. It was quite natural that 
it should remain so, in spite of the usually unwarlike char- 
acter of the Egyptian. The long war with the Hyksos had 
now educated him as a soldier, the large army of Ahmose 
had spent years in Asia and had even been for a longer or 
shorter period among the rich cities of Syria. Having 
thoroughly learned war and having perceived the enormous 
wealth to be gained by it in Asia, the whole land was roused 
and stirred with a lust of conquest, which was not quenched 
for several centuries. The wealth, the rewards and the pro- 
motion open to the professional soldier were a constant in- 
centive to a military career, and the middle classes, other- 

233 



234 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

wise so unwarlike, now entered the ranks with ardour. 
Among the survivors of the noble class, chiefly those who 
had attached themselves to the Theban house, the profession 
of arms became the most attractive of all careers, and in the 
biographies 1 which they have left in their tombs at Thebes 
they narrate with the greatest satisfaction the campaigns 
which they went through at the Pharaoh's side, and the 
honours which he bestowed upon them. Many a campaign, 
all record of which would have been irretrievably lost, has 
thus come to our knowledge through one of these military 
biographies, like that of Ahmose, 2 son of Ebana, from which 
we have quoted. The sons of the Pharaoh, who in the Old 
Kingdom held administrative offices, are now generals in the 
army. 3 For the next century and a half the story of the 
achievements of the army will be the story of Egypt, for 
the army is now the dominant force and the chief motive 
power in the new state. In organization it quite surpassed 
the militia of the old days, if for no other reason than that 
it was now a standing army. It was organized into two 
grand divisions, one in the Delta and the other in the upper 
country. 4 In Syria it had learned tactics and proper strate- 
gic disposition of forces, the earliest of which we know any- 
thing in history. We shall now find partition of an army 
into divisions, we shall hear of wings and centre, we shall 
even trace a flank movement and define battle lines. All 
this is fundamentally different from the disorganized plun- 
dering expeditions naively reported as wars by the monu- 
ments of the older periods (Fig. 104). Besides the old bow 
and spear, the troops henceforth carry also a war axe. They 
have learned archery fire by volleys and the dreaded archers 
of Egypt now gained a reputation which followed and made 
them feared even in classic times. But more than this, the 
Hyksos having brought the horse into Egypt, the Egyptian 
armies now for the first time possessed a large proportion 
of chariotry. Cavalry in the modern sense of the term was 

i II, 1-16, 17-25, et passim. 2 Ibid. 

350, 362. > * III, 56. 




FIG. 104.-A BODY OF SPEARMEN OF THE EMPIRE. 

Part of the n.ilitary esrort uf Hatshesput's expedition to Punt. From the reliefs in her temple at Der el- 

Bahri, Thebes. 




Fie. 105.-A CHARIOT OF THE EMPIRE. 
It is of full size, made of wood, bronze and leather. Museo Archaeologico, Florence. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 235 

not employed. The deft craftsmen of Egypt soon mastered 
the art of chariot-making (Fig. 105), while the stables of 
the Pharaoh contained thousands of the best horses to be 
had in Asia. In accordance with the spirit of the time, the 
Pharaoh was accompanied on all public appearances by a 
body-guard of elite troops and a group of his favourite mili- 
tary officers. 

With such force at his back, he ruled in absolute power; 
there was none to offer a breath of opposition ; there was not 
a whisper of that modern monitor of kings, public opinion, 
an inconvenience with which rulers in the orient are rarely 
obliged to reckon, even at the present day. With a man of 
strong powers on the throne, all were at his feet, but let 
him betray a single evidence of weakness, and he was quickly 
made the puppet of court coteries and the victim of harem 
intrigues as of old. At such a time, as has happened so 
often since in Egypt, an able minister might overthrow the 
dynasty and found one of his own. But the man who ex- 
pelled the Hyksos was thoroughly master of the situation. 
It is evidently in large measure to him that we owe the recon- 
struction of the state which was now emerging from the tur- 
moils of two centuries of internal disorder and foreign 
invasion. 

This new state is revealed to us more clearly than that of 
any other period of Egyptian history under native dynasties, 
and while we shall recognize many elements surviving from 
earlier times, we shall be able to discern much that is new 
in the great structure of government which was now rising 
under the hands of Ahmose I and his successors. The su- 
preme position occupied by the Pharaoh meant a very active 
participation in the affairs of government. He was accus- 
tomed every morning to meet the vizier, still the main spring 
of the administration, to consult with him on all the interests 
of the country and all the current business which necessarily 
came under his eye. 1 Immediately thereafter he held a con- 
ference with the chief treasurer. 2 These two men headed 

' il, 678. * Ibid. 



236 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

the chief departments of government: the treasury and the 
judiciary. The Pharaoh's office, in which they made their 
daily reports to him, was the central organ of the whole 
government where all its lines converged. All other reports 
to government were likewise handed in here, and theoretic- 
ally they all passed through the Pharaoh's hands. Even 
in the limited number of such documents preserved to us, 
we discern the vast array of detailed questions in practical 
administration which the busy monarch decided. The pun- 
ishment of condemned criminals was determined by him, l 
the documents in the case being sent up to him for a decision 
while the victims awaited their fate in the dungeon. Besides 
frequent campaigns in Nubia and Asia, he visited 2 the quar- 
ries and mines in the desert or inspected 3 the desert routes, 
seeking suitable locations for wells and stations. Likewise 
the internal administration required frequent journeys to 
examine new buildings and check all sorts of official abuses. 4 
The official cults in the great temples, too, demanded more 
and more of the monarch's time and attention as the rituals 
in the vast state temples increased in complexity with the 
development of the elaborate state religion. Under these 
circumstances the burden inevitably exceeded the powers of 
one man, even with the assistance of his vizier. From the 
earliest days of the Old Kingdom, as the reader will recall, 
there had been but one vizier. Early in the Eighteenth 
Dynasty, however, the business of government and the duties 
of the Pharaoh had so increased that he appointed two 
viziers, one residing at Thebes, for the administration of 
the South, from the cataract as far as the nome of Siut; 
while the other, who had charge of all the region north of 
the latter point, lived at Heliopolis. 5 This innovation prob- 
ably took place after the transfer of the southern country 
between El Kab and the cataract from the jurisdiction of the 
Nubian province to that of the vizier. 

For administrative purposes the country was divided into 

i IV, 541. 2 III, 170. a IV, 464. 

4 III, 58. 5 Inscription of Meg. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 237 

irregular districts, some of which consisted of the old and 
strong towns of feudal days, each with its surrounding vil- 
lages ; while others contained no such town centre, and were 
evidently arbitrary divisions established solely for govern- 
mental reasons. There were at least twenty seven such 
administrative districts between Siut and the cataract, 1 and 
the country as a whole must have been divided into over 
twice that number. The head of government in the old 
towns still bore the feudal title "count," but it now indicated 
solely administrative duties and might better be translated 
"mayor" or "governor.' 1 Each of the smaller towns had 
a "town-ruler," but in the other districts there were only 
recorders and scribes, with one of their number at their 
head. 2 As we shall see, these men were both the adminis- 
trators, chiefly in a fiscal capacity, and the judicial officials 
within their jurisdictions. 

The great object of government was to make the country 
economically strong and productive. To secure this end, its 
lands, now chiefly owned by the crown, were worked by the 
king's serfs, controlled by his officials, or entrusted by him 
as permanent and indivisible fiefs to his favourite nobles, his 
partisans and relatives. Divisible parcels might also be 
held by tenants of the untitled classes. Both classes of hold- 
ings might be transferred by will or sale in much the same 
way as if the holder actually owned the land. 3 Other royal 
property, like cattle and asses, was held by the people of 
both classes, subject, like the lands, to an annual assessment 
for its use. For purposes of taxation all lands and other 
property of the crown, except that held by the temples, were 
recorded in the tax-registers of the White House, as the 
treasury was still called. All "houses" or estates and the 
"numbers belonging thereto," 4 were entered in these regis- 
ters. On the basis of these, taxes were assessed. They were 
still collected in naturalia : cattle, grain, wine, oil, honey, tex- 
tiles, and the like. Besides the cattle-yards, the "granary'' 

ill, 716-745. 211, 717. 

Inscription of Mes. * II, &I6. 1. 31. 



238 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

was the chief sub-department of the White House, and there 
were innumerable other magazines for the storage of its 
receipts. All the products which filled these repositories 
were termed l ' labour, ' ' the word employed in ancient Egypt 
as we use "taxes.' 1 If we may accept Hebrew tradition as 
transmitted in the story of Joseph, such taxes comprised 
one fifth of the produce of the land. 1 It was collected by 
the local officials, whom we have already noticed, and its 
reception in and payment from the various magazines de- 
manded a host of scribes and subordinates, now more numer- 
ous than ever before in the history of the country. The chief 
treasurer at their head was under the authority of the vizier, 
to whom he made a report every morning, after which he 
received permission to open the offices and magazines for 
the day's business. 2 The collection of a second class of 
revenue, that paid by the local officials themselves as a tax 
upon their offices, was exclusively in the hands of the viziers. 
The southern vizier was responsible for all the officials of 
Upper Egypt in his jurisdiction from Elephantine to Siut; 3 
and in view of this fact, the other vizier doubtless bore a 
similar responsibility in the North. This tax on the officials 
consisted chiefly of gold, silver, grain, cattle and linen; the 
mayor of the old city of El Kab, for example, paid some 
5,600 grains of gold, 4,200 grains of silver, one ox and one 
"two-year old" into the vizier's office every year, while his 
subordinate paid 4,200 grains of silver, a bead necklace of 
gold, two oxen and two chests of linen. Unfortunately the 
list 4 from which these numbers are taken, recorded in the 
tomb of the vizier Rekhrnire at Thebes, is too mutilated to 
permit the calculation of the exact total of this tax on all 
the officials under the jurisdiction of the southern vizer ; but 
they paid him annually at least some 220,000 grains of gold, 
nine gold necklaces, over 16,000 grains of silver, some forty 
chests and other measures of linen, one hundred and six 
cattle of all ages and some grain ; and these figures are short 

1 Gen. 47 : 23-27. 2 II, 079. 

311, 716-745. *Ibid. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 239 

by probably at least twenty per cent, of the real total. As 
the king presumably received a similar amount from the 
northern vizier's collections, this tax on the officials formed 
a stately sum in the annual revenues. We can unfortu- 
nately form no estimate of the total of all revenues. Of the 
royal income from all sources in the Eighteenth Dynasty 
the southern vizier had general charge. The amount of all 
taxes to be levied and the distribution of the revenue when 
collected were determined in his office, where a constant bal- 
ance sheet was kept. In order to control both income and 
outgo, a monthly fiscal report was made to him by all local 
officials, and thus the southern vizier was able to furnish 
the king from month to month with a full statement of pros- 
pective resources in the royal treasury. 1 The taxes were so 
dependent, as they still are, upon the height of the inunda- 
tion and the consequent prospects for a plentiful or scanty 
harvest, that the level of the rising river was also reported 
to him. 2 He held also all the records of the temple estates, 
and in the case of Amon, whose chief sanctuary was in the 
city of which the vizier was governor, he naturally had 
charge of the rich temple fortune, even ranking the High 
Priest of Amon in the affairs of the god's estate. 3 As the 
income of the crown was, from now on, so largely augmented 
by foreign tribute, this was also received by the southern 
vizier and by him communicated to the king. The great 
vizier, Eekhmire depicts himself in the gorgeous reliefs in 
his tomb receiving both the taxes of the officials who ap- 
peared before him each year with their dues, 4 and the tribute 
of the Asiatic vassal-princes and Nubian chiefs. 5 

In the administration of justice the southern vizier played 
even a greater role than in the treasury. Here he was su- 
preme. The old magnates of the Southern Tens, once pos- 
sessed of important judicial functions, have sunk to a mere 
attendant council at the vizier 's public audiences, 6 where they 
seem to have retained not even advisory functions. They 

i II, 708 2 II, 709. 3 II, 746-751. 

Il! 716-745. 611,760-761 JI, 712. 



240 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

are never mentioned in the court records of the time, though 
they still live in poetry and their old fame survived even 
into Greek times. The vizier continues to bear his tradi- 
tional title, "chief of the six great houses" or courts of jus- 
tice, but these are never referred to in any of the surviving 
legal documents and have evidently disappeared save in the 
title of the vizier. As always heretofore the officers of ad- 
ministration are incidentally the dispensers of justice. They 
constantly serve in a judicial capacity. Although there is 
no class of judges with exclusively legal duties, every man 
of important administrative rank is thoroughly versed in 
the law and is ready at any moment to serve as judge. The 
vizier is no exception. All petitioners for legal redress 
applied first to him in his audience hall; if possible in per- 
son, but in any case in writing. For this purpose he held a 
daily audience or "sitting" as the Egyptian called it. 1 
Every morning the people crowded into the "hall of the 
vizier," where the ushers and bailiffs jostled them into line 
that they might "be heard,' 1 ' in order of arrival, one after 
another. 2 In cases concerning land located in Thebes he 
was obliged by law to render a decision in three days, but 
if the land lay in the "South or North" he required two 
months. 3 This was while he was still the only vizier ; when 
the North received its own vizier such cases there were re- 
ferred to him at Heliopolis. 4 All crimes in the capital city 
were denounced and tried before him, and he maintained a 
criminal docket of prisoners awaiting trial or punishment, 
which strikingly suggests modern documents of the same 
sort. 5 All this, and especially the land cases, demanded 
rapid and convenient access to the archives of the land. 
They were therefore all filed in his offices. No one might 
make a will without filing it in the "vizier's hall." 6 Copies 
of all nome archives, boundary records and all contracts were 
deposited with him 7 or with his colleague in the North s Every 

111,675,714-715. 211,715. 311,686. 

Inscription of Meg. s II, 683. II, 688. 

* IT, 703. Inscription of Mes. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 241 

petitioner to the king was obliged to hand in his petition in 
writing at the same office. 1 

Besides the vizier's "hall," also called the "great coun- 
cil," there were local courts throughout the land, not pri- 
marily of a legal character, being, as we have already 
explained, merely the body of administrative officials in each 
district, who were corporately empowered to try cases with 
full competence. They were the "great men of the town," 
or the local "council," and acted as the local representatives 
of the "great council.' 1 In suits involving real estate 
titles, a commissioner of the "great council" was sent out 
to execute the decisions of the "great council' in cooper- 
ation with the nearest local "council.' 1 Or sometimes a 
hearing before the local "council' 1 was necessary before 
the "great council" could render a decision. 2 The num- 
ber of these local courts is entirely uncertain, but the most 
important two known were at Thebes and Memphis. At 
Thebes its composition varied from day to day; in cases 
of a delicate nature, where the members of the royal 
house were implicated, it was appointed by the vizier, 3 and 
in case of conspiracy against the ruler, the monarch him- 
self commissioned them, though without partiality, and 
with instructions merely to determine who were the guilty, 
accompanied by power to execute the sentence. 4 All courts 
were largely made up of priests. It is difficult to discern 
the relation of these courts to the "hall of the vizier," but 
in at least one case, when satisfaction was not obtained at 
the vizier's hall, the petitioner recovered a stolen slave by 
suit before one of these courts. 5 They did not, however, 
always enjoy the best reputation among the people, who 
bewailed the hapless plight of "the one who stands alone 
before the court when he is a poor man and his opponent is 
rich, while the court oppresses him (saying), ' Silver and 
gold for the scribes ! Clothing for the servants ! ' " 6 For 
of course the bribe of the rich was often stronger than the 

1 II, 691. 2 Gardiner, Inscription of Mes. 3 n j 705. 

* IV, 423-4. e Spiegelberg, Studien. e p ap . Anast. II, 8, 6. 

IS 



242 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

justice of the poor man's cause, as it frequently is at tlie 
present day. The law to which the poor appealed was 
undoubtedly just. The vizier was obliged to keep it con- 
stantly before him, contained in forty rolls which were laid 
out before his dais at all his public sessions where they were 
doubtless accessible to all. 1 Unfortunately the code which 
they contained has perished, but of its justice we can have 
no doubt, for the vizier was said to be a judge "judging 
justly, not showing partiality, sending two men [opponents] 
forth satisfied, judging the weak and the powerful," 2 or 
again, "not preferring the great above the humble, reward- 
ing the oppressed . . . , bringing the evil to him who com- 
mitted it." 3 Even the king dealt according to law; Amen- 
hotep III called himself in his titulary "establisher of law," 
and when before one of the courts which we have already 
described, the king boasts that "the law stood firm; I did 
not reverse judgment, but in view of the facts I was silent 
that I might cause jubilation and joy." 4 Even conspira- 
tors against the king's life were not summarily put to death, 
but, as we have seen, were handed over to a legally con- 
stituted court to be properly tried, and condemned only when 
found guilty. The punishments inflicted by Haremhab 
upon his corrupt officials who robbed the poor, were all 
according to "law." 5 The great body of this law was un- 
doubtedly very old, 6 and some of it, like the old texts of 
the Book of the Dead, was ascribed to the gods ; but Harem- 
hab 's new regulations were new law enacted by him. 6 
Diodorus tells of five different kings before Persian times 
who enacted new laws, and in the Middle Kingdom even 
a nobleman relates having made laws, meaning, of course, 
that he had formulated them at the king's request. 7 The 
social, agricultural and industrial world of the Nile-dwellers 
under the Empire was therefore not at the mercy of arbi- 
trary whim on the part of either king or court, but was gov- 
erned by a large body of long respected law, embodying the 
principles of justice and humanity. 

1-11,675,712. 211,713. 311,715. Spiegelberg, Studien. 

6 III, 51 ff. 6 gee above, pp. 80-82. III. 65. I, 531. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 243 

The southern vizier was the motive power behind the 
organization and operation of this ancient state. We recall 
that he went in every morning and took council with the 
Pharaoh on the affairs of the country; and the only other 
check upon his untrammelled control of the state was a law 
constraining him to report the condition of his office to the 
chief treasurer. Every morning as he came forth from his 
interview with the king he found the chief treasurer standing 
by one of the flag-staves of the palace front, and there they 
exchanged reports. 1 The vizier then unsealed the doors of 
the court and of the offices of the royal estate so that the 
day's business might begin; and during the day all ingress 
and egress at these doors was reported to him, whether of 
persons or of property of any sort. 2 His office was the 
means of communication with the local authorities, who 
reported to him in writing on the first day of each season, 
that is, three times a year. 3 It is in his office that we discern 
with unmistakable clearness the complete centralization of 
all local government in all its functions. This supervision 
of the local administration required frequent journeys and 
there was therefore an official barge of the vizier on the 
river in which he passed from place to place. It was he 
who detailed the king's bodyguard for service as well as 
the garrison of the residence city ; 4 general army orders pro- 
ceeded from his office ; 5 the forts of the South were under his 
control; 6 and the officials of the navy all reported to him. 7 
He was thus minister of war for both army and navy, and 
in the Eighteenth Dynasty at least, "when the king was 
with the army," he conducted the administration at home. 8 
He had legal control of the temples throughout the country, 
or, as the Egyptian put it, "he established laws in the tem- 
ples of the gods of the South and the North," 9 so that he 
was minister of ecclesiastical affairs. He had economic 
oversight of many important resources of the country; no 
timber could be -cut without his permission, and the admin- 

111,678-9. 211,676,680. 3 II, 687, 692, 708, 711. * II, 693-4. 

511,695. 611,702. II, 710. 8 II, 710. 9 II, 757. 



244 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

istration of irrigation and water supply was also under Ms 
charge. l In order to establish the calendar for state busi- 
ness, the rising of Sirius was reported to him. 2 He exer- 
cised advisory functions in all the offices of the state; 3 so 
long as his office was undivided with a vizier of the North 
he was grand steward of all Egypt, and there was no prime 
function of the state which did not operate immediately or 
secondarily through his office, while all others were obliged 
to report to it or work more or less closely in connection 
with it. He was a veritable Joseph and it must have been 
this office which the Hebrew narrator had in mind as that 
to which Joseph was appointed. He was regarded by the 
people as their great protector and no higher praise could 
be proffered to Amon when addressed by a worshipper than 
to call him "the poor man's vizier who does not accept the 
bribe of the guilty." 4 His appointment was a matter of 
such importance that it was conducted by the king himself,, 
and the instructions given him by the monarch on that occa- 
sion were not such as we should expect from the lips of an 
oriental conqueror three thousand five hundred years ago. 
They display a spirit of kindness and humanity and exhibit 
an appreciation of state craft surprising in an age so remote. 
The king tells the vizier that he shall conduct himself as 
one "not setting his face toward the princes and councillors, 
neither one making brethren of all the people"; 5 again he 
says, " It is an abomination of the god to show partiality. This 
is the teaching : thou shalt do the like, shalt regard him who 
is known to thee like him who is unknown to thee, and him 
who is near . . . like him who is far. . . . Such an official 
shall flourish greatly in the place. ... Be not enraged 
toward a man unjustly . . . but show forth the fear of thee ; 
let one be afraid of thee, for a prince is a prince of whom 
one is afraid. Lo, the true dread of a prince is to do jus- 
tice. ... Be not known to the people and they shall not say, 
'He is only a man.' " 6 Even the vizier's subordinates are 

i II, 697-8. II, 709. 3 II, 696. 

* Pap. Anast. II, 6, 5-6. 6 II, 666. 6 II, 668-9. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 245 

to be men of justice, for the king admonishes the new vizier, 
"Lo, one shall say of the chief scribe of the vizier, 'A scribe 
of justice' shall one say of him." 1 In a land where the 
bribery of the court still begins with the lowest subordinates 
before access is gained to the magistrates, such " justice'' 
was necessary indeed. The viziers of the Eighteenth Dy- 
nasty desired the reputation of hard working, conscientious 
officials, who took the greatest pride in the proper adminis- 
tration of the office. Several of them have left a record of 
their installation, with a long list of the duties of the office, 
engraved and painted upon the walls of their Theban tombs, 
and it is from these that we have drawn our account of the 
vizier. 2 

Such was the government of the imperial age in Egypt. 
In society the disappearance of the landed nobility, and the 
administration of the local districts by a vast army of petty 
officials of the crown, opened the way more fully than in 
the Middle Kingdom for innumerable careers among the 
middle class. These opportunities must have worked a 
gradual change in their condition. Thus one official relates 
his obscure origin thus : " Ye shall talk of it, one to another, 
and the old men shall teach it to the youth. I was one whose 
family was poor and whose town was small, but the Lord 
of the Two Lands [the king] recognized me ; I was accounted 
great in his heart, the king in his role as sun-god in the 
splendour of his palace saw me. He exalted me more than 
the [royal] companions, introducing me among the princes 
of the palace. ... He appointed me to conduct works while 
I was a youth, he found me, I was made account of in his 
heart, I was introduced into the gold-house to fashion the 
figures and images of all the gods. ' ' 3 Here he administered 
his office so well in overseeing the production of the costly 
images of gold that he was rewarded publicly with decora- 
tions of gold by the king and even gained place in the 
councils of the treasury. Such possibilities of promotion 

1 II, 670. 2 n ; 665-761. 

'Unpublished stela in Ley den (V, I), by courtesy of the curator. 



246 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

and royal favour awaited success in local administration; 
for in some local office the career of this unknown official in 
the small town must have begun. There thus grew up a 
new official class, its lower ranks drawn from the old middle 
class, while on the other hand in its upper strata were the 
relatives and dependents of the old landed nobility, by 
whom the higher and more important local offices were 
administered. Here the official class gradually merged into 
the large circle of royal favourites who filled the great offices 
of the central government or commanded the Pharaoh's 
forces on his campaigns. As there was no longer a feudal 
nobility, the great government officials became the nobles of 
the Empire. The old middle class of merchants, 1 skilled 
craftsmen and artists also still survived and continued to 
replenish the lower ranks of the official class. Below these 
were the masses who worked the fields and estates, the serfs 
of the Pharaoh. They formed so large a portion of the 
inhabitants that the Hebrew scribe, evidently writing from 
the outside, knew only this class of society beside the priests. 2 
These lower strata passed away and left little or no trace, 
but the official class was now able to erect tombs and mor- 
tuary stela3 in such surprising numbers that they furnish 
us a vast mass of materials for reconstructing the life and 
customs of the time. An official who took a census in the 
Eighteenth Dynasty divided the people into "soldiers, 
priests, royal serfs and all the craftsmen," 3 and this clas- 
sification is corroborated by all that we know of the time; 
although we must understand that all callings of the free 
middle class are here included among the " soldiers. ' ; The 
soldier in the standing army has therefore now also become 
a social class. The free middle class, liable to military ser- 
vice, are called "citizens of the army,' : a term already 
known in the Middle Kingdom, 4 but now very common; so 
that liability to military service becomes the significant des- 
ignation of this class of society. Politically the soldier's 
influence grows with every reign and he soon becomes the 

i III, 274. Gen. 47: 21. a II, p. 165, note a. I, 681. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 247 

involuntary reliance of the Pharaoh in the execution of 
numerous civil commissions where formerly the soldier was 
never employed. Side by side with him appears another 
new and powerful influence, the ancient institution of the 
priesthood. As a natural consequence of the great wealth 
of the temples under the Empire, the priesthood becomes 
a profession, no longer merely an incidental office held by 
a layman, as in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. As the 
priests increase in numbers they gain more and more polit- 
ical power ; while the growing wealth of the temples demands 
for its proper administration a veritable army of temple 
officials of all sorts, who were unknown to the old days of 
simplicity. Probably one fourth of all the persons buried 
in the great and sacred cemetery of Abydos at this period 
were priests. Priestly communities had thus grown up. 
Heretofore the priests of the various sanctuaries had never 
been united by any official ties, but existed only in individual 
and entirely separated communities without interrelation. 
All these priestly bodies were now united in a great sacer- 
dotal organization embracing the whole land. The head of 
the state temple at Thebes, the High Priest of Amon, was 
the supreme head of this greater body also and his power 
was thereby increased far beyond that of his older rivals 
at Heliopolis and Memphis. The members of the sacerdotal 
guild thus became a new class, so that priest, soldier and 
official now stood together as three great social classes, yet 
possessing common interests; their leaders were the Phar- 
aoh's nobles, who replaced the old aristocracy; but their 
lower ra/iks were not to be distinguished from the free middle 
class, the tradesmen and craftsmen; while at the bottom, as 
the chief economic basis of all, were the peasant serfs. 

The priests whom we now find so numerous as to have 
become a class of society, were the representatives of a richer 
and more elaborate state religion than Egypt had ever seen. 
The days of the old simplicity were forever past. The wealth 
gained by foreign conquest enabled the Pharaohs from now 
on to endow the temples with such riches as no sanctuary 



248 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

of the old days had ever possessed. The temples grew into 
vast and gorgeous palaces, each with its community of 
priests, and the high priest of such a community in the larger 
centres was a veritable sacerdotal prince, ultimately wield- 
ing considerable political power. The High Priest's wife at 
Thebes was called the chief concubine of the god, and his 
real consort was no less a person than the queen herself, 
who was therefore known as the ' ' Divine Consort. ' ' In the 
gorgeous ritual which now prevailed, her part was to lead 
the singing of the women who were also still permitted to 
participate in the service in large numbers. She possessed 
also a fortune, which belonged to the temple endowment, 
and for this reason it was desirable that the queen should 
hold the office in order to retain this fortune in the royal 
house. 

The triumph of a Theban family had brought with it the 
supremacy of Amon. He had not been the god of the resi- 
dence in the Middle Kingdom, and although the rise of a 
Theban family had then given him some distinction, it was 
not until now that he became the great god of the state. His 
essential character and individuality had already been oblit- 
erated by the solar theology of the Middle Kingdom, when 
he had become Amon-Ke, and with some attributes borrowed 
from his ithyphallic neighbour, Min of Coptos, he now rose 
to a unique and supreme position of unprecedented splen- 
dour. He was popular with the people, too, and as a Moslem 
says, "Inshallah, " "If Allah will," so the Egyptian now 
added to all his promises "If Amon spare my life.' 1 They 
called him the "vizier of the poor,' 1 the people carried to 
him their wants and wishes, and their hopes for future pros- 
perity were implicitly staked upon his favour. But the 
fusion of the old gods had not deprived Amon alone of his 
individuality, for in the general flux almost any god might 
possess the qualities and functions of the others, although 
the dominant position was still occupied by the sun-god. 

The mortuary beliefs of the time are the outgrowth of 
tendencies already plainly observable in the Middle King- 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 249 

doin. The magical formulae by which the dead are to 
triumph in the hereafter become more and more numerous, 
so that it is no longer possible to record them on the inside 
of the coffin, but they must be written on papyrus and the roll 
placed in the tomb. As the selection of the most important 
of these texts came to be more and more uniform, the ' ' Book 
of the Dead" began to take form. All was dominated by 
magic; by this all-powerful means the dead might effect 
all that he desired. The luxurious lords of the Empire no 
longer look forward with pleasure to the prospect of plowing, 
sowing and reaping in the happy fields of Yaru. They 
would escape such peasant labour, and a statuette (Fig. 

106) bearing the implements of labour in the field and in- 
scribed with a potent charm is placed in the tomb, thereby 
ensuring to the deceased immunity from such toil, which 
will always be performed by this representative whenever 
the call to the fields is heard. Such ' ' Ushebtis, " or " respon- 
dents, ' ' as they were termed, were now placed in the necrop- 
olis by scores and hundreds. But this means of obtaining 
material good was now unfortunately transferred also to the 
ethical world, in order to secure exemption from the conse- 
quences of an evil life. A sacred beetle or scarabreus (Fig. 

107) is cut from stone and inscribed with a charm, beginning 
with the significant words, ' ' my heart, rise not up against 
me as a witness. " So powerful is this cunning invention 
when laid upon the breast of the mummy under the wrap- 
pings that when the guilty soul stands in the judgment-hall 
in the awful presence of Osiris, the accusing voice of the 
heart is silenced and the great god does not perceive the 
evil .of which it would testify. Likewise the rolls of the 
Book of the Dead containing, besides all the other charms, 
also the scene of judgment, and especially the welcome ver- 
dict of acquittal, are now sold by the priestly scribes to 
anyone with the means to buy ; and the fortunate purchaser 's 
name is then inserted in the blanks left for this purpose 
throughout the document ; thus securing for himself the cer- 
tainty of such a verdict, before it was known whose name 



250 A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

should be so inserted. The invention of these devices by the 
priests was undoubtedly as subversive of moral progress and 
the elevation of the popular religion as the sale of indul- 
gences in Luther's time. The moral aspirations which had 
come into the religion of Egypt with the ethical influences 
so potent in the Osiris-myth, were now choked and poisoned 
by the assurance that, however vicious a man's life, exemp- 
tion in the hereafter could be purchased at any time from 
the priests. The priestly literature on the hereafter, pro- 
duced probably for no other purpose than for gain, continued 
to grow. We have a "Book of What is in the Nether 
World,' 1 describing the twelve caverns, or hours of the 
night through which the sun passed beneath the earth; and 
a "Book of the Portals," treating of the gates and strong- 
holds between these caverns. Although these edifying com- 
positions never gained the wide circulation enjoyed by the 
Book of the Dead, the former of the two was engraved in 
the tombs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty kings 
at Thebes, showing that these grotesque creations of the per- 
verted priestly imagination finally gained the credence of 
the highest circles. 

The tomb of the noble consists as before of chambers 
hewn in the face of the cliff, and in accordance with the pre- 
vailing tendency it is now filled with imaginary scenes from 
the next world, with mortuary and religious texts, many of 
them of a magical character. At the same time the tomb 
has become more a personal monument to the deceased and 
the walls of the chapel bear many scenes from his life, espe- 
cially from his official career, particularly as a record of 
the honours which he received from the king. Thus the cliffs 
opposite Thebes (Figs. 131, 166), honey-combed as they are 
with the tombs of the lords of the Empire, contain whole 
chapters of the life and history of the period, with which 
we shall now deal. In a solitary valley (Fig. 108) behind 
these cliffs, as we shall see, the kings now likewise excavate 
their tombs in the limestone walls and the pyramid is no 
longer employed. Vast galleries (Figs. 109, 110) are pierced 




FIG. 106 "USHEBTI" OR RESPONDENT 
STATUETTES. 

The substitute of the deceased when called upon for 
menial labor in the hereafter. See p. 249. (Art 
Institute, Chicago.) 





FIG. 107.-HEART SCARAB OF THE "FIRST 
OF THE SACRED WOMEN OF AMON, 
ISIMKHEB." See p. 249. (Field Museum, 
Chicago.) 




FIG. 108. PART OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS' TOMBS, THEBES. 
The entrances of two tombs are discernible at the right of the center. See pp. 250-51; 279-80. 



THE NEW STATE: SOCIETY AND RELIGION 251 



into the mountain, and passing from 
hall to hall, they terminate many hun- 
dreds of feet from the entrance in a 
large chamber, where the body of the 
king is laid in a huge stone sarcoph- 
agus. It is possible that the whole 
excavation is intended to represent the 
passages of the nether world along 
which the sun passes in his nightly 
journey. On the western plain of 
Thebes, the plain east of this valley, 
as on the east side of the pyramid, 
arose the splendid mortuary temples 
of the emperors, of which we shall 
later have occasion to say more. But 
these elaborate mortuary customs are 
now no longer confined to the Pharaoh 
and his nobles ; the necessity for such 
equipment in preparation for the here- 
after is now felt by all classes. The 
manufacture of such materials, result- 
ing from the gradual extension of these 
customs, has become an industry; the 
embalmers, undertakers and manufac- 
turers of coffins and tomb furniture 
occupy a quarter at Thebes, forming 
almost a guild by themselves, as they 
did in later Greek times. The middle 
class were now frequently able to exca- 
vate and decorate a tomb; but when 
too poor for this luxury, they rented a 
place for their dead in great common 
tombs maintained by the priests, and 
here the embalmed body was deposited 
in a chamber where the mummies were 
piled up like cord-wood, but neverthe- 
less received the benefit of the ritual 




FIG. 109. Ground Plan of the 
Tomb of Seti I, excavated in the 
Valley of the Kings' Tombs at 
Thebes. The shaded portions 
are descending steps. I-IV and 
VII-IX are galleries, which 
descend as they advance. The 
other rooms tre pillared halls. 
In hall X was the magnificent 
alabaster sarcophagus of the 
king, now in Sir John Soane's 
Museum in London. 



A HISTORY OF EGYPT 

maintained for all in common. The very poor still buried 
in the sand and gravel on the desert margin as of old, 
but even they looked with longing upon the luxury enjoyed 
in the hereafter by the rich, and at the door of some lux- 
urious tomb they buried a rude statuette of their dead, 
bearing his name, in the pathetic hope that thus he might 
gain a few crumbs from the bounty of the rich man's mor- 
tuary table. 

Out of the chaos which the rule of foreign lords had pro- 
duced, the new state and the new conditions slowly emerged 
as Ahmose I gradually gained leisure from his arduous wars. 
With the state religion, the foreign dynasty had shown no 
sympathy and the temples lay wasted and deserted in many 
places. We find Ahmose therefore in his twenty second 
year opening new workings in the famous quarries of Ayan 
or Troja, opposite Gizeh, from which the blocks for the Gizeh 
pyramids were taken, in order to secure stone for the tem- 
ples in Memphis, Thebes (Luxor) and probably elsewhere. 1 
For these works he still employed the oxen which he had 
taken from the Syrians in his Asiatic wars. None of these 
buildings of his, however, has survived. For the ritual of 
the state temple at Karnak he furnished the sanctuary with 
a magnificent service of rich cultus utensils in precious 
metals, and he built a new temple-barge upon the river of 
cedar exacted from the Lebanon princes. 2 His greatest work 
remains the Eighteenth Dynasty itself, for whose brilliant 
career his own achievements had laid so firm a fou