LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY
SAM DIEGO
JUUUUWUIMAIUUU1JU1^^
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO.
Barneses Meiamc.un, from the Alabaster Statue in the
of the Louvre.
EAMESES THE GREAT;
OB,
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
rKANSLATKD FKOM THE FRENCH
or
F. DE LANOYE.
W1TB THIRTY-NINB WOOD OUTS Bf LANOSLOT, 8ZLLIJBB AND BAYARD.
NEW YOKK :
CHAELES SCBIBNER AND COMPANY.
1870
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for tho
Southern District of New York.
ALVORD, PRINTER.
TO THE VICOMTE E. DE BOUGE\
This historical study, inspired by his labors and indebted to
them for its best pages,
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
if not as the work of an expert pupil, for the author dare not
assume that title, at least as a feeble testimonial of the pro-
found gratitude which the illustrious master of Egyptian lore
has the right to claim of every one engaged in seeking out the
origin of human society, and new foundations on which to es-
tablish history.
F. DE LAKOTB.
PABIS, December 1, 1865.
CONTENTS.
THE CAMPAIGNS OF RAMESES THE GREAT.
PAGB
The Basin of the Nile and its First Colonists. Races of Men
known in Egypt Fifteen Centuries before the Birth of Christ.
Pre-Historic Chronology of the Egyptian Empire.
Menes, the First Founder of a Dynasty. Discordance
between Epigraphy and Geology. The Irruption of the
Hycsos. National Rivalries and Wars. The Eighteenth
Dynasty 1
RAMESES IL
Rameses II. Mei-Amoun the Great, otherwise known as
Sesostris. The Names of Rameses ; his Childhood ; his
Youth ; his Coronation. A Consecration Thirty-three
Centuries Ago. Social Rank in Egypt, and the People,
at that Period of its History 61
THE CAMPAIGNS OF RAMESES THE GREAT.
Situation, "Wealth and Population of Egypt, on the Accession
of Rameses. The plausible Motives for his Expeditions.
Two Razzias at an Interval of Thirty-three Centuries. De-
parture of Rameses for Asia. His Army. Testimony of
Tacitus, Herodotus, Strabo and the Monuments. A Bulle-
CONTENTS.
MB
tin of Victory, and a Poet Laureate of the Fourteenth Cen-
tury before our Era. The Battle of Atesh. The return of
Rameses 97
THE MONUMENTS OF E AMESES THE GREAT.
The Testimony of Herodotus, of Diodorus, and of the Bible.
Memphis and Thebes. the Great Days of Royalty. An
Artesian Well in the time of Rameses. The Land of
Gush. The Spears of Ipsamboul. The old Age of Ram-
eses. Skeletons of* Oxen and Skeletons of Kings. Darius
and the Statue of Rameses 161
APPENDIX.
L The Cushites 249
IL The Temple of Denderah 250
IIL The Ancient Bed of the Nile 252
IV. The Shepherd King Apapias and the God Sutekh 253
V. The Names of Rameses II 254
VL The linages of Ancestors 257
VIL The Army of Rameses IL the Military Caste 261
VHL The Robus 263
IX. Manners and Customs of the Egyptians 264
X. The Stele of the Temple of Khons 281
XL Chronological Canon, or Table of the Dynasties and
Kings of Egypt 287
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Barneses Mei-Amoun. From the alabaster statue in the Mu-
seum of the Louvre. (Frontispiece.) PAGB
The Pyramids and the Sphinx. . 9
Peoples known to the Egyptians 17
The Temple of Denderah (restored) 27
The Smaller Temple at Philae 39
The Temples of Philse (restored) 43
Hypostylic Hall at Karnak 55
The Avenue of Rams 71
An Egyptian Princess 75
The Interior Court of Karnak 81
The Sphinx of Eameses IL 87
Eoyal Scribes 109
Egyptian Cavalry 113
Egyptian Infantry 119
Bas-relief of Sesostris 123
Asiatic Enemies of the Egyptians 131
Barneses in Battle 139
The City of Atesh 147
Pylons and Portico of a Grand Temple , 169
View of Thebes during an Inundation 173
Colossi of Amenoph III., or Memmon 177
A Palace Temple of Thebes (bird's-eye view) 181
The Eesidence of an Egyptian of rank 185
The Kameseum. Hall of the Colossus 189
The Eameseum. Hall of the Caryatides 193
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Slaves under the Eighteenth Dynasty, making brick 197
Captives building a Temple 201
A Hypostylic Hall 203
Present Aspect of Ibrim 217
The Speos of Athor 221
The Speos of Phra 225
Interior of the Speos of Phra 229
FaQade of the Speos of Ipsamboul 233
A Mummy in its Bandages 238
Case containing a Mummy 239
Interior Coffin 239
Exterior Coffin 240
Sarcophagus 241
Royal Cartouche of Barneses Mei-Amoun 245
Hieroglyphics of the Names of Egyptian Kings 255-257
Asiatic Nomads. . , .281
EGYPT BEFORE THE
TIME OF RAMESES.
EGYPT BEFORE THE TIME OF
RAMESES.
The Basin of the Nile and its First Colonists. Kaces of Men
known in Egypt Fifteen Centuries before the Birth of Christ.
Pre-Historic Chronology of the Egyptian Empire. Menes, the
First Founder of a Dynasty. Discordance between Epigraphy
and Geology. The Irruption of the Hycsos. National Rivalries
and Wars. The Eighteenth Dynasty.
WHEN the traveller from Europe directs his
course toward the southeast angle of the Medi-
terranean, he must not expect to see the African
country reveal itself to his gaze in those majestic
aspects to which the Alpine landscapes of Liguria,
the Tyrrhenian Islands, Italy or Greece may have
accustomed him. Upon that part of the African
coast which directly confronts Asia Minor, there
is nothing of the kind ; a reddish mist, due,
no doubt, to the rarefaction of the atmosphere,
heated by the combined action of the sand and
4 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
the sun, is the first indication of the vicinity of
land that appears on the horizon : the second is
presented by the sight of a few palm-tree tops
reflected high in the air by the refraction of the
vapory mass. At length, almost at the moment
when you are about to touch it, the low, sandy
beach that sustains them is seen, like a thin, red-
dish line, a feeble boundary between the deep
green of the sea and the pale blue of the heavens.
Beyond that line, marshes whose extent has
earned them the title of lakes, and moving sands, are
forever renewing with the fertility of the soil, and
the cultivation bestowed upon it, the antique strug-
gle between the two brothers Typhon and Asiri.*
Then, behind that second zone, a wide plain,
almost level with the water and intersected by
numerous canals, extends toward the south, grad-
ually narrowing as it goes, up to the point where
these canals and the river which feeds them diverge
in a triangle toward the sea. This river is the Nile :
this plain is its Delta, a tract periodically submerged
for three months at a time, by the waters that have
formed it, " a carpeting of verdure, of flowers and
* This we think is the more exact spelling of the classic
Osiris. Asiri = Asnra, one of the oldest titles employed
by man to designate God. See E. Burnouf's Commentary
on the Yaena ; and JeanReynaud's study on Zoroaster.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 5
of rich harvests from November until March, a
cracked and burning soil, laden with a black, im-
palpable dust during the remainder of the year,"
says Amrou in a letter to the Caliph Omar.
At the apex of the Delta, the horizon ascends and
gradually contracts from the southeast toward
the west. At that point, the crests of the hills
which, all the way from the ridges of Upper Africa,
shut in the narrow valley of the Nile between their
parallel chains and shelter it from the continually
threatening invasions of the deserts that it crosses,
subside and are at length lost beneath the sand.
At the foot of the Mokattan, the last broad
slope of the Arabian chain, stretches the modern
city of Cairo. Nearly opposite, on the left bank
of the river, a salient angle of the Libyan chain
serves as a pedestal to the eternal pyramids whose
gigantic shadows the setting sun flings far over the
groves of palm trees that now cover the space where
Memphis stood.
" Placed at the entrance of the valley of the Nile,"
says Chateaubriand in Les Martyrs, " they look like
the mourning portals of Egypt, or rather like some
triumphal monument reared to Death to commemo-
rate his victories. Pharaoh is there with all his
people, and their sepulchres are around him !"
6 EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO.
H.
Six degrees of latitude separate this point from
the one where almost immediately under the
tropic circle, the Nile, traversing the granitic rocks
of Syene and of Philse, penetrates the Egyptian
territory. Beyond, toward the South, extends Nubia.
In this space of more than four hundred and fifty
miles in length, by a breadth of nearly twenty, the
brilliant glow of the sky, the freshness of the waters,
the fertility of the plain and the aridity of its borders ;
the extreme pettiness of all the traces that modern
man has left of his presence, and the colossal seal
of the antique generations, contrasts of every kind,
in a word, seem to be accumulated, to strike the
beholder with prolonged astonishment.
Here the geologist may recognize, as he does in
the Delta, a conquest won by the dry land over the
sea, a gulf filled up, since the last great astronom-
ical revolution of our globe, by deposits of clay
that the lapse of ages had heaped there after it had
been washed down, each spring, from the abrupt
slopes of Abyssinia and from those other moun-
tains, unknown until yesterday, but suspected, for
two thousand years, to be in existence, which, away
beyond the Equator, conceal the long-soug it-foi
sources of the Nile.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS A<JO. '
Here, too, the antiquary and the poet may con-
template the most gigantic efforts of plastic art
that any race has left behind it : temples, palaces,
tombs, obelisks and colossal figures half ruined and
buried beneath the sand; crypts cut out in the
solid rock ; catacombs ; cities of the dead perpetuat-
ing in the very entrails of the desert mountains,
those ruins which were the cities of the living !
a long avenue of fragments and remains dating
back to an epoch whereof history lacked the an-
nals more than twenty centuries ago, but which the
correlation of the monuments, the religious notions
and the institutions of an entire people with the
surroundings in the midst of which it grew, seem to
characterize so peculiarly that no other epoch
could comprehend or explain its fundamental mean-
ing and creative idea, much less successfully attempt
to take them for a model.
in.
IT was reserved for the generation that is dying
out to penetrate, and not in vain, the depths of
these enigmatical ruins ; to disentomb from them
the past, and to restore to it the real aspect that
8 EGYPT 3300 YEARS A.GO.
once it wore, along with a part of its lost chrono-
logy-
Thanks to the acquisitions of modern science,
for whose progress the genius and the blood
of France have helped to clear the way ; thanks to
the unhoped-for deciphering of those monumental
inscriptions through which the Egyptians of forty
centuries ago seem still to converse with the men of
our own time, the historian can at length present
to them upon their sepulchres testimony more cer-
tain and reliable than classic antiquity, in the days
of its decline, could offer in their behalf.
Although the idea of again securing the thread,
a hundred times broken, of Egyptian tradition,
must be once for all abandoned, we have it in our
power to reconstruct the most brilliant part of it
almost to perfection. The period that it covers
flourished in times which nations the most jealous of
their antiquity do not, in their authentic records,
pretend to have attained.
Henceforth, enabled to appreciate the weight of
Egypt in the balance of the world, historical criti-
cism is called upon, also, to judge of the manner in
which she has fulfilled the functions that seemed to
have been assigned to her by Providence, viz., the
protection of nascent civilization against the native
barbarism of the wandering tribes that hung around
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 11
its outskirts, and the initiation of the savage races
of the Mediterranean valley into the peaceful mys-
teries of agriculture and industry. In fine, it is
easy to make out how the empire must have per-
ished, and its colossal model have disappeared from
the Earth, on the day when humanity ceased to be
split up into a few hostile groups, separated as
much by space as by animosity ; and when the
vital energy of social communities, the exclusive
privilege, at first, of castes and classes restricted in
number, began to be distributed among all the
members of the social body.
IV.
THE lofty plateau of equatorial Africa that ex-
tends beyond the fifteenth degree of north latitude
in Abyssinia and the twelfth in the Wadai, seems to
recede, between those two extreme points, as far
southward as some distance beyond the Equator,
whence it sinks towards the North, in a vast con-
cave depression, of which the Nile occupies the low-
est part.
Issuing from the only source worthy of it, a sort
of fresh water sea covering the highest levels of this
12 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
table-land, the great African river that, to use the
expression of Herodotus, has created Egypt, descends
by a series of cataracts into the plains of the Baris,
the Djirs and the Donkas, which are dotted with
lakes and streamlets, and then into the country
where the Shillooks have taken the place of the
old Automoli or refugees.* The water sheds on its
left, pour into its tide during this journey a great
number of tributaries which are still unnamed in
history. On the other hand, the Abyssinian moun-
tain mass sends to it, on its right bank, some pow-
erful affluents of which two at least, the Abawi and
the Taccaze, were know to the earliest geographers
under the names Astapus and Astaboras.
A characteristic trait of this river, and one that
at first sight distinguishes it on the map of the
globe, is the rectilinear direction of its basin. The
30th meridian eastward of Paris, one of the three
that traverse the great sheet of water know as Lake
Nyanza, crosses one of the mouths of the Delta at
the distance of a thousand leagues from there, and
during the interval the Nile, that seems to entwine
* Herodotus gives this name to the Egyptians who aban-
doned their country, under the reign of Psammeticus, in con-
sequence of the intrusion of foreigners into public office,
and of Greek and Ionian condottieri into the ranks of the
army.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 13
itself around it like the sacred urwus around the
antique cadwxus, intersects it eight times at least
with its windings, without, in any instance, receding
more than forty leagues from it in its farthest di-
vergence.
But in other respects, it alone among the great
rivers of the world is not swollen by any affluent in
the last third of its course, which it pursues in sol-
itary grandeur for the distance of four hundred
leagues, between two deserts whose sands, cut off
from the rains of the tropics, greedily absorb its
waters without yielding it, in return, the tribute of
the feeblest rivulet or torrent.
The isolation of this portion of the basin in which
it dwelt constituted the strong point of Egyptian
society during the period of its development. With
few exceptions the migrations of tribes and races
that then wandered to the four quarters of the earth,
swept past, either above or below it. Herein lay
the secret of the form that it assumed ; of the pro-
longed existence that was accorded it, and, let us
hasten to add, of its weakness when the hour of its
downfall had arrived.
14 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
V.
ALL who have devoted any time to observation of
the territory and history of Egypt, from Herodotus
to Champollion, were under the impression that
the Nile, as it has brought soil and fertility to
Egypt, had likewise brought it men and civilization,
and that the latter descended with it from the south
to the north.
A contrary opinion prevails, at present, among
the learned in Egyptian matters. Many of them,
those especially who are somawhat under the influ-
ence of German philosophy, affirm that the earliest
settlers and earliest civilization commencad their
work in the basin of the Nile, on the north, and
that they ascended, instead of descending, the
river.
This difference of opinion is more apparent than
real, since it has reference, fundamentally, only to
the line followed by the migrations between the
point of departure and the point of arrival, and in
bath hypotheses, the primitive cradle of the Egyp-
tians and of'their instructors must be sought for in
Asia.
Among the mummies which the Egyptian cata-
combs and places of burial daily yield to our exam-
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 15
ination, modern anatomists think that they are able
to distinguish three separate classes : the first com-
prising the ancestors of the Copts properl) so-
styled, the form of whose crania recalls the shape
of the heads of the statuary and the sphinxes of
Thebes ; the second bears some analogy to the
Hindoo type, and the third seems to be akin to the
Nubian tribes, and the same savants connect it, as
well as the Copts, with the Berber race.
All who still cherish a disciple's remembrance
of the eminent men who were the preceptors, so to
speak, of those who to-day are the masters of his-
torical science, of the Yolneys, the Heerens and
the Ecksteins will, very justly, be astonished
when they miss from among the tribes set down as
the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, the Cush-
ites or Negroes who have left their indelible stamp
upon the religions notions of the people. For our
part, since we have but little faith in the expression
human races, but a great deal in the modifica-
tions of the family of man effected by the combined
action of physical and moral surroundings ; by the
influence of climate ; of the rules of health ob-
served, and the institutions maintained, and by the
emanations of soil and sun, we shall confine our-
selves to another source of information. We shall,
upon this much debated subject, question the tombs
16 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
of the Pharaohs excavated in the Libyan chain to
the westward of Thebes, during the lifetime of the
princes whose last resting-places they became.
The perfection of the adornment and the finish
of the workmanship on each of them are in propor-
tion to the duration of the reign of the guest whom
they were to receive. But upon the walls of all of
them where time had admitted the finishing stroke,
dating from the nineteenth dynasty,* the mysteri-
ous artist has carved and painted the images of the
principal fractions of the human race known in his
time.
Conducted, one and all, by Horus, the pastoral
god of the nations, they are generally arranged in
four groups corresponding with the four divisions
of the world then known. The group farthest away
from the god consists of savages of lofty stature, with
light or sandy hair, blue eyes, and straight or slightly
rounded features. Tattooed and covered with the
spoils of the auroclis and the bear, just as those late
comers in old Europe, the Gauls and the Cimbri, ap-
peared to the affrighted Greeks and Romans, in after
ages, did the ancient Pelasgi appear fifteen centuries
before the Christian Era, to the erudite and culti-
* The nineteenth only. The geographical knowledge
which these paintings pre-suppose does not appear to have
existed any earlier. This is a good point to establish.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 19
vated Egyptians. The latter called them Tamhus.
In the group that precedes them, are strikingly
observable all the characteristics of the negro type
in its most degraded varieties, and to these legend
gives the name of Nahazis.
In advance of them, again, are the representa-
tives of Asia. Their yellow and tawny complex-
ions ; their aquiline or beaked noses ; their black
beards, sharp and pointed on some, ample and
curly on others ; their costumes of varied hue and
fashion, indicate members of the Aramaean branches :
Arabs, Hebrews and Assyrians. On some walls,
Medes and lonians figure among these sons of
Shem. All of them are comprised in the general
denomination of Aamus. Lastly, standing close to
the heathen divinity, and, as it were, under his
special protection, are men of dark red skins and
tall slender figure, with gentle and regular counte-
nances, clear cut eyes, straight noses and open facial
angle, wearing their hair in plaits, and dressed in
white garments. The name of Rut-n-Bom the
germ, or the race of man with which they are
specially honored, sufficiently point out the dwellers
on the banks of the sacred river, in other words,
the Egyptians.
The typical characteristics here associated with
them, identical on all the monuments and verified
20 EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO.
upon thousands of mummies of different epochs, are
not found among the Copts, their mongrel descend-
ants. Amid the confused mixture of all the nations
that have succeeded each other in Egypt, the Copts
have retained the idiom, better than the blood, of
the old race.*
The latter, whose presence may be traced at nu-
merous points on the African continent, is met with
again, in all its original purity, in two nations
who dwell in the basin of the Nile, but at a wide
distance from each other, the Abyssinians of the
upper plains, and the Barabras of lower Nubia,
sheltered as they have been, the latter by poverty,
the former by the natural strength of their soil,
from the invasions of conquerors, and from the
current of the migrations which, in the lapse of
ages, has passed between them and isolated them,
leaving them divided and far apart, yet kindred
boughs of a parent trunk that has ceased to exist.
* Champollion's Letters on Egypt and Nubia. Larrey's
Memoirs, in the Description of Egypt. Oaillaud's Journey
to Meroe and the White Nile. Tremeaux's Journey to
Nubia, etc.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 21
VI.
SHOULD the logic of induction lead us, more than
once, in the course of this recital, to admit extracts
from Manetho among the material upon which his-
torical conclusions are based, it must not, for that
reason, be inferred that we are inclined to accord to
the remaining works of that old annalist, and espe-
cially to his lists of kings and dynasties, analogous
authority.
It is not for us to inquire whether that Egyptian
priest, entrusted with the task of collecting in the
Greek language all the national traditions stored
away among the sacerdotal archives of his country,
was or was not equal to his mission. Of the three
volumes that composed his work, a few fragments,
drowned in the compilations of later periods, and
lists of kings revised, corrected and abridged by the
monastic zeal of the early Christians, being all, un-
fortunately, that have come down to us, it would be
unjust to hold the author responsible for all the
contradictions of dates, facts and figures as well as
the double applications that these different frag-
ments contain.
But, when we consider the complete discordance
that exists between these documents of common
22 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
origin and those whence Herodotus had drawn his
facts two centuries earlier, and weigh the conflicting
views whereby they have strayed from the ancient
source that should have supplied them, and which,
surviving in our day under the name of the Old
Chronicles, gives only four hundred and forty-three
years to the fifteen earliest dynasties to which Man-
etho assigns forty or fifty centuries, we must agree
with one of the most judicious investigations of an-
tiquity, that it is improbable that an Egyptian priest
compiling with all the prejudices of his caste in a
foreign tongue, and in behalf of a king whom he
regarded as of barbarian origin, the traditions of an
expiring nationality scattered on monuments of di-
verse and often rival purport, should be specially
endowed with that spirit of criticism in whose de-
fault history relapses into legend, and which was
almost entirely wanting in the ancients.*
At the close of this work will be found a faithful
synopsis of Manetho's lists, such as they emanated
from the hands of Julius Africanus, Eusebius and
Syncellus : such, too, as Champollion and his suc-
cessors thought they could make them by correct-
ing the figures according to the monumental inscrip-
tions. We have also reserved the right to range to-
gether a certain number of facts, the synchronism
* Volney's Researches in ancient History.
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 23
of which is well-nigh certain, and may serve to estab-
lish some rallying points upon the floating canvas
of Egyptian chronology, and prepare for it a frame-
work beyond which it cannot very easily escape.
VII.
IT is not consistent with the plan of our book to
extend this chronological study any farther. Such
as it is, it must suffice the reader for a basis where-
on to form his own opinion of the matter, and to
choose between the system that would push back
into the night of ages the development of the Egyp*
tian nationality, and the one that, relying upon the
study of social facts, and upon the nature of man,
holds that the more the torch of history gains in
clearness, the more concise should chronology be-
come and ancient times approach our own.
The eternal aspiration of the human mind toward
a felicity which the present denies it, and which
it could not ask of the future, so long as it was un-
aware of its own progressive faculties, was undoubt-
edly the source of the mania that impelled all com-
munities to antedate their origin and throw it back
into a past that was all the more regretted that its
24 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
depths were the more obscure. In those days, na-
tions, as in more recent times families, gauged their
nobility not by deeds but by the duration of their
existence. Hence, for historians jealous as to the
origin of their country, arose the necessity of mul-
tiplying generations and centuries, and of ranging in
series, one after the other, successions of dynasties
and parallel epochs, along with contemporaneous
men and facts. Hence, too, for Manetho, in partic-
ular, the necessity of conforming his annals to the
fabler credited by the puerile vanity of the priestly
order, and of spreading out the real traditions of
his country in a chaos without proportion, name or
limit.
Serious history, then, cannot carry these tradi-
tions farther back than the period where they cease
to be controlled by positive synchronic data. The
first point of all is the appearance of Argus upon
the stage of the world. From astronomical data
calculated first by Bailly and Colebrooke, after-
wards adopted by Lahsen and Wilson, and finally
put beyond all doubt by Laplace, this event, which
has furnished roots to the genealogical tree of an-
cient Egypt, may go back thirty centuries before
our era, but no farther.
This opinion, we know, will be taxed as heretical
and even blasphemous by those who approach the
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 25
realm of history not in order to extract therefrom
fruitful lessons and hopes for the future, but that
they may, in the presence of dusty remains and ex-
travagant legends, give themselves up to the ec-
static admiration of an old idolatry as aimless as it
was artificial and out of date. To have Memphis
built by Menes, 5800 years before our era, upon
the filled- up bed of the Nile diverted from its
course ; to believe piously in the books of anatomy
written by Athoth, the son and successor of the
first-named dynastic founder; to unreservedly ad-
mit the authenticity of the ancestral images carried
before the kings at religious ceremonies,* and the
filiation of the three hundred and forty-five Pi-Ro-
mish mentioned by Herodotus ; to rear the Pyra-
mids of Gizeh in the time of the brothers Supphi
* At Rome, also, in many public and private ceremonies,
there were exhibited along with the images of ancestors
those of the gods to which the Roman patricians pretended
to trace their origin. Bat have modern historians ever
come to the conclusion, from the presence of the images of
Mars and Venus at the funeral rites of Julius or Martius,
that those fetiches of the primitive clans of Latium ever had
a real personal existence ? Assuredly not. Yet this is what
Egyptian investigators do in our day, in regard to Menea
and many mythical personages of ancient Egypt.
f This word is equivalent to "the man superior to all
others ;" "a brave and virtuous person ;" "an excellent
man." Herodotus. Euterpe, ch. 143.
26 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
or Clmffu, of the fourth dynasty, forty or fifty cen-
turies before Christ ; and to put back the origin of
the grand hydraulic and architectural monuments
of Fayoum fifteen hundred years anterior to Thoth-
mes III, to Seti I, to Ilameses Mei-Amoun ; to
cause the conquest of Asia, two thousand five hun-
dred years before the Saviour, by an Osymandyas
and a Sesortasen, personages of whom the heroes of
the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties would be
merely feeble imitators, all this was, for a long
time in France, and is still in Germany, a source of
pleasure even to grave adepts in science, that it
would be perilous to disturb by calm discussion.
Therefore, we shall not attempt the task, confident
as we are, that, ere long, there will become of those
mythical legends, what recently became of the series
of centuries that our fathers so generously accorded
to the temples of Esneh and Denderah centuries
which we had to reduce from sixty-four and from
thirty-eight to seventeen or eighteen at the utmost.*
* We know that this pretended antiquity was the basis
given by Dupuy to his system in his " Origin of Religious
Worship." See Appendix IL
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 29
vin.
NEVERTHELESS, we cannot close this dissertation,
which has been too far prolonged, already, for the
plan of our book, without reminding those who " do
not see what delight there is in shutting themselves
up for four thousand years with nations in their in-
fancy and tyrants in decay "* the avowal wrung by
Herodotus from the very priesthood of Memphis :
" That in the time of Menes, the first mortal King
of Egypt, the entire country below the Thebaic nome
was nothing but a marsh" But, in regard to the
philological identity of the name Menes with that
of Manu, given in the Sanscrit tongue, to the spir-
its proceeding out of Brahma and especially entrust-
ed by him with the charge of giving laws to the
Earth, this avowal leaves nothing to the name in
question and to the legends therewith connected
but the consistency of a myth symbolizing the ener-
getic force of nature in the earliest times, the same
being subsequently imported from the banks of the
Indus to those of the Nile, at an unknown period
by a method of transmission identical with that
which has borne the name of Jemshid (Yima
* Chateaubriand. Introduction to hia Journey to Ame-
rica.
30 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Tehaeto), step by step, from the valleys of the Jax-
artes and the Tarim, to the high plains of Media and
Persia. In tine, we must ascertain for our readers
the result of the researches that modern geology
has been making with regard to the beds of clay
successively deposited by the periodical inundations
of the Egyptian river, and according to which we
must not date farther back than some thirty centu-
ries before Christ the appearance of the first human
monuments on the primitive soil of Thebes.*
When a trench is dug or any excavation made in
the valley of the Nile, there is, invariably, found a
layer of vegetable earth from 20 to 24 feet in depth,
the result of the river's annual deposit. This layer
rests directly upon a bed of sea sand. Very minute
calculations led the engineers of the great French
expedition to Egypt to estimate at 126 millimetres,
or about .4134: of a foot, per century, the elevation
of this alluvial soil. At a later date, Mr. Lebas, the
engineer upon whom devolved the task of convey-
ing the obelisk of Luxor to Paris, and the English
savant Wilkinson, came to conclusions almost iden-
tical, on the same subject, by methods of research
different in character but equally exact in detail.
Eight metres, 26 j feet, the greatest thickness, divided
* Description of Egypt. Girard's Nemoire on Drainage.
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 31
by 126 millimetres, or .4134 of a foot, gives us no
more than 6350 years of days equal in length to those
of our time. Egyptian history, as Manetho and
the epigraphists understand it, is not restrained
within these narrow limits. What, then, are we to
do, unless we bring down to a date much later than
Menes and the kings who built the Pyramids, the
period when the Egyptians neither employed nor
knew any years of longer term than four months.
" The proof of this," admits one of the most ardent
champions of the high antiquity of Egypt, " is that,
later, when the year consisted of twelve months,
three seasons were designated, each comprising
four months, which were indicated hieroglyphically
by the word ter, and by a sign tliat may mean a sea-
son or a year, indifferently."*
The lower course of the old Egyptian Nile is,
therefore, geologically speaking, one of the most
recently formed of the ancient continent, and, if
geology be not a vain word, three thousand, aye,
four thousand years anterior to Rameses, five
thousand years at most, if the heaping up of the
lower deposits are to be, likewise, taken into ac-
count, the soil of Egypt was still oscillating between
the billows of the sea, and the rays of the sun. t
* Dr. H. de Brugsch. History of Egypt from the earliest
period of its existence (Leipzig, 1859, p. 26.)
t See Appendix III.
32 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Hence, the city of This or Thinis, from which
the chief of the first Egyptian dynasty was said
to have come, was not founded until long after-
ward.
IX.
NINE or ten centuries later, that is to say after a
longer lapse of time than was allotted to any nation
of classic antiquity for its birth, development and
death, the population of the valley of the Nile is
dimly seen attempting a form of civilization of
which historians make known to us only the de-
cline.
Subdivided into several groups whereof Beheni in
Nubia, Thebes, Heracleopolis, and Memphis, some-
times independent, sometimes tributary cities, but
always rivals of each other, were the chief centres,
the different populations referred to had for a com-
mon bond :
I. Their social organization, founded on the sys-
tem of castes, the result of successive immigrations
and conquests.
II. Their religous creed, arising like their castes
from the superposition of different races upon the
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 33
same soil; a synthetic derivation from the mon-
strous superstitions of the Cushites, of Semitic
Sabaism and Aryan naturalism, it presented, in the
individual manifestations of divine power, traces of
its triple origin ; but, multiplying those manifesta-
tions according to the place and the interest of the
moment, and upon each rung of the ladder that con-
nects the phenomena of Earth with the invisible
world, it could but terminate for the multitude in
the grossest fetichism, and, for thinking men,
athwart the mystery of the initiations, in those
mystical metaphysics of which the Alexandrian
school has transmitted only vague echoes to us.
III. Their language, issuing from the same com-
mingled sources, and retaining traces of its origin,
yet differing importantly from nome to nome, from
metroplis to metropolis, and particularly, from the
Thebais to the Delta, but for which, however, the
priests had, in the long run, discovered in the num-
berless array of their fetiches, animate or inanimate,
tangible symbols, a graphic representation and a
consecrated alphabet whereof every temple had the
key.
IV. A method of burial singular, but imperative-
ly required by a long and cruel experience of the
periodical inundations of the river, and of the poi-
sonous effluvia arising from the contact of the wa-
34 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
ters with the organic remains hidden beneath the
soil.
V. Their sedentary life ; industrial and agricul-
tural habits, derived, perforce, like social manners
and customs, from the imperious exigencies of their
dwelling place and the odd shape of its narrow and
elongated territorial surface ; at the same time, too,
from their jealous attachment to the soil, their
hatred and contempt for the stranger, and especially,
for the wandering tribes of the frontiers, an impure
race whose insolent rapacity and greedy herds de-
nied the earth and impaired its fertility.
What was there wanting to tribes who inhab-
ited the banks of the Nile, at this period of their
existence, to form a nation ? One of those catastro-
phes which bring communities closer together and
combine them, as they do individuals a partner-
ship of perils, struggles, sufferings, reverses and tri-
umphs gone through, side by side.
Providence brought this about.
In due time, came rushing headlong across
Western Asia, the first migration of nations where-
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 35
of history has retained the remembrance. Swollen
by all the nomadic tribes that it had gathered to
it on the way, it feU suddenly upon the valley of
the Nile.
Whence came this human avalanche ? Josephus
seems to indicate Chaldea; Yolney speaks of
Yemen. Judging by the force of its impetus and
the length of time it took for the disappearance of
its straggling remnants, by the name accursed that
it left in the memory of Egypt, and above all, by
the avenging hate that, in later times, repeatedly
impelled the Egyptian armies beyond the river
Tigris and the Armenian Taurus, we think that it
is in Central Asia, the ever-seething cauldron and
workshop whence the commissioned races and the
scourges of Divine wrath emanate, that we must
look for the starting point of the Hycsos.
Written history contains but a few words to sus-
tain our opinion, yet they are formal and charac-
teristic. " Before there were any Medes and As-
syrians," says Justinus, in Book II., chapter iii., the
Scythians, i. e., a wandering race coming from the
north, invaded Asia and held it in subjection for
fifteen hundred years."
The prophets of Thebes and of Memphis might
have exclaimed, as those of Judea had occasion to
36 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
do in later years, in the presence of an irruption oi
similar hordes.
"Behold a people cometh from the north; a
mighty nation hath arisen from the loins of the
Earth ! They carry the bow and the buckler : they
break and destroy without pity ! The noise of
their coming is like the roaring of the sea.
" They come up as a cloud ; their chariots fly as
the whirlwind. Woe unto us !
" I looked upon the Earthand it was a desert ; I
beheld the mountains, and lo they trembled, and all
the hills, and they dashed together. I beheld and
lo! there was no man, and all the birds of the
heavens were fled ; * * * all the cities were broken
down. * * * The whole land shall oe desolate.* * *
"It is a mighty nation, an ancient nation, a na-
tion whose language thou knowest not, neither uii-
derstandest what they say. * * * Their quiver is an
open sepulchre. * * * And they shall eat up thine
harvest and thy bread which thy sons and thy
daughters should eat."
* Jeremiah, ch. iv. v. and viii.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 37
XL
HEKE, the avowal of Manetho should be received
with credence ; since sapping the foundation of his
system of national antiquity, better than any other
argument, it must have sorely wounded his pride.
" In the ancient times," he says, " during the
reign of one of our kings named Timaos, the anger
of God was aroused against us, I know not why ;
and there came from the direction of the east a
multitude of men of ignoble race who, precipitating
themselves by surprise upon our country, possessed
themselves of it without a struggle and with the great-
est ease. They slew part of the chiefs and cast the
rest into chains. They burnt our cities and threw
down the temples of the gods. Their barbarity
toward the Egyptians were such that all who had
not perished by the sword were reduced with their
women and children to the hardest servitude.
"They then took one from among themselves
named Salatis, for a king, and he made his seat at
Memphis and subjected all the provinces, superior
and inferior alike, to tribute, by occupying them
with military garrisons.
" The latter he established principally in the di-
rection of the east, with a view to closing the gates
of his conquest against the future masters of Asia.
38 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
Having discovered in the Saitic nome or district to
the eastward of the Bubastic branch of the Nile, a
convenient spot called Avaris (Wara), he fortified
it, and placed within its confines and in its neigh-
borhood, two hundred and forty thousand warriors.
Every year, at harvest time, he quited Memphis
to come to that place, to superintend the harvests,
to pay the salaries and wages, to exercise the mul-
titude in warlike evolutions, and thus inspire the
vanquished and foreigners with a salutary fear.
Dying after a reign of nineteen years, he had for a
successor Beon, who was replaced by Apachnas, to
whom succeeded Apophis, then Janas, then Assis,
in all, six kings in 259 years and three months."
During this whole space of time, they never ceased
to wage a war of extermination on the Egyptian
race, and they were called the Hycsos or Shepherd
Kings, for hoc in the sacred tongue means king,
and sos in the vulgar idiom a shepherd. *
A curious document which has come down to us
from those remote times yields the support of irre-
futable testimony to Manetho's recital. There may
be read on a hieratic papyrus in the British Museum
the following inscription :
" It happened that the land of Egypt fell into the
* Extract of Manetho in Flavins Josephus, contra Appionem.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 41
hands of strangers (Aad-tus) and then there were
no native Pharaohs left in the whole country. At
that time their descendant, Ra-Sekenen, was nothing
but a hac, or chief, of Upper Egypt. The Aad-tus
held the strong city of the sun * and their king, his
majesty Apapias, resided at Ha-~War.f The whole
country was tributary to him, and brought him all
its good productions after the example of the lower
country (Lower Egypt).
"And his majesty Ra- Apapias chose the god
Sutech as his Lord, and would not be the worship-
per of any other god in the entire region, and he
built a temple to him in good imperishable stone :":
In the presence of text so specific and formal as
this, what becomes of the forty preceding centuries
of administrative and territorial unity ? What re-
mains of all that systematic scaffolding ? unless it
be the undeniable proof that the Egypt of those
days succumbed so easily, only through the ab-
sence of unitary institutions and traditions, the
inanity of her past existence as a nation.
* This designation may be applied to Thebes, as well as
to Heliopolis.
t Tliis word, which is entirely Aryan in origin, would suffice
to indicate the primitive country of the Hycsos. War, in
the Zend language, means the original enclosure built by
Jemshid. Wara or War, in Pelhvi, or old Persian, mean-
ing borough, fortified enclosure.
I See Appendix IV.
42 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Surprised amid the pre-occupations inherent
to the long infancy in which her servile educa-
tion kept her under the yoke of religious and
royal formalism ; parcelled out by the rival preten-
sions of her various tribes, her cities and her two
controlling castes ; more accustomed to luxurious
pageants, to religious chantings and processions
sweeping past from temple to temple along her
sacred river, than inured to warlike exercises and the
din of battle; better skilled in handling the hoe
that fertilizes the soil and the chisel that carves
decorations in granite for the hours of peace, than
in brandishing the bow and shield which would
have saved her in the hour of peril, Egypt fell com-
pletely prone before the Hycsos and disappeared
for a time beneath the billows of invasion.
The latter, sweeping all before it with barbarian
fury, frenzied as it was by the fanaticism of an
image-breaking creed, halted only at the limits
which nature herself had set to its easy conquest.
Those limits were the rocky mountain ranges
that a little below the Tropic, and parallel to it, ex-
tended from the Libyan desert to the shores of the
Red Sea.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
XII.
A DEEP ravine with steep declivities ; a river in it
studded with a labyrinth of small islands and sharp
projections of dark granite constantly embrowned
by the dash and the foam of the waves, marks the
passage of this mountain chain across the Nile, and
constitutes the phenomenon of the cataracts of
Syene, so strangely exaggerated by classic antiquity,
A little higher up than these rapids rises the Island
of Philse where Egyptian mythology placed the
tomb of Asiri, and where, in fact, seemed to termi-
nate, with Egypt itself, the furrow of fertility which
the river opens from that point to the sea.
Upon both banks of the Nile, enormous masses
of brown freestone and granite, of sombre and cal-
cined hue, confused and upturned at their base,
rise, like the chosen scene where Nephtis and Ty-
phon, the gods of the desert and of chaos, had tri-
umphed, and shutting in the horizon of the myste-
rious isle on all sides, contrast, in the most startling
manner, with the white pylons and the regular col-
onnades that cover its surface.
From this point to the Island of Say in Middle
Nubia, this heap of rocks stamped with the seal of
desolation, ascends the valley of the Nile, and en-
closes it with its abrupt acclivities, in such manner as
46 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
to leave it only the aspect of a mountain torrent
which at certain points is but a stone's throw
across. A steep path painfully winds along its
rugged slopes, and below, at their foot, are seen
some narrow furrows of barley and dourah, with oc-
casional clumps of date trees indicating a thin strip
of cultivable land, which, a hundred times intercept-
ed by jutting ridges of rock rarely attains more
than 355 feet in breadth, and supports hardly one
hundred thousand inhabitants, upon a surface of
more than one hundred and fifty leagues in longi-
tudinal extent.
XIII.
YET, this poor country, this region of stones, as the
Arabs call it, in their energetic idiom, the Batn or
Dar-el-kazhar, was the salvation of rich and fertile
Egypt, in the days of Ilycsos rule. It gave refuge
behind its granite frontier to all the vanquished
who had been fortunate enough to escape the
sword or the yoke of the invaders. It offered them,
in the jagged recesses of its rocks, temples for their
gods, palaces for their princes, and rallying places
for their warriors. AH drank in from its rudo hos-
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 47
pitality the energy that they lacked, and little by lit-
tle, it changed to thoughts of vengeance and the hope
of return, the regrets they had bestowed on their
lost country. The very insufficiency of the Nubian
soil to support their number, augmented as it was
each day by fresh fugitives, strengthened their reso-
lution. In order to subsist, they were forced to
venture upon marauding expeditions into the coun-
try that they had not been able to defend. They
had to creep stealthily toward it, through the wil-
derness, and, exposed to constant peril, to snatch
away by dint of arms, a portion of the fruits and
harvests that it lavished on the stranger. This
Bedouin existence perforce accustomed the military
caste to danger, and they were recruited by all who
had a heart or an arm at the service of their desti-
tution or their resentment. Partial successes de-
veloped courage and confidence ; allies came to the
Egyptians, undoubtedly, from the depths of Ethio-
pia, and, very probably, from the coasts of India ;
their expeditions, as they multiplied, became more
regular in form and assumed a more general char-
acter; their warfare, from being clandestine and
fitful became open and continual, until, finally,
it took permanent foothold in all the passes that
descend from the south into Egypt, recovering
ground, step by step, from the Hycsos. Holy
48 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
work ! in which many generations were consumed
and which was transmitted from father to son, for
more than two hundred years.
The chieftains who, by reason of their descent
from the ancient kings, or through services ren-
dered to the common cause, were summoned to di-
rect this great struggle, shared all its vicissitudes.
At first mere chiefs of bands roving among the
rocks and over the deserts, then sovereigns of
Nubia and the Thebais, victory and national con-
sent made them, successively, masters of the
Heptanomis and of the lower course of the great
river. There are many names, now the subject of
dispute between authorities skilled in Egyptian
lore who refer them back to still earlier times, which
we think belong to the period and range that we
are just describing. At length, when Ahmes, the
founder of the eighteenth dynasty, uniting all the
native forces of the Nile valley, entered Memphis
in triumph, drove all the strangers beyond the river
to their entrenched camp at Wara, and afterwards
expelled them even from that ; and when Amenoph,
his son, completed their explusion from the terri-
tory of Kemi by fresh victories on the roads lead-
ing to Asia, these princes may have thought of re-
constructing only the past, but, in reality, they set
up a totally unknown order of things and ideas.
EGYPT 3300 TEAKS AGO. 49
Upon the ruins of the old principalities of Thebes,
Memphis and Fayoum, trampled out by the feet of
the Hycsos, worn away and jumbled together by
two centuries and a half of battles, they laid what
was the real foundation of Egyptian nationality,
the true groundwork of a new empire whose strong
and stable unity was long to remain without a
counterpart in the future, as it was without one in
the past.
XIV.
SUCH were, for Egypt, the final consequences of
her first struggle with the men of the north. His-
tory, which faithfully credits nations with the tears
and the blood that similar crises cost them, and
which does not always have the opportunity, as it
has in this instance, to correctly estimate their
prolific results, must record these with eagerness.
It is to this period of general revival, that we
must also refer a fact, the date of which the an-
cients, failing to discover its origin in the historical
ages of Egypt, have pushed back into the night of
time, so as to do honor to Menes, a veritable
sphinx to whom they committed the keeping of all
50 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
the problems that they deemed impenetrable. We
allude to the reform which substituted the warrior
for the priestly caste, at the head of the hierarchy,
and which withdrew the kings from the shadow of
the temples and the tutelage of the clerical order,
to centralize all power in them, and to make them,
for a long series of generations, the representatives
of all the energies of society.
In the system of the old legendary writers this
reform can be explained only by some violent revul-
sion, or by a usurpation of rights revolting against
rights acquired. In our opinion, it proceeded from
the grand onward sweep of human affairs ; it was
ordained by the inflexible logic of events. The lat-
ter, in creating new duties, naturally displaced the
rights of various classes, and, naturally also, be-
stowed the greatest share of privilege upon those
who undertook the greatest share of responsibility.
Such were the men who, in the presence of the vic-
torious stranger, covered with their bosoms and
their swords the last asylums of their families and
their gods, and repurchased a country for them at
the price of their blood. Such men were preferred
to those who, seeking refuge in the depths of their
sanctuaries, had offered nothing to the common
cause but sterile appeals and vain speculations on
the enigma of the world.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 51
XV.
THE vital sap so superabundant in all nations in
a state of social renovation, was with the Egyptians
when they had become, in their turn, the conquer-
ors of the Hycsos, in proportion to the time and the
sacrifices that victory had cost them.
It developed, afterward, for centuries, from gener-
ation to generation, revealing itself, on all sides in
striking displays; at home by gigantic achieve-
ments of art or of public utility ; outside, by inces-
sant effort to expand in the most opposite directions
the boundaries of the Empire, until the latter, at
length, overflowed upon the world in civilizing col-
onies and in warlike expeditions which by ideas or
by the sword, by trade or conquest, fertilized the
soil where other races were to spring up and grow
great in their turn.
If we are to believe the testimony deduced from
the monuments, most of the sovereigns who, at
that time, reigned in Egypt, had to contend not
only against the barbarians of the north and of the
south ; to repel fresh attacks of the Hycsos, who
could not make up their minds to abandon forever
the grand prize that their fathers had won, and to
hurl them back into the heart of Asia ; but they
52 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
had, also, to restore the majesty of the altar and
the throne by re-erecting the temples and palaces
destroyed by time and invasion, and to re-open by
agriculture and by canals that should distribute
the fertilizing properties of the Nile, sources of
Egypt's territorial wealth.
" In no country," wrote the last and the greatest
of Egypt's conquerors, on this subject, " in no coun-
try has the administration so much influence over
public prosperity. If the administration be good, the
canals are well dug, well kept, the rules for irriga-
tion are properly executed, the flooding is more
complete. If the administration be bad, corrupt or
weak, the principles of the system by which the
country is watered are violated by seditions fac-
tions or by the interests of particular persons or
localities ; the canals are choked with mud : the
dykes are poorly kept, and the entire nation suffers.
Other governments have no control over the snow or
the rain that falls in this province or in that, but in
Egypt, it has a direct influence over the extent
and character of the Nile inundations, which take
the place of the showers and drifts that fall else-
where." *
Numerous attestations deduced from public
* Napoleon. Memoirs Dictated at St. Helena : Campaigii
in Egypt.
EGYPT 3300 TEARS AGO. 53
monuments, and even from the tombs of private
persons, agree in bearing witness that the sons and
grandsons of Ahmes did not fall short of their mis-
sion as warriors and administrators.
Among them, three Amenophs and four Thoth-
mes held sway in Nubia and Syria. Thothmes III.,
the most celebrated of all, extended the frontiers of
the empire as far as the borders of the Tigris to the
eastern limits of Mesopotamia.
It is to this period of success and development
that Egypt owed an acquisition more valuable for
her, and more durable, too, than the annexation of
territories distant from her natural frontiers. This
was the possession of Hie, Iwrse and its healthful
domestication on the borders of the Nile.* Strange
as it may appear in view of the extreme antiquity
ascribed to Egyptian civilization, it cannot be de-
nied that the noUest conquest that man ever made re-
mained unknown in Egypt until the seventeenth
century preceding our era ; and this fact alone
suffices to annihilate any system of history tending
to assign to Egypt any activity beyond the borders
of the valley of the Nile earlier than the eighteenth
dynasty.
"The lists of the contributions exacted by
* Dr. H. Brugscli. History of Egypt p. 25.
54 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Thothmes III.," says the Vicomte de Bouge, in his
Memoir on the Campaigns of Sesostris, " at the
close of fourteen expeditions directed chiefly against
the Assyrians and the Phoenicians, reveal to us
Nineveh and Babylon, Asshur and Shiuar bringing
in their tribute as vassals to Egypt. They are ac-
companied by other nations more powerful at that
tune in Asia than they, but whose names have
shone less conspicuously in succeeding ages. Dur-
ing time of peace, the Pharaohs exercised their su-
premacy regularly in those countries. Leaving all
authority in the hands of the national chiefs, they
contented themselves with levying an annual tribute.
They had, nevertheless, seized the best domains of
the vanquished princes, and had appropriated the
revenues either to the use of different temples, or to
their personal treasury. Fortresses commanded
the chief approaches to Asia; governors at the
head of strong garrisons watched the conquered
provinces ; and when a royal reign lasted for some
length of time, the king himself was seen coming to
Asia, either peaceably to receive tribute, or angrily
to chastise rebels by one of those terrible forays
which, in the East, seem to be the very essence of
war.
" The concluding re'gns of the eighteenth dynasty
wore agitated by usurpations and religious dissen-
fiyoostyiic nail of Earmk 'the Central $)ve restored
according to ttic Egyptian Commission).
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 57
sious. Favored by these disorders, Asia shook off
the yoke of the Pharaohs, aiid Seti I., the Sethos of
historians, found the revolt pushed on as far as the
gates of Lower Egypt, so that he had to begin over
again the conquest of Syria. The victories that
signalized the first years of his reign appear to have
re-established the Egyptian supremacy over the
Asiatic provinces, for some length of time.
The grand hypos tylic hall of Karnak, and the
magnificent tomb discovered by Belzoni, are majes-
tic monuments, that sufficently attest the tranquillity
of the country, the wealth of the monarch, and the
high perfection of the arts under the reign of Se-
thos.
But the glory of these names and of these deeds
is founded, for posterity, upon the still more daz-
zling splendor of the second period of that grand
Egyptian cycle which, until our day, was entirely
comprised in the legend of Sesostris, but which
is henceforth eclipsed by the reign, the name,
the monuments of Kameses the Great.
RAMESES II.,
OR,
MEI-AMOUN THE GREAT.
RAMESES II.
Rameses II. Mei-Aruoun the Great, otherwise known as Sesos-
tris. The Names of Rarneses ; his Childhood ; his Youth ; his
Coronation. A Consecration Thirty-three Centuries Ago. So-
cial Rank in Egypt, and the People, at that Period of its His-
tory.
THE name of the man whose place we are seeking
to fix, and whose active part in history we would
make plain to our readers recalls the exaltation of
human personal position to the highest limits of
pride and power, and the most excessive concentra-
tion, in one individual, of all the vital forces of a
people that historical annals record. Yet, the
name and the individual referred to, had remained
enveloped in doubt and uncertainty until our day.
In vain have the chisel and the pencil perpetuat-
ed both upon the finest monuments in the valley of
the Nile. In vain in the basreliefs that adorn
62 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
the sanctuaries of the temples and the halls of the
palaces, whereof the great Barneses was the found-
er, has the hyperbole of flattery been pushed so far
as to cause the likeness of the supreme Egyptian
deity, Ammon-Ba, to appear among those of the
monarch. Ammon bestows the empire of the
world, both sea and land, upon him, " his well-be-
loved child, the guardian sun of justice, Barneses
II." Along with the image .of this heathen god, is
seen that of Sethos, the god of war, " who promises
him a secure and upright life upon the throne of
the sun, forever." With these are also found the
portraits of Maut (primeval and prolific Night), and
of Isis and Anuke, who dandle Ammon on their
knees, refresh this singular bantling with their
milk, and endow him, by virtue of this divine nour-
ishment, with " a future prolonged for endless
periods of panegyrics."* .... Strange con-
fusion and extinction of all things here below !
through causes of which the present condition of
society permits us to get only a glimpse,t the name
and personality of Barneses Mei-Amoun became
* Panegyrics were the grand state occasions when the
fame of the princes and the glory of the gods of Egypt
were publicly extolled and celebrated with processions,
chan tings and festivities.
t See Appendix V.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 63
mixed up, gradually, with those of his father and of
two of his descendants. Greece, that grand voice
which fills the trumpet of fame, knew nothing of
him excepting the mythical remembrances that
emerged from this confusion, and which Manetho,
the only annalist of his native country, could not or
would not clear away. The written history of an-
tiquity contains but one exact mention of him, and
this it owes to Tacitus ; and it has required all the
progress of modern science applied to the researches
of the past to enable some of our contemporaries to
exhume the real name of the Egyptian hero, and
the true part that belongs to him in the furrow
which the old land has worn through the years of
antiquity. This they accomplished at last, when
thirty centuries had rolled away, by disputing with
the sands of the desert, the monumental legends of
Nubia and the Thebais.
Yet, after all, it matters but little to the history
of humanity whether Barneses II. was a member
of the eighteenth dynasty, as Champollion thought,
or with his grandfather Rameses I., his father Seti
I., and Menephta and Seti II., his son and grand-
son, made up the nineteenth dynasty, as some
of the successors of the above-named writer hold.
What interests us, at our great distance in time
from Barneses, is to form some idea of the political
64 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
and social condition of the world when he was sum-
moned to agitate it with the sceptre and the sword :
and also to comprehend the elements that had pre-
pared the state of things of which he was, as it
were, the consequence, and also those the germs of
which he left behind him. We have already, in our
former book, endeavored to set forth the first ; and
in the following pages we shall strive to complete
oui % review by extending it to the second.
n.
SON of Seti I. and of the Queen Twea the
second wife of that prince Barneses Mei-Amoun
must have been born during the quarter of a cen^
tury that preceded the year 1400 before our Era.
The long duration attributed to his reign, and the
place that Moses held after him in chronoogy, do
not admit of the date of this event falling any later.
It was, says Diodorus, the occasion of an act magni-
ficent and truly royal. The recital that the Greek
historian has transmitted to us on this subject is
tinged with the marvellous, as his readers may re-
member, the dream in which a god announces to Pha-
raoh that the empire of the Earth is promised to tho
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 65
child just born ; the means conceived by the happy
father to prepare his son for this high destiny ; all
the young Egyptians born on the same day with
the little prince, gratuitously furnished with nurses
and teachers, subsequently brought together around
him and with him subjected to a complete educa-
tion and discipline, made common to them all, so
that he might, one day, find in the companions and
the studies of his childhood, instruments devoted
to him and worthy of his designs as a man and his
glory as a King. Then, Arabia and Libya con-
quered; their deserts traversed and their wild
beasts subdued, formed, so to speak, the climax of
this masculine education, and, as it were, the first
essay in the field made by the prince and his young
brethren in arms.
If, in the monuments discovered, nothing has
been found to confirm the legendary part of this
narrative, at the same tune nothing has been found
to invalidate it. History sees no objection there to
her admitting that Seti was the fortunate adversary
of the Asiatic nations, and that, in one of his tri-
umphs, he was enabled to display the images and
captives taken from forty-eight of them whom he
had subdued, the prisoners saluting him and ap-
plauding him as ike son of the Sun, the Lard of dia-
dems, the favorite of Phtah, the good Deity, sovereign
66 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
of two worlds and eternal as the Sun itself!" That such
a man as this should have dreamed still greater
things for his son, and that he should have surround-
ed the boy's education with all sorts of precau-
tions and all the incitements that could favor his
designs, when, at that age of humanity, he had
power exalted to the height of divine control at his
disposal, is not, by any means, incredible.
Still more : the monuments show us Barneses as-
sociated with the crown from his earliest infancy,
and receiving the homage of the Egyptians while
in his cradle. " You were yet in the egg," his sub-
jects say to him, " and you had the honors of a
prince. WJiile still a very little child, wearing plaited
hair, no monument was made without you At
the age of ten, you commanded armies" This is
an inscription of the year III. In fact, there are
portraits of Barneses in a child's dress ; the double
crown is on his head, and he still carries his finger
at his mouth, the symbol adopted to designate in-
fancy.*
* At the Museum of the Louvre in Paris may be seen in
case C, in the Historic Hall, on the first floor, two baa
reliefs representing Rameses IL In one of them the prince
is already a youth : he is standing near a lion, with a bow in
his hand ; but he still wears the plait of hair, the distin-
guishing emblem that was laid aside on attaining manhood.
In the other fragment, Barneses IL, still a mere infant, is
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. G7
m.
THE monuments, while they are silent with regard
to the termination of Seti's reign, and his death,
have transmitted to us details concerning the con-
secration ceremonial of the Pharaohs of his dynasty,
which enable us, without making any great archaic
efforts, to retrace the scene of his son's coronation.
At the moment when the existing generation is
dying out around us, while it looks on with coldness
and mockery at the last essays of monarchy now
dilapidated by time and deprived of credit by the
progress of ideas, it may not prove uninteresting,
perhaps, to see what it was at the outset in the ages
of monarchic fervor and popularity. Nothing, it
seems to us, enables one to appreciate the distance
traversed so perfectly, as to reascend the stream
of time, in fancy, to the period when society was in
its youth, and the masses of men, well or ill con-
ducted during their passage through life, rolled
along inert, from the cradle to the tomb, in blind
nevertheless King, as the urceus, viper or nazha, which sur-
mounts his crest, and the titles carved around him, bear wit-
ness. He wears the long dangling tress, and carries his fiii-
ger at liis mouth, as a token of childhood.
68 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
adoration of their guides ; when human thought,
shut up in the depths of the temples, had no other
perception of the divine ideal than in objects
of surprise and terror the brutalities of mat-
ter in nature, and in humanity, the tyranny of
Kings. When, after the 72 days of mourning pre-
scribed by the funereal regulations, the corpse of Seti
had been deposited in the magnificent tomb which
he had prepared for himself in tJie holy mountain of
the West* beside the last resting places of the other
terrestrial gods, his predecessors ; and when, by vir-
tue of other consecrated rites, the moment for the
establishment of his son Mei-Amoun upon the
throne had been decided and proclaimed, Thebes,
the city of Ammon, saw flowing in to her all the
* This tomb is that discovered and described by Belzoni.
The Museum of the Louvre has a superb fragment of it, in
No. 7 of the bas reliefs.
Most of the tombs of the valley of Biban-el-Moluk have
remained unfinished, because, upon the death of the sov-
ereigns who caused them to be excavated, the work ceased
and the corpse was deposited and sealed in its resting-place
in the condition in which the sepulchre happened to be at
that moment.
There was no exception to this rule for any but Seti,
Barneses Hikpun, and his son Barneses IV. The tomb
of the great Mei-Amoun, destroyed, undoubtedly, by -the
Persians, has never been pointed out. See Lenorumnd,
Muste des Anliq. egypt. , p. 20.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 69
functionaries of the two first classes who by right
or through duty had a marked place in the pane-
gyrics, or great public ceremonies.
The entrenched camps with which, in emulation
of the ancient Hycsos camp of Wara, the Pha-
raohs of the eighteenth dynasty had covered their
capital on both banks of the Nile, received, with-
in their spacious enclosures, the deputations of the
army sent from all the cantonments that maintained
on the uttermost frontiers the integrity of the em-
pire or the submission of the newly subjugated
tribes. The rich dwellings which the great vassals
had to keep up around the palace of their sovereign
became peopled with (Eris, intendants of the
Egyptian nomes, or governors of conquered territo-
ries. These brought with them, mingling in their
showy retinues, and laden with rich tribute, the
chiefs of distant countries of the south who had
been reduced to subordinate rank or positively
conquered and made vassals. Many of the latter
also were from the western region of the oases, or
the shores of the Red Sea, and the Asiatic con-
fines. In a word, the mysterious dwellings
of the great Theban triad ; the innermost re-
treats of the sacerdotal colleges were thrown open
to give hospitality to the eponymic divinities of all
the local religions of the valley of the Nile, which,
70 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
borne in pomp along the river by their prophets,
their pontiffs and their choristers, came to intercede
respectfully with Ammon-Ra, their lord and fatJter,
in favor of the mortal who was to become Hue, guard-
ian Sun of justice among men.
IV.
ON the appointed day, so soon as the sun rising
above the horizon of the Arabic chain, had gilded
the opposite summits of the Libyan mountains,
sanctified by the presence of the royal necropolis or
city of the dead, and floods of sparkling light began
to ripple along the masses of sandstone and mar-
ble, red porphyry and black or rose-colored granite
which, reared in gigantic temples ; hewn in the vast
pylons ; carved in obelisks ; sculptured in sphinxes
and colossi, seemed, at Thebes more than in the
rest of Egypt, like the material envelope of the
empire's mysterious soul, a tremendous clamor of
human voices and instruments of music, rising from
the bosom of the city, saluted the appearance of
the Pelasgic god and gave the signal for the com-
mencement of the day's ceremonies. All who were
to take part in the latter hastened to range them-
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 73
selves along the approaches to the palace where
Mei-Amoun had passed, in seclusion, the period of
his mourning. Under the main portico stood a
magnificent naos * upon supports of eoony carved
in symbolical caryatides. It contained a throne of
ivory, the base of which represented in gilded relief
the sphinx, the emblem of wisdom united with
strength, and the lion, the symbol of courage.
Of this throne the colored statues of Tmei, the god-
dess of justice, and of Hor-Moei, the sun-god
of truth, with outstretched arms and expanded
wings, formed the background and sustained the
dais. The king, his forehead encircled with a sim-
ple band surmounted with a golden urceus set with
jewels, having seated himself in this kind of case or
shrine, twelve Oeris or warrior chieftains, the first
in the empire in dignity and birth, uplift'ed him on
their shoulders. Other great personages then took
hold, each one of some particular part of the sup-
ports and steps leading to the throne, and all
moved off together, preceded by an immense
crowd, to the temple of Ammon.
The march was opened by a band of vocal and
instrumental music in which figured the rudimen-
tary types of the flutes, trumpets and drums still in
* A car or chair of state.
74: EGYPT 3300 TEAES AGO.
use. The members of the king's household and
the functionaries of his home establishment came
next, and immediately after them, the royal naos
surrounded by attendants, by fanbearers and young
children of the sacerdotal caste carrying the sceptre,
the arms and the other insignia of the monarch, be-
fore whom the first of the princes of the blood and
the son of the high priest burned incense in golden
censers.
The Queen Nofre-Ari, the youthful companion of
Mei-Ainoun when he too was young, robed like
him in rich and almost transparent tissues, of which
India even then possessed the secret, and like him
displaying about her black waving masses of hair,
and in the many ornaments of her neck, her arms and
her naked feet all that was most precious among the
pearls and corals of the Erythrean seas and the em-
eralds of the Troglodytes, accumulated during the
lapse of centuries in the treasury of the Pharaohs,
followed her spouse in an elegant palanquin, the
elastic hammock of which, constructed of fine flax
and gold, seemed suspended to stalks of rose-colored
and blue lotus. Above it, a broad dais woven of
the rainbow-hued spoils of the most brilliant birds
of the Tropics, threw forth coruscating, ever-chang-
ing shades and tints.
Behind the Queen came on, in two parallel lines,
An Egyptian Princess in her palanquin (according to Wilkinson).
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 77
the princes and princesses of the blood, the vassal
kings, and the dignitaries of the priesthood and
the army. Detachments of the latter, regularly
drawn up in line by platoons under their respective
officers and standards, terminated the procession
which even the long avenue of sphinxes and rams,*
leading from the banks of the river to the main en-
trance of the temple, could not wholly contain.
IN front of the sacred edifice of which the granite
depths resounded with solemn and mysterious
murmurs, the military music ceased, and the royal
pageant halted.
The brazen gates, placed between two large py-
lons, gave passage to a long succession of priestly
choirs advancing to the presence of Mei-Amoun ;
these were the local ecclesiastics of all the great
temples in the Empire, and all the peculiar creeds
of different places which time, conquest and the
policy of legislators had made part of the system
subordinate to Theban divinity. They brought the
* Colossal stone statues of rams were used like the
sphinxes to adorn the avenues of the temples.
78 EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO.
benedictions of their gods to the new son whom
Ammon on that day adopted ; nay more, they
brought the gods themselves. Baris or barks sus-
tained on the shoulders of groups of eighteen or
twenty-four priests, according to the importance of
the divine personage represented on the prow or
the poop of each one of them, contained small naos
or tabernacles carefully veiled with a thick tissue
of silver and gold. There, hidden from the sight
of every profane eye, were supposed to be stationed
those renowned gods descended from the Vedic
Aria upon the land of Kemi at successive and un-
known epochs, viz : Ph-t-ah or Agny, meaning fire;
Ph-Ra ;* Jom ; t Sevek ; $ Asiri ; and those oth-
er local conceptions, half monster and half myth,
which the pontiff teachers of Ethiopia had engraft-
ed upon the coarse fetiches of the Cushites, the
original inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, and
which were all associated in divine families or
households analogous to the great initial triad of
Thebes.
As each bari filed along in its place in the proces-
* An equivalent of Re, Ra, Ri, La, El, the Sun.
f Om, Aom, Homa, the god of the Cup.
I Siva, g Asura. These were the Indian deities and titles
with which the analogy of the Egyptian gods uiid goddess-
es is thus indicated.
tfGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 79
sion, in front of Mei-Amoun the priests who carried
it mingled praises of the King in their hymns, at-
tributing to him all the virtues of which their par-
ticular deity was, more especially, the type, the in-
spiration or the symbol : some extolled his sense of
justice and his magnanimity; others his hatred
of falsehood and his love for the good ; these sang
laudations of his wisdom and his prudence and
their control over his passions, and those his
strength and courage in overcoming his enemies.*
VL
THE tabernacles of the gods were followed by
statuettes of the royal ancestors and predecessors
of Mei-Amounf also carried and interpreted by
priests. Then, in the midst of another sacerdotal
group, the white bull, the living emblem of Ammon-
Ba, covered with flowers and enveloped in a cloud
of incense, appeared on the threshold of the tem-
ple, as though to invite the new Aroeri to cross it.
Then, descending from his elevated naos, Mei-
Amoun on foot proceeded through the interior
* See Diodorus, Book L, chapter 70.
t See Appendix VL
80 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
porticoes and the high colonnades of the hyposty-
lic halls toward the sanctuary where, upon an altar
of porphyry, sat the grand Theban triad. The
priestly choirs, the sacred baris, the images of the
ancestors, the royal family and the chiefs of the
(Eris only went in thither with him.
On his arrival, the high priest presiding over the
pageant, caused the pontiffs officiating under him
to intone the chant consecrated to the Divine light
revealing itself to mortals. Standing erect at the
altar, he there received the King, who, ascending to
a place beside him, aided him in completing the
sacrifice ordained for the occasion ; poured out
consecrated libations before Ammon ; burned the
prescribed incense, amid a shower of flowers, and
prostrated himself while pronouncing these words,
at once so haughty and so simple :
"I come to my father Ammon at the end of the
procession of gods which he forever admits to his
presence."
During this time, these same gods and their ter-
restrial retinue wheeled solemnly around the altar,
mingling with the homage that they laid at the feet
of the King of Heaven, as they passed, the wishes
which they expressed for the welfare of the new
King of the Earth. The strange import of these
antique litanies may be conjectured from the
llliilillil
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 83
following fragments which, have been preserved for
us by the mural inscriptions :
THE GODDESS MAUT.
(The grand-motJier and companion of Ammon.)
" I come to render homage to the sovereign of the
gods, Ammon-Ra, the governing and controlling
head of the land of Kemi, in order that he may
grant long years to his son King Barneses who
loves him."
THE GOD KHONS.
(Son of Maut and Amman.)
" We approach thee, to serve thy Majesty, Oh,
sovereign lord, Ammon-Ra ! grant a pure and safe-
ly established life to thy son who loves thee, Ra-
meses, the lord of the Earth."
THE QUEEN NOFKE-ARI.
" And I, the royal spouse, the all-powerful mis-
tress of the world, I bring my homage, also, to Am-
mon-Ra, King of gods and men. My heart rejoices
in thy loving kindness ; I leap with delight under
the weight of thy favors. Oh thou who dost es-
tablish the seat of thy power in the dwelling
of thy son, the lord of the world, Rameses, accord to
him a firmly established and pure life. May his
years be counted by periods of panegyrics."
Si KGYPT 3300 YE AHS AGO.
VII.
To tins series of prayers and intercessions, Am-
mon-Ra replies by the mouth of his high-priest
speaking to Mei-Amoun : " My well-beloved son,
receive from me a pure life and long days to pass
upon the throne of Kemi. Thou shalt joyously con-
trol the world ; Thoth. has written down beside thy
name all the royal attributes of the celestial Aroeri.
The South and the North, the East and the West,
shah 1 be brought under thy yoke ; all the good gates
shall be opened to thee. I give the evil races to
thee to trample beneath thy sandals. The force of
thy arm shall triumph in all parts of the world,
and the terror of thy name shall stamp itself deeply
on the heaps of the barbarians. I give to thee,
oh ! my son, the scythe of battle to restrain the
foreign nations, and to sever the heads of the im-
pure. Take the whip and the sceptre to rule the
land of Kemi. By my orders, the lady of the
celestial palace has prepared for thee, the diadem
of the sun. May this helmet remain upon thy fore-
head, where I place it, forever !...."
At these words, Barneses having seized the crown
upon the altar to place it on his head, the high
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 85
priest stretched forth his pastoral staff toward the
four quarters of the globe, and while the assistant
pontiffs set at liberty four living geese which, kept
in reserve until that moment, represented the genii
of the four cardinal points of the compass, he ex-
claimed :
"Amset, Hapi Dawu-Mutef and Keba-snuf,
Go ye toward
The South, the North, the "West, the East,
And tell the gods of those regions
That Horus, the son of Isis and of Asiri,
Has put the Pshent upon his forehead,
That King Rameses has put on the Pshent!"
His head encircled with this mystic tiara, Mei-
Amoun had, then, to cut with his own hands a stalk
of wheat which had grown within one of the enclos-
ures of the temple, and to place it upon the altar
of Ammon. This offering and the reading aloud
by the high-priest of certain sealed rules relative
to the duties and conduct of kings terminated
the religious ceremony. Barneses was then escort-
ed with the white bull and the images of the ances-
tral Kings, back to the exterior limits of the temple,
and, amid a cloud of incense and flowers, regained
the naos that was awaiting him in front of the
pylons ; then, preceded and followed with accla-
mations, oaths of fidelity and universal expressions
88 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
of interest and regard, he advanced slowly to liis
palace, between two rows of sphinxes whose granite
heads, that day adorned with ornaments and a roy-
al or divine head-dress which determined the symbol-
ical expression of each of them, seemed to become
animated with the breath of human enthusiasm and
rise up to salute the new sovereign as he passed by.
Such were the grand official pageants of Egypt
fourteen centuries before Jesus Christ.
The Egyptian monarchs celebrated, during their
entire reign, the anniversary of their coronation, by
a ceremony of the same kind, less imposing no
doubt than the first, but invested, by the events of
the year, with more or less interest and distinction.
Yin.
WERE the question to be asked, " What was the
position of the people in these festivals?" and if
that expression meant the plebeian throng of
artisans, mechanics, laborers and soldiers, who to-
day make up the living force of a nation, we should
have to reply that the people did not exist in the
Egypt of the Rameses, and that the day of their
appearance and rise had not yet dawned upon any
human community.
The Sphinx of Rameses II. (according to the Sphinx at the Louvre).
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 89
Below these two classes, one of which was the ed-
ucating and the other the conquering caste in the val-
ley of the Nile, there were crowds of artisans, of
workers-by-hand who, under the direction of chiefs
belonging to the religious castes, cut and built ma-
sonry ; melted and worked with the metals ; spun flax
and byssus ; in fine, toiled at the trades assigned to
them, from the cradle, by law or by descent. There
were farmers who tilled the lands given to them by
the King, the priests or the warriors who were the
sole owners of the soil of the empire. Upon the
borders of the deserts, around the oases and the
broad levels of the Delta, lived herdsmen who
transmitted, from father to son, the business of
raising and guarding the flocks and herds of the
royal ecclesiastical or military domains. But these
shepherds, these laborers, these artisans, excluded
by law from public affairs ; deprived, also, of the
right to bear arms and of plying various trades at
once ; liable to be condemned, for each offence, to
imprisonment, flues or the bastinado, that great re-
source of the stationary -East, could not be looked
upon as citizens, by modern eyes. Indeed, they do
not appear to have differed much, upon the land of
Kemi, from the Sudras of India to whom the
sovereign Master of things has assigned but one
90 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
office, viz., that of serving tJie upper classes witlioui
depredating tlieir merits.*
Below them, again, were the slaves who had
been purchased in the markets or captured in war.
IX.
THIS condition of things, which is not denied by
the boldest admirers of the past history of Egypt,
and is attested by the unanimous reports transmit-
ted to us twenty centuries or more ago, by the
sagacious observers of antiquity, who went from all
the centres of civilization in those days, to the
borders of the Nile to study a civilization older
than their own this state of things, we say, was
discredited by one of our contemporaries as re-
markable for the universality of his learning as for
the vivacity of his scientific decisions. Arguing
from th e text of of some funereal inscriptions, in
relation to the civil or private life of the ancient
dwellers on the borders of the Nile, Mr. J. J. Am-
pere has felt authorized to declare that there never
were castes among them.t
* Manava Shastra. Book First.
t In reference to castes in Egypt, see Revue des Deux
Mondes, 15 Sept., 184=8.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 91
Without disputing the validity of the documents
adduced by that savant ; without inquiring whether
they did not belong to periods of perturbation in
Egyptian history, to times of trouble and strife, like
those which preceded the eighteenth and followed
the nineteenth dynasty; and especially to ages of
decline, like those in which the last Kameses
passed away, we shall confine ourselves to ascer-
taining, with Mr. Ampere himself, that if, at certain
epochs of Egyptian history, the functions of judges,
engineers, architects, chiefs of nomes and districts,
seem to have been exercised indifferently by priests,
or by warriors, and if by chance there was so lit-
tle demarcation between these two aristocratic
classes, the same person could, sometimes, accu-
mulate sacerdotal, military and civil offices, the
line of separation between them and the inferior
classes always remained so broad that nothing
could obliterate it not even death. For the
honors paid to ancestors in the tombs, the admis-
sion of their names into the funereal inscriptions do
not appear to have ever ceased to be the exclusive
privilege of members of the priesthood and the
army.
It would be easy to prove that of the two terms
of this proposition, the last affirms much more de-
cidedly than the former one, the existence of
92 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
castes. However that may be, we shall leave to
any one who has studied in good faith, the nature
of man and the affiliation of his social conceptions,
the task of deciding whether deductions drawn
from hieroglyphics, or from a doubtful interpreta-
tion and uncertain dates, are sufficient to refute the
formal assertions of Herodotus, Plato, Strabo and
Diodorus, who affirmed nothing concerning the in-
stitutions of Egypt without having seen them with
their own eyes and touched them with their own
hands.
For our part, even in the absence of such testimo-
ny, the contemplation of the valley of the Nile,
which has been for 3000 years impotent in the pro-
duction of a people, the sight of the degraded race
that now occupies the homes of Thothmes III., of
Seti and of Mei-Amouu, would have sufficed to con-
vince us that this long hereditary lethargy, this
stupor that has fallen there upon the growth of that
progress of which Providence has planted the seed
in the bosom of every region and every man, can
be attributed to nothing but the violence of a rigid
system of castes, too profoundly rooted into the
land by conquest, and too long carried to extremes
by the tyranny of established institutions.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 93
X.
THIS point of historical criticism put aside, and
we have touched npon it for no other purpose than
to show how far one may go astray, in allowing
oneself to be guided by epigraphy alone, we have
to admit that the social ideal of our time could not
have been that of ancient days. Civilization could
not sustain itself, at the outset, and go on with its
development excepting under the shelter of a
rigorous system. There must be a coercive princi-
ple, material as well as moral, to compel wandering
tribes, whether rude shepherds or savage hunters, to
become a nation. The institution of castes promptly
attained this end, in Egypt and India ; but those who
promoted it could not foresee how far their system,
carried out to its ultimate results, would compro-
mise the future. To the man of those days much
less than to him who lives in our own time, was it
given to uplift his gaze far enough toward the ze-
nith to catch glimpes of the light reflected there
from the dawn that still lingers below the horizen.
He made up for this by creating according to the
extent of his visual range and his requirements,
a type of absolute monarchy in which the despot
could be, up to a certain point, less the tyrant than
the father of his subjects ; wherein each class and
94 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
each profession had its allotted sphere ; wherein a
religious dedication to the task, extending its influ-
ence from father to son, age after age, confined
each individual within a circle of cares and duties
amid which he was to live and die ; wherein, finally ,
at the cost of beholding all human dignities concen-
trated upon a few heads, and the free will of each
one sacrificed to the rigid mechanism of the law,
the arts of peace, agricultural abundance, and com-
mercial wealth seemed to diffuse themselves over
the whole social body, at the hands of the sovereign
lite the blessings that descend from Divinity itself.*
Some of the reigns of the eighteenth and nine-
teenth Egyptian dynasties, and, particularly, that
of Barneses II., seem to have attained the limits of
this ideal type.
* See Heeren " On tlie Commerce and Policy of the An-
cients." Vol. I.
THE CAMPAIGNS OF RAMESES
THE GREAT.
Situation, Wealth and Population of Egypt, on the Accession of
Barneses. The plausible Motives for his Expeditions.- -Two
Razzias at an Interval of Thirty-three Centuries. Departure of
Rameses for Asia. His Army. Testimony of Tacitus, Herodo-
tus, Strabo and the Monuments. A Bulletin of Victory, and a
Poet Laureate of the Fourteenth Century before our Era. -The
Battle of Atesh. The return of Rameses.
WHEN Rameses ascended the throne, more than
two centuri-es had elapsed since the expulsion of
the Hjcsos. The almost uninterrupted succession
of a decade of memorable reigns had raised the in-
ternal prosperity of the empire, as well as its influ-
ence outside, to the highest pitch. The advan-
tages resulting naturally from a long period of
security ; an administration equal to the needs of
the epoch ; the multiplication and good manage-
ment of . the canals, those peaceful conquerors of
arable land won by them from the desert, were
98 EYGPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
daily augmenting the chances of existence al-
ready so easy on a fertile soil and beneath a smil-
ing sky. And, while all these causes combined
were making the agricultural and industrial classes
of Egypt the most laborious and the most compact
population then existing, on the other hand, the
military castes, trained to warfare from generation
to generation by a series of successful distant expe-
ditions, presented in its real effective force, and in
that alleged in the exaggerated figures handed
down to us by the writers of Greece and Rome,*
the most martial, the best armed and the most for-
midable mass of combatants known to those an-
cient times.
Such elements of greatness, taken together with
the youth of Mei-Amoun and his natural ardor, ex-
cited, as it was, in the highest degree by his first
triumphs in war, and by the example of his father,
ren ler it needless for us to search, with the legend-
ary historians, in the oracles of the gods or the in-
terpretation of dreams, the motives of his ambition
and his conquests.
* We cannot admit the 700,000 armed men spoken of in the
recital of the Theban priests to Germanicus (See the Annals of
Tacitus) any more readily than the picked force of 640,000
reported by Diodorus. Either of these accounts would make
the numbers of the entire caste amount to from two to three mil-
lions of individuals, and that is excessive. See Appendix VII.
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 99
Moreover, at that time, great disorders were agi-
tating the East, and the noise of their distant tu-
mults could not but re-echo as far as the borders
of the Nile. In the great irruptions that Seti I. had
guided toward Central Asia, he had repeatedly
come into collision with the confederation of the
Khetas, in whose title seem to He concealedjboth that
of the old Hycsos and the more modern name of the
Scythians. From the gorges of the Taurus and the
Lebanon mountains, where they had established then-
citadels and the centre of their power, these ancient
wandering races presided over the great movements
of the Oriental populations which the religious or so-
cial convulsions of Upper Asia were incessantly de-
taching from the antique Aryan throne, and contin-
ually recruited their numbers with fresh swarms.
There was reason to apprehend that, ere long, all
these torrents of men would foUow the descending
channel worn for them by former migrations, and,
like them, pour down and inundate Egypt. To'
await their attacks was dangerous. It was better
to hasten to meet them and to hurl them back to-
ward the sources whence they came, or, at all
events, to break the force of the stream, and scatter
its ramifications over the earth. Thus, no doubt,
thought Mei-Amoun, and from the modern point of
view, we cannot but agree with him.
100 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
According to Diodorus, whom, we think, we can
take for our guide in this matter, Mei-Amoun pre-
pared himself for his great enterprise by such acts
as were most likely to give his popularity deep root
in the minds of his subjects. In order to feel as-
sured of the fidelity of those whom he was to leave
behind him on the soil of his country, and to make
certain of the indomitable perseverance of the com-
panions in arms selected to follow him, he strove to
link them to his destiny by the ties of interest and
of gratitude. Affable and cordial with all, he dis-
played a liberality equal to his unlimited power.
He overwhelmed some with gifts ; to others he dis-
tributed lands, while to still others, again, he remit-
ted the fines and penalties they had incurred, and
gave liberty to all prisoners of State, and all who
had been incarcerated for debt, of whom the mul-
titude then overstocked the jails.*
The population and area of the Empire increas-
ing from reign to reign, and necessitating a new
territorial division, he fixed the number of nom.es or
provincial governments! at thirty-six, and placed
at the head of each, to preside over the local ad-
* See Diodorus, Book I.
f M. Brougsch, who very naturally, will have it that this
administrative division of Egypt dates back to a period
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 101
ministration and the collection of taxes, men whose
reputation or hereditary attachment to his dynasty
recommended them the most to his confidence.
One of the first results of this scheme having been
an exact census of the military caste, he was en-
abled to raise from its midst an army composed of
men who were the most robust and the most capa-
ble of supporting the long fatigues and perilous
chances of distant or unknown climes. He gave
them for leaders the playmates of his childhood
and the comrades who had shared the exploits* of
his early youth. All of them, like himself, full of
ardor and ambition and inured to warlike exercises,
were bound to each other by fraternal ties of which
the common bond was an absolute devotion to
Mei-Amoun, who, at the expense of the treasures
amassed by his ancestors, and the regions annexed
to the domains of the crown by previous con-
quests, had provided for their pecuniary welfare
sufficiently to leave them free from any other anxi-
eties than those of war.*
much anterior to Rameses, raises the number of nomes to
forty-four, equally divided between Upper and Lower Egypt.
He confesses, however, that concerning many nomes of this
latter part of the Egyptian territory, he still felt some lin-
gering uncertainty, the solution of which demands fresh re-
searches and discoveries.
* Diodorus Book I, cli. LIV.
102 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
H.
AFTEB having thus regulated the organization of
the interior, and of the army, Mei-Amoun had still to
provide for the security of the frontiers during the
whole period of his projected absence, on his distant
expeditions. On the western side, his possession of
the oases, maintained by fortified posts, and
the immensity of the desert, dispelled the idea of all
serious danger. On the north, the carefully secured
and guarded locks and barriers that closed the
seven mouths of the Nile, sufficed to prevent the
rovers of the Mediterranean from penetrating into
Egypt, and the natives from leaving it. The Isth-
mus of Suez, the point of both departure and ar-
rival for all the Asiatic routes, and partly covered
by the Bitter Lakes which, at the epoch in question,
every high tide still put in communication with the
neighboring gulf, was moreover sheltered from all
attack by the numerous military establishments that
were to serve as a base for the warlike operations
toward the East that Barneses was planning. There
remained the districts on the south, ever exposed to
the descents of the savage hordes belonging to
the bad race of Gush, and the Sea- Weed Lake, the
way to which the monsoons of the Indian Ocean
had taught to the Pelasgians from the banks of the
EGYPT 3000 TEARS AGO. 103
Indus and the Nerbudda. Always in quest of ad-
venture and pillage, as their brethren of the ^Egeean
Sea and of the open Ocean were to be, after
an interval of many centuries, they frequently
came thither to gather booty, sometimes as traders
but oftener as pirates.
To remedy this double inconvenience, two things
seemed necessary to Mei-Amoun ; the subjuga-
tion of Upper Ethiopia and the establishment of a
military marine which, riding supreme on the wa-
ters of the Arabian Gulf, should, in maintaining
the security of the two shores, guarantee the com-
munications that trade and the working of the cop-
per mines on the peninsula of Tor had kept open
between- them for several centuries. These two en-
terprises were interlinked, because the soil of Egypt
and of Lower Nubia lacking timber fit for naval
construction, it was necessary to seek that mate-
rial upon the broad plateaux watered by the tribu-
taries of the great river above Meroe.
Consequently, he penetrated those regions and
traversed them in every direction, at the head of a
continually victorious army, exacting tribute in
gold, ivory, ebony, and building-timber from all the
Ethiopian tribes extending from the Nile to the Bed
Sea, who, until then, had escaped the Egypti/in yoke.
104 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Then, when the shipyards established in the ports
subsequently named Adulis, Berenice and Leucos *
had given him the first long vessels constructed by
Egyptian hands, t he embarked upon the waters of
the Arabian Gulf, and subdued its islands, and its
shores as far as its southern extremity. The port
of Mosselycus, situated not far from Cape Guarda-
fui, and six hundred leagues from Thebes was, accord-
ing to Pliny and Strabo, the extreme point reached
by Barneses in that direction.:}:
The mementoes of these events, precursors as
they were of others on a grander scale, may still bo
deciphered on the ruins that cover Mount Barkal
to the south of Nubia, as also among the broken re-
mains of the Bameseum or great temple of Thebes,
on the right bank. In one of the bas relief pictures
of the speos of Ipsamboul, even the triumphal
entry of Barneses into his capital, on his return
from the regions of the south, has been made out.
Helmet on head, encased in a coat of mail, and
erect in a superb chariot drawn by four magnifi-
cently caparisoned horses, the Egyptian hero, amid
the acclamations of his soldiers, is driving before
* Herodotus, Book II.
t DioJorus, Book I, ch. Iv.
J Strabo, Book LVI. Pliuy Book VL
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 105
him a throng of negro and Leuco-Ethiopean cap-
tives with which he is going to do homage to the
Theban triad.
What meaning must we assign to this terrible
expression ? Egyptian scholars refuse to see any-
thing in it but the right which war gave to the mas-
ter over his slave, to the victor over the vanquished,
without admitting that this right was ever extended
so far as to cover human sacrifice. But those who
do not, without some restrictions, ascribe very pure
or very exalted light to the Egyptian priesthood ;
those who remember what pitiless hatred to the
foreigner Egypt bequeathed to ah 1 the races that
inherited either her blood or her doctrines, and
what unworthy trophies the warriors of the Nile
sought out with frantic eagerness on the battle-field ;
all, in fine, who acknowledge the fifteenth, sixteenth
and twenty-second verses of the first book of Ex-
odus to be historical documents, will, no doubt,
think with us that, in the period we describe, the
prisoner of war had but feeble guarantees against
bloody oblation, and the treatment meted out to
the condemned, in the philanthropy of the priests
of Egypt, the generosity of her warriors and the
gentleness or the clemency of her kings.*
* A carved pillar of the reign of Amenoph IL , lately found
in the temple of Amada in Nubia, unfortunately brings
in.
ONE of the bas-reliefs of Beit-el- Wally shows us
Mei-Amoun seated in a brilliant naos and causing a
long procession, the immediate result of his victories
in Ethiopia, to file before him. There are groups
of prisoners, among whom figures an Amenoph, the
chief ruler of that part of the land of Gush which
the inscriptions designate as bad ; tables and side-
boards covered with gold-dust and golden rings ;
logs of ebony wood, elephant tusks, ostrich feathers
and leopard skins all those articles of luxury and
rarity, in fine, which the nations of the north and
the east have never ceased, since the time in ques-
terrible confirmation to the hints we have expressed. Its
precise language is this : " After having vanquished his ene-
mies, and enlarged the frontiers of Egypt, his Holiness
Amenoph II.) came back from the country of the Upper
Ruteni (Upper Assyria) and filled the heart of his father,
Aui:iion-Ra, with joy ; for he had, with his own war-club,
massacred seven kings captured in the city of Tasliis and
led in chains on board of his vessel. Six of these kings, af-
ter having had their hands cut off, were hung opposite to
the pylons of Thebes.
"As for the other enemy, he was conveyed by water to
Nubia, and hung to the wall of the city of Napata, to dis-
play to the evil raws of Cvsh the victories won by his
majesty over all the nations of the world, and the manner in
\vhich he chastises them."
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 107
tion, to oear away from Africa, that mother of gold,
of slaves and of monsters who se deplorably prolific
yield four thousand years of pillage have not been
able to exhaust.
The names of some of the tribes subjugated in
this expedition have tlieir analogous equivalents on
the modern map of Abyssinia and Sennaar ; un-
fortunately, this similarity of names is not the only
one that may be traced between those whom Mei-
Amoun conquered, and their descendants living in
our own day.
It is well known that the present chiefs of the
Eastern Soudan country annually organize murder-
ing and robbing expeditions ghrazias or razzias as
they term them against the inhabitants of the
higher levels of the central table-land of Africa.
Then, too, the narratives that modern travellers give
of these acts of plunder sound like a faithful transla-
tion of the legends explaining one of the bas-reliefs
of Beit-el-Wally destined to transmit to posterity
the remembrance of a raid directed by Barneses
against the Nahazis, the ancestors of the negroes of
the present day.
According to the hieroglyphic recital legible
there, "The barbarians, utterly routed, are flying
in consternation before the Egyptian hero, who is
pursuing them in a chariot, at furious speed, and
108 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
reaches them with his arrows even in the shelter of
their forests. Men, women, children and grey-
beards, terrified at the sight of the carnage, are
vainly endeavoring to escape extermination, and to
find a refuge in retreats that they share with the
wild beasts."*
In connection with this picture, read another
description sketched but yesterday, nearly on the
same spot, and in which the descendants of the
same hostile races figure :
" The Abyssinian army had furiously pursued the
wretched tribe of Soddo-Gallas, and their horsemen
had soon overtaken a crowd of old men, women
and children unable to escape. The sight of these
unfortunate people, far from awaking in them that
sentiment of compassion so natural to us when we
behold helpless feebleness, only served to excite
their brutal instinct for bloodshed. Some of them
came back with their bleeding trophies paraded in
the most indecent manner, and vaunted their ex-
ploits in obscene recitals; others brought with
them the wives and daughters of the helpless
wretches whom they had massacred or mutilated.
It was but one long wail of grief and despair.
* Cliampollion's Letters written from Egypt and Nubia.
Cherubini's Nubia. Firmin Didot.
EGYPT 3300 TEAKS AGO. Ill
When the army pressed forward in the direction of
a thicket where the Gallas, it was supposed, had
taken refuge, I withdrew, so as not to witness the
slaughter of the poor creatures who, to escape the
j&velins hurled at them, were clambering up into
the trees. There they were shot like sparrows, and
thither, also, came the king, who would not have
missed a humming-bird, at blank range, to bring
down a miserable fugitive from the covert of the
branches where he had tried to hide himself."*
Between these two narratives thirty-three centu-
ries had elapsed, sweeping away the Pharaohs
and their empire, along with the nations that re-
placed them on the stage of the world and the gods
that dethroned their gods. All the races who
owned submission to Horus, the divine shepherd of
men, have, turn by turn, seized and borne the
sceptre of civilization and renewed the face of the
Earth. The Nahazis form the sole exception.
Cast outside of the track of the great migrations ;
fastened to a harsh and enervating soil, under a sky
of brass, they remained motionless, in their barbar-
ism, their ignorance, and their native weakness and
terror ; having no other relations with the remain-
ing members of the great family than such as the
* Clias. Lefevre's Journey to Abyssinia, vol. ii., pp. 245, 246.
112 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
wild animals of their forests hold with the hunter,
they have for five thousand years paid to them tri-
bute of flesh and blood, and seen the bones of their
children scattered to all the four quarters of the
globe, along the roads that lead to every slave
mart. Gloomy fate ! unjustifiable in every age, but
especially so in ours, when civilization, grown up
and triumphant, no longer needs, as it did in the
time of the Barneses, to secure its cradle against
the assaults of barbarism, and has ceased to be, for
any nation, a privileged deposit, the jealous safe-
keeping of which implies, as the first of social du-
ties, hatred, war and oppression for the stranger.
IV.
THE preceding facts must have fully occupied the
first two years of the reign of Mei-Amoun, and it
was probably only toward the beginning of the third
that, having provided for all that the accomplish-
ment of his vast designs demanded, and having
confided the government of Egypt to the Queen,
assisted by a council of regency, he set in move-
ment for the conquest of Asia the masses which he
had accumulated with that intent on the borders
of the Isthmus.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 115
If the monuments have not placed it in our pow-
er to correct the assertions of the ancients with re-
gard to the numerical strength of that army, they
at least leave us in the way to compensate for the
silence that they have maintained with regard to
the material of which it was composed.
The cavalry of our modern armies was represent-
ed in it, as it continued to be for a long time after-
ward by squadrons of war-chariots manned by
the flower of the CEris.* The rest of the military
caste furnished the hoplites or troops of the line on
foot, who, protected by a cuirass and shielded by
a buckler, used the lance, the sword and the battle-
axe in combat, and manoeuvred, according to pre-
scribed rules, eight or ten men deep. Then, there
was the light infantry, whose duty it was to recon-
noitre and clear the roads, to skirmish in the ad-
vanced guard, and to cover, with its cloud of archers
and slingers, the wings of the army and the inter-
vals between the chariots. It probably recruited
among the auxiliary tribes on the frontiers, and
from the Ethopian allies its numerous soldiers
* The number of these chariot teams, each consisting of
two horses at least, indicates clearly the importance and the
degree of development which the business of raising and
training that noble race of animals had assumed in the few
generations that had elapsed since their introduction on the
borders of the Nile.
116 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
who, armed with all the projectile weapons known
at that period, held also in reserve for hand to hand
struggles that terrible battle scythe or sickle, the
murderous use of which has been perpetuated to
this day in Africa, among the Abyssinians and the
Gallas, and in Asia, among the Ghoorkas of the
Himalayas and of the Western Ghauts.
All these troops performed their evolutions to
the sound of the trumpet and the drum, under the
banners oi their respective chiefs ; but above all
these special and subordinate symbols, there rose
at the extremity of a tall and strong staff, the en-
sign of the Empire, aD glittering with the splendor
of pure and massive gold. It consisted of a ram's
head surmounted with the solar disk, the double
symbol of Ammon-Ea leading his worshippers
against the hostile races. Borne along on a mag-
nificent chariot, which had to be kept close to that
of the sovereign, under all circumstances, this ven-
erated emblem, indicated to the gaze of all, on
the march, and in actual battle, the centre of the
army and the presence of its leader, and when in
camp, the position of the royal pavilion.
V.
FBOM the borders of the Nile to those of the Ti-
gris, Barneses could follow routes upon which near-
ly all his predecessors, dating from Thothmes I., had
left some land-marks. Since the opulent Pentapo-
lis of the Jordan had sunk in the bituminous gulf
of the Dead Sea, the most compact centres of per-
manent population, existing between Egypt and
upper Asia, were the maritime establishments which
the Cushites of Canaan, driven from the shores of
the Erythrean gulfs by convulsions of the soil, had
founded upon the Syrian coast ; the fortified cities
which the Khetas had built between the Orontes
and the Euphrates, and, lastly, Babel in the land of
Shinar, where a celebrated temple of the Sun and
a great navigable river, attracted caravans and flo-
tillas of pilgrims and traders from all directions.
To the eastward of the Naharain country Naha-
raina-Kah on the Ipsamboul inscriptions, mean-
ing Mesopotamia, rise the mountainous regions,
that, at a later period, were to form the nu-
cleus of the empires of Semiramis and Cyrus.
Here, for Barneses, the realm of the unknown began,
and an entire new world opened before him, in
which he, undoubtedly, had no other guide than the
118 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
instinctive hatred against the men of the North-
east that animated his army, and the fugitive cur-
rents of the tribes and races with which he camo
into collision as he passed on.
Nevertheless, one may infer from the narrations
on this subject which the ancients have left to us,
separating them from the exaggerations credited
by Diodorus, that the march of the Egyptian con-
queror, at first directed eastward, touched, perhaps,
on the Hindoo Koosh and JBactrian country, and then
diverging toward the north, turned back again by
a long elliptical curve and debouched upon the
European shores of the Propontis. Thus, Barneses
II. after having left the imprint of his feet upon the
rocks of Cape Guardafui, could, after an interval of
some years, cause images of himself to be graven
on the mythical terraces of the Indian Parnassus,
and appear in the semblance of a fearful and un-
known god to the savages inhabiting the shores
of the Thracian Bosphorus. We must run down
along the lists of chronology more than ten centu-
ries in order to again find in the son of Philip so
indefatigable a promoter of the mixture of races,
and the diffusion of ideas.
When Germanicus, one of the latest heroes of
antique society in its decline, for whom Rome wept
bitterly and whom Tacitus extolled, repaired to the
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 121
East where a premature death awaited him, he vis-
ited the vast remains of Thebes in sober medita-
tion, and, having asked one of the priests then pre-
sent, a living relic in the midst of so many ruins,
the meaning of the sacred characters that covered
the edifices still standing, the latter replied while
he interpreted the inscriptions, that the King Ba-
rneses, at the head of an army of 700,000 men, had
subjugated Libya and Ethiopia, the country of the
Medes and Persians, Bactria and Scythia ; that he
had brought under the yoke of his empire, the
countries inhabited by the Syrians and the Arme-
nians, Cappadocia, which is near to them, and all
hither Asia from the Sea of Bithynia to that of Ly-
cia.*. ,
VI.
HERODOTUS, who preceded Gerrnanicus by more
than 450 years on the borders of the Nile, and Ta-
citus by at least five centuries in history, likewise
reports, in accordance with the statement of the
priests, that Sesostris (Barneses II.), after the sub-
* See the Annals ot Tacitus, Book II., cliap. lx.
122 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
jugation of Ethiopia, marched with a numerous
army to the conquest of Asia, and subdued all the
nations he encountered on the way, taking care,
after each victory, to erect landmarks upon which
inscriptions narrated the details of the combat,
the name of his country and his own
Thus traversing the continent, he passed from Asia
into Europe, and subdued the Thracians and Scyth-
ians ; " but I do not think," adds the historian,
" that he penetrated any farther in that direction,
for, although we find among the last named nations
the trophies that he set up, none are discovered be-
yond their confines."
" Retracing his steps, he halted on the banks of
the Phasis ; but I do not make out clearly whether
it was voluntarily that he left a part of his army
there to colonize the country ; or whether detach-
ments of his soldiers, fatigued and exhausted by
their long marches, settled there in spite of
him
" However that may be, it appears positive that
the Colchians are of Egyptian origin. I suspected
this fact; others had mentioned it to me, and I
wished to make certain of it for myself. I can affirm
that the two nations have retained remembrances
of each other, which are much more vivid, however,
among the Colchians than among the Egyptians.
Bass-Relief of Sesostris near Sardis, from a photograph.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 125
. . . These nations both have a black skin
and woolly hair . . . practise circumcision ;
live in the same manner; cultivate and work flax
in the same style ; in fine, speak the same language.*
Herodotus adds that most of the monuments which
Sesostris had caused to be set up in commemora-
tion of his victories had already ceased to exist, in
his day ; but that he had, with his own eyes, seen
as many as three, which have been found in our
time, at the places pointed out ; one in Syrian
Palestine and the other two in Ionia, on the roads
from Ephesus to Phocaea and from Smyrna to
Sardis. "Each one of these, carved in relief on a Avail
of rock, represents a warrior five cubits in height,
holding a.javelin in his right hand, and in his left
a bow. The rest of his equipment is equally
Egyptian and Ethiopian. On his breast, he bears
an inscription in sacred characters, to this purport :
" It is I who have conquered this country by the strength
of my arm"*
Strabo, whose birth in Asia Minor and long
journeys in the East gave him the opportunity to
verify or correct with his own eyesight the asser-
tions of the father of history, declares that the
routes followed by Eameses-Sesostris had been dofr-
* Herodotus, Book IL, chaps. 102, 103, 104, 105.
126 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
ted with commemorative columns, inscriptions, bas-
reliefs and temples.*
The great historical pages of Ipsamboul, Luxor
and Karnak confirm in most of their details, with-
out invalidating any, the preceding attestations of
the two great historians of Greece and Home, and
of the erudite geographer of Amasia ; only that one
must not expect to find in these monumental in-
scriptions the ethnical data of the nations and em-
pires enumerated in the text of those writers. The
ethnography of the days of Barneses transmitted
but very few names to those of the Hellenic and
Roman epochs. If appellations like Luki and
Naharain may be easily translated in them by
" Lycians " and " Mesopotamia," the wandering
tribes of Arabia figure there only as the children
of the red soil : the Rotenians hold the place after-
ward occupied by the Assyrians ; Sengar is the
name of the country of Babel, and in the regions
where the empires of Media and Persia were to
be reared, the Remeni, the Moshaushs and the
Robus f range themselves along from north to
south, between the Caspian Sea and the Ocean.
Then, farther on, beyond that zone, in the vanguard
* Strabo. Book XVII.
t See Appendix VIII.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 127
of the East, the offensive designation of the plague
ofli/ieta marks out upon an immense space not lim-
ited toward the north, the numberless and warlike
nomadic hordes which, since the days of the Hyc-
sos, had supplied the most implacable enemies
known to the warriors of the borders of the Nile.
It is not without some emotion that the historian
records these names, effaced so many centuries ago
from the memory of mankind ; but especially is it
not without profound interest that, amid these for-
gotten generations, which however took part, ac-
cording to their gifts and opportunities, in the hu-
naanitary task of their period, he is enabled to
ascertain the presence of the ancestors of a people
who, after having long held the sceptre of antique civ-
ilization, have arisen before our eyes from the tomb
iu which the ages had buried them, to claim a
place among the modern nations. It will be un-
derstood that we are here referring to the louni, evi-
dently identical with the Javans of the Hebrew
books, and the Yavanas of the Hindoos, whose
tribes, scattered and floating about over Western
Asia after their expulsion from Ariawarta, their
original country, undoubtedly owed to their inva-
sion by Barneses Mei-Amoun, to their struggles
with that conqueror and their flight before his vic-
torious armies, their concentration in the region
128 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
surrounding the .ZEgean Sea, and thereby, too, the
germ of their long subsequent history.
This double fact of an ancient antagonism in the
heart of Asia, between the forefathers of the Greeks
and the warriors of the Nile, and of the alliance of
the former with the ancestors of the Medes and
Persians, would no doubt have awakened singular
incredulity among the contemporaries of Themisto-
cles or Plato. Nevertheless, it has been repeatedly
affirmed by Champollion, who, in the inscriptions at
Kamak and in the Rameseum existing side by side,
with the names of barbarous nations, in northern
costumes, with shaven heads or their hair raised in
a single lock or wisp like that of the " Ked Skins "
of America or the Mongols of Asia, declares that
he read the title of these louni whose blue eyes and
golden hair* Homer was to celebrate some ages
later.
* This version of the illustrious Egyptian scholar is sus-
tained by Messrs. Birch andLepsius, who think that they have
again come across the same name of a nation which they
spell Ya-bu-na in the inscriptions attributed -by them to the
12th and 13th dynasties.
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 129
VII.
FOE Champollion, the Khetas were Scythians ;
but M. de Rouge, followed by all the Egyptian
scholars of the present day, considers them 110 other
than the Chets or Hittites of the Bible, whose power-
ful confederation comprised, in the time of Rameses,
a portion of Mesopotamia and the whole north of
Syria on the two slopes of the Lebanon.
Whoever coincides with, the ideas that we have
advanced in the preceding pages, in reference to
the Scythians of Justimis and T. Pompeius, will
consider the difference of opinion existing, on this
point, between the founder of Egyptian research
and his worthiest successor, as reducing itself to
a mere ethnical question, the same thing being
transcribed in two different idioms.
A formidable revolt of the Asiatic tribes sum-
moned Rameses into the midst of their encamp-
ments in the fifth year of his reign. In following
the steps of the conqueror thither, we have uner-
ring guides. The historical pictures dedicated to
this campaign adorn a great number of monuments ;
rthey moreover comprised the first bulletin of vic-
tory that history has picked up. Besides, M. de-
Rouge has analyzed or translated them, here and
130 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
there, with his usual penetration, in a special paper
from which we borrow the following passages :
" While studying the battles represented in these
mural paintings, says the learned and conscientious
philologist, my attention was attracted by a singu-
lar episode in which the personal valor of the King
seems to have extricated him from great peril:
hence, too, it is repeated, as though by emulation, in
the paintings of all the temples. Twice given in
the Bameseum, it is also found at Luxor, at Ipsam-
boul and at Beit-el-Wally. In addition to the
bulletin of the campaign reproduced by these bas-
reliefs, a manuscript which Champollion has made
famous in science, the papyrus of Sallier, now be-
longing to the British Museum, has preserved for
us the greater part of a poem composed at the very
period of the battle by a writer of the court of Ba-
rneses named Penta-ur. Champollion appears to
have copied only a few lines of this manuscript :
nevertheless, his great knowledge of the Egyptian
texts, revealed to him, as by instinct, the extremely
interesting character of this document. He recog-
nized in it the characteristics of a historical poem,
and gathered from it, at the outset, the names of
the hostile tribes in league with the Prince of
Kheta. But, neither Champollion nor his succes-
^rs had discerned the real theme of this epic frag-
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 133
ment, to wit : the great peril to which Kameses was
exposed, when separated from his army and at-
tacked, with his feeble escort, by a picked force
consisting of twenty-five hundred chariots. This
is the characteristic trait that enabled me to recog-
nize the same incident carved on all the temples.
The poem of Pen-ta-ur was esteemed by his con-
temporaries, for it had the distinguished honor to
be carved upon one of the walls of Karnak, which
it completely covered. It is too much defaced, at
the present day, to serve for the completion of the
manuscript ; but the number of the columns form-
erly filled with hieroglyphics leads us to conjecture
tha at least the first third part of the poem is
lacking.
The historian may fill this deficiency, to some ex-
tent, by the aid of the official bulletins of the cam-
paign, which the pictures of Ipsamboul and the
Ilameseum have preserved almost intact ; they will
explain to us by what stratagem the hostile leader
had succeeded in cutting off the Pharaoh and his
retinue from the bulk of his army.
But I must first give notice that we are not as
yet able to exactly determine the locality of the oc-
currence. The tribes of Mesopotamia figure with
those of Syria in the confederation commanded by
the Prince of Kheta ; the city of Atesh, near which
134 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
the fight took place, was the strongest post in the
control of those tribes ; the Egyptian armies moved
via the north of Syria to reach the country in ques^
tion, and the city was washed by a river called
the Aranta. This name naturally recalls that of the
Orontes, the only river of importance in Syria ; yet
this is all that we can say, at present, with regard to
the position of a place that underwent several sieges,
beheld bloody battles fought under its walls, and
seems to have been the culminating point of the
earliest struggles made, in those primitive times,
for the mastery of the world."
"Such are the facts that stand forth from the
story of the campaign as it is found carved at Ib-
samboul and in the Ilameseum.
" In the fifth year of his reign, on the ninth day
of the eleventh month, (Epiphi,) Rameses was in
Asia with his army, marching against the insurgent
tribes commanded by the prince of Kheta. The
king was advancing to the southward of the city,
but he lacked information concerning the position
of the hostile army, when some Bedouins came in '
to offer their services, and told him that the prince
of Kheta, intimidated by the Egyptian advance, had
retired toward the south, in the direction of the
Khirab country. But these rovers were emissaries
of the foe, specially entrusted with the task of mis-
leading the Egyptians by their false reports. The
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 135
confederates had really massed their forces secretly
to the northward of Atesh. Barneses, thus de-
ceived, moved to the northwestward of that city,
and drew near to the enemy. At this juncture, his
scouts brought in to him two other Kheta spies, who,
after being severely bastinadoed, confessed that they
had been sent to examine the position of the Egyp-
tian army, and that aU the confederate forces were
concentrated behind the city of Atesh watching
the movements of the Pharaoh for an opportunity
to attack him at advantage.
" Barneses caUs his generals together ; repri-
mands them sternly for their lack of vigilance, and
informs them that the Prince of the Khetas, use-
lessly pursued toward the south, by the Egyptian
army, is there under the walls of Atesh ready to
precipitate himself upon them. The generals ac-
knowledge their delinquency, and that of the leaders
of the scouts, who had obtained no information
concerning the enemy's movements. An officer is
then despatched in hot haste, to the main body of
the army which is pursuing its march to the south-
ward, thus uncovering the position of the king
more and more.
"While this council of war is being held, the
Prince of Kheta causes his troops to advance rap-
idly to the southward of Atesh, and long before the
136 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
Egyptian army has time to retrace its steps, the lit-
tle band of followers and attendants who accom-
pany the king is dispersed, and Barneses finds him
self surrounded by the hostile chariots.' 1 *
It is into the midst of this critical phase of the
action that what remains of the poem of Penta-ur
transports us. The papyrus, worn and rent in
many places, as it is, exhibits many a gap ; and we
confess, with ah 1 humility, that we have endeavored
to supply some of its deficiencies by the help of the
notes that Champollion has left, in reference to the
same subject. f
VIII.
EXTRACTS FROM THE SALLIER PAPYRUS.
THE prince of Kheta came with his archers and
his horsemen well armed ; every chariot bore three
men. They had gathered together the swiftest
warriors of those base Khetas, carefully armed
.... and had placed themselves in ambush to
* See the Vicomte Em. de Kongo's Memoir on the Cam-
paigns of Sesostris, Revue Contemporaine, August, 185G.
f The reader will recognize these fragments by the murk
which we have placed before and after them.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 137
the northwest of the city of Atesh. They attacked
the soldiers of the king when the sun, god of the
two horizons, was at the middle of his course : the
latter were on the march, and were not expecting
an attack. The archers and the horsemen of his
Majesty fell back before the enemy, who was master
of Atesh on the left bank of the Aranta
Then his Majesty, strong and sound in constitution,
rising like the god Month, put on the panoply of
battle : arrayed in his weapons he was like unto
Baal in his hour. The mighty coursers of his
Majesty (strength in Thebais was their name) came
forth from the grand stables of the Sun, the lord of
justice, Barneses Mei Amoun.*
The king, rushing forth in his chariot, plunged
into the ranks of the despicable Kheta : he was
alone, no other near him. This onset his Majesty
made in sight of his whole retinue. He found him-
self surrounded on all sides by two thousand five
hundred swift chariots, manned by the bravest war-
riors of the pitiful Kheta and his numerous allies :
AraduSj Masu, Patasa, Kaslikash, (Elon, Gazwa-
tan, Khirdb, Aktar, Atesh and Rdka. Each of
* The Louvre Museum (Historical Hall, case G) possesses
a golden ring of singular shape, representing, on its collet,
two tiny horses in relief. It may be that in them we behold
a souvenir of the two steeds of Barneses II., who consecrated
them to the Sun on his first return from Egypt.
138 EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO.
their chariots bore three men .... and the
king had with him neither his princes, nor his gen-
erals, nor the captains of the archers or of the
chariots.
And this is what his Majesty of the sound and
strong life said :
"What, then, is the intent of my father Am-
mon ? Is it a father who would deny his son? Or
have I trusted to my own thoughts ? Have I not
walked according to thy word ? Has not thy mouth
guided my goings forth, and thy counsels have
they not directed me ?" . . .
" Have I not dedicated to thee magnificent festi-
vals in great number, and have I not filled thy
house with my booty ? There is building to thee a
dwelling for myriads of years. . . . The whole
world is gathering together to dedicate its offerings
to thee. I have enriched thy domain ; I have sac-
rificed to thee thirty thousand oxen, with all the
scent-bearing herbs and choicest perfumes. . . .
I have built for thee upon the sand, temples of
blocks of stone; and bringing obelisks from Ele-
phantina, I have reared eternal shafts in thy honor.
For thee, the great ships toss upon the deep ; they
bear to thee the tribute of the nations. Who will say
that like things have been done at any other time ?
Ignominy to him who resists thy designs ; felicity
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 141
to him who understands thee, oh, Ammon ! I in-
voke thee, oh, my lather ! I am in the midst of a
throng of unknown tribes, and I am alone, before
thee; no one is with me. My archers and my
horsemen deserted me when I called aloud to them ;
not one among them hearkened to me when I cried
to them for help. But I prefer Amrnon to thou-
sands of archers, to millions of horsemen and to
myriads of young men arrayed in phalanx. The
wiles of men are as naught ; Ammon will prevail over
them. Oh Sun ! have I not obeyed the order of thy
lips, and thy counsels have they not guided me ?
Have I not given glory to thee, to the ends of the
Earth ?"
These words resounded in Hermonthis; Phra
comes to him who calls upon him ; he stretches
forth his hand to him. Rejoice and be glad ... he
flies to thee, he flies to thee . . . Barneses Mei-
Amoun ! He says to thee, "Behold, I am near thee ;
I am thy father, the Sun ; my hand is with thee,
and I am more, for thee, than millions of men ar-
rayed together. It is I who am the lord of troops
and armies, loving courage ; I have found thy heart
firm in valor, and my heart exults thereat."
When my master of the horse saw that I re-
mained surrounded by so many chariots, he fal-
tered, and his heart gave way for fear ; a mighty
142 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
terror seized on all his limbs. He said, then, to his
Majesty : " My good master, generous King, sole
protector of Egypt in the day of battle, we are tar-
rying alone in the midst of the foe ; halt in thy
course and let us save the breath of our lives.
What can we do, oh, Barneses Meiamoun ! my
good master ?"
And thus did his Majesty reply to his master of
the horse :
" Have courage ! strengthen thy heart, oh my
comrade ! I will plunge into their midst like the
hawk from on high darting down upon his foe ;
hurled to the ground and slain, they shall roll in
the dust. What does thy heart then think of these
Aamus f Ammon .... would not be a god, did
he not make glorious my countenance in the pres-
ence of their countless legions."
The king pierced his way into the army of these
vile Khetas ; six times did he enter into their midst.
. . . . " I pursued them like Baal, in the hour of
his might, and I slew them so that none could
escape.
"I threw myself upon them, like unto the god
Month ; in a moment's space, my hand mowed
them down. I slaughtered among them : I killed
in their midst, and I was alone to shout aloud,
there was no second word, not one of them lifted
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 143
up his voice. Sutekh, the -great warrior-Baal, was
in all his members. . . . Each one of all my ene-
mies felt his hand without strength against mine ;
they could no longer hold the bow or the spear.
The king, rallying around him the generals and
the horsemen of his retinue, said to them : " Your
comrades have not satisfied my heart ; is there one
among them who has deserved well of my country ?
If your lord had not arisen in his might, all of ye
had been lost. Each day . . . . I transmit to the
sons the honors of their fathers, and when some
misfortune falls upon Egypt, ye abandon your
duty I administer justice every day,
hearkening to every complaint that comes to me.
And ye ! what have ye accomplished oh, my war-
riors? Ye have remained in your tents and in
your fortified camps, and ye gave no counsel to
my army. I recommended to each of ye at his
post, to take note of the day and the hour of the
battle, and behold, one and all, ye have done ill ; not
one of you arose to aid me with his hand
I govern Egypt like my father, the Sun, and there
was not found one to take heed . . . and to fore-
warn the land of Egypt. While, on this fortunate
day, sacrifices are offered up in Thebais, in the
city of Ammon, great is the fault committed by my
soldiers and my horsemen. It is greater than can
144 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
be told, for if I have made manifest my valor,
neither the archers nor the horsemen came with
me. The whole world has made way to the efforts
of my arm ; and I was alone, and no other one was
with me. That is what, of truth, I have done in
the sight of my army."
When the archers and the horsemen came in,
one after the other, from their camps toward the
evening hour, they found the whole region in which
they were marching covered with dead bodies
bathed in their blood all good warriors of Kheta,
valorous champions of their prince. When day-
light illuminated the land of Atesh, the foot could
not find place, so numerous were the dead. Then,
the army went up to glorify the names of the king :
" Good and mighty man of war, with the heart
that cannot be shaken, thou dost the work of thine
archers and of thy mounted men! Son of the god
Toum, fashioned from his own substance, thou hast
wiped out the land of Kheta with tby victorious
falchion! It is thou, oh good warrior! who art the
lord of ar nies. There is no king like to thee who
does battle for his soldiers on the day of conflict.
It is thou, oh king of the great heart ! who art the
foremost in the strife ; it is thou who art the
greatest of the brave, before thine army, and in
the presence of the whole world risen up against
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 145
thee. It is thou who dost reign over Egypt and
chastise the barbarian races The loins of
the land of Kheta are thine forever."
IX.
" HOWEVER, on the next day, so soon as it was
daylight on the Earth, Barneses caused the battle
to be joined afresh, and rushed into the combat like
a bull that dashes among the geese The
warriors, in their turn, went into the fight like the
hawk darting upon his prey And the
king hurled flames into the faces of his foes, like
the Sun, when he appears in the morning, darting
his fires on the wicked The great lion
that walked beside his coursers, fought with him ;
rage filled all his members, and whoever ap-
proached him was overthrown. The king seized
upon them or slew them, so that not one could es-
cape. Hewn to pieces in front of his horses, their
dead bodies, extended on the ground, formed but
a single heap of bleeding remains."*
One circumstance which has frequently repeated
itself in scenes of warfare, rendered the disaster
* See the Vicomte de Rouge at the passage cited.
146 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
that befell the army of the confederates still more
decisive. With a river close behind them, they
seem to have had for their line of retreat nothing
but the bridge leading to the city which they had
wished to defend. Toward it the mam struggle
concentrated ; Mei-Amoun, guided by his terrible
military instinct, doing his utmost to force his way
as far as that bridge, and Khetasar, his antagonist,
fighting desperately to cover its approaches.
[ There, the forests of spears, the clouds of ar-
rows, the shields and the chariots crossed and re-
crossed each other, and met in the deadly shock of
battle with such re-echoing uproar that the Earth
trembled to its depths, as though Apophis, the
great serpent, had broken away from the chains
with which the gods have fastened him to the
foundations of the world.*
There valiantly fought, and not ingloriously fell,
around the chief commander of the Khetas, his
most faithful warriors, such as Grabatusa his
squire, and Khirapsar, his librarian or rhapsodist ;t
* In the Egyptian mythology, Apophis, the serpent, is
the great enemy of the Sun ; in several hypogees he is rep-
resented as struggling against the gods of the Amenti, who
succeed in capturing and chaining him. See Champollion's
Letters from Eyypt.
t Write)' of Books, says the text.
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 149
and his most tried lieutenants, such as Rabsuna,
chief of the archers, and Tarekennas, general of
the cavalry. But, when Kameses the II. had hewn a
broad and bloody passage for himself to the banks of
the river over the bodies of these champions of Asia,
mangled and yet palpitating beneath the wheels
of his chariot, the defeat of the confederated army,
now cleft in twain and without any common rally-
ing-point, degenerated into a frightful rout, in which
death in every form struck down the fugitives. Thou-
sands of men fell under the sword, some to rise no
more and others to survive themselves, mutilated
as they were for life, by the terrible hooked chariot-
scythe. And if the river spared a few who, follow-
ing Masraim, the brother of their king, succeeded in
swimming across, it swallowed up a far greater
number and, especially noted among them, "the
chieftain of the land of Tonira, and the prince of
the bad race of the Khirabs, who was separated
from his warriors while flying before Icing in the di-
rection of the icater"
From the foot of the walls to which he had been
pushed back step by step, all the time fighting,
Kketasar, beholding the tremendous disaster that
his gallantry had been unable to avert, resolutely
took the only course that presented itself to him to
150 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
save his capital from the consequences of an assault
that had now become unavoidable.]
He turned with his hands extended toward the
smiling sun
He sent forth to invoke the great name of hid
Majesty : " It is thou who art the Sun, the god of
the two horizons ! It is thou who art Soutukh^kke
great conqueror, the son of heaven ; Baal is in all
thy members. Terror is in the land of Kheta, in
such wise that thy feet are on her reins forever."
Announcement was made that a messenger had
presented himself bearing a writing addressed to
the great names of Majesty. . . . May this wri-
ting satisfy the heart of the god Sun, the mighty
Bull, loving justice ; the supreme King who him-
self directs his soldiers ; the sword of terror ; the
rampart of his army on the day of battle : the
King of Upper and of Lower Egypt, with the
mighty courage and the boundless ardor; the Sun,
lord of justice, the chosen one of the god Phra, the
son of the Sun Rameses Mei-Amoun.*
The slave says, addressing his Majesty : " My
good master, son of the Sun, since Amnion has ta-
ken thee from out his loins and has given thee all
the countries united together, that Egypt and the
* This series of titles constitutes the official protocol of
King Barneses II.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 151
people of Kheta may be slaves beneath thy feet ;
Phra has granted to thee, dominion over them.
Thou canst slaughter thy slaves ; they are in thy
power ; not one of them will contend against thee.
Thou earnest yesterday, and thou hast slain an in-
finite number of them ; thou comest to-day, do
not continue the slaughter. . . . We are prostrate
on the ground, ready to obey thy orders : oh va-
liant king! honor to the race of warriors! grant
to us the breath of life." ....
Then his Majesty caused the chief leaders of
the army to come, and gathered them together that
they might hear the message of the great Prince
of Kheta .... so as to write an answer. They
said to his Majesty : " He hath done well, he
throws his heart before the supreme king, his
lord ; he makes no conditions. . . . He does hom-
age to thee to appease thy wrath."
[The king hearkened to their word and gave the
vanquished his assurance of pardon and clemency ;
then, addressing himself to the GEris assembled in
a throng around him, he added :
" Give yourselves up to rejoicing, oh my com-
*ides ; let it ascend to heaven !
" We have triumphed over the strangers by our
might ; we have fallen upon them like lions and we
have pursued them like hawks. We have crossed
152 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
their rivers, burned their fortified places, annihilated
their guilty souls. The terror of my name has ho-
vered over them and their hearts have been filled
with it.
" Rejoice, then, oh my warriors !
" I am for the land of Kemi what the God Month
has been. I have done battle with all the parts of
the earth. Aminoii-Ra has been at my right and
at my left (in the battles ;) his mind has inspired
my own and has prepared the downfall of my en-
emies. Ammon-Ba, my father, has brought the
whole world low beneath my feet, and I am on the
throne forever."]
Thereupon, Eameses, directing his march south-
ward, returned peaceably to Egypt with his princes
and his army, leaving all the nation terrified at
his exploits, and the princes prostrating themselves
before him, doing homage to his countenance.
"His Majesty arrived in the city of Eameses
Mei-Amoun,* the great image of Plira, and rested
between his royal double pylons with a serene ex-
istence, like the Sun in his double abode in the
heavens."
* Erected by the Asiatic captives and the Hebrews be-
tween the present sites of Heliopolis and Suez on the fresh
water canal which once ran, and, after an interval of 3000
years, is again to run from the Nile to the Bed Sea.
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 153
X.
WHEN, some time after that period, Barneses led
back his army to his country, laden with the spoils
of the East, and dragging numberless captives in
its train ; when, having passed through the cities
of the Delta and the Heptanoinis, more as a divin-
ity than as a simple mortal, he came to the great
temple of Thebes, to make in the presence of all
Egypt, the emphatic recital of winch we have just
given the substance ; and then, in enumerating, in
grand outlines, the palpable results of his con-
quests ; the roving tribes of the North hurled back
and restrained within their native steppes, by the
sword or by the faith of treaties ; the frontieis of
the Empire pushed beyond the Taurus and the
Tigris and covered by military colonies which, from
the Euxine to the Ocean, guaranteed the fidelity of
nations that were vassals or hi tutelage, he termi-
nated, at last, with " the tributes imposed, their
weight in gold and silver ; the number of weapons
and horses ; the quantities of ivory and of incense
for the temples; the grain and other products
which each subjugated country was to furnish, and
the aggregate of which equalled all the imposts
that tht? arms of the Parthians or Roman power
154 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
have raised since then !"* Assuredly, it was a fine
day in the life of that man and of his people, what-
ever may have been the price that one and the
other had paid for it !
No doubt that in the thinned ranks of the victors
many a vacant place summoned the tears of many
a family, for fathers, sons and husbands who had
remained on the roads they had traversed. If we
are to believe testimony quite unaniinous,t Rame-
ses himself, as he first re-appeared upon his natal
soil, but narrowly escaped the plottings of a broth-
er armed against his life, and had to inflict condign
punishment upon his own flesh and blood. But
the broodings of domestic misfortune and private
sorrow were lost in the intoxication of triumph and
the glory shared by all ; for it is the peculiar qual-
ity of great events to draw closer the bonds of fel-
lowship that unite communities, in rejoicing as in
grief, and to cause generations to sympathize with
one another athwart the lapse of time.
More than three thousand years have gone since
these events, and yet we, who know how much each
of its tardy steps of progress cost humanity ; we
who have it in our power to connect with the labors
of Barneses and of his companions their ultimate
* Tacitus : Annals, Book II. cL. 60 and 61.
t Herodotus, Diodorus, Manetho.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 155
results, which in their time no one could even con-
jecture beforehand, with their complete victories
over the roving tribes, the whole future of the west-
ern world based upon agriculture and the rearing
of permanent cities ; with their gigantic journey-
ings, the enlargement of general views with regard
to the world, and the drawing nearer together of
a part of the long dispersed fragments of human
tradition ; well, we confess aloud that, far from
being tempted to smile at the ingenuous emphasis
with which these men of the antique time express
themselves and their infatuated delight in the in-
dulgence of their own pride, we cannot remain
coldly unsympathetic with the invocation of the
day that we have mentioned, however deeply hid-
den it may be in the strata of history ; and we feel
irresistibly drawn to applaud the words of the high
priest of Thebes responding to Mei-Amoun in the
name of his God :
[" May thy return be joyous !
"Thou hast pursued, and dispersed the barbari-
ans ; thou hast broken their bows and triumphed
over their leaders. The world has seen thee, at
my command, pierce the heart of the accursed na-
tions, and make free the breath of those who fol-
lowed thee under my sacred ensigns; and the
15G EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
world has stood still before thee! . . . My mouth
doth praise thee !"]
" Thus," says the bard Penta-ur, in conclusion,
" Thus Rameses, child of the Sun, and friend of
Ammon, seated himself upon his throne, like the
Sun, forever, all the nations of the Earth having
been subdued by him."
At this point historical truth is found to disagree
with the lyrical enthusiasm of the poet, for, although
the achievement of Barneses, the battle of Atesh
and the occupation of that city terminated the
campaign, they did not put an end to the war.
Numerous monuments offer us the pictures of
many other expeditions by Rameses, and long addi-
tional lists of tribes brought under subjection by
his arms. In his campaign of the year XL, he re-
turned to attack and capture by storm several for-
tresses in the land of Canaan, and among them,
Ascalon, which had again fallen into the hands of
the rebels. It is in this locality (Askaluna) a
frontier town, and not at Pelusium, that we should
be tempted to place the scene of the treason of
which Herodotus has left us the legendary recital.
In fine, it is only in the twenty-first year of his
reign that Rameses, amid the pageantries of a pan-
egyric celebrated at Thebes in honor of Amnion,
sees a solemn embassy come in from the Prince of
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 157
the Khetas, soliciting a definitive treaty of peace
from the Pharaoh. Khetasar then acknowledged
himself the vassal and tributary of Barneses, and
bound himself to furnish an auxiliary contingent
whenever required. This treaty, put under the pro-
tection of the national gods of each contracting
party, was carved upon a memorial pillar, and
exhibited to the gaze of all, in the temple of Am-
mon. Reciprocal matrimonial alliances cemented
it, and Barneses admitted the eldest daughter of
Khetasar to his harem with the rank of one his
wives.
" This peace bore lasting and prolific fruit for
Egypt, where, for a very long time, engraved in-
scriptions recalled the fact that the tribes of Khe-
ta and of the borders of the Nile, a thing unheard
of until then,* had but one heart to serve Barneses
Mei-Amoun."
* See the Vicomtc Em. de Rouge's previously cited Me-
moir
THE MONUMENTS OF
RAMESES II.
THE MONUMENTS OF RAMESES THE
GREAT.
The Testimony of Herodotus, of Diodorus, and of the Bible.
Memphis and Thebes. the Great Days of Royalty. An Arte-
sian Well in the time of Barneses. The Land of Gush. The
Spears of Ipsamboul. The old Age of Barneses. Skeletons
of Oxen and Skeletons of Kings. Darius and the Statue of
Barneses.
ALTHOUGH some allowance must be made for the
official hyperboles of the great bard Penta-ur, the
friend of the master of the world, it remains a con-
firmed fact in history that the world had never un-
til then beheld power so vast as that possessed by
Rameses on his triumphal return from his great
expedition, and that for many generations afterward
it was not to witness such another.
None of Mei-Arnoun's successors attained the
distant boundaries that he had set to his dominion,
and none of them impressed upon the soil of Egypt
162 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
itself such deeply marked or such multiplied traces
of their passage.
In reference to this subject, Diodorus relates that
" on returning from his conquests, Sesostris re-en-
tered the regions subject to his sway with unaccus-
tomed pomp, bringing in his train a numberless
throng of captives, along with immense booty of
priceless value, a share of which he pressed upon all
the temples of Egypt. That country was also in-
debted to him for the importation of many useful
inventions.
" Having given up war, he furloughed his army,
compensating its services the while, with donations
of land ; but his passion for renown allowing him no
rest, he devoted himself to numerous and magnifi-
cent undertakings, intended at once to glorify his
own name, and to defend, embellish and fertilize
the soil of his country. First, he caused to be built
in each city a temple in honor of the patron deity
of the place. In many a locality he had causeways
and embankments constructed to shield the dwell-
ings from the annual inundation ; and, in many
others, he dug canals, one of which was intended to
open communication between Memphis and the
Red Sea.
. ..." In order to check the incursions of the
predatory Arabs, he moreover enclosed the Isth-
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 163
mus from Pelnsium to On (or Heliopolis) with a
wall of one thousand five hundred stadii in extent.
In the temple of the god worshipped at Thebes, he
consecrated a vessel of cedar wood two hnndred
and eighty cubits long, and plated it with gold on
the outside and with silver within. He had two
obelisks of very hard stone erected in front of the
same temple, and thereon caused to be engraved
the exact tabular statistics of his armies, his reve-
nues, the nations that he had vanquished and the
tribute that he had derived from them. Within
the precincts of the temple of Hephaestus,* at
Memphis, he placed his own statue and that of his
wife, each thirty cubits in height and hewn from
one solid block. The most difficult of all these
works were executed by the captives whom he had
brought from foreign regions, and he took care that
the lapidary inscriptions should remind the reader
that no Egyptian had a hand in
H.
THESE details, borrowed from many sources, no
doubt, by the historian of Stagyra, agree with those
* The Greek form of the Egyptian Phtah.
f Diodorus, Book I., chap. Ivi. and Ivii.
164 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
that Herodotus collected four centuries earlier from
the lips of the priests at Memphis, Thebes and
Heliopolis, tJiose of tJie latter city being considered tlie
best informed of all in tJie history of tlieir country.*
Of the numerous monuments of Barneses II.
some, such as the Isthmus wall, and the fortified
cities which he had built by the tribes of Beni-
Heber upon that frontier, have been swept away
by the breath of thirty-three centuries, or, like the
terraces which formed the artificial soil of the an-
cient cities along the Nile, have been covered by
the miry deposits which the inundations annually
heap up ; others, like the canal uniting the Seaweed
Lake, since then rediscovered in the days of our
fathers,t by the very man who was for them what
Barneses had been for his contemporaries, have
left vestiges which science interrogates, sometimes
with profit and always with interest ; still others, yet
standing upon the desolate banks of the river that
mirrored their pristine splendor, make the modern
* Herodotus, Euterpe, c. III.
f Ou the 30th of December, 1798, the general-in-chief of
the Army of the East, passing from Cairo to Suez, several
times crossed the vestiges of the old canal with his escort
of learned men. Napoleon, in his Memoirs dictated at St.
Helena. Description of Egypt.- J. M. Lepere, in his Me-
moire on the communication of the Indian Ocean with the
Mediterranean.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 165
solitudes participate in the majesty of the ancient
days ; and finally others again, borne away to the
museums and public places of the great Western
capitals, are perpetual sources of study and medita-
tion for thinking minds.
It was above all in the two great capitals of his
empire, in Memphis and in Thebes, that the monu-
mental splendor of Barneses struck the observers
of antiquity.
m.
THE first of these cities, much more exposed
than its rival, to the inroads of time and the invader,
alike by its geographical situation and the material
of which it was built, sleeps to-day, completely bu-
ried beneath the slime of the inundations and the
sands of the desert. A few vague undulations of
the soil alone disturbing this double shroud, have
served to indicate the site of monuments the ruins
of which were still, six hundred years ago, according
to the statement of one of the most judicious sons
of Islam, a subject of admiration and astonishment
for the observer.
"Notwithstanding the immense extent of Mem-
166 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
phis and its high antiquity," writes the Arab'Ab-
dallatif in the 13th century of our Era, " notwith-
standing the vicissitudes of the various govern-
ments to whose yoke it has submitted; whatever
the attempts that different peoples have made to
annihilate it, to cause even its faintest vestiges to
disappear and wipe out the slightest traces of its
existence by transporting to other points the
stones and other materials of which it was con-
structed ; by devastating its edifices and mutilating
the statues that adorned them ; in fine, despite all
that the ages have superadded to so many causes
of destruction, its ruins still present to those who
contemplate them a combination of wonders that
confounds the intelligence and which the most elo-
quent tongue or pen might vainly attempt to de-
scribe. The more one considers it the more one
feels the admiration that it inspires augment ; and
every succeeding glance that one casts at its ruins
is a new source of enchantment."*
Memphis was especially proud of the grand tem-
ple of its eponymic divinity Phtah,t whom the rela-
tions of Barneses with Upper Asia, whence the wor-
* Abdallatif translated into French by M. de Sacy.
f Ph-l-ahahi, agny. The most ancient divinity of Vedio
days. The northern origin of fire-worship seems to us in-
disputable.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 167
ship of this god had descended, had taught him to
honor with especial devotion. Around this temple,
where all the gods of the eighteenth dynasty seem
to have been concentrated, Mei-Amoun had caused
to be reared, in majestic colonnades, immense blocks
of white calcareous stone in order to extract which
from the quarrries of Mokattan and transport them
to the other side of the Nile, thousands of captives
had exhausted themselves for weary years.
Moreover, in testimony of his gratitude and his
piety, he had caused the monolithic statues of his
wife, his children and himself, to be placed before the
pylons of the sanctuary, in the attitude of religious
contemplation. Well ! in these palaces or temples,
divinities and worshippers are plunged in the same
sleep and at this day abandon to the winds of the
desert the same dust ; and a fallen column cast to
a distance from its pedestal, including which it
must formerly have measured nearly forty-five feet
in height, still surmounts with all the thickness of
its mutilated fragments the general level of the
plain last relic of the pahny days of Memphis !
By his warlike insignia, by the delicacy of his
features, by the name of Barneses engraved upon
the ornaments on his breast and on the buckle of
his belt, it is impossible to mistake in him the im-
age of the conqueror, the same one of whom Dio-
168 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
dorus and Herodotus wrote, and whom Abdallatif
admired.
IV.
ONE hundred and fifty leagues of navigation,
ascending the windings of the Nile, over the richest
soil and the most densely inhabited territory on
record in all time, along a double line of towns and
cities led from the city of Phtah to that of Ammon.
In latitude 25 34', the Nile, which, after entering
Egypt, directs its course between the north and
the northwest, suddenly doubles on itself and runs
for many scores of miles toward the east-northeast,
as though it would break its way through toward
the nearest sea. In this space, the valley of the
river, scooped out in a wide oval like an immense
amphitheatre between its two parallel chains, pre-
sents one of those sites which seem predestined by
nature to receive great communities of men.
This is the point at which the lines of traffic
from Africa and Arabia, of the more direct routes of
the Soudan by the Oases, and of the Habesh by
the Nubian tablelands, converge ; it is the debouch-
ing centre of the wadys that lead to the Red Sea,
and which formerly guided the way to the mines of
gold, copper and emeralds in the land of the Trog-
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 171
lodytes : it was there that " No- Amman was seated
between the canals, having for ramparts the loaters of
waters."
" There this instructress of the nations rested in
her strength upon Ethiopia as also upon Egypt,
and had the sons of Libya and those of Phut the
boundless for hor champions."*
There her scattered members lie to-day.
V.
WHEN, coming up from the North, the travellei
has reached the projecting angle of the Libyan
range which crosses the Theban plain upon that
side, he suddenly beholds unrolled before him one
of the grandest spectacles that man can gaze upon
here below.
A mingled surface of earth and sand nearly as
spacious as the modern area of Paris, traversed by
a river the width of which at its period of lowest
ebb is thrice that of the Seine at St. Cloud, and
rolls along its broad undulations beneath a blazing
sky, its stream studded with the shafts of columns,
blocks of granite and broken scraps of walls whose
* The prophet Nahum, ch. iii. , verses 8 and 9.
172 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
fallen fragments have formed hillocks there, muti-
lated colossi, sphinxes and gigantic rams nearly all
headless now emblems of the Kings and gods of
ancient times !
Four enormous massive groups, standing with
broad spaces between them, sentinelled upon this
field of ruins and holding, as though in a fasces, all
these rudimentary or ornamental types of Egyp-
tian architecture, seem to have been, at different
epochs, the centres of the antique metropolis. Ac-
cording to the names of the wretched modern
hamlets which seek shelter in their shadow, Gour-
nah and Medinet Abou are the towns to the west
of the river, going from the north, and Karnak and
Luxor are those to the eastward. The first of
these groups contains the commemorative monu-
ments erected to Barneses I. by Seti and to the lat-
ter by his glorious son ; the second, which exhibits
traces that go back to Thothmes III., was rebuilt
on a gigantic plan by Rameses-Hickpun (haq-an)
and was the residence of the Pharaohs of the twen-
tieth dynasty.
The principal edifices of Luxor founded by Ho-
rus (HoremJieb) were finished by Mei-Amoun to
whom, for instance, are due the two grand pylons
that look out upon the Nile, as also the two obel-
isks mentioned by Diodorus, the smallest of which
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 175
now adorns the principal open square in Paris. In
fine, the structures of Karnak, which contained
among them the first temple of the Egyptian Em-
pire, the revered sanctuary of Ammon-Ea, date
from the time of the kings who expelled the Hyc-
sos. They have retained the stamp of their most
renowned successors, and, above all, the majestic
mark of Seti and of Mei-Amoun.
To these general elements of the plan of Thebes
must be added the indescribable levellings of
nameless temples and palaces ; the canals filled
up ; the granite quays undermined by the Nile, or
crumbling into the sand, and the three avenues of
sphinxes terminating in the pylons of Karnak, and
one of which is no less than half a league in length.
Then, if the reader will picture to himself the soil
of a long series of artificial terraces between Gour-
nah and Medinet-Abou, between the river and the
mountain, which, in our days, are flooded by each
overflow, where thousands of broken shafts of
colonnades, splinters of capitals and fragments of
monoliths, and, finally, the two colossi once so cele-
brated under the name of Memnon, mark the site
of the temple palace of Amenoph III., and of that
Kameseum which seems to have been the favorite
abode of "Mei-Amoun. If, moreover, on the western
side, one adds to this sad picture, as a framework
176 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
worthy of it, the precipitous walls of the Libyan
chain, pierced like the sides of an immense vessel
with galleries on galleries where sleep the genera-
tions who succeeded each other in No-Amnion for
two thousand years, one will, even then, have but a
very imperfect idea of the mighty remains of that
city, as they are seen from the top of the slope
where the sight of them drew long continued plau-
dits of surprise and admiration from the French
Army of the East.
VI.
" THEBES," says one who was present in that ar-
ray, in the monumental folio in which they have
recorded their impressions, " Thebes, the foremost
city of the world in the time of Homer, is still, at
the present day, the most surprising. One feels as
though he were in a dream while contemplating
the immensity of its ruins, the vastness and majes-
ty of its edifices, and the numberless remains of its
ancient magnificence."*
In order to move, to this degree, men whom un-
paralleled struggles, the loved study of antiquity,
and the recent conquest of Italy had saturated with
* Rosicre's Description of Egypt. Ancient Thebes.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 179
the perception of the grand and beautiful, what
must not Thebes have been when life animated
that vast body and harmonized all its parts in one
imposing whole ?
What must not Thebes have been at the period
when, sharing in the plenitude of glory and power
attained by its chiefs, this city beheld triumphant
predatory expeditions and caravans of traders
streaming in from all points of the horizon, and
pouring the wealth of nations into her lap ? in the
time when the black native of eastern Soudan and
the representative of the vanquished hordes of
western Asia ; the Hymiarite come from the land
of incense and the tattooed Pelasgian from the bor-
ders of the Hellespont ; the opulent merchant of
the Phoenician coasts ; the pearl-fisher of the Erytli-
rean seas ; the Eotenu son of Asshnr with the
long trailing robe, and the humble Ben-Eber of
the plains of Goshen, met annually at the foot of
Mei-Amoun's throne to lay the tribute of their
clans and country there ? What must not Thebes
have been when her temple-palaces, built and em-
bellished by twelve generations of kings, rivalled
each other in splendor and display ; had for enclo-
sures fresh thickets of palms and mimosas; be-
decked themselves with parterres skilfully designed,
and mirrored in the blue waters of spacious basins
180 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
of marble or porphyry, the pure and severely simple
lines of their architecture ; when, amid floods of
light under the rays of an unrivalled sun, there
sparkled to the gaze the vividly colored bas-reliefs
of the granite pylons, the inscriptions on rose-tinted
obelisks, the giant heads of sphinxes and colossi,
and when each Egyptian could contemplate in the
one the grand pages of his country's past history
and in the other revere the well known features of
his ancestors and of the gods and heroes of his
race ? No voice, to-day, could tell it all, no pencil
accurately retrace it, and even thought, plunging
through the heaped-up dust of ages, could but catch
a glimpse of its vague and feeble image.
VII.
MOREOVER, in order not to be drawn into grave
error in the appreciation of that image, one must
divest himself of all preconceived ideas based upon
the plan of any modern capital. We must not for-
get that the dead level which now gauges society,
depresses their salient heights and elevates their
lower strata, was neither foreseen nor even dreamed
of in the days of Theban grandeur ; and that from
Bird's Eye View of a Temple-Palace at Thebes (restored according
to the monuments).
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 183
this absolute ignorance of the virtual conditions of
a future far beyond the ken of that period, arose
the very sanction of the social inequalities which
existed with that of all the forms with which the
sombre logic of the human mind invested them in
the material as well as in the moral order.
The dwellings of men were, then, subjected to the
same law that proclaimed the monarch son of tla
gods, and made the priesthood their inspired inter-
preters. Around consecrated edifices built of im-
perishable materials, cemented with the blood and
sweat of whole generations of slaves, were grouped,
in accordance with this law and at intervals of
greater or less space marked out by cultivated
fields, the luxurious yet neither very grand nor
very lasting structures of the principal function-
aries of the empire, the brick-built workshops
and stores of the merchant, the cabin of the fellah
made of clay and reeds, and the mud hovel where
the sable captive sometimes the copper-colored
or white one, as well, crouching on the dungheaps
of the animals entrusted to his care, dressed the
bleeding cuts which the stick of his master had in-
flicted upon his naked body, and then sought in
sleep a vision of his native land and his weeping
family.
Naga and Meroe, Babylon and Nineveh, the
184 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
primitive cities in the basin of the Oxus, the Indus
and the Ganges ; at a later period, the cities of
the Etruscans, in the West ; much later still, those
which the Toltecs and Aymaras built upon the
table- lands of the Andes, and the emigrants from
India in the forests of Hindostan ; all the metro-
politan marks, in fine, which men erected during
their passage from the second to the third social
epoch, were constructed upon this principle.
VHI.
IN the time of Diodorus, the historical sense of
this grand Egyptian period had already been lost
to the Greeks, if, indeed, the latter had ever pos-
sessed it. The historian of Stagira has left us
a description of a monument in the metropolis of
the Pharaohs, which had remained an indeciphera-
ble enigma until the day when Champollion proved
the identity of that monument with the Rameseum
on the left bank of the Thebes.
"At the distance of ten stadii from the first
tombs, where, according to tradition, the Queens of
Thebes are buried, there stood," says Diodorus,
" the tomb of Osymandyas. At its entrance rose
a pyl on in marbled stone ; its breadth was two pic-
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 187
thrae and its height forty-five cubits. After having
passed it, one entered a square peristyle, each side
of which measured four plethrae. It was not sus-
tained by columns, but by animals carved in solid
blocks of stone sixteen cubits in height, and carved
in the ancient style. The entire ceiling, consisting
of a single stone, was studded with golden stars up-
on a field of azure. At the end of this peristyle
there was a second entrance and a pylon like the
former one, but adorned with variegated carvings of
perfect workmanship. Beside this second portico
were three statues, each chiselled from a single block
of the hard and tinted stone of Syene. One, repre-
senting a personage in a sitting posture, was the
largest of all the statues in Egypt. The two others,
placed near his knees, one on the right and the
other on the left, were those of the mother and
the daughter, and did not approach the first in size.
This piece was not only remarkable for its dimen-
sions, but it was worthy of admiration hi regard to
its artistic execution and the nature of the stone,
which, notwithstanding its vastness, did not reveal
a single crack or blemish. Upon it could be read
the following inscription : / am Osymandyas, King
of the Kings ; if any should wish to know who I am
and ivhere I repose, let him surpass one of my works.
There was, also, another monolithic statue repre-
188 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
seuting the mother of this king separately. It
was twenty cubits in height, with three diadems or.
its head to indicate that the personage commem-
orated had been the daughter, wife and mother of
kings. After the second pylon was discovered an-
other peristyle more remarkable than the first. It
was adorned with different sculptures, figuratively
illustrating the war that this king had maintained
against the revolted Bactrians. He had marched
against them at the head of four hundred thousand
foot and twenty thousand horsemen, after having
diviclcd his army into four bodies, commanded by
the princes, his sons.
" Upon the first wall of this peristyle Osymandyas
was represented besieging a fortress surrounded by
a river, exposing himself to the blows of his ene-
mies, and accompanied by a terrible lion which
served him as an auxiliary in his combats. Amouy
those who explain these carvings, some say that it
was a real lion, tamed, fed by the king's own hand,
and taugut to accompany him while attacking and
pursuing his enemies. Others maintain that this
king, who was distinguished above all the rest for
his valor and his strength, intended to sound his
own praises by symbolizing his qualities in the fig-
ure of a lion. . . . Finally, at the extremity of the
monument, there was, in the midst of a series of
EGYPT 3300 YEAR AGO. 191
apartments, the second library designated by the
inscription : The office of the, soul"
Volney had declared, as early as the beginning
of the present century, with the intuition of genius,
that all these details too clearly pointed to Sesos-
tris to admit of any one seeing in the name given
by the Greek historian anything but the epithetic
title of that monarch. Twenty years later, Chani-
pollion, applying the description of Diodorus to
the ruins of the Bameseum, put together from its
fragments, shattered as they may be, the pretended
tomb of the Osymandyas. Excepting in dimen-
sions, exaggerated as ever by classic antiquity, he
rediscovered every particular : the double pylons ;
the court of the colossus ; the enormous fragments of
the latter, which formerly must have measured thir-
teen yards in height ; the hall of the caryatides ; the
galleries, the colonnades giving access to the inte-
rior apartments, and even the library with its ultra-
marine blue vault studded with golden stars, and
decorated with an astronomical picture. Moreover,
he was enabled to detect in the mural paintings, a
majestic concordance with the poem of Penta-ur,
and to decipher in several legends dedicated to the
great deity Ammon-Ea, these characteristic words :
192 EGYFI- 3300 YEARS AGO.
" the habitation of Kameses Mei-Amoun in the Oph
of Thebes."*
IX.
To the distant expeditions of her warriors, to her
communications, more or less compulsory, with the
other groups of the human race, Egypt was indebt-
ed for not only an accumulation of power and
wealth, but for a more active impetus given her to-
ward the arts, trade and industry. M. de Rouge,
whose authority we cannot too frequently invoke in"
this place, has shown that a great intellectual de-
velopment, a sort of literary cycle, had been, as it
were, the natural consequence of the glory of the
arms and the extension of the power of Egypt over
the world. Neither the poem nor the personality
of Penta-ur is an isolated phenomenon of this
epoch. Papyri exhumed from the tombs con-
tain numerous and remarkable fragments of that
* The restored sketches published by the great Egyptian
Commission puts it in our power to offer our readers differ-
ent views of this monument, the finest, perhaps, of which
Thebes was so proud at the period of her greatness, and one
of the most dilapidated that her enclosure of ruins now con-
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 195
literature which was in a flourishing condition at
the court of the Pharaohs more than fifteen hun-
dred years before our era. They have even pre-
served for us the names of the Egyptian authors who
lived in the vicinity of Barneses, or of his immedi-
ate successors, and whose theological, philosophical
historical, romantic or poetical compositions prop-
agated and multiplied by the bureaux of calligra-
phy, or, in other words, copying offices, of the pe-
riod, were not without their echoes among their
contemporaries, nor without influence upon the
general current of the human mind. This rising
movement of intelligence upon the borders of the
Nile seems to correspond in time with those
achievements of a similar nature that, on the banks
of the Indus and the upper Ganges, distinguished
the heroic age of the Aryan tribes that used the
Sanscrit tongue. From that time forth, anterior
Asia also undoubtedly had her writers and her art-
ists. But Egyptian domination ruled in this region
during too long a lapse of centuries not to leave the
imprint of the conquerors deeply stamped upon its
manners, institutions, and religious notions. Thus,
the style of the most ancient cuneiform inscriptions
difters but little from that of the carved hiero-
glyphics and the papyri of the Egyptians. Still
more, a stele foiind among the ruins of a Thebau
196 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
temple, a veritable ex voto of those remote times,
exhibits to us a sovereign from beyond the Tigris,
the father-in-law and vassal of a Pharaoh of the
twentieth dynasty sending a solemn embassy to his
son-in-law to obtain the temporary cession or the
loan of an Egyptian idol of great repute in order
that it might exorcise one of his daughters who
was possessed of an evil spirit.
" Four centuries of intercourse in peace and war
had multiplied the intimate relations between the
Egyptians and the Asiatic nation. The former
made journeys to Mesopotamia : these were officers
sent by the prince to govern the provinces, to su-
perintend the stations established and command
the garrisons posted in the fortified places. The
Asiatic came to Egypt, far as it was, either to con-
sult the Egyptian physicians whose learning was
already famous, the wizards, probably, who con-
tended with Moses, or to carry on trade. The
metal cups found in the ruins of Assyria are cov-
ered with Egyptian emblems, and the Kings of Tyre
wore a diadem patterned after the pscJient of the
Pharaohs.
" We also discover the influence of the literary
forms usual in Egypt among a people whose first
steps excite a lively interest everywhere. The
Bible shows us, at this epoch, the sous of Jacob, of
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 199
whom Divine protection had made a new nation,
exhausting their strength in constructing in the
Delta a city to which the holy book gives the name
of Barneses.
" Frequently mentioned in our papyri, the place
there bears the name of Barneses Mei-Amoun, and
the scroll-boxes (even a statue) of the great con-
queror have been found among its ruins. Barne-
ses II., then, was the persecutor of the Israelite
family whose increasing number became a subject
of alarm for his policy. This king could not ban-
ish the remembrance that, upon several occasions,
the wandering tribes of Asia, filling up lower Egypt
by their incursions, had driven out the Pharaohs.
"It was then that Moses, having been rescued
by the daughter of the sovereign, was reared in the
palace and instructed in all the lore of Egypt.
The concordance of the periods of time, and the
minutiae of the narrative do not leave room to attri-
bute these wants to any other Pharaoh. Barne-
ses is the only one who by his reign of sixty-eight
years presents a sufficient lapse of time for the
long withdrawal of Moses to the deserts of Arabia.
The book of Exodus informs us, in fact, that the
king whose anger Moses had aroused died qfter a
very long time, and that then only did the prophet
venture to return to Egypt
200 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
" Moses, therefore, was reared in a country which
had carried art and industry to a very high pitch,
and at a moment when its literature shone with
more than usual brilliance. It is easy to recognize
in the Egyptian texts, the peculiar turn of verses
and the parallelism of the ideas or of the expres-
sions which form the special character of Hebrew
poesy. The earliest sacred writers even have di-
rectly borrowed from the priestly annalists certain
expressions whose energy and beauty have long
been admired, and it is no mean glory for the poet
Penta-our and for the other men of letters assem-
bled at the court of Barneses Mei-Amoun to have
had a considerable share in the literary education
of the Hebrew legislator."*
X.
BEFORE going farther we should point out the
fact that the cruel policy practised by Barneses
toward the Hebrews, was not exclusively his own.
It had been that of all his predecessors. A very
curious painting found at Thebes, upon the walls of
a burial chapel attributed to Thothmes III., shows
* Viscount E. de Rouge in the paper already cited.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 203
us prisoners of war employed in kneading clay,
moulding bricks and building the walls of a temple
to Ammon under the surveillance of Egyptian
superintendents or overseers armed with heavy
staves. The inscription informs us that these
prisoners at hard labor, " are captives taken by His
Holiness to work upon the temple of his father
Ammon." When copied by the engraver's art, does
not this scene look like an illustration of the fol-
owing passage in Exodus : ch. i. v. xiii. and xiv.
" And the Egyptians made the children of Israel
to serve with rigor :"
" And they made their lives bitter with hard
bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all man-
ner of service in the field : all their service, wherein
they made them serve, was with rigor."
History can bring to the support of the Biblical
text still more formal testimony than the preceding.
There are legible upon the back of a hieratic papy-
rus which, unfortunately, has been very much mu-
tilated, but which may be referred to the nineteenth
dynasty, these characteristic lines : " That for twelve
years, these men, entrusted with the making of
bricks, be kept and closely watched in the work-
shops, so as to see that they deliver exactly the
number of bricks tha-t they are ordered to make,
ivithout rest or cessation /" (A papyrus of the Anas-
tasi Collection No. 3, page 3.)
204 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
This working-up of the captive and the slave
pushed to its farthest limits, i.e. mutilation and
death, was the law of nations of a historic age, which
did not cease even with the most civilized countries
until after tha advent and triumph of Christianity :
that law of nations, of which, long after the time of
Rameses, the Assyrian monarchs, the Dorian Re-
publics of Greece and the Roman patriciate, were
to make many another ferocious application, and
which, even while we write, still entangles, with its
long-surviving roots, the eastern half of modern
Europe, and all the countries yet under the yoke of
the late-comers of wandering barbarism.
XI.
AT Thebes, as in all the great cities of the valley
of the Nile, the sacred edifices enclosed within their
limits between the pronaos and the sanctuary of the
gods, a spacious hall which, owing to the numerous
columns supporting its massive ceiling of carved and
tinted granite, received the title of hypostyle from
the Greeks. The one that Seti I. caused to be
built in the temple of Karnak is celebrated among
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 207
them all for its dimensions one hundred yards by
fifty and its hundred and thirty-four columns still
standing, a dozen of which sustain the central part
of the ceiling, at the height of seventy feet from the
soil, upon capitals of twenty yards in circumference.
The dimensions of these halls, even in the absence
of other indications, would bear witness to the pur-
pose for which they were destined. In the shadow
of these groves of columns, where apertures curious-
ly cut in the upper part of the cornice or windows
hewn through the solid granite allowed only a sub-
dued heat to penetrate, and just enough light to
illuminate the reliefs and the tintings of the great
mural scenes, the monarch, seated on a magnificent
throne, between the mementoes of his ancestors
and the images of his gods, presided at the meet-
ings of the priesthood and high dignitaries of the
empire ; gave audience to the ambassadors of for-
eign nations and to deputations from vassal nomes
and provinces ; adjudged, as a tribunal of last ap-
peal, the disputes of cities or of individuals ; listened
to the complaints of his subjects or the outcry of
their need ; in. fine, held the great days of the royal
sway.
The scribes, a very busily employed race of
functionaries, whose learned body replenished its
ranks from the colleges of the priesthood, took
208 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
down, on the spot, the minutes of these sessions of
absolute power. Subsequently, when the impor-
tance of the subject demanded it, the series of all
the orders and of all the administrative measures
thereunto appertaining was recapitulated on a
monumental stele, destined to remind the popula-
tion therein interested of the vigilance and solici-
tude of the prince. And, in sooth, these stones of
testimony which have survived until our own time,
are not the least instructive of the monuments
that will put modern science in a condition to
reconstruct the genuine history of the Egyptian
period, of which, more faithfully than the others,
perhaps, they represent the real aspect, the charac-
teristic traits and the inner private life.
It is with this view that we do not feel as though
we could omit from this study on Rameses and his
time, a few passages from a document of this de-
scription dating from the commencement of the
reign of that prince. We borrow them from the
interpretations jointly agreed upon by the English
orientalist Birch, and our learned compatriot
M. Lenormand.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 20 'J
XII.
. . . . " When he had subdued the land of Ethio-
pia, trodden the Libyans beneath his sandals, and
rooted his sceptre among them ; after terror had
overwhelmed Wentnovvr and the Akars, the living
and life-bestowing god, the representative of Seth
and Ammon, the king sun, the guardian of truth
approved by Phrah, the director and defender of
the land of Kemi, the child of the gods, the beloved
one of Ammon, Barneses, the eternal life-giver, de-
scended at Memphis to accomplish toward the di-
vine triad of that city ceremonies of thanksgiving.
" On the twenty -fourth day of the month paoni,
in the third year of his reign, as he was seated on
his throne of the purest gold, and, with his head
adorned with two ostrich plumes emblematic of
justice, was causing the names of the regions from
which gold was obtained to be registered in his
presence, and was giving orders that the roads
leading to them and unprovided with water should
be supplied with fountains, there was mentioned,
among others, the country of Okau where gold
abounded, but the route to which was utterly des-
titute of springs. His Majesty was informed of the
distress of the workmen employed in the extraction
and preparatory washing of the precious metal,
210 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
many of whom had perished of thirst on the way
with the asses they drove thither. In fine, the con-
dition of things was such that it could not continue
without leading to the abandonment of the rich
placers in question.
" At this moment, the officer of the palace whose
business it was to lead visitors to the foot of the
throne, breaking silence, announced to Barneses
that the leading personages of the Okau country
were present and humbly awaiting the favor of an
audience :
" Behold them, oh king, with their arms uplifted
toward thy throne and drawing nigh with reverence
to look upon thy sacred features, in order that they
may unfold to thee the deplorable condition of
their country, and beseech thy limitless power to
remedy it."
And permission to speak having been accorded
to the chiefs of Okau, they said :
" Thy power has no bounds ; it is like the power
of Mandu and of Ammon, whose depositary thou
art, here below : if thou wert to give orders to the
night, the light would instantly appear. We come
then, in all haste, to implore thy Majesty to do
something in behalf of these gold mines, since thou
art he who dost shine, at present, on the throne of
the world. Thou wilt not reject our prayers, thou
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 211
who hast but to say to the mountain spring to leap
forth, in order to behold the abyss of the waters of
the heavens fly open at the sound of thy voice ; for
thou art the sun made flesh, all of whose orders are
obeyed, all of whose words are made good, oh thou,
our lord and our master !...."
Thus spake the chiefs of Okau ; then a great
dignitary, the second in the empire, the viceroy of
Ethiopia, came forward to sustain their request
with the weight of his opinion.
" It is but too true," said the royal son of Gush.
In their country the grass has been burned since
the reign of the gods, and all the Pharaohs, thy pre-
decessors, desired that a well should be dug on the
borders of the road that leads thither, but their
wish was in vain. At the command of Seti, of glo-
rious memory, search was made to the depth of one
hundred and twenty cubits for the sheet of water
intended to refresh the soil : it did not reach the
surface. But thou, if thou saidst to Hapi-Mou,
thy father and the father of the gods: Cause the
water to cover the face of the desert ! it would be as
it is with all thy words, all thy orders which are
fulfilled in thy very presence. If they are instantly
obeyed is it not because thou art dear to the gods
of thy ancestors above all the monarchs that have
reigned since the sun ?" . . .
212 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
To the royal son of Gush, and to the chiefs of
the country of Okau, Barneses replied : " Your
request is just ; as you have declared, there has
been no well dug near this road since the reign of
the gods ; and, it is my will that a well shall be
made there to yield water without ceasing, as
though it sprang from the exhaustless bosom of the
Nile. The gods who heap their favors upon me,
and who have flooded my heart with joy, will help
me in this circumstance. Under their protecting
auspices, I proclaim, then, the order to pierce a liv-
ing well at one of the intermediate stations of the
road that leads from the Nile to Okau. Let this
order, copied by the scribes on duty, be reproduced
and published by the aid of the chief of the tran-
scribing bureau, in my double dwelling of light,
and let a copy of the order be sent to the royal son
of my land of Gush, who continues charged with
its execution."
And the prince of Nubia, superintendent of the land
of Cush, having got together the necessary work-
men recommenced the task that had been begun
during the reign of Seti, and caused it to be pushed
with so great activity, that nothing like it had been
done since there were kings in Egypt. The caving
in of the soil, and the infiltration of sand into the
tube of the well, were checked successfully by liu-
EGYPT 3400 YEARS AGO. 21-'}
Ings of reeds woven in mats or interlaced in fas-
cines* and with such excellent result that the vice-
roy was enabled to send word to Mei-Amoun
that the water was spouting four cubits above the
soil, but that to raise it to twelve, as his Majesty
had ordered with his own lips, it was still indispens-
able that a skilled workman should be sent. . . .
Shortly afterward the sovereign word of Barneses
had its full effect : " The king of the waters has
hearkened to the king of the earth, the well has
been fortunately terminated, and abundant waters
leap from its mouth and pass on to a distance to
fertilize the surface of the desert and quench the
thirst of the parched traveller." By a last decree,
Barneses, the friend of Ammon, expressed the wish
that this work of public utility should bear his
name, and that a stde commemorative of these acts
should be placed within the enclosure of the tem-
ple raised to Thoth Trismegistus, (celestial superin-
tendent of Nubia for the supreme gods,) on the
right bank of the Nile, opposite to the city of
Pselkis. And it was there, at the mouth of the
wady . which leads from the river to the modern
cantonal district of Olaki, that it has been found
again in our time.
* We give this interpretation on our own responsibility ;
it seems to be indicated by M. Lenorinand. As for Mr.
Birch, the text seems to him to allude to aquatic birds ply-
'u .tinong +lia reeds.
214 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
XIII.
THE appellation of the land of Gush, which in
the presence of the encroachments of the yellow or
red branches of the human main stem, had receded
from the southern plains of Asia as far as the
upper basin of the Nile, still ran down in the days
of Mei-Ainoun from the unknown heights of Africa
as far as the cataracts of Syene, thus covering all
the territory that the Greeks have since called
Ethiopia, and the moderns Sennaar and Nubia.
The importance of these provinces in the monarchy
of Barneses was such that the title of their viceroy
or superintendent seems to have been, under sev-
eral dynasties, one of the first that was conferred
upon the heir presumptive of the empire, at his
birth, and a long partnership in common, of inter-
ests and of glory, had so bound them to Egypt that
Champollion did not fail to discover that the
Pharaohs, full of confidence in the natives of Ethi-
opia, gave up to them all the administrative po-
sitions even to the command of the troops of the
country. The learned Egyptian scholar has cited
and deciphered in support of his assertion a great
number of inscriptions still existing between the
first and second cataract.*
* Champollion the younger: Letters Written from Ec/ypt
and Nubia.
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO. 215
Mei-Amoun, whose appanage this country ap-
pears to have been during the lifetime of his father
Seti, seems also, judging by the monuments with
which he endowed it, to have retained a peculiar
affection for it, during the whole course of his long,:
life.
In fact, from Philae as far as Mount Barkal,
more than two hundred leagues from Thebes and
four hundred from the Mediterranean, there are
few ruins, sides or subterranean temples that do
not retain some relic, the scrolls or even the fea-
tures of the great Barneses.
It is to the graphic arts, to pure archaeology,
that the labor of retracing the stages of this long
advance speciaUy appertain ; but it is not departing
from the limited circle of this sketch even, wherein
the effort is to become inspired with the philosophy
of history, to cite those of the localities the exami-
nation of which may prove profitable in pursuing
the study of ancient manners and institutions.
XIV.
AT Essebouah, stood a temple palace the avenue
to which was formed by a double row of lions em-
blematic of courage ever on the alert. It termi-
nated in two magnificent pylons supported by eight
EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
gigantic statues of Rameses. A bas-relief repre-
senting the fourteen daughters of that monarch
makes one think that the monument dates from an
advanced epoch of his reign and of his life. More-
over, it seems to have been thrown down in Avan-
tonness at some period of ferocious reaction or bar-
barian invasion, and the eight colossi overturned
in the sand, remind us involuntarily of the Titans
struck by the bolts of Jove*
In the speos or subterranean temple cut in the
rocks at Derr by order of the conqueror, his image
is seen seated at the farther end of the sanctuary
between those of the three great ancestors of the
Egyptian pantheon : Phtah, Ainmon and Phra ;
and the legends on the walls show the same Barn-
eses taking part as a divinity in the religious hom-
age which he offers as a mortal, a priest and a
god, all in one.
At Ibrim, which, under the name of Primis, was
the landmark of the Roman empire at the time of
its greatest extension toward the south, another
speos was excavated in honor of Pharaoh and un-
der the invocation of Toth and of Sate, the local
divinities, through the pious care of a royal son of
Cvsh. the same, no doubt, who is mentioned on
* Ampere : Correspondence from Eyy^ <md Nubin, Let-
ter IX.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AOO. 219
the side relative to the well of Okau. On the
carved and painted walls of the subterranean tem-
ple " this same personage is represented rendering
his respectful homage to Barneses, at the head of
all the functionaries of his government."
Champollion has called attention to the fact that
the mere presence of the wife of the Ethiopian
prince who figured in this ceremony at the side of
her husband and in advance of all the other func-
tionaries marks an essential difference between the
civilization of Egypt and that of the rent of the East.*
If the erudite French hierogrammatist had substi-
tuted the words tlie modern Oriental world for the
expression above given, he would have kept closer
to the exact truth. What we know of India at the
epoch of the second Bama allows us to dispense
with insisting on this point. Between the exquisite
sentiment that revealed to the antique poet Valmiki
the fresh and pure creation of Sita, and that which
impelled Barneses to rear directly beside the most
commemorative edifice of his life a sort of votive
chapel to the Egyptian Venus for the use of the
Nofre-Ari, tlie roycd spouse wJiom he loved,\ is there
* Champollion : Letters written from Egypt and Nubia.
f This inscription is the one on the grand front "To
make u^ for it, in the dedication carved upon the architrave,
in the interior of the temple, at the end of the ordinary
220 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
not something like a bond of simultaneousness in
time or of common origin ?
It will be understood that we refer to the speos
of Athor at Ipsamboul, tJie grotto of purity and of
love, the details of which are full of interest and
artistic charm, and where, from the gigantic front
excavated in the rock to the ornaments on th3 pil-
lars that support the vault of the three halls
scooped out in its flanks, and even to the minutest
adornments of its chiselled and frescoed walls, every-
thing reveals, as it were, a tender and reverential
association of thought between B/ameses and the
fair companion of his youth; everything bears the
impress of a feeling of harmony and conjugal
equality.*
When, in the time of our fathers, t the celebrated
traveller Burckhardt discovered the fa r ;ade of this
monument, and measured its caryatides of thirty-six
feet in height, he believed that he had come upon
legend of Rameses, is read this line, which discloses the tea-
derness of the Queen for Raruases : His royal spouse wh)
loves him, Nofre-A ri, the great mother, has constructed this rest-
ing place in the grotto of purity. Ampere, at the place cited.
* Ampere in the place cited. The queen is charming, says
the traveler, and one never grows weary of meeting every-
where with her likeness, which Pharaoh never grows tired of
reproducing.
t In 1817. See the Voyages de Burckhardt. French
translation. Vol. I.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 223
the grandest thing that Egyptian art had created.
What then was his astonishment when, on turning
an angle of this rocky cliff, he found himself con-
fronting four colossal figures of double dimensions,
cut out in a second mountain, raising their fronts
bound with the pshent, and their huge shoulders,
high above the avalanche of sand which the wind
of Libya continually rolls down from the top of the
stony wall of which they form a part. There the^
seemed to be waiting, amid the silence of the desert,
the approach of some representative of modern civ-
ilization who should extricate them from the ob-
livion in which renown had let them sleep for thirty-
three centuries.
XV.
SINCE Burckhardt's adventure, many other vis-
itors have reached the spot, and the great temple
of Ipsamboul ha*, become the goal of the numerous
tourists which Europe daily sends to the banks of
the Nile. In the four stone giants, which have
none like them in the world excepting the two
colossi of Bamian that, from an unknown date in
the past, have recalled to the inhabitants of the Paro-
pamisus the nameless features of atn?andtMMi of
224: EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO
the South,* have been recognized, even previous to
any aid through the interpretation of the scroll
cases, the pure and delicate graciousness and the
majestic placidity that characterize all the portraits
of Barneses Mei-Amoun. The portico of the speos,
when cleared of the sand of ages which had ob-
structed it, yielded to the study and the admiration
of the explorers a whole historical museum of which
Barneses is the hero. Sixteen halls carved out in
the flanks of the mountain by the chisels of the old
Egyptian sculptors, are dedicated only to reproduce
his deeds and to glorify his memory. Upon their
walls he battles and triumphs as a warrior, sits en-
throned and wields the sceptre as a king, and
officiates as a pontiff. His statues, erect, with
their arms crossed upon their breasts, supply the
place of pillars to prop up the mountain ; then, he
sits in the sanctuary between Ammon, the supreme
divinity, and Phrah, the Sun made a deity.
How long did the members of this strange triad
assemble the same worshippers, receive the same
incense? For two thousand years past, Ammon
utters no more oracles, the Sun has ceased to be
the eternal source of life even for the black Nubian,
and the echoes of the Nile have forgotten even the
name of Barneses. However, to this hour, when
* Alex. Burnos : Journey to Samarcand.
peos of Pkra at Ipsaiuuoul (fm/udc restoretl).
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO. 227
the star of day, emerging from the horizon of
Arabia, darts its morning ray athwart the narrow
portico of the great speos of Ipsamboul, and sur-
rounds the mutilated brows of the three antique
idols with a fleeting halo, it still seems to the most
indifferent passer-by, the coldest and most skeptical
son of mocking Europe, as though some religious
mystery were occurring in the recesses of the rock.*
What, then, must have been the effect upon the
imagination in those periods of implicit belief or
credulous ignorance, of this daily phenomenon,
skillfully managed by the priesthood of the speos,
when immediately opposite to the latter, a con-
siderable centre of population, culture and com-
merce covered the Eastern bank of the river now
so desolate? It appears that at the time of the
social upheaving directed by Moses, which, not long
after Mei-Amoun's day, compeDed the Pharaohs
and their court, as in the days of the Hycsos, to
seek an asylum in Nubia, that hospitable country
could not offer them a retreat better calculated than
this to fortify their resolution afresh. In what
* Ampere, place already cited. See in the works of Fon-
tenelle what he states, on the authority of Rnffin, in reference
to an opening made by the priests in the temple of Serapis,
through which, at a certain moment, a ray of the sun fell
upon the lips of the god.
228 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
school could the orphaned and banished heir of the
sceptre of Barneses, the young Haq-an who, after-
ward, was Barneses III.,* wishing to become
inspired with the soul of his great-grandfather so
as to resume and consolidate his work, have drawn
loftier lessons than those which exhaled for him
from the subterranean temples of Ipsamboul ?
XVI.
The ages and barbarism have so well respected
the bas-relief pictures of the great temple, and their
colors are still so fresh, that, according to the in-
genuous expression of the Arabs, one would think
that the workmen employed had hardly had time
to wash their hands since they were completed.!
All these marvels of Egyptian art at the height
of its splendor offer material for study the more
precious that the most of it evidently dates back to
an epoch in the life of Barneses, concerning which
the historians of antiquity knew as little as they
did of the monuments that are now engaging our
attention.
* Manetho, in Joseplius contra Appionem. It is evident
tliat the Cetlios of this fragment is indeed Rnmeses III.
son of Seti II., son of Menq>htali, son of Rnmeses the
Great.
t Ampere, place cited.
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 231
According to the legendary opinion followed by
Herodotus, Diodortis and Josephus, Barneses II.
from the tenth year of his reign had closed his
career of battle and conquest, and the friendly fates
had imposed no other care upon him than to enjoy
in peace the fruit of his youthful exploits. The
walls of Ipsamboul, on the contrary, along with the
inscriptions that we have been enabled to put to-
gether among the ruins of the two Bameseums of
Thebes, the most dilapidated of all the great king's
monuments, and, also, one of the bas-reliefs of
Beit-el- Wally, show him to us in his riper years,
surrounded by numerous sons, and in their company
fighting the same enemies against whom he had
directed the expeditions of his youth, viz., the black
tribes of the South and the white or yellow hordes
of the North.
The picture of the grand hall of Ipsamboul, in-
scribed by ChampoUion under No. 1, offers, in this
respect, along with that which the same learned
antiquarian copied from the half crumbled pylon of
the western Bameseum, such analogies of detail,
that it is impossible to avoid considering the one a
reproduction of the other. In both of them, Barn-
eses, accompanied by three of his sons, already men
grown and mounted like himself in war chariots, is
pursuing, at headlong speed, a hostile army whose
2J2 EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
heavy garments covered with mantles, hair gathered
up in a single lock in the middle of the cranium,
and pallid complexion, would indicate their origin
to ba from beyond the Oxus, even did the legends
of these historic pages fail to give them the name
of Khetcis. At Thebes, as at Ipsamboul, these ob-
stinate antagonists of Barneses are seen seeking
refuge in a fortified place, the walls of which four
Egyptian princes, other sons of the conqueror, have
just assailed. We know not whether the name of
the besieged town has been discovered at Ipsamboul,
only the last half of it having been preserved among
the ruins of the Theban monument. But that termi-
nation is quite significant, for it reads : apur^ and
this Sanscrit ending alone indicates some locality
far to the Eastward.
XVII.
Ir has not been allotted, so far as we know, to
men who have been summoned to make themselves
felt in the world on the eve of great upheavals in
the social strata or in the human mind, to find re-
pose anywhere but in the tomb. Everything,
therefore, induces us to believe that, contrary to the
assertions of the ancients, Barneses must have
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 235
passed the long years of his reign struggling, sword
in hand, to maintain outside, the eminent influence
of his name and the completeness of hi^ conquests.
More than once, no doubt, he was obliged, as
Charlemagne was, in long after ages, to hasten, in
his grey hairs, from his Southern frontiers, still
threatened, as they were, by the savage barbarism
of the Nahazis, to those of the North which were
still agitated by the movements of the Aryan com-
munities pushing the Samites and the Pelasgians
before them on all the routes of the West. More
fortunate than the son of Pepin, was he spared the
sight of the tempests that were to sweep away the
dynasty that had been the labor of his life ? And
if his iron constitution secured him the honor so
coveted by the Pharaohs, of twice celebrating the
trentenary panegyric of his coronation, could he in
this enjoyment of his old age carry his sceptre and
his harp as high as the level of his pride ? No one
can tell. History and the monuments are silent on
this score. The first accords to him a reign of
from sixty-six to sixty-eight years, but dating from
the sixty-second, the monuments preserve a mourn-
ful silence in reference to this great name.*
* The latest date foaud at Ipsainboul is of the 38th year.
The rocks of Silsilis mention the 40th and the 44th ; the
walls of the Serapeutn the 55th. Finally, a stele in the Flor-
ence Museum is dated in the t>2d.
236 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
Like the patriarchs his contemporaries, Rameses
saw a numerous family born and reared around
him. The monumental inscriptions have acquaint-
ed us with the names of twenty-three princes, his
sons, and thirteen of his daughters, of whom five
are dignified with the title of queens. One, with a
name anything but full of euphony for our ears
Baunt-Ant seems to have been the female Ben-
jamin of his declining years.
But he also lived to see most of his children die
one by one, around him, including all of his sons
who had taken part in the struggles, the combats,
and the triumphs of his riper age. He survived by
thirteen years the man who, among all the rest, he
and his subjects regarded as the most worthy to
succeed him, viz., the prince Sha-em-Jom, and, at
last, he had to leave his sceptre in feeble hands.
Then, as the good king Priam was mad3 to feel in
later years, he had to admit that a lengthy lineage
is not always a guarantee of good fortune and sta-
bility ; that old age is rarely a blessing, and that
those whom the gods love, die young.*
The prince Sha-em-Jom, so popular among his
contemporaries, and of whom Egypt, during the
troubled reign of his brother Menephtah doubly
felt the loss, has left tokens of remembrance on a
7
* Homer's Iliad, ch. 24. and Meuander's Fragmmib.
EGYPT 3300 YEABS AGO. 237
great number of monuments, particularly at Mem-
phis, of which he was governor or viceroy. The
lapidary inscriptions show him to us presiding in
this character from the thirtieth year of his father's
reign over the grand panegyrics which were cele-
brated every four years in honor of the god Phtah.
The French savant M. Mariette, to whom we are
indebted for an interpretation of these inscriptions,
has found a great number of others dedicated to
the same prince, in the recesses of the Serapeum of
Memphis, that strange necropolis peopled with
statues of Apis or sacred bulls whose epitaphs have
enabled that indefatigable reader of inscriptions to
regulate, by genuine figures, the hypothetical dates
of a quite important portion of Egyptian chrono-
logy, and to bring the undeniable testimony of these
humble four-footed creatures to bear in proving or
disproving the existence of royal dynasties and
monarchs claiming to be the children of gods.
According to all appearances, Sha-em-Jom was
buried in the Serapeum, where, after the lapse of
thirty-three centuries, M. Mariette thinks that he
has discovered his mummified remains. We can
do no better than to transcribe in this place the
exact language of the report on the subject which
that celebrated expert has addressed to his Euro-
pean brethren :
238
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
" Three of the five Apis that died during tlie
reign of Barneses II. were buried in chambers No.
2, 3 and 4 of the small subterranean excavations.
The other two had been deposited in one hollow
chamber, the wall of which bears the date of the
year 55 of the great king. One died when the
prince Meuephtah, who at a later period was to
succeed his father Rameses II., had taken the place
of Sha-em-Jom in the government of Memphis,
and from the position of the mummy, I do not think
A mummy in its bandages.
that it is to this Apis that the date written on the
wall refers. Consequently, the other died in the
year 55, and this observation is interesting if, as
may be the case, the mummy of which I have re-
covered the remains, instead of being that of Apis
was that of prince Sha-em-Jom himself. This
new point would be worth extended explanation.
Let the reader imagine a mummy in the human
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
239
form destroyed in all its lower parts from the
breast downward. A thick mask of gold now at
Case containing a mummy.
Interior coffin to contain the case.
the Louvre covered its face. Around the neck
were two chains, also of gold, to one of which wove
suspended three amulets. As for the interior, it
240
EGYPF 3300 YEAKS AGO.
presented nothing but a mass of odoriferous bitumen
mingled with shapeless bones, in the midst of which were
buried two or three pieces of jewelry with golden clasps
containing small plates of glass. Finally, near this
singular monument, I picked up a large beetle in
greyish steatite, a little pillar of green feldspar and
a score of small funereal statues of the human form.
Exterior coffin.
Such was our Apis, and some estimate of the em-
barrassment this discovery occasioned us may be
had when it is furthermore known that while all the
monuments found above the mummy indicate the
title and name of Sha-em-Jom only, all those on
the contrary that were discovered in the neighbor-
EGYPT 3300 YEAKS AGO.
241
hood mention the name and usual qualifications of
Osorapis. Is this an Apis? or is it the mummy of
Sha-em-Join, who, dying in the 55th year of his
father's reign, made it a point to be buried in the
finest of the tombs that adorned the cemetery of
the city of which he was the governor, therein fol-
Sarcophagus.*
lowing the example of the other grandees of Egypt,
who had themselves buried at Abydos near the
tomb of Osiris ?"
To sum up, was this funereal windfall, this de-
cayed magma, the remains of the beloved son of
Barneses, of the selected heir of his vast empire, or
* These sarcophagi ill porphyry, in basalt or in alabaster,
formed the fourth and last outside covering of mummies of
high rank.
242 EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
simply those of a bull fattened in a sacerdotal stall ?
Is there not in the doubt itself, a keen satire on
renown and death, as bitter as any that history
has ever gathered in the tomb ?
We have elsewhere remarked the relations that
'exist between the duration of the reigns of the
Pharaohs and the splendor of their tombs. That
of Barneses should, consequently, have surpassed
all the rest in -magnificence. It was the third to
the right in the valley of tombs. At the present
day nothing remains of it but a mass of shapeless
ruins. All the funereal abodes of the holy mountain of
the West having been violated and overturned by
the Persians at the time of the invasion of Cam-
byses, those barbarian conquerors wreaked their
revenge particularly on the tomb of the man in
whom was incarnated the Egyptian nationality in
its struggles against the men of the North, justly re-
garded by these barbarians as their ancestors.
However, long before this period of warlike ven-
geance, the priestly reaction which had put an end
to the dynasty of Barneses and his successors ;
which had identified the patron deity of this mar-
tial family withTyphon, the genius of evil; which
had pursued the images of Sethos even to where
they were found on the scroll-box of the great king,
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO. 243
had this reaction really respected his memory
and his coffin !
XVIII.
WHATEVER may have been the causes of the
revolution that wrested from the descendants of
Rameses the sceptre of Egypt and transferred it to
the family of the priest Peor, it cannot be con-
sidered as a reassertion of human dignity, outraged
by the unbounded haughtiness of the Pharaohs of
the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.
A mere shifting from one set of hands to another
of privileges and vices, it momentarily profited the
priestly order only to the detriment of the vital
forces of the nation whose decline and downfall it
hastened. A people can never with impunity be
taught to contemn what once they worshipped.
Under the anathema which fell upon her military
spirit and warlike energy, Egypt sank back upon
herself like her granite sphinxes crouching near
the entrance of her temples. Thenceforth, concen-
trating in the adoration of natural phenomena, an
activity which had no other outlet, she strove to
connect with the subtleties of nascent inetaphysi-
244 EGYPT 3300 YEAES AGO.
cal science, the rude conceptions of her original
mythology, and made everything else subservient
to this vain toil ; men and things, principles and
facts, art, industry and intelligence alike. With her
everything passed into the condition of a symbol,
and every symbol became stone, until, petrified her-
self like the objects of her idolatry, she did not no-
tice the billows of the human race that were flood-
ing up around her.
Even then, upon that soil struck with a paralysis
which lingers there still, one grand memory alor.e
survived and covered this corpse of a nation with
the name of Barneses as with a protecting aegis.
One day Darius, entering Memphis as its master,
penetrated to the temple of Phtah and gave orders
that his own statue should be placed in front of
those of the native kings, and even of the colossal
figure of Barneses Mei-Amoun. But, upon hearing
this order of the victorious monarch, the prophet
of the temple opposed it in these terms : " Thou
hast not done, oh king, ah 1 that Barneses did, since
the latter not only subdued as many nations as
thou, but he also conquered the Scythians whom
thy Persians could not overcome. It is not just,
therefore, that thine image should be placed above
that of Barneses, since thou hast not surpassed him
by thy deeds."
EGYPT 3300 YEARS AGO.
245
At the words of this aged priest, inspired with
a patriotic remembrance as though bj fhe breath
of his god, Darius, the undisputed sovereign of
twenty satrapies whose chiefs had kings for vassals,
bowed his head in silence and abandoned his
haughty design.
lioyal cartonche of
Kaineses Mei-Amouo.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
THE CUSHTTES, (page 15.)
.... THE Coptic idiom, a remnant of the old Egyptian
tongue, is incontestably one of the most curious although
one of the most meagre fragments of the languages of an-
tiquity. An original kinship with the Somitic idioms htm
been discovered for it ; since the Semitic dialects have pen-
etrated the old Cushite foundation of human tongues
Although the Coptic is the antipodes of the Sanscrit,
a thousand reasons seem to conspire to make us look in the
basin of the Indus for the seat of primitive civilization
transported to the valley of the Nile at an epoch preceding
the time when Southern Asia was wrested from the Cushites
by the Aryan and Semitic races. If we find in the popular
forms of worship of India the contrast between which and
the religious notions of the Vedas is so marked, a strong
resemblance to the creeds of Egypt, is there any reason to
feel surprised when we discover some words in Coptic
that have an equivalent in the Sanscrit ? There is one
thing that must never be lost sight of, in any inquiry relative
to those distant times. It is absurd to say : this is of Indian
and that of Egyptian origin, for the influences that shai>ed
them have followed the tide of migration.
Thus, even while admitting (he influence of the Ariau and
250 APPENDIX.
Semitic creeds upon the forms of Egyptian worship, we can-
not avoid recognizing in certain portions of the Vedas
a character common to the religion of Egypt. The cause
of these coincidences must be sought in the primitive
extension of the race of Gush and of Shem in the
regions lying in the immediate vicinity of the Aryan
tribes. (Baron Eckstein, Researches wrjcerning Prim-
itive Humanity.)
n.
THE TEMFLE OF DENDEKAH, (p. 29.)
THE great celebrity conferred on this monument since the
French expedition of 1798, is associated with an archaeologi-
cal error respecting the date of a planisphere carved on th'J
ceiling of the temple, and with the fantastic speculations ot'
Dupuis and his school on this pretended relic of antiquity.
Nevertheless, the ruins of Tentyris, of which the wretchel
village of Denderah retains the name with its Arabic modifi-
cation, have in themselves a real interest, principally owing
to the state of preservation in which the temple is found.
But, if this temple be one of the best preserved in Egypt,
it is also one of the most recent. Commenced under the
last Ptolemies it was not completed until some time in Nero's
reign. The most ancient names that figure on the hiero-
glyphic inscriptions are those of Cleopatra and of her son
Ptolemy Cfpsarion ; the latest is that of Nero. A Greek
inscription legible upon the upper part of the portico, on
the overhanging of the cornice, is in the name of Tiberius
and dated in the 21st year of his sovereignty.
The emperors Caligula :uid Claudius also contributed to
the embellishments of the edifice. Near the hieroglyphic
inscription in which arc read the names of Cleopatra and of
the sou she bore to Caesar, on the external part of the rear
APPENDIX. 251
wall of the temple, there is carved a portrait of that famous
Queen ; it does but little credit to the chisel of the artist.
The whole sculptural work, moreover, betrays a period of
decadence in the art. The hieroglyphics, like tne orna-
ments, are of inferior execution, as we find them on many
other monuments of the same periods. But arckitaature
maintained itself better in. the midst of this wasting away of
art. Here, for instance, the general effect, notwithstanding
t he bad taste and the heaviness of detail, lacks neither gran-
deur nor majesty, and the temple, even in its present condi-
tion, still produces a vivid impression on the traveller.
The portico or pronaos, a work of Tiberius, is supported
by 24 columns in four rows of six columns each. An inter-
columnary wall, breast high, extending between the pillars,
closes the lower part of the first row. The ceiling, which is
in'coniplete preservation, is ornamented with the celebrated
zodiac which has been the subject of so many dissertations
and hypotheses. To the portico succeed thive halls of un-
equal size, the first adorned with columns, and the two
others with adjoining side rooms. On the ceiling of one of
these chambers was secured a planisphere which is now in
Paris. The naos or sanctuary which terminates this range of
halls is isolated by a circular passage from the six rooms that
surround it. The total length of the temple is 81 and its
width 34 yards. That of the portico, which overshoots the
body of the temple iu such manner as to give the whole
structure the form of a T, is 43 yards in length by 98 of interior
height. The temple was preceded by its dromos, extending
a length of J.10 paces to an isolated pylon which bears the
names of Domitian and of Trajan.
This temple was dedicated to the goddess Hathor, from
whom the city, to all appearance, had taken its name (Than-
athorthe habitation of Hathor.) In the inscriptions dis-
tributed in various parts of the temple, the goddess bears,
among other titles, that of the Qaeeu of Tennthyr, a word
from which, in the fullness of time, was derived Teutyris.
In its turn the latter degenerated to
2;>2 APPENDIX.
M. de Rouge, in one of his lectures at the college of
France, in the course of 1865, communicated to his audience
a letter from M. Mariette, announcing the discovery that the
latter had just made, beneath the temple of Denderah, of
a subterranean chapel, the construction of which the inde-
fatigable explorer thought that he could trace back to
Cheops, (Chuffu.) the founder of the Great Pyramid.
Whatever may be the credit to assign or the reservations to
be made in reference to this opinion, one thing is certain,
to wit, that the discovery, in itself, does not in any degree
affect the relatively modern dates of the upper temple and
of its zodiac. The utmost it could do would be to give
fresh credit to the hypothesis (rather quickly abandoned by
the savants of our day) according to which the first religious
monuments of Egypt were subterranean temples.
in.
THE ANCIENT BED OF THE NILE, (p. 33.)
To the westward of the Delta, parallel to its line of incli-
nation and thirty-five miles distant, runs a valley that opens
on the Mediterranean Sea not far from Arabs Cape. The name
Bahr-bela-ma given by the wandering tribes to this valley
signifies the river without water ; it stretches far away to-
ward the south and sends off many side valleys" to the Nile
below Gizeh, (the Bahr-el-Farigh,) and toward Fayoum.
It is one of the singular features of the physical configura-
tion of Northeastern Africa. A simple crest or ridge sep-
arates it from the Wadi-Natroun or the valley of the lakes of
Natron, which no doubt was only one of its brandies at the
period when the waters rolled full and high between its
banks fully 15,000 yards apart. The Bahr-bela-Ma is clog-
ged with sand. Neither vegetation nor springs can be seen ;
APPENDIX. 253
but, on the other hand there are such great quantities of
petrified trunks of trees as are met with between the Mokat-
tan and the Red Sea. Some of these trunks, completely
transformed to stone, are as much as eight or ten yards in
length. Impressions of fossil fish have also been noticed on
the stone, and it has been ascertained that the pebbles
picked up there belong to the primitive mountains of Up-
per Egypt and the high Ethiopian Plains. These petrifac-
tions are to be found, also, in the Bahr-el-Farigh.
Ascending southward across the Fayoum, the small oasis,
the interior oasis and that of Khargeh, one may follow the
traces of the Bahr-bela-ma to the bosom of the Nubian des-
ertb as far as those wadys which, traversed by the roads
leading to Darfur between the 20th and the 22nd degrees of
latitude, seem to weld themselves to the most salient angles
of the present bed of the Nile to the northward of Dougola.
The Bahr-bela-ma is, then, but the old channel followed by
the waters of the Ethiopian plateaux ere the convulsions of
the crust of the earth had opened an outlet for them toward
the primitive gulf which became Egypt, thanks to the local
depressions of the surface.
IV.
THE SHE1 HERD KINO APAPSAS AND THE GOD SOTJTEKH.
WE read in Strabo that " at Heliopolis and Memphis there
were edifices of a barbarian order of architecture, with sev-
eral rows of columns, but with neither ornaments nor de-
signs." Was not the temple reared to Soutekh, the only God,
by the Semitic iconoclast Apapias, one of these edifices ? Is
it any other than the monument without ornament, without
sculpture, without a single letter, discovered by M. Marietta
twenty yards from the great Sphinx of Gizeh, and in which
a well filled up with the statues of the gods and the kings of
254 APPENDIX.
the fourth dynasty, bears witness to the hatred of the foun-
der for the idols and fetiches of the preceding generations ?
V.
THE NAMES OP KAMESES II.
[Note by M. Roug6.]
If the testimony of Tacitus placed the present reading of
the name of Rameses beyond dispute it did not assist us in
comprehending how the Greeks had come to write a name
so different from it. The condition in which the royal lists
taken from Manetho have reached us still increase the em-
barrassment. In the nineteenth dynasty no other name had
been found on these lists than the genuine Egyptian one of
Rameses Mei-Amoun. The Greek chronologists who have
transmitted these lists to us felt that they could not omit in-
troducing the Sesostris of Herodotus, somewhere. A list of
the Egyptian kings on which Sesostris had not been named
would have seemed to them something as monstrous as a
history of Greece from which the name of Alexander had
been excluded. Hence these compilers of quotations found
in Manetho, at the twelfth dynasty, a king whose name
Sesortasen presented some analogy to that of Sesoslris. More-
over, he was a conqueror. His monuments, which still exist
to this day, show that he had advanced the frontiers of Egypt
on the Nubian side, and that his memory was still held in
sufficient honor to cause fresh temples to be reared to his
memory many centuries after his death. Undoubtedly there
were in the first extracts from Manetho some words of praise
following this royal name, as there were after several others ;
and this circumstance, joined to the similarity of names, in-
duced the chronologists to place the Sesostris of the Greeks
just there. The writing that accompanies it is, moreover,
too clear in its specifications to be accepted as the genuine
text of Manetho.
APPENDIX. 255
It is not the Sesostris of Herodotus that we meet with,
then, at the 'twelfth dynasty ; it was, indeed, a king who was
victorious on the frontiers, but whose armies had never pen-
etrated into Asia, and this false application of the legend of
Sesostris may have been caused by the complete absence of
trhat famous name from the real lists of Manetho. Since
the British Museum published its flue collection of papyri,
all Egyptian scholars have remarked in the historical texts
of the nineteenth dynasty a singular royal monogram which
reads Sesu, \~ ' ' ' -** Jl . The same name is also found
at Thebes on a mural inscription. It seemed impossible to
find any particular place for this king Sesu, and the analogy
of the name with Sesostris was so tempting, that it no
doubt occurred to the mind of more than one archaeologist ;
but the question was to find some decisive information so as
to correctly place the king designated by the device. I be-
lieve that I have been so fortunate as to come across the proof
desired, in the Egyptian collection in the imperial musm-m
at Vienna.
That museum possesses a small solid pyramid of calcareous
stone ; its four sides are covered with finely executed carv-
ings. I have described, in the catalogue of the Louvre, the
ordinary decoration of this small monument. It is, so to
speak, turned so as to face eastwardly, and is always made
up of invocations to the sun in his various positions. The
Vienna pyramid does not fall short of this programme, and
these repeated invocations have supplied opportunities to
frequently mention the name of the person dedicating it.
That personage was called, like the great king, Rameses
Mei-Amoun, | f |] j f (\U Excepting the border sur-
rounding the royal name, the signs are exactly the same.
Now, twice upon the pyramid, the same Egyptian is named
256 APPENDIX.
simply Ses, I I written without the vowel. A third time his
name is written SesMei-Ai wun \ I \\Ml in such manner as
to make us perfectly understand that Ses is a popular abbre-
viation of Rameses. This royal name, in its most complete
form, that which was particularly in use under Rameses L,
SES
reads thus :V I T Ramesesu. From this form
are derived several abbreviations. On the historical papyri
we find the scrolls
d
.,
Sesesu, and V ' ' ' -A J| R a -Sesesu, all used indiffer-
ently to designate Barneses II. I have even found there the
variation V I I JlT 1 ' 1 ~~J( Sem-Mei- Amoun, identical
with that which is read once on the pyramid at Vienna, where
the surname Met- Amoun accompanies the abbreviation of the
proper name. It is certain, then, that there did exist a pop-
ular abbreviation Kesu, so currently used to designate the
great Rameses, that it could be employed indifferently to
write the title of one of his namesakes. The form used in
the papyri Sesesn is very exactly what Diodorus has tran-
scribed into Sesoosis. It is not that I regard the form Sesos-
tris as less correct ; it may be derived from the scroll Ra-Se-
sesu. The Egyptians had known a number of kings whose
names ended in the word ra, or sun (pronounced ri by iota-
cism, according to all the Greek transcripts, in the termina-
tions). Although the sign for the sun was traced at the
commencement of the scroll as an honorary distinction, tho
APPENDIX. 257
grammatical construction frequently brought it to the end of
the name. It is thus that the name of king Menkeres, writ-
ten invariably
LI
He-men-Ice, became in the pronuncia.
tion fumm LJ Q and it is in this way that I found it written
and it is in this way that I found it written for the proper
name of a Saitic functionary. It seems to me very probable
that, in consequence of this custom, the abbreviation
(TUTU
became transformed in the mouth of the
people to Sesesu-ri and that it was in this shape that they
peated, in the presence of Herodotus, the name that produced
the Greek from Sesostris.
[Extract from the Atheene-uinfratifais, 1856.]
VI.
THE IMAGES OF ANCESTOES, (p. 79.)
THE small statues of the ancestors and predecessors of Barn-
eses II., which the musal paintings represent as figuring at
the panegyric of his coronation, are only thirteen in number.
They are, besides those of his father Seti and his grandfather
Eameses I., those of nine lawful kings of the 18th
dynasty. Aahmes, Amenophl., Thothmes I., ThothmesIL,
Amenoph II., Thothmes IV., Amenoph III., and Horemheb.
These historical sovereigns are preceded by a Mentu
Hotep VI., of the llth dynasty, who has left no trace of his
personality on the monuments, and of the legendary Mena
two pers onages only, and problematical at that, to represent
2/>8 APPENDIX.
the long series of ages attributed to the history of Egypt
beyond the time of the Hycsos ! .... Is it not as though, in
a gallery of portraits of the Bourbon race, no place had been
found prior to the time of Henry IV., for any but the like-
nesses of Eobert the Strong and Francis the son of Hec-
tor ?
This leads us naturally to some reflections on the tables or
lists of the Egyptian Kings recently discovered and pub-
lished.
THE TABLES OF ABYDOS AND OF MEMPHIS.
In the month of September, 1863, M. Mariette, who had
just made some excavations in the great burial district of
Sakkara near Memphis with great success, published in the
Archceological Review (Revue Archeologique) a monumental
table containing, in their order, the names of the fifty-three
Pharaohs. Seti I., of the 19th dynasty, himself, comprised
in the same table, is represented as making the offerings pre-
scribed by the funereal rites, to his deified predecessors.
Although the Egyptian scribes to whom was confided the
task of recalling their names, have inverted the order of the
kings of the 12th dynasty, whether through inattention or in
pursuance of some purpose as yet nnfathomed, in such man-
ner as to ascend instead of descending the scale of time ;
and although this table contains among the kings of the
first dynasties, some names until then unknown, stiU, such
as it is, it was at the time of its publication, in the month of
September 1863, the most important document of its kind
that had seen the light since the discovery of the famous
tablet of Abytlos in the possession of the British Museum.
But it was not long ere the glory of this discovery was
eclipsed by another, still more important, found by the in-
defatigable French explorer. M. Mariette was very recently
lucky enough to find a considerable portion of a temple,
buried in the soil and dedicated to Asiris, in the heart of
th- holy fity of Abydos, the same from which the table in
the British Museum came. Upon one of the walls of thia
APPENDIX. 259
temple lie discovered i representation of the offerings made
by Seti I., and by ji; ton, (who, afterwards, was Barneses
the Great,) to their deceased ancestors, no less than seventy-
six in number, from the first dynasty ruler, Menes, down to
Sethi himself. This discovery, which a German doctor, a
savant by trade and a robber by calling, who clung to the
steps of M. Mariette, has tried to take away from our coun-
tryman, is undoubtedly of great value, but has perhaps been
rated too high in a historical point of view. A slight obser-
vation will suffice to prove as much. The first part of the
old table of Abydos having been destroyed, it is not known
whether this table did or did not commence with Menes.
The Sakkara tablet does not contain this name, which, how-
ever, is found upon the new list of Abydos. These three
lists are of nearly the same epoch ; the first, dating from
Barneses the Great, contains 49 kings ; the second and the
third are of the reign of Seti, and yet do not present the
same number of names. The temple of Memphis has fifty
two ; that of Abydos seventy-five ah 1 predecessors of the
same Seti. Hence it must be inferred that the Egyptian
priests who prepared them, had the privilege of selecting
the kings whoso names they wished, to retain a choice the
motives of which must frequently have varied, since the two
tables of the same city of Abydos, composed at two periods
quite close together, differ in the names as well as in the
number of them.
But it will be confessed that the choice made by the his-
torian of certain kings commendable for their virtues or
odious for their vices is reasonable only when one knows the
motives that determined this adoption or exclusion, and all
becomes mystery to one who has not possession of the key
to the labyrinth. On the other hand, isolated monuments
and the list of the royal chamber at Karnak have revealed to
us the existence in Upper Egypt of dynasties of Nantefs and
Sevekhoteps, preceding the 12th dynasty ; and, although
localized, perhaps, in Upper Egypt, they were powerful,
but the names of all their people are omitted on the three
tables of which we are treating.
260 APPENDIX.
A careful comparative examination of these different doc-
uments casts a ray of light, however, upon the dark places.
By its help, we perceive that there was a period when the
priests had not the privilege of choosing among the names
of the kings ; there was, indeed, a period in the history of
Egypt in relation to which the different tables agree with
each other as they, likewise, agree with the lists of the his-
torian Manetho. This epoch was the commencement of the
famous 12th dynasty of the Sesortasens and of the Amenem-
has. In ascending from Barneses II. to Amenemha I. every-
thing is clear, everything follows in the same order on the
different documents ; but, in taking the last named king for
the point of departure, all becomes doubt and confusion ex-
cepting at the epoch, comparatively free from clouds and
mists, of the Pharaohs who built the great pyramids.
Hence we may conclude that the learned copyists and scribes
of the colleges at Thebes and Memphis composed, in the
fourteenth century preceding the Christian Era, a history of
Egypt in which the whole period anterior to the 12th dy-
nasty is but a tissue of fables, legends and traditions toned
down to the historic form, something like the history of
England written in the ninth and tenth centuries by monks
and translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The
papyrus at Turin is a collection of this nature, with its
mythical kings, its divine dynasties and its legendary con-
querors and law-givers. The history of Manetho is probably
but an abridgment or an amplification of these traditions,
and, thus, these compilations of the fourteenth century be-
fore our era bring no support to the history of Manetho in
all that concerns the epochs anterior to the commencement
of the 12th dynasty. And, in fact, it is with this period
that Manetho himself opens the second book of his history
and emerges from the confused eras of the unfamiliar dy-
nasties and nameless kings in order to enter upon the his-
torically and monumentally well ascertained series of kings
belonging to the 12th dynasty.
The conclusion of all this reasoning is self-apparent. The
APPENDIX. 261
history of the Egyptian Kings of the united monarchies of
Thebes and Memphis begins with the 12th dynasty ; with
its accession the tide of Egyptian history brightens ; the
priests retain without difficulty a remembrance of the kings
that had governed the whole country, whereas previously
they had seen before them a crowd of local sovereigns, of
mere chiefs of cities and of petty kings independent of each
other a confused throng from which they chose whom they
pleased according to the different degrees of renown that
each of these petty princes had been able to acquire in the
different great centres of the theocratic power. Some of
these Pharaohs, the most celebrated for instance of those
who reared the Pyramids, and the old King Papi, are in-
scribed, alone and the same time, upon the lists of Upper
and Lower Egypt. But the inscription of the name of
Meues, the legendary founder of the empire, upon the The-
ban list of Abydos, and his exclusion from the Meinphian
list of Sakkara, confirm the opinion that we owe what we
have of Egyptian history in form to the labors of the The-
ban writers belonging to the palmy time of Egyptian litera-
ture, the age of the Pharaohs of the dynasty of Barneses.
vn.
THE AKMY OF KAMESES H THE MILITARY CASTE, (p. 98.)
THE figures given by Diodorus (Book I., ch. 54) for the
army of Sesoosis (Rameses) are 600,000 foot-soldiers, 24,000
horsemen and 27,000 chariots. The only specimen of horse-
manship that has been discovered on all the monuments ex-
plored in old Egypt, from Memphis to the Cataracts, is a
veritable caricature, viz., a terrified fugitive twisting and
struggling on the back of a runaway horse. Diodorus says
elsewhere (Book I., ch. 31,) that, in his time, the population
of Egypt ran up to 3,000,000 of souls, and that it had been
262 APPENDIX.
millions under the Ptolemies. This last estimate, without
being impossible, seems very small when compared with the
cultivable surface of the country, even putting the latter at
its highest estimate. The actual number of 2,900,000 al-
ready surpasses the average population of France in respect
to the extent of its territory. It is true that in the time of
the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, the cultivable surface of
Egypt may have been double what it is now, and this would
give us, all proportions carefully observed, a total of
6,000,000 souls. In his " Memoirs Dictated at Saint Helena, "
the former general of the army of the East pretends that
under good administration, when irrigating canals extended
from the valley of the Nile to the Oasis of Libya, this num-
ber may have risen to 10 millions. But did a foundation for
this hypothesis ever really exist ?
However that may have been, here is what Herodotus has
told us of the military caste in Egypt :
Euterpe CLXIV. . . . The warriors receive from their
countrymen the names of Calasiries and Herrnotybies. They
live in the nomes hereinafter enumerated, and all Egypt is
divided into nomes.
CLXV. Those of the Hermotybies are : Busiris, Sais,
Chemnis, Papremis, the island of Prosopitis and the half of
Natho ; the Hermotybies have their domains upon these
nomes : their number is one hundred and sixty thousand
men when they are complete. Not one of them has ever
learned any of the mechanical arts, but they devote them-
selves to the military profession.
CLXVI. The nomes of the Calasiries were Thebes, Bu-
bastis, Aphris, Thauis, Mendes, Sebennys, Athribis, Phar-
betis, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, Mycephoris ; the last
named nome occupies an island opposite Bubastis ; the
Calasiries have their domains on these nomes. Their num-
ber is two hundred and fifty thousand when they are in
their full muster. They are not permitted to cultivate any
mechanical art, but they practice the arts of war and hand
them down from father to son.
CLXYII. I cannot decide with certainty whether the
APPENDIX. 263
Greeks have received these usages from the Egyptians,
since I perceive that the Thracians, the Scythians, the Per-
sians, the Lydians, and nearly all the barbarians place such
of their citizens as have learned the mechanical arts, and
their descendants after them, in the lowermost rank in their
estimation, and considered those the noblest of men who
free themselves from manual labor, and especially those who
resort to warlike service. Such were the ideas of all the
Greeks, especially of the Lacedaemonians ; the Corinthians
were they who least despised the artisan.
CLXVm. The following privileges were assigned to the
soldiers, and they were the only Egyptians, excepting the
priests, to whom anything of the kind was ever gi'auted.
Each of them possesses twelve roods of excellent land ex-
empt from taxation. The Egyptian rood is equivalent to a
square lot measuring a hundred cubits on each side, the
cubit being identical with that of Samos. Such are their
privileges. They also enjoy by turns, and never twice the
same, these other advantages : every year a thousand Gala-
si ries and as many Hermotybies form the king's guard ; to
these, besides their land, are given every day five mini of
baked bread, two mini of beef and four cups of wine.
vin.
THE ROBUS, (p. 126.)
WE are not unaware that Dr. Brugsch, and with him many
other Egyptian scholars, make this people out to have been
a tribe in the north of Africa. For them, Itobus meant
Libus or Libyans. But notwithstanding the scientific
authority of these learned men, we do not think that Libyiui
shepherds ever wore the double garment and the long tunic
which the mural paintings attribute to the liobns, along
with their clear complexion, their blue eyes and light beard.
Neither do we admit that auy kind of a confederation of no-
264 APPENDIX.
madic tribes to the westward of the Nile ever was important
enough to have abandoned from 12,000 to 13,000 corpses to
the Egyptian soldiers on one field of battle to be mutilated,
as the inscriptions at Medinet-Abou pretend in reference to
the Robus.
For all these reasons, it remains quite evident to us, as it
was for Champollion and for Wilkinson, that it will not do to
rank the Rohus among the Eastern peoples, and that they
occupied in Asia a country very remote from Egypt, and en-
joyed a climate much more temperate than that of the bor-
ders of the Nile.
IX.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OP THE EGYPTIANS.
[Extracts from Herodotus.]
XXXV. . . The Egyptians live beneath a sky peculiar to
themselves ; their country is watered by a river different
from all other rivers : and then they have established laws
and customs which are, for the most part, the opposite of
those of the rest of human beings. With them the women
go to market and trade ; the men stay at home and
weave. Everywhere else the weavers pass the woof above,
the Egyptians pass it below. The men carry burthens on
their heads, the women carry them on their shoulders. No
woman has the office of priesthood for gods of either sex ;
the men only can be priests. The young men are never con-
strained to support their parents, if such be not their own
wish ; but the girls are compelled to do so even against their
will.
XXXVI. Elsewhere the priests of the gods wear
long hair : in Egypt they shave ; among other men, the cus-
tom is to cut the hair when mourning commences for any
ui-ur ivlutive; the Egyptians, to show respect for the dead, let
APPENDIX. 265
the hair and the beard which previously they shaved off,
grow on their heads and under their chins. Other men live
separate from their animals ; the Egyptians live pell rnell
with them. Elsewhere, wheat and barley are staples of
food, but the Egyptians consider it a disgrace to live upon
that diet ; they use duurah. They knead dough with their
feet and clay with their hands, and they lift manure with
both hands. . . . Every man wears two garments ; the
woman has only one. Other people fasten the rings and
the cables of their sails inside ; the Egyptians fasten them
outside. The Greeks write and count from left to right ;
the Egyptians go from right to left, and, in doing so, claim
that they go to the right, and the Greeks to the left. They
have two kinds of letters the sacred and the vulgate char-
acters.*
XXXVII. As they are observers of ceremonies more than
other men they practise the following customs : they drink
from a brazen cup which they cleanse every day ; and this not
some only but all of them do. They wear linen garments,
and are very careful to have them always fresh and clean v
They deem it better to be neat than to be handsome. Every
three days, the priests shave their whole bodies, so that no
vermin may defile them while they are serving the gods.
They wear nothing but linen garments and shoes of papyrus
bark, and they are not permitted to use others. They wash
themselves with fresh water twice each day and twice each
night. They accomplish other rites innumerable one might
say, but they enjoy uncommon advantages. They neither
wear out nor spend what belongs to them ; sacred viands are
cooked for them ; every day plenty of beef and geese are
sent to them ; grape wine is distributed to them ; but, at
the same time, they cannot eat fish. No beans are planted
throughout all Egypt, and if any come up they are not eaten,
either raw or cooked. The priests cannot bear the sight of
* The hieroglyphics and demotic characters.
2G6 APPENDIX.
them, since they look upon the vegetable as impure. Each
god is served not by one priest only, but by several, one of
whom is the high priest, and when he dies his son succeeds
him.
XLVIL The Egyptians regard the hog as an impure ani-
mal. Consequently, should one of thorn, in passing near a
pig, be touched by him, he is made to go down into the
river without undressing, and they bathe him in his cloth-
ing ; on the other hand, the Egyptian swineherds only,
among all the population, cannot enter any temple in the
country. No one gives them his daughters in marriage and
no one marries their daughte. s, nor can they intermarry ex-
cepting among themselves. The Egyptians do not think it
proper to sacrifice a pig to any other .deities than the Moon
and Bacchus ;* to them only they sacrifice that animal, at the
same moment, during the full Moon, and eat the flesh of the
victim. The manner of making this sacrifice of swine is as
follows : when the victim has boon slaughtered, they fasten
together the extremity of the tail, the spleen and the kid-
neys. These are then wrapped in all the fat found in the
stomach, and are burned upon the altar. The remainder of
the flesh is eaten during the same day at the close of the
sacrifice : no one would taste it on any other day.
XL VIII. At the evening repast, on the day previous to
the festival of Bacchus, (Asiri,) every man, in front of his own
door, having slaughtered a young pig gives it to the swine-
herd who had sold it to him, to take away. The Egyptians
celebrate the rest of the festival as the Greeks do, in all but
the music and the singing.
. . . L. Nearly all the names of the gods came to Greece
from Egypt. My researches prove to me that we get them
from the barbarian countries, and I think that they come
especially from Egypt. Excepting Neptune and the Dioscuri,
of whom I have already spoken ; excepting Juno, Vesta,
Themis, the Graces and the Nereids, the names of all tin
* Luis aud Asiri.
APPENDIX, 267
other gods have always existed among the Egyptians. I
here repeat what they themselves declared to me. The
divinities of whom they say they do not know the names
seem to me to have been named by the Pelasgi, excepting
Neptune (Poseidon). The Libyans were they who revealed
this last divinity to us : no one pronounced his name pre-
viously, and they have always honored him as a god. The
Egyptians do not worship heroes.
LI. The Greeks have learned from the Egyptians the
customs which I have already mentioned and others that I
shall speak of hereafter.
LII. Primitively, the Pelasgi, when praying, made offer-
ings of all kinds to their gods, as I was told at Dodona, but
they gave neither name nor surname to any one of them ;
for they had never heard any given to them. They called
them gods for the sole reason that, after having put the
universe in order, they maintained all its laws. Then, much
time having elapsed, they learned from Egypt the names of
gods other than Bacchus, and, a long time afterward, this
last name too. They consulted the oracle of Dodona in re-
lation to these names, that being the one wliich the Greeks
consider the most ancient, and which, at that time, was the
only one. When the Pelasgi had asked whether they should
accept names coming from the barbarians, the oracle replied
t " Take them !" Thereupon, they sacrificed to the gods
under these names, of which they made use from that time
forth, and, finally, the Greeks received the same from them.
LIII. Whence came each of the gods ? Have they always
existed ? What is the form of them ? Nothing of all this
was known, properly speaking, until a very recent period.
For I think that Hesiod and Homer only four hundred years
anterior to me, not more. Well, it was they who made up
the Greek theogony ; who gave names to the gods ; who
distributed honors and attributes among them ; who de-
scribed their forms, and it appears to me that the poets
said to have preceded those two men were born after them.
LVIIL The oracle of Thebes in Egypt and that of Dodoua
268 APPENDIX.
yield their responses in nearly the same manner. The art
of prophesying from an inspection of the victims came also
from .Egypt. The Egyptians were the first of all men to
establish solemn processions, holidays and oli'eiings, and it
is from them that the Greeks learned these ceremonies.
This, for me, is proof of the fact : in Egypt it is plain that
they are very ancient, and, in Greece that, they have been bnt
recently established.
LIX. The Egyptians do not restrict themselves every year
to one solemn festival only ; those great assemblages are
frequent. The first of these and the one which is the most
zealously attended, is held at Bubastis in honor of Diana :
the second at Busiris in honor of Isis, since in this city stands
the largest temple of Isis. The city itself is built in the
midst of the Delta, and Isis, in the language of the Greeks,
is Ceres. The third gathering is at Sais in honor of Minerva :
the fourth at Heliopolis, in honor of the Sun ; the fifth at
Buto, in honor of Latona ; the sixth at Papremis, in honor
of Mars.
LX. And this is the way in which they repair to the City
of Bubastis, for both men and women go thither, in great
multitudes, from all parts, each family in its boat. Some of
the women have castanets and sound them : for their part
during the whole trip some of the men play the flute and
the remainder of both sexes clap their hands and sing.
When, as they sail along, they approach one of the cities that
dot the way, they moor the boat and do what I am going to
relate. Among the women some continue their singing or
rattle their castanets, while others with loud cries jeer at the
women of the city, and others again dance. ... At each
town on the river banks, they do in like manner. On their
arrival at Bubastis, the passengers begin to celebrate the
festival and offer sacrifices ; and in this solemnity they con-
sume more grape wine than during all the rest of the year.
Without counting the children, more than seven hundred
thousand men and women, according to the statements of
the inhabitants, assemble there. Such are the things that
take place at Bubastis.
APPENDIX. 269
LXI .... After the sacrifices, the men and women,
thronging together in a numberless multitude, ply each
other with blows. For what god they strike it would be an
impiety in me to tell. The Carians established in Egypt do
that and more still ; they cut each other's foreheads with
knives ; by that they show that they are strangers and not
Egyptians.
LXII. When the latter are assembled to make sacrifices
in the city of Sais, during a certain night, they all light, in
in the open air around their houses, a great number of
lamps filled with salt and oil, the wick floating on the sur-
face.
The wick burns all night, and this celebration is called the
" festival of the lamps. " Such Egyptians as have not come
to the assemblage equally celebrate the night of the sacri-
fice ; all light their lamps as well, so that it is not the city of
Sais alone that is illuminated, but all Egypt. For what rea-
son has this night its share of illuminations and honors ?
That is told in a sacred legend.
LXIII. At Heliopolis, at Buto, the celebrants restrict
themselves to the immolation of victims. At Papremis, the
same sacrifices are offered up and the same ceremonies are
observed as in the other cities ; Moreover, when the sun
begins to wane, some of the priests are busied around the
statue ; others in much greater number, armed with staves,
take their stations at the entrance of the temple ; the people,
that is to say many thousand persons, fulfilling their vows
and similarly armed, are assembled on the opposite side.
Now, on the previous evening, the statue, enclosed in a
small chapel of painted wood, had been carried from the
temple to another station ; the priests that had been placed
around the statue go to work and draw a four-wheeled
chariot to convey the wooden chapel and the statue that it
contains back to the large temple ; but those who are in tho
portico refuse to admit them. The crowd of devotees,
rushing to the rescue of the god, strike them : they defend
270 APPENDIX.
themselves ; a violent conflict with sticks and staves ensues,
and many a head is broken ; however, the Egyptians declare
that no one has ever been killed.
.... LXV. Bat the Egyptians observe with extreme
attention all the prescribed forms of religion, and particularly
those that I am about to describe. Although coterminous
with Libya, their country is not infested with wild beasts.
The animals that they know are all reputed sacred, chose
that do and those that do not live with men, alike. Were I
to tell why they hold them sacred, I should, in my narrative,
penetrate to things divine of which I am seeking to avoid
saying a word, for if I have chanced to touch upon them,
I have not done so without being forced to it by necessity.
There exists, on the subject of animals, a custom which I
am about to set forth ; keepers of the two sexes are ap-
pointed to feed each kind separately ; the son succeeds the
father in this honorific office. The inhabitants of the towns
fulfill their vows through the medium of these keepers ;
when they have made a vow to the divinity to which one of
these animals belongs, they shave either the whole head, or
half of it, or the third part of the head of their sons ; they
then put in the scales of a balance, on one side the hair,
and on the other its weight in silver ; and, whatever that
weight may be, they give it to the keeper of the animal.
The latter in return cuts up some fish in pieces and throws
them to his animals for fodder : such is the food offered to
them. Should any person kill one of these animals wilfully,
he is put to death ; should he kill unintentionally, he is
punished with a fine fixed by the priests. Any one killing
an ibis or a sparrow-hawk voluntarily or involuntarily would
infallibly be immolated.
LXVI. Whatever may be the number of the animals fed
along with the men, it would be still more considerable if,
in the cat species, for instance, the males did not destroy a
great many of the young by savage instinct, or if frequent
fires did not kill a va-st number of these creatures. When
such accidents occur, profound grief takes possession of the
APPENDIX. 271 ,
Egyptians. When, in any dwelling, a cat, dies naturally, the
inhabitants shave off their eyebrows only ; but if it be a dog
that dies they shave their bodies and their heads.
LXVII. Dead cats are taken to consecrated buildings ;
then, after having been embalmed, they are buried at
Bubastis. Dogs are bulled, each one in its own town, in
consecrated chambers, and ichneumons the same. The
shrew-mice and the sparrowhawks are taken to Buto, the
ibis to Hermopolis. Bears, which are very rarely met with,
and wolves (jackals rather) whose size does not exceed that
of foxes, are interred on the spot where they are found lying
dead.
LXVIII. The crocodile during the four coldest months
eats nothing ; although a quadruped, it lives both on land
and water ; it lays its eggs on land and hatches them there.
It passes the greater part of the day on the banks and the
whole night in the river because the water is warmer than
the open air and the dew. Of all the perishable creatures
that we know this one reaches the largest from the smallest
bulk ; its eggs are no bigger than those of a goose ; the
young one is born only the length of the egg and grows to
seventeen cubits, sometimes more. It has eyes like a pig,
large teeth, and jutting scales all along the dorsal column.
It is the only animal that has no tongue. Its lower jaw is
immovable, and it closes the upper jaw upon it, in this too
being peculiar among all living creatures. It has strong
claws, and on its back scales which cannot be cut. Blind in
the water, on land its sight is piercing ; and, as it passes the
most of the time in the river, its mouth is full of insects that
suck its blood. Animals and birds flee from it, but the
trochylus lives in amity with it because that bird renders it
good service. In fact when the crocodile comes out of the
water and reaches dry land, its first need is to inhale the
breath of the zephyr ; it emerges, therefore, with its jaws
wide open ; then, the trochylus has access to them and can
relieve it of the insects which it swallows. The crocodile
receives this relief with joy, and never harms the trochylus.
272 APPENDIX.
LXIX. To some Egyptians, the crocodile is sacred ; to oth-
ers it is not : the latter treat it as an enemy. Around Thebes
and Lake Moaris, the inhabitauis consider it sacred. Each
one of them rears a crocodile, which is tamed by training ;
and they hang pendants and buckles of crystal and gold in
its ears ; they encircle its fore-paws with bracelets and give
it choice viands from the sacrifices. In fine, while it is alive
they tend it the best they can ; when it is dead they em-
balm it and bury it in consecrated ground. On the contrary,
the inhabitants of the territory of Elephantine eat croco-
diles, not regarding them as sacred in uuy wise. The Egyp-
1 ian name of this animal is not crocodile, but champse. The
louians have called it crocodile, finding it resemble in shape
the lizards (krokodeilos) which breed in stone walls.
LXXVII. The Egyptians who inhabit the cultivated part
o"the country, taking pleasure in adorning their remembrance,
are the most refined of all the men whom I approached and
studied. Their legirnen is as follows : very careful in the
preservation of their health they purge themselves with emet-
ics and clysters every month for three days in succession,
since they think that all the diseases of man come from his
food and drink. Aside from these precautions the Egyptians
are, next to the Libyans, the healthiest of mortals, in niy opin-
ion owing to the steadiness of their seasons ; in fact, sickness
comes upon us, in consequence of the changes of all things,
especially of the seasons. They feed on bread made from
dourrah ; they drink a wine made from barley, in those dis-
tricts where there are no vines. They eat fish, some of it
dried in the sun, other kinds cured in drying-houses, close
by the sea. Among birds, they prefer quails and ducks, and
besides these, some small birds dried raw. All other birds
and fish that they have in their country, apart from those
which they consider sacred^form part of their food, roasted
or boiled,
LXVIII. At the banquets of the wealthy, when the eating
is over, a man brings in a coffin, the wooden effigy of a dead
body perfectly imitated by the sculptor and the painter, nnd
APPENDIX. 273
one or two cubits in length. This ths man shows to each of
the guests, and, as he does so, he says : " Look upon this ;
then drink and be merry, for such as thou seest it wilt thou
be, after thy death."
LXXX. With the Lacedemonians only do the Egyptians
agree in this other custom : young men when they meet
their elders, yield the path and pass aside to make way for
them ; at their approach they rise from their seats. But in
what follows, they do not resemble any Hellenic nation.
Instead of saluting with the voice on the street, they dc so
by letting their hand fall to the knee.
LXXXI. They dress in linen tunics with fringes around
their legs ; they call these fringes calis>ris, and over the
tunics they wear mantles of white wool. However, they
do not eutei the temples with the woolen garment on ; nor
are these left on corpses to be buried with them that would
be an act of impiety. In this respect, they chime in with the
Orphic, or, as they are likewise called, the Bacchic traditions,
which are equally observed by the Egyptians and by the
Pythagoreans, since among the latter it is an impious act to
bury in woolen tissues any one who has been initiated in the
mysteries. A religious motive is ascribed to this custom.
LXXXIV. In Egypt, the practice of medicine is divided
iuto specialities, each physician devoting himself to one
branch of disease, and not to several. Physicians swarm
everywhere, some for the eyes, others for the head, others
for the teeth, others for the stomach, and still others for in-
ternal disorders.
LXXXV. Their acts of mourning and their funeral cer-
emonies are after this fashion : when they lose a relative
whom they greatly esteemed, all the women of the family,
after having bedaubed their heads and faces with mire, leave
the dead body in the house and wander hither and thither
through the town, beating their uncovered breasts and
naked bosoms, in company with all those who hold relations
yf friendship with them. On the other hand, the men with
274: APPENDIX.
uncovered breasts beat themselves in the same manner ,
this done, they bear the body away to embalm it.
LXXXVI. There are persons entrusted with this business.
It forms their profession. When the corpse has been
brought to them, the euibalmers show the friends of the de-
ceased wooden models of corpses, imitated in painting, and
they point out those that they consider the most worthy of
attention, the name* of which I do not deem it proper to give
in this place ; they then exhibit the second, which costs less,
and finally the third, which is the cheapest of all. After
this, they ask how they are desired to operate upon the
corpse, and so soon as they agree upon the style and the terms
the relatives depart. The operators thus left to themselves
proceed in the following manner to embalm in the best style.
First, with a bent iron, they extract the brain through the
nostrils, at least the greater part of it, and afterward the rest
by the application of dissolvent injections. Then, with a
sharpened Ethiopian stone, they cut open the sides of the
corpse, take out all the intestines from the abdomen, wash
the latter with palm wine, besprinkle it with powdered per-
fumes, and at last sew it up, after having filled it with
bruised myrrh of pure quality, cinnamon and other perfumes,
from among which incense alone is excluded. These opera-
tions completed, they dry the body in carbonate of soda and
leave it plunged in that for seventy days, but no longer ; they
are not permitted to do so. At the expiration of these sev-
enty days, they wash the corpse and wrap it up completely
in bandages of the finest linen saturated with gum, of which
the Egyptians make great use instead of glue. The relatives
then again take possession of the corpse, enclose it in a
wooden case shaped like a human body, and place it standing
against the wall in the burial chamber. This is the costliest
style of embalming.
LXXXVII. For those who prefer the middle method of
embalming, and desire to avoid heavy expense, the embalmera
* Asm.
APPENDIX. 275
proceed in the following manner ; by means of syringes
they inject cedar oil into the abdomen of the dead without
opening it or removing the entrails, and they take care to
retain the liquid in such manner that none of it may escape.
They next plunge the body into carbonate of soda and leave
it there for the time specified, and then cause the cedar oil
which they first introduced, to issue from its cavities. The
latter has strength enough to carry with it the intestines and
the viscera, for it liquefies them all. Externally, the soda
"has dried up the flesh, and nothing remains of the dead man
but his skin and his bones : these operations concluded, they
deliver the body and their task is over.
LXXXVHI. The third style of embalming, for the ac-
commodation of the poor, is this : the embalmers make an in-
jection of horse-radish into the intestines, and dry the body
in carbonate of soda for seventy days ; then they deliver it.
XC. Whoever is found dead after having been seized by a
crocodile, or swept away by the river, be he Egyptian or
stranger, and whatever the town where his body was picked up,
is entitled to consecrated burial at the hands of the inhabi-
tants. They perform the funeral rites in the costliest man-
ner and deposit the body in their burial chambers. Neither
its friends nor its neighbors are permitted to touch it, but
the priests of the Nile take charge of it and bury it as a
more than human body. Herodotus, Book II.
The foregoing facts w^re gleaned by the historian of Hali-
carnassus in the midst of Egyptian society when it had
grown old and was in full decay : they may be completed by
other information deduced from the paintings on the walls
so abundant on the monuments which that same social or-
ganization reared in the days of its youth and development.
In this respect, what is there more curious or more striking
from the point of view afforded by the private and civic life
of the primitive Egyptians than the sepulchral grottoes of
276 APPENDIX.
Beni Hassan, excavated on the right bank of the Nile, nut
far from the ancient Artemidos ? Below we give, according
to Charnpollion, an enumeration of the subjects represented
on the walls of these hypogees.
I. Agriculture. Designs representing ploughing done by
oxen or by human labor ; sowing, the treading of the ground
by ranis, and not by pigs as Herodotus says ; five kinds of
carts ; digging and the harvest of grain and flax ; the
sheaving of these different kinds of plants ; the stacking,
the threshing and pounding, the measuring and the housing*
of the same in barns ; two designs of different kinds of large
barns ; flax carried by asses ; a host of other agricultural
toils, and among them the gathering of the lotus ; the cul-
tivation of the vine, the vintage, its transportation, the seed-
ing, the winepress of two kinds, one by manual power, the
other by machinery ; the bottling of the wine, or putting up
in jars, and its conveyance to the cellar ; the manufacture of
shrub, etc., garden culture, the gathering of fruit, the cul-
tivation of the onion, irrigation, etc. ; all, like the following
pictures, with explanatory hieroglyphic legends ; and, more-
over, the superintendent of the country house and his clerks.
II. Trades and Manufactures. A collection of paintings,
mostly in colors, so as to the better determine the nature of
the articles, and representing the carver in stone and the
carver in wood, the painter of statues, the painter of archi-
tectural objects ; furniture and cabinet work, the painter
with his pallet executing a picture ; scribes and clerks busied
with writings of all kinds ; workmen at the quarries carry-
ing blocks of stone ; the potter's trade with all its operations ;
workmen kneading clay with their feet, others with their
hands ; the placing of the clay on the conical wheel and the
wheel on the turning lathe, the potter making the belly and
the neck of the vase, etc. : the first baking in the kiln, the
second drying in the oven ; makers of canes, oars and pud-
dles ; cabinet makers ; joiners ; carpenters ; wood-sawyers ;
curriers ; the leather and morocco dyers ; the shoemaker ;
spinning ; the weaving of cloths of different manufacture ;
APPENDIX. 277
the glassblower and all his operations ; the goldsmith, the
jeweller ; the blacksmith.
1IL The Military Caste. The education of the military
caste and all its gymnastic exercises, represented in more
than 200 pictures, in which are reproduced all the positions
and attitudes that two skillful antagonists can assume, attack-
ing, defending, receding, advancing, standing up, prostrate
etc. ; people may see from these whether Egyptian art con-
tented itself with mere profile designs, legs joined and arms
tightly pressed against the haunches.
I copied all this curious series of naked warriors struggling
together ; and, besides, some sixty figures representing sol-
diers of every arm and of every rank ; sham fights ; a siege ;
the tortoise and the battering ram ; military punishments ;
a field of battle and the preparations for a military meal ;
finally, the manufacture of spears, javelins, bows, arrows,
war clubs, battle-axes, etc.
IV. Singing, Music and Dancing. - A picture representing
a vocal and instrumental concert ; a singer whom a musician
accompanies on the harp, is seconded by two choirs, one of
four men, the other of five women, and the latter beat the
time of the measure with their l^ands : it is a whole opera ;
harp players of both sexes ; players of the German fiute,
of the flageolet, of a species of conch shell, etc. ; dancers ex-
ecuting different figures with the names of the steps they are
dancing ; in fine, a very curious collection of designs repre-
senting dancing women (or ahnes of ancient Egypt) dancing,
singing, playing tennis and performing divers feats of
strength and skill.
V. A considerable number of designs representing the
education of animals; cowherds with oxen of all kinds, cows,
calves ; milking ; butter and cheese making ; goatherds ;
keepers of asses ; shepherds and their sheep ; scenes relating
to the veterinary art ; finally, the barn yard, comprising the
management of a great variety of geese and ducks, and of a
species of swan that had been domesticated in ancient
278 APPENDIX.
VH. Designs relative to games, exercises, and amusements.
Among these may be noticed a sort of " hot cockles,"
"sledge-hammer," jackstraws, the game of pegs driven into
the ground, etc. ; different games of strength ; the chase of
wild beasts, a picture representing a grand hunt on the
desert, and in which from 15 to 20 kinds of quadrupeds are
depicted ; scenes representing the return from the chase ; the
game carried in dead or brought alive ; many pictures rep-
resenting the pursuit of birds with the net ; one of these
paintings is of very large dimensions and is tilled out with
all the colors, and the movement of the original. Finally,
drawings on a large scale, of the different kinds of traps to
take birds, are given : these instruments of the chase are
painted, separately, in some hypogees. Then, there are
many pictures that relate to fishing ; line angling ; the line
and fishing rod ; fishing with the trident or bident ; with
the net ; the preparation of fish, etc.
VIII. Domestic Justice. Under this head, I have arranged
some fifteen designs of bas-reliefs representing offences
committed by servants ; the arrest of the culprit : the
charge against him ; his defence ; his conviction by the
superintendents of the household ; his condemnation and
punishment, which is restricted to the bastinado, the minutes
of which, along with all the particulars, have to be deposited
with the body of the trial in the hands of the master of the
house by his superintendent.
IX. The House and Housekeeping. I have brought
together in this series, which is very numerous already,
everything that relates to private or interior home life.
These very curious designs represent, 1st, different Egyp-
tian houses, more or less sumptuous ; 2nd, vases of dif-
ferent forms, utensils and furniture, all colored, because
the colors invariably indicate the material ; 3d, a splendid
palanquin ; 4th, a kind of small room with folding doors
borne along on a sledge and serving as vehicles for the great
personages of Egypt in ancient times ; 5th, monkeys, cats and
APPENDIX. 279
dogs which formed part of the household, as well as dwarfs
and other human deformities who served to clear the spleen
of the Egyptian lords 1500 years B. C. just as they did for
the old style barons in Europe 1500 years after the birth of
the Saviour ; 6th, the officers of a great establishment, su-
perintendents, clerks, etc. ; 7th, servants carrying in supplies
of all kinds for the table ; the maids likewise bringing various
eatables ; 8th, the mode of slaughtering beef and cutting it
up for home use ; 9th, a series of designs representing cooks
preparing dishes of different kinds ; 10th and last, servants
bringing the dishes all prepared to the master's table.
XII. Navigation. An assortment of designs representing
the construction of vessels and barks of different kinds, and
the games of the sailors, altogether analogous to the contests
of strength and skill that take place on the Seine on great
holidays. Champollion's Letters from Egypt and Nubia.
In a crypt of the strange necropolis that has furnished
these details, the mortal remains of a governor of the nome
of Sah had been sealed up for all eternity. The deceased in-
forms us, by the history of his life written on the walls of his
eternal abode, what were the duties and conduct of an impor-
tant functionary of the military caste, at that remote period.
.... As a general, he had accompanied the king (an User-
tesen of the 15th dynasty) into the land of Cush, and had
penetrated to the extremities of the earth. Subsequently, at
the head of a troop of 400 men, he had brought back from the
mines on the Peninsula of Sinai a convoy of gold to the city
of Keft (Coptos.) As nomarch (or governor of a nome) he
had earned the praises of his sovereign and the gratitude of
his constituency.
"I," he says, " was a master full of goodness and amiabil-
ity ; a governor who loved his country. For years I exer-
cised my power in the nome of Sah. All the works for the
royal house were executed through my care. Thanks were
280 APPENDIX.
extended to me on the part of the royal house for the tri-
bute brought in by me in horned cattle. I carried the fruit
of all my toil to the royal house. Nothing was stolen from
me in all my workshops. I labored and the whole nome
was in activity. Never was a little child distressed by me ;
never was a widow maltreated by me ; never have I troubled
a fisherman on the waters or a shepherd in the pasture fields.
Never was there a pentarch (foreman of five) whose men I
turned aside from their work. Never was there a scarcity
in my time, never a starving mouth under my administra-
tion, even if these were famine years. For, see, I had tilled
all the fields of the nome of Sah clear to its frontiers on the
north and on the south. I made its inhabitants live upon
its products, and thus there were no starving people in it.
I gave equally to the widow and to the married woman, nor
did I set the great before the little in the distributions that
I made. And, see, the Nile was in great inundation ; the
owners of the fields and of the orchards were full of hope
for a fertile year, and I did not cut the branches of the canaL
etc. etc."
The last part of this curious inscription in which the nom-
arch, referring to a famine that took place during the years
of his administration, makes a panegyric in his own behalf,
for having warded off the miseries of the dearth by his be-
nevolent impartiality toward every one, has struck some ob-
servers as a pendant to the history of Joseph in Egypt and
his seven famous years of famine in that country.
A mural scene on the same tomb recalls still more vividly
the Biblical legend. It represents the arrival in Egypt of a
family of the Semitic race of the Aam or Ammonites.
Forced by causes unknown, by a famine, perhaps, they have,
like the sons of Jacob, abandoned their country ; they
present themselves, thirty-seven persons in number men,
women and children before Olmumhotep, the governor of
the nome of Sah, to solicit help or an asylum at his hands.
A temple scribe called Neferhotep is offering to the nomarch
a sheet of papyrus covered with an inscription bearing at
APPENDIX. 283
the top the date of the year six of Usertesen II., and the
number of the strangers. The chief or sheik of the little
tribe, named Abu-sa, first respectfully approaches the person
of Chnumhotep and offers him a young wild-goat as a
present. Behind him are his companions armed with spears,
clubs and bows ; their women clad in richly colored tunics,
and their children carried in wicker paniers slung over the
backs of donkeys. The musician and minstrel of the clan
closes the march playing on a sort of lyre.
Are not these the pioneers, or, if the term be preferable,
the forlorn hope of the vanguard of those nomadic hordes
which were, at a later period, to inundate the valley of the
Nile?
THE details collected by Herodotus with regard to the
civil and private life of the Egyptians are of nine centuries
later date than the epoch of Barneses Mei-Amoun. Those
which the grottoes of Beni-Hassan yield. us relate to genera-
tions long preceding that conqueror. Nevertheless, the
lapse of time does not appear to have introduced any notice-
able dissimilarities between them. We think that we can
fill them out with ideas upon the connection of temples with
temples and the diplomatic relations of sovereigns with sov-
ereigns at a period of history when the sceptre of Egypt
was still held by the Pharaohs of the name and blood of
Barneses.
These items of information are yielded us by a stele found
at Thebes among the ruins of a temple of Khons, a divinity
who appears to have been the object of a special kind of
worship, and to have enjoyed a renown that was propagated
as far as the centre of Asia.
r H K. STELE OP TMJ TEMPLE OF KHONS.
.... His Majesty Barneses XTT. having gone to Naha-
rina (Mesopotamia) to collect the annual tribute of that
284 APPENDIX.
region , the princes and chiefs of each province came to
prostrate themselves before him, and the natives of inferior
rank, stooping beneath burthens of gold, of lapis lazuli,
of copper and of precious woods, drew near to lay them at
his feet.
The King of Bouchten (Ecbatana according to Dr.
Brugsch) came, in his turn, to do homage to His Majesty
and to solicit peace. He had with him his eldest daughter,
a young and handsome woman, who at once captivated the
heart of Rameses more than did anything else. His Majesty
gave her the title of Great Queen, the name of Ra-Neferu,
and conducted her to Egypt, where she was received with
solemn pomp.
In the fifteenth year of his reign, when His Majesty was
celebrating at Thebes that capital and mistress of the na-
tions the grand panegyric of his father Amrnon, the sun,
the distributor of thrones, behold the arrival of a messenger
bearing rich presents from the King of Bouchten for the
queen, was announced to his Majesty.
On being admitted to the presence of Rameses XII., the
envoy saluted His Majesty in these words : " Glory to
thee, oh sun of nine peoples ; grant to us the breath of life !"
Then prostrating himself, he added : " The king my mas-
ter sends me to Thy Holiness because of Benten-rest, the
young sister of the Queen Ra-Neferu. A secret malady
consumes her ; will Thy Holiness deign to send to her one
of those men who know all things, such as there are around
thee ?"
Then the King said : "Let there be assembled before me
the college of sacred philosophers and the doctors skilled in
mysteries.
So soon as they had all hastened to stand in array in His
Majesty's presence, he said to them : " I have summoned
you to hear and to obey. Point out to me the one of all
of you whom you look upon as the firmest of heart, the
quickest in understanding and the most skillful of hand."
The recorder of sacred writings, Toth-em-hebi, stepped
forth from the ranks and bowed before His Majesty. He
APPENDIX. 285
immediately received orders to repair to the country of
Bouchten with the royal messenger.
But when this master of wisdom and science had arrived
at Bouchten, and was placed in the presence of the spirit
that beset the Princess Benten-rest, he found himself its
inferior and dared not engage in contest with it.
The King of Bouchten thereupon sent another messenger
to Pharaoh, saying : " Sovereign lord ! oh my master ! deign
to command that a god may be brought to the country of
Bouchten to combat this evil spirit."
His Holiness was then still at Thebes, celebrating, in the
twenty-sixth year of his reign, the panegyric of Ammon.
He thereupon went to the temple of the Theban god
Khons-Neferhotep, and thus appealed to him : " O my be-
neficent Lord ! I come to thee on behalf of the daughter of
the King of Bouchten. If thou wouldst command Khonsou,
the giver of counsel who subdues rebels, to go to the coun-
try of Bouchten, endowng him with some of thy divine
power, I will cause that god to be borne thither to save the
daughter of the king my father-in-law."
Khons-Neferhotep, the patron of Thebes, acquiesced in
His Majesty's wishes, and, four times over, imparted a por-
tion of his divine virtue to the god Khonsou-Pa-ar-secher,
who, enclosed in a brilliant naos, and placed upon a grand
bari, proceeded upon a broad car toward the country of
Bouchten, escorted by many horsemen riding on the right
and on the left of him.
When, at the end of a year and five months, the god
Khonsou-Pa-ar-secher arrived in the country of Bouchten,
the king, accompanied by his chieftains and his soldiers, came
forth to meet him, and, prostrating himself before the sacred
bari, cried aloud with his forehead in the dust: "Hail to
thee, who comest to us by order of the King Barneses !"
When the god had reached the place where the Princess
Benten-rest was, the spirit that beset her humiliated itself
before Khonsou-Pa-ar-secher, and said to him : " Welcome
to thee, mighty god, conqueror of those who rebel ! The
strong city of Bouchten is thy domain ; its inhabitants bow
286 APPENDIX.
down before thee, and for myself, I am thy slave ; I shall be
no hindrance to the purpose of thy journey, but shall return
to the place whence I came. Only command the King of
Bouchten to make a sacrifice in my honor."
Then Khoiisou-Pa-ar-secher of Thebes said graciously to
his prophet : "Let the King Of Bouchten make a sacrifice
honorable to this spirit."
While the god Khonsou and the spirit were thus conver-
sing, the King of Bouchten, filled with a holy fear, was
trembling in the midst of his soldiers. He celebrated a great
festival in honor of Khonsou and of the spirit, made rich
offerings to them, and his daughter Benten-rest was in
stantly cured, and the spirit withdrew whither he saw fit.
Then the King of Bouchten was seized with extreme de-
light, as also were all bis subjects. Then he said : " This
god ought to remain in the country of Bouchten. I will
not let him go back to Egypt. " Thus Khonsou-Pa-ar-se-
cher was kept three years and nine months in Bouchten ;
but at the end of that time, behold the King of Bouchten,
lying in his bed, saw this god leaving his naos in the form
of a golden sparrow-hawk, and extending his wings to fly to-
ward Egypt. And the king, when he awoke, was seized
with an inward sickness. He then said to the priest of
Khousou-Pa-ar-secher : " Let him leave us quickly and
return to Egypt : cause his car to be made ready 1"
When the King of Bouchten caused this god to depart for
Egypt, he gave him numerous and costly presents, and sol-
diers and horses in great quantity. And when the god
Khonsou-Pa-ar-secher had reached the temple of Khons-
Neferhotep, he offered him the presents which the King of
Bouchten had given him in the form of all sorts of good
things, and kept nothing for himself. Khonsou-Pa-ar-secher
of Thebes thus returned to his temple in peace in the year
33, on the nineteenth day of the month of Mechir, of the
King Barneses XIL, reigning eternally like the sun.
APPENDIX.
287
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I
Scrtbner & Co.,
654 Broadway, New York,
HAVB JUST COMMENCED THE PUBLICATION OF
IHusfrafpi) Eufirerg of Mon&prs.
This Library is based upon a similar series of works now in course of issue
in France, the popularity of which may be inferred from the fa& that
OVER ONE MILLION COPIES
have been sold. The volumes to be comprised in the series are all written
in a popular style, and, where scientific subjects are treated of, with care-
ful accuracy, and with the purpose of embodying the latest discoveries and
inventions, and the results of the most recent developments in every de-
partment of investigation. Familiar explanations are given of the most
striking phenomena in nature, and of the various operations and processes
in science and the arts. Occasionally notable passages in history and re-
markable adventures are described. The different volumes are profusely
illustrated with engravings, designed by the most skilful artists, and execu-
ted in the most careful manner, and every possible care will be taken to
render them complete and reliable expositions of the subjects upon which
they respectively treat For THE FAMILY LIBRARY, for t use as
PRIZES in SCHOOLS, as an inexhaustible fund of ANECDOTE and
ILLUSTRATION for TEACHERS, and as works of instruction and
amusement for readers of all ages, the volumes comprising THE ILLUS
TRATED LIBRARY OF WONDERS will be found unexcelled.
The following volumes of the series have been published :
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
Optical
HTHE WONDERS OF OPTICS. By F. MARION.
*- Illrstrated with over seventy engravings on wood, many of
them full-page, and a colored frontispiece. One volume, I2mo.
Price $15
For specimen illustration see page 13.
In the Wonders of Optics, the phenomena of Vision, including the struc-
ture of the eye, optical illusions, the illusions caused by light itself, and the
influence of the imagination, are explained. These explanations are not at
all abstract or scientific. Numerous striking facts and events, many of which
were once attributed to supernatural causes, are narrated, and from them the
laws in accordance with which they were developed are derived. The closing
section of the book is devoted to Natural Magic, and the properties of Mir-
rors, the Stereoscope, the Spectroscope, &c., &c., are fully described, together
with the methods by which "Chinese Shadows," Spectres, and numerous
other illusions arc produced. The book is one which furnishes an almost
illimitable fund of amusement and instruction, and it is illustrated with no
less than 73 finely executed engravings, many of them full-page.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" The work has the merit of conveying much useful scientific information in a popular
manner." Phila. North American.
"Thoroughly admirable, and as an introduction to this science for the general reader,
leaves hardly anything to be desired." N. Y. Evening Post.
" Treats in a charming, but scientific and exhaustive manner, the wonderful subject of
optics." Cleveland Leader.
" All the marvels of light and of optical illusions are made dear." A^. Y. Observer .
t)ttntotr antr HigDtning*
T^HUNDER AND LIGHTNING. By W. DE FON-
^ YIELLE. Illustrated with 39 Engravings on wood, nearly
all full-page. One volume, I2tno $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 14.
Thunder and Lightning, as its title indicates, deals with the most star-
tling phenomena of nature. The writings of the author, M. De Fonvielle,
have attracted very general attention in France, as well on account of the
happy manner in which he calls his readers' attention to certain facts hereto-
fore treated in scientific works only, as because of the statement of other)-
Illustrated Library of Wonder*.
often observed and spoken of, over which he appears to throw quite a new
light. The different kinds of lightning forked, globular, and sheet light-
ning are described ; numerous instances of the effects produced by this won-
derful agency are very graphically narrated ; and thirty-nine engravings, nearly
all full-page, illustrate the text most effectively. The volume is certain to
excite popular interest, and to call the attention of persons unaccustomed to
observe to some of the wonderful phenomena which surround us in this
world.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" In the book before us the dryness of detail is avoided. The author has given us all
the scientific information necessary, and yet so happily united interest with instruction that
no person who has the smallest particle of curiosity to investigate the subject treated of can
fail to be interested in it." N. Y. Herald.
" Any boy or girl who wants to read strange stories and see curious pictures of the do-
ings of ele&ricitv. had better get these books." Our Young Folks.
" A. volume which cannot fail to attract attention and awaken interest in persons who
have not been accustomed to give the subject any thought." Daily Register (New
Haven}.
'"THE WONDERS OF HEAT. By ACHILLE CAZIN.
*- With 90 illustrations, many of them full-page, and a colored
frontispiece. One volume, I2mo $i 50
For specimen illustration see page \ tj.
In the Wonders of Heat the principal phenomena are presented as viewed
from the standpoint afforded by recent discoveries. Burning-glasses, and the
remarkable effects produced by them, are described; the relations between
heat and electricity, between heat and cold, and the comparative effects of
each, are discussed ; and incidentally, interesting accounts are given of the
mode of formation of glaciers, of Montgolfier's balloon, of Davy's safety-
lamp, of the methods of glass-blowing, and of numerous other facts in nature
and processes in art dependent upon the influence of heat. Like the other
volumes of the Library of Wonders, this is illustrated wherever the text
gives an opportunity for explanation by this method.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" From the first to the very last page the interest is all-absorbing." Albany Evening
Times.
" The book deserves, as it will doubtless attain, a wide circulation." Pittsburg Chrort
icle.
4 Illustrated Library of Wonders. _
"This book is instructive and clear." Independent.
" It describes and explains the wonders of heat in a manner to be clearly understood by
non-icientinc readers." Fhila. Inquirer.
animal KntrUf0etue,
E INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS, WITH
ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES. From the French of ERNEST
MENAULT. With 54 illustrations. One volume, i2mo . $i 50
Far specimen illustration see page 1 6.
In this very interesting volume there are grouped together a great num-
ber of fa<5ls and anecdotes collected from original sources, and from the
writings of the most eminent naturalists of all countries, designed to illus-
trate the manifestations of intelligence in the animal creation. Very many
novel and curious fa<5ts regarding the habits of Reptiles, Birds, and Beasts
are narrated in the most charming style, and hi a way which is sure to
excite the desire of every reader for wider knowledge of one of the most
fascinating subjects in the whole range of natural history. The grace and
skill displayed in the illustrations, which are very numerous, make the vol-
ume singularly attractive.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" May be recommended as very entertaining." London Athenaeum.
" The stories are of real value to those who take any interest in the curious habits of
animals." Rochester Democrat.
3,300 YEARS AGO; OR, RAMESES THE
GREAT. By F. DE LANOYE. With 40 illustrations. One
volume, I2mo ......... $i 50
For specimen illustration see pa.gt I7
This volume is devoted to the wonders of Ancient Egypt during the time
of the Pharaohs and under Sesostris, the period of its greatest splendor and
magnificence. Her monuments, her palaces, her pyramids, and her works
of art are not only accurately described in the text, but reproduced in a
series of very attractive illustrations as they have been restored by French
explorers, aided by students of Egyptology. While the volume has the
attraction of being devoted to a subjeft which possesses all the charms of
novelty to the great number of readers, it has the substantial merit of dis-
cussing, with intelligence and careful accuracy, one of the greatest epochs
in the world's history.
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" I think this a good book for the purpose for which it is designed. It is brief on each
head, lively and graphic, without any theatrical artifices ; is not the work of a novice, but
of a real scholar in Egyptology, and, as far as can be ascertained now, is history."
JAMES C. MOFFA T, Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary.
"The volume is full of wonders." Hartford Cournnt.
" Evidently prepared with great care." Chicago Evening Journal.
" Not merely the curious in antiquarian matters will find this volume attractive, but the
general reader will be pleased, entertained, and informed by it." Portland Argus.
" The work possesses the freshness and charm of romance, and cannot fail to repay all
who glance over its pages." Philadelphia City Item.
ADVENTURES ON THE GREAT HUNTING
GROUNDS OF THE WORLD. By VICTOR MEUNIER.
Illustrated with 22 woodcuts. One volume I2mo . . $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 1 8.
Besides numerous thrilling adventures judiciously selected, this work con-
tains much valuable and exceedingly interesting information regarding the
different animals, adventures with which are narrated, together with accu-
rate descriptions of the different countries, making the volume not only
interesting, but instructive in a remarkable degree.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
"This is a very attractive volume in this excellent series." Cleveland Herald.
"Cannot fail to prove entertaining to the juvenile reader." Albion.
" The adventures are gathered from the histories of famous travellers and explorers, and
have the merit of truth as well as interest." IV. Y. Observer. ,
" Just the book for boys during the coming Winter evenings." Boston Daily Journal.
Domjmt.
WONDERS OF POMPEII. By MARC MONNIER,
With 22 illustrations. One volume i2mo . . $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 19.
There are here summed up, in a very lively and graphic style, the results
of the discoveries made at Pompeii since the commencement of the exten-
sive excavations there. The illustrations represent the houses, the domes-
tic utensils, the statues, and the various works of art, as investigation gives
every reason to believe that they existed at the time of the eruption.
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" It is undoubtedly one of the best works on Pompeii that have been published, and has
this advantage over all others in that it records the results of excavations to the latest
date." N. Y. Herald.
"A vsry pleasant and inslr::live book." Bait. Meth. Prat.
" It gives a very clear and accurate account of the buried city." Portland Transcript.
Stitiiime in Nature*
THE SUBLIME IN NATURE, FROM DESCRIP-
TIONS OF CELEBRATED TRAVELLERS AND
WRITERS. By FERDINAND LANOYE. Illustrated with 48 wood-
cuts. One volume I2mo $i 50
for specimen illustration see page 2O.
The Air and Atmospheric Phenomena, the Ocean, Mountains, Volcanic
Phenomena, Rivers, Falls and Cataracts, Grottoes and Caverns, and the
Phenomena of Vegetation, are described in this volume, and in the most
charming manner possible, because the descriptions given have been selected
from the writings of the most distinguished authors and travellers. The
illustrations, several of which are from the pencil of GUSTAVE DoRfi, re-
produce scenes in this country, as well as in foreign lands.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" As a hand-book of reference to the natural wonders of the world this work has no
luperior." Philadelphia Inquirer.
" The illustrations are particularly graphic, and in some cases furnish much better ideas
of the phenomena they indicate than anything short of an actual experience, or a pano-
ramic view of them would do." A^. Y. Sunday Times.
Kty Stm,
THE SUN. By AMEDEE GUILLEMIN. From the French
by T. L. PHIPSON, Ph.D. With 58 illustrations. One
volume I2mo $i 50
For specimen illustration see pagt 21.
M. GUILLEMIN'S well-known work upon The Heavens has secured him
a wide reputation as one of the first of living astronomical writers and ob-
servers. In this compact treatise he discourses familiarly but most accu-
rately and entertainingly of the Sun as the source of light, of heat, and of
chemical action ; of its influence upon living 1 eings ; of its place in the
Planetary World ; of its place in the Sidereal We rid ; of its physical and
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
chemical constitution ; of the maintenance of Solar Radiation, and, in con-
clusion, the question whether the Sun is inhabited, is examined. The work
embraces the results of the most recent investigations, and is valuable for
its fulness and accuracy as well as for the very popular way in which the
subject is presented.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" The matter of the volume is highly interesting, as well as scientifically complete ; the
style is clear and simple, and the illustrations excellent." N. Y. Daily Tribune.
" For the first time, the fullest and latest information about the Sun has been comprised
in a single volume." Philadelphia Press.
"The work is intensely interesting. It is written in a style which must commend itself
to the general reader, and imparts a vast fund of information in language free from astrono
mical or other scientific technicalities." Albany Evening "Journal.
"The latest discoveries of science are set forth in a popular and attractive style." Port'
land Transcript.
" Conveys, in a graphic form, the present amount of knowledge in regard to the luminous
centre of our solar system." Boston Congregationalist.
WONDERS OF GLASS-MAKING ; ITS DESCRIPTION
AND HISTORY FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
PRESENT. By A. SAUZAY. With 63 illustrations on wood. One
volume I2mo $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 22.
The title of this work very accurately indicates its character. It is writ-
ten in an exceedingly lively and graphic style, and the useful and ornamen-
tal applications of glass are fully described. The illustrations represent,
among other things, the mirror of Marie de Medici and various articles
manufactured from glass which have, from their unique character, or the
associations connected with them, acquired historical interest
CRITICAL NOTICES.
"All the information which the general reader needs on the subject will be found heie
in a very intelligible and attractive form." N. Y. Evening Post.
" Tells about every branch of this curious manufacture, tracing its progress from the re-
motest ages, and omitting not one point upon which information can be desired." Boston
Post.
"A very useful and interesting book." N. Y. Cititen.
8 Illustrated Library of Wonders.
" An extremely pleasant and useful little book." N. Y. Sunday Times.
" The book will well repay perusal." ff. Y. Globe.
A most interesting volume." Portland Argus.
" Graphically told." N. Y. Albion.
" Young people and old will derive equal benefit and pleasure from its perusal."
ff. Y. Ch. Intelligence.
Ktaltan art*
WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART. By Louis VIARDOT.
With 28 illustrations. One volume I2mo . $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 23.
As a compact, readable, and instructive manual upon a subject the ex-
position of which has heretofore been confined to ambitious and expensive
treatises, this volume has no equal. In style it is clear and attractive ; its
critical estimates are based upon thorough and extensive knowledge and
sound judgment, and the illustrations reproduce, as accurately as wood
engravings can do, the leading works of the famous Italian masters, while
anecdotes of these great artists and curious facts regarding their works
give popular interest to the volume.
Efte Tlnnuau l*otn>.
WONDERS OF THE HUMAN BODY. From the
French of A. LE PILEUR, Doctor of Medicine. Illustrated
by 45 Engravings by LEVEiLLis. One volume I2mo . $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 24.
While sufficiently minute in anatomical and physiological details to satisfy
those who desire to go deeper into such studies than many may deem
necessary, this work is nevertheless written so that it may form part of the
domestic library. Mothers and daughters may read it without being re-
pelled or shocked ; and the young will find their interest sustained by
incidental digressions to more attractive matters. Such are the pages re-
ferring to phrenology and to music, which accompany the anatomical
description of the skull and of the organs of voice ; and the chapter on
artistic expression which closes the book. Numerous simple but at-
tractive engravings elucidate the work.
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
WONDERS OF ARCHITECTURE. Translated from
the French of M. LEFJSVRE ; to which is added a chapter
on English Architecture by R. DONALD. With 50 illustrations.
One volume I2mo ........ $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 25.
The object of the Wonders of Architefture is to supply, in as accessible
and popular a form as the nature of the subject admits, a connected and
comprehensive sketch of the chief architectural achievements of ancient
and modern times. Commencing with the rudest dawnings of architectural
science as exemplified in the Celtic monuments, a carefully compiled and
authentic record is given of the most remarkable temples, palaces, columns,
towers, cathedrals, bridges, viaducts, churches, and buildings of every
description which the genius of man has constructed ; and as these are all
described in chronological order, according to the eras to which they belong,
they form a connected narrative of the development of architecture, in
which the history and progress of the art can be authentically traced.
Care has been taken to popularize the theme as much as possible, to make
the descriptions plain and vivid, to render the text free from mere techni
calities, and to convey a correct and truthful impression of the various
objects that are enumerated.
BOTTOM OF THE SEA. By L. SONREL. Translated
and edited by ELIHU RICH, translator of " Cazin's Heat,"
&c., with 68 woodcuts. (Printed on Tinted Paper) One vol I2mo
$r 50
For specimen illustration see page 26.
Written in a popular and attractive style, this volume affords much use-
ful information about the sea, its depth, color, and temperature ; its action
in deep water and on the shores ; the exuberance of life in the depths of
the ocean, and the numberless phenomena, anecdotes, adventures, and
perils connected therewith. The illustrations are very numerous, and
specially graphic and attractive.
CRITICAL NOTICE.
This book is well illustrated throughout, and is admirably adapted to t.'tc^e wlio
require light scientific reading. Nature,
to Illustrated Library of Wonders.
7i.f&i)ttjottsrs an*
LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTSHIPS. By W. H, D.
ADAMS. With sixty illustrations. One volume I2mo-
Printed on tinted paper ....... $i 50
The aim of this volume is to furnish in a popular and intelligible form a
description of the Lighthouse as it is and as it was, of the rude Roman
pharos, or old sea-tower, with its flickering fire of wood or coal, and the
modern Lighthouse, shapely and yet substantial, with its powerful illumina-
ting apparatus of lamps and lenses, shining ten, or twelve, or twenty miles
across the waters. The author gives a descriptive and historical account of
their mode of construction and organization, based on the best authorities,
and revised by competent critics. Sketches are furnished of the most re-
markable Lighthouses in the Old World, and a graphic narration is presented
of the mode of life of their keepers.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
"The book is full of interest." JV. Y. Commercial Advertiser.
"The whole subject is treated in a manner at once interesting and instructive."
Rochester Democrat.
"The illustrations are full, and excellently engraved." Phil. Morning Post.
WONDERS OF ACOUSTICS; or, THE PHE-
_L NOMEMA OF SOUND. By R. RADAU. With I io illustra-
tions. One volume 1 2mo. Printed on tinted paper . . $i 50
For specimen illustration see page 27.
No overweight of technicalities encumber the author's ample and exceed-
ingly instructive disquisition ; but by presenting the results of curious inves-
tigation, by anecdote, by all manner of striking illustration, and by the aid
of numerous pictures, he throws a popular interest about one of the most
suggestive and beautiful of the sciences. The book opens with an attractive
chapter on " Sound in Nature," in which the language of animals, nocturnal
life in the forests, and kindred subjects are discussed. Among the topics
treated of later in the work are such as "Effects of Sound, on Living
Beings," "Velocity of Sound," "The Notes," "The Voice, Music, and
Science." This volume forms a valuable addition to the series.
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
A 000713200 4