HISTORY OF EGYPT
CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA
By G. MASPERO,
Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of
Queen’s College,
Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at
the College of France
Edited by A. H. SAYCE,
Professor of Assyriology, Oxford
Translated by M. L. McCLURE,
Member of the Committee of the Egypt
Exploration Fund
CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Volume I.
LONDON
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Professor Maspero does not need to be introduced to us. His name is well
known in England and America as that of one of the chief masters of
Egyptian science as well as of ancient Oriental history and archaeology.
Alike as a philologist, a historian, and an archaeologist, he occupies a
foremost place in the annals of modern knowledge and research. He
possesses that quick apprehension and fertility of resource without which
the decipherment of ancient texts is impossible, and he also possesses a
sympathy with the past and a power of realizing it which are indispensable
if we would picture it aright. His intimate acquaintance with Egypt and
its literature, and the opportunities of discovery afforded him by his
position for several years as director of the Bulaq Museum, give him an
unique claim to speak with authority on the history of the valley of the
Nile. In the present work he has been prodigal of his abundant stores of
learning and knowledge, and it may therefore be regarded as the most
complete account of ancient Egypt that has ever yet been published.
In the case of Babylonia and Assyria he no longer, it is true, speaks at
first hand. But he has thoroughly studied the latest and best authorities
on the subject, and has weighed their statements with the judgment which
comes from an exhaustive acquaintance with a similar department of
knowledge.
Naturally, in progressive studies like those of Egyptology and
Assyriology, a good many theories and conclusions must be tentative and
provisional only. Discovery crowds so quickly on discovery, that the truth
of to-day is often apt to be modified or amplified by the truth of
to-morrow. A single fresh fact may throw a wholly new and unexpected light
upon the results we have already gained, and cause them to assume a
somewhat changed aspect. But this is what must happen in all sciences in
which there is a healthy growth, and archaeological science is no
exception to the rule.
The spelling of ancient Egyptian proper names adopted by Professor Maspero
will perhaps seem strange to many. But it must be remembered that all our
attempts to represent the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian words can be
approximate only; we can never ascertain with certainty how they were
actually sounded. All that can be done is to determine what pronunciation
was assigned to them in the Greek period, and to work backwards from this,
so far as it is possible, to more remote ages. This is what Professor
Maspero has done, and it must be no slight satisfaction to him to find
that on the whole his system of transliteration is confirmed by the
cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna.
The difficulties attaching to the spelling of Assyrian names are different
from those which beset our attempts to reproduce, even approximately, the
names of ancient Egypt. The cuneiform system of writing was syllabic, each
character denoting a syllable, so that we know what were the vowels in a
proper name as well as the consonants. Moreover, the pronunciation of the
consonants resembled that of the Hebrew consonants, the transliteration of
which has long since become conventional. When, therefore, an Assyrian or
Babylonian name is written phonetically, its correct transliteration is
not often a matter of question. But, unfortunately, the names are not
always written phonetically. The cuneiform script was an inheritance from
the non-Semitic predecessors of the Semites in Babylonia, and in this
script the characters represented words as well as sounds. Not
unfrequently the Semitic Assyrians continued to write a name in the old
Sumerian way instead of spelling it phonetically, the result being that we
do not know how it was pronounced in their own language. The name of the
Chaldæan Noab, for instance, is written with two characters which
ideographically signify “the sun” or “day of life,” and of the first of
which the Sumerian values were ut, babar, khis, tarn, and par,
while the second had the value of zi. Were it not that the Chaldæan
historian Bêrôssos writes the name Xisuthros, we should have no clue to
its Semitic pronunciation.
Professor Maspero’s learning and indefatigable industry are well known to
me, but I confess I was not prepared for the exhaustive acquaintance he
shows with Assyriological literature. Nothing seems to have escaped his
notice. Papers and books just published, and half forgotten articles in
obscure periodicals which appeared years ago, have all alike been used and
quoted by him. Naturally, however, there are some points on which I should
be inclined to differ from the conclusions he draws, or to which he has
been led by other Assyriologists. Without being an Assyriologist himself,
it was impossible for him to be acquainted with that portion of the
evidence on certain disputed questions which is only to be found in still
unpublished or untranslated inscriptions.
There are two points which seem to me of sufficient importance to justify
my expression of dissent from his views. These are the geographical
situation of the land of Magan, and the historical character of the annals
of Sargon of Accad. The evidence about Magan is very clear. Magan is
usually associated with the country of Melukhkha, “the salt” desert, and
in every text in which its geographical position is indicated it is
placed in the immediate vicinity of Egypt. Thus Assur-bani-pal, after
stating that he had “gone to the lands of Magan and Melukhkha,” goes on to
say that he “directed his road to Egypt and Kush,” and then describes the
first of his Egyptian campaigns. Similar testimony is borne by
Esar-haddon. The latter king tells us that after quitting Egypt he
directed his road to the land of Melukhkha, a desert region in which there
were no rivers, and which extended “to the city of Rapikh” (the modern
Raphia) “at the edge of the wadi of Egypt” (the present Wadi El-Arîsh).
After this he received camels from the king of the Arabs, and made his way
to the land and city of Magan. The Tel el-Amarna tablets enable us to
carry the record back to the fifteenth century b.c. In certain of the
tablets now as Berlin (Winckler and Abel, 42 and 45) the Phoenician
governor of the Pharaoh asks that help should be sent him from Melukhkha
and Egypt: “The king should hear the words of his servant, and send ten
men of the country of Melukhkha and twenty men of the country of Egypt to
defend the city [of Gebal] for the king.” And again, “I have sent [to]
Pharaoh” (literally, “the great house”) “for a garrison of men from the
country of Melukhkha, and… the king has just despatched a garrison
[from] the country of Melukhkha.” At a still earlier date we have
indications that Melukhkha and Magan denoted the same region of the world.
In an old Babylonian geographical list which belongs to the early days of
Chaldsean history, Magan is described as “the country of bronze,” and
Melukhkha as “the country of the samdu,” or “malachite.” It was
this list which originally led Oppert, Lenormant, and myself independently
to the conviction that Magan was to be looked for in the Sinaitic
Peninsula. Magan included, however, the Midian of Scripture, and the city
of Magan, called Makkan in Semitic Assyrian, is probably the Makna of
classical geography, now represented by the ruins of Mukna.
As I have always maintained the historical character of the annals of
Sargon of Accad, long before recent discoveries led Professor Hilprecht
and others to adopt the same view, it is as well to state why I consider
them worthy of credit. In themselves the annals contain nothing
improbable; indeed, what might seem the most unlikely portion of them—that
which describes the extension of Sargon’s empire to the shores of the
Mediterranean—has been confirmed by the progress of research.
Ammi-satana, a king of the first dynasty of Babylon (about 2200 B.C.),
calls himself “king of the country of the Amorites,” and the Tel el-Amarna
tablets have revealed to us how deep and long-lasting Babylonian influence
must have been throughout Western Asia. Moreover, the vase described by
Professor Maspero in the present work proves that the expedition of
Naram-Sin against Magan was an historical reality, and such an expedition
was only possible if “the land of the Amorites,” the Syria and Palestine
of later days, had been secured in the rear. But what chiefly led me to
the belief that the annals are a document contemporaneous with the events
narrated in them, are two facts which do not seem to have been
sufficiently considered. On the one side, while the annals of Sargon are
given in full, those of his son Naram-Sin break off abruptly in the early
part of his reign. I see no explanation of this, except that they were
composed while Naram-Sin was still on the throne. On the other side, the
campaigns of the two monarchs are coupled with the astrological phenomena
on which the success of the campaigns was supposed to depend. We know that
the Babylonians were given to the practice and study of astrology from the
earliest days of their history; we know also that even in the time of the
later Assyrian monarchy it was still customary for the general in the
field to be accompanied by the asipu, or “prophet,” the ashshâph of
Dan. ii. 10, on whose interpretation of the signs of heaven the movements
of the army depended; and in the infancy of Chaldæn history we should
accordingly expect to find the astrological sign recorded along with the
event with which it was bound up. At a subsequent period the sign and the
event were separated from one another in literature, and had the annals of
Sargon been a later compilation, in their case also the separation would
assuredly have been made. That, on the contrary, the annals have the form
which they could have assumed and ought to have assumed only at the
beginning of contemporaneous Babylonian history, is to me a strong
testimony in favour of their genuineness.
It may be added that Babylonian seal-cylinders have been found in Cyprus,
one of which is of the age of Sargon of Accad, its style and workmanship
being the same as that of the cylinder figured in vol. iii. p. 96, while
the other, though of later date, belonged to a person who describes
himself as “the servant of the deified Naram-Sin.” Such cylinders may, of
course, have been brought to the island in later times; but when we
remember that a characteristic object of prehistoric Cypriote art is an
imitation of the seal-cylinder of Chaldsea, their discovery cannot be
wholly an accident.
Professor Maspero has brought his facts up to so recent a date that there
is very little to add to what he has written. Since his manuscript was in
type, however, a few additions have been made to our Assyriological
knowledge. A fresh examination of the Babylonian dynastic tablet has led
Professor Delitzsch to make some alterations in the published account of
what Professor Maspero calls the ninth dynasty. According to Professor
Delitzsch, the number of kings composing the dynasty is stated on the
tablet to be twenty-one, and not thirty-one as was formerly read, and the
number of lost lines exactly corresponds with this figure. The first of
the kings reigned thirty-six years, and he had a predecessor belonging to
the previous dynasty whose name has been lost. There would consequently
have been two Elamite usurpers instead of one.
I would further draw attention to an interesting text, published by Mr.
Strong in the Babylonian and Oriental Record, which I believe to
contain the name of a king who belonged to the legendary dynasties of
Chaldæa. This is Samas-natsir, who is coupled with Sargon of Accad and
other early monarchs in one of the lists. The legend, if I interpret it
rightly, states that “Elam shall be altogether given to Samas-natsir;” and
the same prince is further described as building Nippur and Dur-ilu, as
King of Babylon and as conqueror both of a certain Baldakha and of
Khumba-sitir, “the king of the cedar-forest.” It will be remembered that
in the Epic of Gil-games, Khumbaba also is stated to have been the lord of
the “cedar-forest.”
But of new discoveries and facts there is a constant supply, and it is
impossible for the historian to keep pace with them. Even while the sheets
of his work are passing through the press, the excavator, the explorer,
and the decipherer are adding to our previous stores of knowledge. In
Egypt, Mr. de Morgan’s unwearied energy has raised as it were out of the
ground, at Kom Ombo, a vast and splendidly preserved temple, of whose
existence we had hardly dreamed; has discovered twelfth-dynasty jewellery
at Dahshur of the most exquisite workmanship, and at Meir and Assiut has
found in tombs of the sixth dynasty painted models of the trades and
professions of the day, as well as fighting battalions of soldiers, which,
for freshness and lifelike reality, contrast favourably with the models
which come from India to-day. In Babylonia, the American Expedition, under
Mr. Haines, has at Niffer unearthed monuments of older date than those of
Sargon of Accad. Nor must I forget to mention the lotiform column found by
Mr. de Morgan in a tomb of the Old Empire at Abusir, or the interesting
discovery made by Mr. Arthur Evans of seals and other objects from the
prehistoric sites of Krete and other parts of the AEgean, inscribed with
hieroglyphic characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at
one time have existed by the side of the Hittite hieroglyphs, and may have
had its origin in the influence exercised by Egypt on the peoples of the
Mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty.
In volumes IV., V., and VI. we find ourselves in the full light of an
advanced culture. The nations of the ancient East are no longer each
pursuing an isolated existence, and separately developing the seeds of
civilization and culture on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile. Asia
and Africa have met in mortal combat. Babylonia has carried its empire to
the frontiers of Egypt, and Egypt itself has been held in bondage by the
Hyksôs strangers from Asia. In return, Egypt has driven back the wave of
invasion to the borders of Mesopotamia, has substituted an empire of its
own in Syria for that of the Babylonians, and has forced the Babylonian
king to treat with its Pharaoh on equal terms. In the track of war and
diplomacy have come trade and commerce; Western Asia is covered with
roads, along which the merchant and the courier travel incessantly, and
the whole civilised world of the Orient is knit together in a common
literary culture and common commercial interests.
The age of isolation has thus been succeeded by an age of intercourse,
partly military and antagonistic, partly literary and peaceful. Professor
Maspero paints for us this age of intercourse, describes its rise and
character, its decline and fall. For the unity of Eastern civilization was
again shattered. The Hittites descended from the ranges of the Taurus upon
the Egyptian province of Northern Syria, and cut off the Semites of the
west from those of the east. The Israelites poured over the Jordan out of
Edom and Moab, and took possession of Canaan, while Babylonia itself, for
so many centuries the ruling power of the Oriental world, had to make way
for its upstart rival Assyria. The old imperial powers were exhausted and
played out, and it needed time before the new forces which were to take
their place could acquire sufficient strength for their work.
As usual, Professor Maspero has been careful to embody in his history the
very latest discoveries and information. Notice, it will be found, has
been taken even of the stela of Meneptah, recently disinterred by
Professor Pétrie, on which the name of the Israelites is engraved. At
Elephantine, I found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an
inscription of Khufuânkh—whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of
the most beautiful objects in the Gizeh Museum—which carries back
the history of the island to the age of the pyramid-builders of the fourth
dynasty. The boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side of
the city-wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the sixth
dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood, on one of
which mention is made of “this domain” of Pepi II., it would seem that the
town of Elephantine must have been founded between the period of the
fourth dynasty and that of the sixth. Manetho is therefore justified in
making the fifth and sixth dynasties of Elephantine origin.
It is in Babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have been
made. At Tello, M. de Sarzec has found a library of more than thirty
thousand tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the other,
and belonging to the age of Gudea (b.c. 2700). Many more tablets of an
early date have been unearthed at Abu-Habba (Sippara) and Jokha (Isin) by
Dr. Scheil, working for the Turkish government. But the most important
finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern Babylonia,
where the American expedition has brought to a close its long work of
systematic excavation. Here Mr. Haynes has dug down to the very
foundations of the great temple of El-lil, and the chief historical
results of his labours have been published by Professor Hilprecht (in The
Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, vol. i. pl.
2, 1896).
About midway between the summit and the bottom of the mound, Mr. Haynes
laid bare a pavement constructed of huge bricks stamped with the names of
Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin. He found also the ancient wall of
the city, which had been built by Naram-Sin, 13.7 metres wide. The débris
of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of Sargon is as much as
9.25 metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost stratum of which
brings us down to the Christian era, is only 11 metres in height. We may
form some idea from this of the enormous age to which the history of
Babylonian culture and writing reaches back. In fact, Professor Hilprecht
quotes with approval Mr. Haynes’s words: “We must cease to apply the
adjective ‘earliest’ to the time of Sargon, or to any age or epoch within
a thousand years of his advanced civilization.” “The golden age of
Babylonian history seems to include the reign of Sargon and of Ur-Gur.”
Many of the inscriptions which belong to this remote age of human culture
have been published by Professor Hilprecht. Among them is a long
inscription, in 132 lines, engraved on multitudes of large stone vases
presented to the temple of El-lil by a certain Lugal-zaggisi.
Lugal-zaggisi was the son of Ukus, the patesi or high priest of the
“Land of the Bow,” as Mesopotamia, with its Bedawin inhabitants, was
called. He not only conquered Babylonia, then known as Kengi, “the land of
canals and reeds,” but founded an empire which extended from the Persian
Gulf to the Mediterranean. This was centuries before Sargon of Akkad
followed in his footsteps. Erech became the capital of Lugal-zaggisi’s
empire, and doubtless received at this time its Sumerian title of “the
city” par excellence.
For a long while previously there had been war between Babylonia and the
“Land of the Bow,” whose rulers seem to have established themselves in the
city of Kis. At one time we find the Babylonian prince En-sag(sag)-ana
capturing Kis and its king; at another time it is a king of Kis who makes
offerings to the god of Nippur, in gratitude for his victories. To this
period belongs the famous “Stela of the Vultures” found at Tello, on which
is depicted the victory of E-dingir-ana-gin, the King of Lagas (Tello),
over the Semitic hordes of the Land of the Bow. It may be noted that the
recent discoveries have shown how correct Professor Maspero has been in
assigning the kings of Lagas to a period earlier than that of Sargon of
Akkad.
Professor Hilprecht would place E-dingir-ana-gin after Lugal-zaggisi, and
see in the Stela of the Vultures a monument of the revenge taken by the
Sumerian rulers of Lagas for the conquest of the country by the
inhabitants of the north. But it is equally possible that it marks the
successful reaction of Chaldsea against the power established by
Lugal-zaggisi. However this may be, the dynasty of Lagas (to which
Professor Hilprecht has added a new king, En-Khegal) reigned in peace for
some time, and belonged to the same age as the first dynasty of Ur. This
was founded by a certain Lugal-kigubnidudu, whose inscriptions have been
found at Niffer. The dynasty which arose at Ur in later days (cir. b.c.
2700), under Ur-Gur and Bungi, which has hitherto been known as “the first
dynasty of Ur,” is thus dethroned from its position, and becomes the
second. The succeeding dynasty, which also made Ur its capital, and whose
kings, Ine-Sin, Pur-Sin IL, and Gimil-Sin, were the immediate predecessors
of the first dynasty of Babylon (to which Kharnmurabi belonged), must
henceforth be termed the third.
Among the latest acquisitions from Tello are the seals of the patesi,
Lugal-usumgal, which finally remove all doubt as to the identity of
“Sargani, king of the city,” with the famous Sargon of Akkad. The
historical accuracy of Sargon’s annals, moreover, have been fully
vindicated. Not only have the American excavators found the contemporary
monuments of him and his son Naram-Sin, but also tablets dated in the
years of his campaigns against “the land of the Amorites.” In short,
Sargon of Akkad, so lately spoken of as “a half-mythical” personage, has
now emerged into the full glare of authentic history.
That the native chronologists had sufficient material for reconstructing
the past history of their country, is also now clear. The early Babylonian
contract-tablets are dated by events which officially distinguished the
several years of a king’s reign, and tablets have been discovered compiled
at the close of a reign which give year by year the events which thus
characterised them. One of these tablets, for example, from the
excavations at Niffer, begins with the words: (1) “The year when Par-Sin
(II.) becomes king. (2) The year when Pur-Sin the king conquers Urbillum,”
and ends with “the year when Gimil-Sin becomes King of Ur, and conquers
the land of Zabsali” in the Lebanon.
Of special interest to the biblical student are the discoveries made by
Mr. Pinches among some of the Babylonian tablets which have recently been
acquired by the British Museum. Four of them relate to no less a personage
than Kudur-Laghghamar or Chedor-laomer, “King of Elam,” as well as to
Eri-Aku or Arioch, King of Larsa, and his son Dur-makh-ilani; to Tudghula
or Tidal, the son of Gazza[ni], and to their war against Babylon in the
time of Khamrnu[rabi]. In one of the texts the question is asked, “Who is
the son of a king’s daughter who has sat on the throne of royalty?
Dur-makh-ilani, the son of Eri-Âku, the son of the lady Kur… has sat on
the throne of royalty,” from which it may perhaps be inferred that Eri-Âku
was the son of Kudur-Laghghamar’s daughter; and in another we read, “Who
is Kudur-Laghghamar, the doer of mischief? He has gathered together the
Umman Manda, has devastated the land of Bel (Babylonia), and [has marched]
at their side.” The Umman Manda were the “Barbarian Hordes” of the Kurdish
mountains, on the northern frontier of Elam, and the name corresponds with
that of the Goyyim or “nations” in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. We
here see Kudur-Laghghamar acting as their suzerain lord. Unfortunately,
all four tablets are in a shockingly broken condition, and it is therefore
difficult to discover in them a continuous sense, or to determine their
precise nature.
They have, however, been supplemented by further discoveries made by Dr.
Scheil at Constantinople. Among the tablets preserved there, he has found
letters from Kharnmurabi to his vassal Sin-idinnam of Larsa, from which we
learn that Sin-idinnam had been dethroned by the Elamites Kudur-Mabug and
Eri-Âku, and had fled for refuge to the court of Kharnmurabi at Babylon.
In the war which subsequently broke out between Kharnmurabi and
Kudur-Laghghamar, the King of Elam (who, it would seem, exercised
suzerainty over Babylonia for seven years), Sin-idinnam gave material
assistance to the Babylonian monarch, and Khammurabi accordingly bestowed
presents upon him as a “recompense for his valour on the day of the
overthrow of Kudur-Laghghamar.”
I must also refer to a fine scarab—found in the rubbish-mounds of
the ancient city of Kom Ombos, in Upper Egypt—which bears upon it
the name of Sutkhu-Apopi. It shows us that the author of the story of the
Expulsion of the Hyksôs, in calling the king Ra-Apopi, merely, like an
orthodox Egyptian, substituted the name of the god of Heliopolis for that
of the foreign deity. Equally interesting are the scarabs brought to light
by Professor Flinders Pétrie, on which a hitherto unknown Ya’aqob-hal or
Jacob-el receives the titles of a Pharaoh.
In volumes VII., VIII., and IX., Professor Maspero concludes his
monumental work on the history of the ancient East. The overthrow of the
Persian empire by the Greek soldiers of Alexander marks the beginning of a
new era. Europe at last enters upon the stage of history, and becomes the
heir of the culture and civilisation of the Orient. The culture which had
grown up and developed on the banks of the Euphrates and Nile passes to
the West, and there assumes new features and is inspired with a new
spirit. The East perishes of age and decrepitude; its strength is outworn,
its power to initiate is past. The long ages through which it had toiled
to build up the fabric of civilisation are at an end; fresh races are
needed to carry on the work which it had achieved. Greece appears upon the
scene, and behind Greece looms the colossal figure of the Roman Empire.
During the past decade, excavation has gone on apace in Egypt and
Babylonia, and discoveries of a startling and unexpected nature have
followed in the wake of excavation. Ages that seemed prehistoric step
suddenly forth into the daydawn of history; personages whom a sceptical
criticism had consigned to the land of myth or fable are clothed once more
with flesh and blood, and events which had been long forgotten demand to
be recorded and described. In Babylonia, for example, the excavations at
Niffer and Tello have shown that Sargon of Akkad, so far from being a
creature of romance, was as much a historical monarch as Nebuchadrezzar
himself; monuments of his reign have been discovered, and we learn from
them that the empire he is said to have founded had a very real existence.
Contracts have been found dated in the years when he was occupied in
conquering Syria and Palestine, and a cadastral survey that was made for
the purposes of taxation mentions a Canaanite who had been appointed
“governor of the land of the Amorites.” Even a postal service had already
been established along the high-roads which knit the several parts of the
empire together, and some of the clay seals which franked the letters are
now in the Museum of the Louvre.
At Susa, M. de Morgan, the late director of the Service of Antiquities in
Egypt, has been excavating below the remains of the Achremenian period,
among the ruins of the ancient Elamite capital. Here he has found
numberless historical inscriptions, besides a text in hieroglyphics which
may cast light on the origin of the cuneiform characters. But the most
interesting of his discoveries are two Babylonian monuments that were
carried off by Elamite conquerors from the cities of Babylonia. One of
them is a long inscription of about 1200 lines belonging to Manistusu, one
of the early Babylonian kings, whose name has been met with at Niffer; the
other is a monument of Naram-Sin, the Son of Sargon of Akkad, which it
seems was brought as booty to Susa by Simti-silkhak, the grandfather,
perhaps, of Eriaku or Arioch.
In Armenia, also, equally important inscriptions have been found by Belck
and Lehmann. More than two hundred new ones have been added to the list of
Vannic texts. It has been discovered from them that the kingdom of Biainas
or Van was founded by Ispuinis and Menuas, who rebuilt Yan itself and the
other cities which they had previously sacked and destroyed. The older
name of the country was Kumussu, and it may be that the language spoken in
it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of
the Hittite type has been unearthed at Toprak Kaleh. One of the
newly-found inscriptions of Sarduris III. shows that the name of the
Assyrian god, hitherto read Ramman or Rimmon, was really pronounced Hadad.
It describes a war of the Vannic king against Assur-nirari, son of
Hadad-nirari (A-da-di-ni-ra-ri) of Assyria, thus revealing not only
the true form of the Assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last
king of the older Assyrian dynasty. From another inscription, belonging to
Rusas II., the son of Argistis, we learn that campaigns were carried on
against the Hittites and the Moschi in the latter years of Sennacherib’s
reign, and therefore only just before the irruption of the Kimmerians into
the northern regions of Western Asia.
The two German explorers have also discovered the site and even the ruins
of Muzazir, called Ardinis by the people of Van. They lie on the hill of
Shkenna, near Topsanâ, on the road between Kelishin and Sidek. In the
immediate neighbourhood the travellers succeeded in deciphering a monument
of Rusas I., partly in Vannic, partly in Assyrian, from which it appears
that the Vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when the news of
the fall of Muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by Sargon, but that,
on the contrary, he “marched against the mountains of Assyria” and
restored the fallen city itself. Urzana, the King of Muzazir, had fled to
him for shelter, and after the departure of the Assyrian army he was sent
back by Rusas to his ancestral domains. The whole of the district in which
Muzazir was situated was termed Lulu, and was regarded as the southern
province of Ararat. In it was Mount Nizir, on whose summit the ark of the
Chaldsean Noah rested, and which is therefore rightly described in the
Book of Genesis as one of “the mountains of Ararat.” It was probably the
Rowandiz of to-day.
The discoveries made by Drs. Belck and Lehmann, however, have not been
confined to Vannic texts. At the sources of the Tigris Dr. Lehmann has
found two Assyrian inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser IL, one
dated in his fifteenth and the other in his thirty-first year, and
relating to his campaigns against Aram of Ararat. He has further found
that the two inscriptions previously known to exist at the same spot, and
believed to belong to Tiglath-Ninip and Assur-nazir-pal, are really those
of Shalmaneser II., and refer to the war of his seventh year.
But it is from Egypt that the most revolutionary revelations have come. At
Abydos and Kom el-Ahmar, opposite El-Kab, monuments have been disinterred
of the kings of the first and second dynasties, if not of even earlier
princes; while at Negada, north of Thebes, M. de Morgan has found a tomb
which seems to have been that of Menés himself. A new world of art has
been opened out before us; even the hieroglyphic system of writing is as
yet immature and strange. But the art is already advanced in many
respects; hard stone was cut into vases and bowls, and even into statuary
of considerable artistic excellence; glazed porcelain was already made,
and bronze, or rather copper, was fashioned into weapons and tools. The
writing material, as in Babylonia, was often clay, over which
seal-cylinders of a Babylonian pattern were rolled. Equally Babylonian are
the strange and composite animals engraved on some of the objects of this
early age, as well as the structure of the tombs, which were built, not of
stone, but of crude brick, with their external walls panelled and
pilastered. Professor Hommel’s theory, which brings Egyptian civilisation
from Babylonia along with the ancestors of the historical Egyptians, has
thus been largely verified.
But the historical Egyptians were not the first inhabitants of the valley
of the Nile. Not only have palaeolithic implements been found on the
plateau of the desert; the relics of neolithic man have turned up in
extraordinary abundance. When the historical Egyptians arrived with their
copper weapons and their system of writing, the land was already occupied
by a pastoral people, who had attained a high level of neolithic culture.
Their implements of flint are the most beautiful and delicately finished
that have ever been discovered; they were able to carve vases of great
artistic excellence out of the hardest of stone, and their pottery was of
no mean quality. Long after the country had come into the possession of
the historical dynasties, and had even been united into a single monarchy,
their settlements continued to exist on the outskirts of the desert, and
the neolithic culture that distinguished them passed only gradually away.
By degrees, however, they intermingled with their conquerors from Asia,
and thus formed the Egyptian race of a later day. But they had already
made Egypt what it has been throughout the historical period. Under the
direction of the Asiatic immigrants and of the eugineering science whose
first home had been in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, they accomplished
those great works of irrigation which confined the Nile to its present
channel, which cleared away the jungle and the swamp that had formerly
bordered the desert, and turned them into fertile fields. Theirs were the
hands which carried out the plans of their more intelligent masters, and
cultivated the valley when once it had been reclaimed. The Egypt of
history was the creation of a twofold race: the Egyptians of the monuments
supplied the controlling and directing power; the Egyptians of the
neolithic graves bestowed upon it their labour and their skill.
The period treated of by Professor Maspero in these volumes is one for
which there is an abundance of materials sucli as do not exist for the
earlier portions of his history. The evidence of the monuments is
supplemented by that of the Hebrew and classical writers. But on this very
account it is in some respects more difficult to deal with, and the
conclusions arrived at by the historian are more open to question and
dispute. In some cases conflicting accounts are given of an event which
seem to rest on equally good authority; in other cases, there is a sudden
failure of materials just where the thread of the story becomes most
complicated. Of this the decline and fall of the Assyrian empire is a
prominent example; for our knowledge of it, we have still to depend
chiefly on the untrustworthy legends of the Greeks. Our views must be
coloured more or less by our estimate of Herodotos; those who, like
myself, place little or no confidence in what he tells us about Oriental
affairs will naturally form a very different idea of the death-struggle,
of Assyria from that formed by writers who still see in him the Father of
Oriental History.
Even where the native monuments have come to our aid, they have not
unfrequently introduced difficulties and doubts where none seemed to exist
before, and have made the task of the critical historian harder than ever.
Cyrus and his forefathers, for instance, turn out to have been kings of
Anzan, and not of Persia, thus explaining why it is that the Neo-Susian
language appears by the side of the Persian and the Babylonian as one of
the three official languages of the Persian empire; but we still have to
learn what was the relation of Anzan to Persia on the one hand, and to
Susa on the other, and when it was that Cyrus of Anzan became also King of
Persia. In the Annalistic Tablet, he is called “King of Persia” for the
first time in the ninth year of Nabonidos.
Similar questions arise as to the position and nationality of Astyages. He
is called in the inscriptions, not a Mede, but a Manda—a name which,
as I showed many years ago, meant for the Babylonian a “barbarian” of
Kurdistan. I have myself little doubt that the Manda over whom Astyages
ruled were the Scythians of classical tradition, who, as may be gathered
from a text published by Mr. Strong, had occupied the ancient kingdom of
Ellipi. It is even possible that in the Madyes of Herodotos, we have a
reminiscence of the Manda of the cuneiform inscriptions. That the Greek
writers should have confounded the Madâ or Medes with the Manda or
Barbarians is not surprising; we find even Berossos describing one of the
early dynasties of Babylonia as “Median” where Manda, and not Madâ, must
plainly be meant.
These and similar problems, however, will doubtless be cleared up by the
progress of excavation and research. Perhaps M. de Morgan’s excavations at
Susa may throw some light on them, but it is to the work of the German
expedition, which has recently begun the systematic exploration of the
site of Babylon, that we must chiefly look for help. The Babylon of
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar rose on the ruins of Nineveh, and the
story of downfall of the Assyrian empire must still be lying buried under
its mounds.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
In completing the translation of this great work, I have to thank
Professor Maspero for kindly permitting me to appeal to him on various
questions which arose while preparing the translation. His patience and
courtesy have alike been unfailing in every matter submitted for his
decision.
I am indebted to Miss Bradbury for kindly supplying, in the midst of much
other literary work for the Egypt Exploration Fund, the translation of the
chapter on the gods, and also of the earlier parts of some of the first
chapters. She has, moreover, helped me in my own share of the work with
many suggestions and hints, which her intimate connection with the late
Miss Amelia B. Edwards fully qualified her to give.
As in the original there is a lack of uniformity in the transcription and
accentuation of Arabic names, I have ventured to alter them in several
cases to the form most familiar to English readers.
The spelling of the ancient Egyptian words has, at Professor Maspero’s
request, been retained throughout, with the exception that the French ou
has been invariably represented by û, e.g. Khnoumou by Khnûmû.
By an act of international courtesy, the director of the Imprimerie
Nationale has allowed the beautifully cut hieroglyphic and cuneiform
type used in the original to be employed in the English edition, and I
take advantage of this opportunity to express to him our thanks and
appreciation of his graceful act.
M. L. McClure.
List of Illustrations
006.jpg The Mouth of The Nile Previous to
The Formation Of the Delta.009.jpg A Line of Laden Camels Emerges
from A Hollow011.jpg Part of Gebel Shêkh HerÎdi
012.jpg The Hill of Kasr Es-sayyad
014.jpg Entrance to the First Cataract
016.jpg League Beyond League, the Hills
Stretch on018.jpg The Entrance to The First
Cataract020.jpg Entrance to the Second Catakact
022.jpg An Attempt to Represent the
Egyptian Universe023.jpg Footnotes With Graphics
027.jpg South Africa and the Sources of
The Nile036.jpg Entrance of the MudÎriyeh Of
AsyÛt040.jpg Acacias at the Entrance to a
Garden Outside EkhmÎm045.jpg The Mormyrus Oxyrhynchus
047.jpg Two Fishermen Carrying a Latus
049.jpg The Shrine of The Nile at Biggeh
051.jpg Nile Gods from the Temple of Seti
I. At Abydos059.jpg The Noble Type of Egyptian
060.jpg Head of a Tileban Mummy
060b.jpg Wrappings from a Mummy (Oil
painting)062.jpg A Fellah Woman With the Features
of an Ancient King066.jpg Negro Prisoners Wearing the
Panther’s Skin As A Loin-cloth.068.jpg Notable Wearing the Large Cloak;
Priest Wearing Panther’s Skin070.jpg A Dignitary Wrapped in his Large
Cloak072.jpg Costume of Egyptian Woman,
Spinning073.jpg Man Wearing Wig and Necklaces
074.jpg The Boomerang and Fighting Bow
076.jpg King Holding the Baton
077.jpg Fishing in the Marshes
078.jpg Hunting in the Marshes:
Encountering a Hippopotamus079.jpg Hunting in the Desert: Bull,
Lion, and Oryx080.jpg Catching Animals With the Bola
082.jpg A Swineherd and his Pigs
089.jpg An Egyptian Saki (well)
Procuring Water for Irrigation091.jpg Boatmen Fighting on a Canal
Communicating With The Nile092.jpg A Great Egyptian Lord, Ti, and
his Wife108.jpg the Goddess NapkÎt, StapÎt
110.jpg Some Fabulous Beasts of the
Egyptian Desert113.jpb Some Fabulous Beasts of the
Egyptian Desert116.jpg Goose-god Facing The
Cat-goddess, The Lady Of Heaven117.jpg the Cow HÂthor, The Lady Of
Heaven118.jpg Twelve Stages in The Life of The
Sun and Its Twelve Forms123.jpg Conception of the Principal
Constellations of the Northern Sky124.jpg Lunar Bark, Self-propelled,
Under The Protection of the Two Eyes125.jpg The Haunch, and The Female
Hippopotamus127.jpg Okion, Sothis, and Two
Hokus-planets129.jpg Orion and the Cow Sothis
Separated by The Sparrow-hawk131.jpg Amon-rÂ, As MÎnÛ of Coptos,
Invested With His Emblems136.jpg The Hoeus of HibonÛ, on The Back
Of The Gazelle147.jp The Black Shadow Coming out Into
The Sunlight.148.jpg August Souls of Osiris and Horus
in Adoration150.jpg The King After his Coronation
161.jpg Sacrificing to the Dead in The
Tomb Chapel169.jpg Open-air Offerings to the
Serpent171.jpg The Peasant’s Offering to The
Sycamore173.jpg Sacrifice of The Bull.—Priest
Lassoing the Victim182.jpg ShÛ Forcibly Separating SibÛ and
NÛÎt185.jpg Osiris-onnophris, Whip and Crook
in Hand187.jpg Isis, Wearing the Cow-horn
Head-dress189.jpg Nephthys, As a Wailing Woman,
and the God SÎt, Fighting192.jpg Horus, the Avenger of his
Father, and Anubis ÛapÔaÎtÛ191.jpg The Sun Springing from an
Opening Lotus-flower194.jpg The Plain and Mounds of
Heliopolis Fifty Years Ago196.jpg HakmakhÛÎti-hakmakhis, the Great
God201.jpg The Twin Lions, ShÛ and TafnÛÎt
204.jpg The Four Funerary Genii,
KhabsonÛf, TiÛmaÛtf, Hapi, and AmsÎt208.jpg The Ibis Thot, and The
Cynocephalous Thot212.jpg The Hermopolitan Ogdoad
224.jpg KhnÛmÛ Modelling Man Upon a
Potter’s Table.230.jpg At the First Hour of The Day The
Sun Embarks236.jpg SokhÎt, the Lioness-headed.
242.jpg Cow, Sustained Above the Earth
by ShÛ and The Support244.jpg Three of the Divine Amulets
Preserved250.jpg the Osmian Triad Hokus. Osiris,
Isis.253.jpg Isis-hathor, Cow-headed.
256.jpg The Osirian Mummy Prepared
257.jpg The Reception Op The Mummy by
Anubis259.jpg Osikis in Hades, Accompanied by
Isis, AmentÎt, And Nephthys260.jpg The Deceased Climbing The Slope
of The Mountain Of the West261.jpg The Mummy of SÛtimosÛ Clasping
his Soul Into His Arms.262.jpg Cynocephali Drawing the Net in
Which Souls Are Caught. 1264.jpg Deceased and his Wife Seated in
Front of The Sycamore of NÛÎt266.jpg Deceased Piercing a Serpent With
his Lance. 2267.jpg Good Cow HÂthor Carrying The
Dead Man and His Soul.268.jpg Anubis and Thot Weighing the
Heart of The Deceased269.jpg The Deceased is Brought Before
The Shrine Of Osiris the Judge272B.jpg The Occupations of Ani in the Elysian
Fields275.jpg The Manes Tilling The Ground and
Reaping in Fields277.jpg The Dead Man and his Wife
Playing at Draughts In The Pavilion.278.jpg The Dead Man Sailing in his Bark
Along The Canals279.jpg Boat of a Funerary Fleet on Its
Way to Abydos.280.jpg The Solar Bark Into Which The
Dead Man is About To Enter.282.jpg The Solar Bark Passing Into The
Mountain of The West.284.jpg The Soul Descending The
Sepulchral Shaft285.jpg The Soul on The Edge of The
Funeral Couch287.jpg The Soul Going Forth Into Its
Garden by Day289.jpg An Incident in the Wars of Haratheus
and Sit293.jpg One of the Astronomical Tables
Of The Tomb Of Ramses IV.304.jpg The Gods Fighting Foe The
Magician Who Has Invoked Them.306.jpg The Child Horus on The
Crocodiles.310.jpg A Dead Man Receiving the Breath
of Life.315.jpg Th0t Records the Years of The
Life Of Ramses.332.jpg Plan of the Ruins Of Abydos,
Made by Mariette In 1865 and 1875.343.jpg Necklace, Bearing Name of Menes.
350.jpg SatÎt Presents the Pharaoh
AmenÔthes III. To KhnÔmÛ.353.jpg The Step Pyramid of Sauara.
CHAPTER I.—THE NILE AND EGYPT
THE RIVER AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE
COUNTRY—THE OLDEST INHABITANTS OF THE LAND—THE FIRST POLITICAL
ORGANIZATION OF THE VALLEY.
The Delta: its gradual formation, its structure, its canals—The
valley of Egypt—The two arms of the river—The Eastern Nile—The
appearance of its hanks—The hills—The gorge of Gehel Silsileh—The
cataracts: the falls of Aswan—Nubia—The rapids of Wady Halfah—The
Takazze—The Blue Nile and the White Nile.
The sources of the Nile—The Egyptian cosmography—The four
pillars and the four upholding mountains—The celestial Nile the
source of the terrestial Nile—the Southern Sea and the islands of
Spirits—The tears of Isis—The rise of the Nile—The Green
Nile and the Bed Nile—The opening of the dykes—-The fall of
the Nile—The river at its lowest ebb.
The alluvial deposits and the effects of the inundation upon the soil
of Egypt—Paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the
lotus; the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dôm-palms—The
fauna: the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the
hippopotamus and the crocodile; birds; fish, the fahaka.
The Nile god: his form and its varieties—The goddess Mirit—The
supposed sources of the Nile at Elephantine—The festivals of Gebel
Silsileh-Hymn to the Nile from papyri m the British Museum.
The names of the Nile and Egypt: Bomitu and Qimit—Antiquity of
the Egyptianpeople—Their first horizon—The hypothesis of their
Asiatic origin—The probability of their African origin—The
language and its Semitic affinities—The race and its principal
types.
The primitive civilization of Egypt—Its survival into historic
times—The women of Amon—Marriage—Rights of women and
children—Houses—Furniture—Dress—Jewels—Wooden
and metal arms—Primitive life-Fishing and hunting—The lasso
and “bolas”—The domestication of animals—Plants used for food—The
lotus—Cereals—The hoe and the plough.
The conquest of the valley—Dykes—Basins—Irrigation—The
princes—The nomes—The first local principalities—Late
organization of the Delta—Character of its inhabitants—Gradual
division of the principalities and changes of then areas—The god of
the city.
THE NILE AND EGYPT
The river and its influence upon the formation of the country—The
oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization.
A long low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of vaguely
defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular plain
beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land—this, the
Delta of Egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is as it
were the gift of the Nile. The Mediterranean once reached to the foot of
the sandy plateau on which stand the Pyramids, and formed a wide gulf
where now stretches plain beyond plain of the Delta. The last undulations
of the Arabian hills, from Gebel Mokattam to Gebel Geneffeh, were its
boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow channel running
between Africa and Asia united the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Westward,
the littoral followed closely the contour of the Libyan plateau; but a
long limestone spur broke away from it at about 31° N., and terminated in
Cape Abûkîr. The alluvial deposits first tilled up the depths of the bay,
and then, under the influence of the currents which swept along its
eastern coasts, accumulated behind that rampart of sand-hills whose
remains are still to be seen near Benha. Thus was formed a miniature
Delta, whose structure pretty accurately corresponded with that of the
great Delta of to-day. Here the Nile divided into three divergent streams,
roughly coinciding with the southern courses of the Rosetta and Damietta
branches, and with the modern canal of Abu Meneggeh. The ceaseless
accumulation of mud brought down by the river soon overpassed the first
limits, and steadily encroached upon the sea until it was carried beyond
the shelter furnished by Cape Abûkîr. Thence it was gathered into the
great littoral current flowing from Africa to Asia, and formed an
incurvated coast-line ending in the headland of Casios, on the Syrian
frontier. From that time Egypt made no further increase towards the north,
and her coast remains practically such as it was thousands of years
ago:[*] the interior alone has suffered change, having been dried up,
hardened, and gradually raised. Its inhabitants thought they could measure
the exact length of time in which this work of creation had been
accomplished. According to the Egyptians, Menés, the first of their mortal
kings, had found, so they said, the valley under water. The sea came in
almost as far as the Fayûm, and, excepting the province of Thebes, the
whole country was a pestilential swamp. Hence, the necessary period for
the physical formation of Egypt would cover some centuries after Menés.
This is no longer considered a sufficient length of time, and some modern
geologists declare that the Nile must have worked at the formation of its
own estuary for at least seventy-four thousand years.[**]
This figure is certainly exaggerated, for the alluvium would gain on the
shallows of the ancient gulf far more rapidly than it gains upon the
depths of the Mediterranean. But even though we reduce the period, we must
still admit that the Egyptians little suspected the true age of their
country. Not only did the Delta long precede the coming of Menés, but its
plan was entirely completed before the first arrival of the Egyptians. The
Greeks, full of the mysterious virtues which they attributed to numbers,
discovered that there were seven principal branches, and seven mouths of
the Nile, and that, as compared with these, the rest were but false
mouths.
As a matter of fact, there were only three chief outlets. The Canopic
branch flowed westward, and fell into the Mediterranean near Cape Abûkîr,
at the western extremity of the arc described by the coast-line. The
Pelusiac branch followed the length of the Arabian chain, and flowed forth
at the other extremity; and the Sebennytic stream almost bisected the
triangle contained between the Canopic and Pelusiac channels. Two thousand
years ago, these branches separated from the main river at the city of
Cerkasoros, nearly four miles north of the site where Cairo now stands.
But after the Pelusiac branch had ceased to exist, the fork of the river
gradually wore away the land from age to age, and is now some nine miles
lower down.[*] These three great waterways are united by a network of
artificial rivers and canals, and by ditches—some natural, others
dug by the hand of man, but all ceaselessly shifting. They silt up, close,
open again, replace each other, and ramify in innumerable branches over
the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. As the
land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused,
while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured
line of the desert comes into sight. The Libyan and Arabian hills appear
above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the
horizon until it seems as though they would unite. And there the Delta
ends, and Egypt proper has begun.
It is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south between
regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the banks of the
river, made by the Nile, and sustained by the Nile. The whole length of
the land is shut in between two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a
mean distance of about twelve miles.[**]
During the earlier ages, the river filled all this intermediate space, and
the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very summits,
still bear unmistakable traces of its action. Wasted, and shrunken within
the deeps of its ancient bed, the stream now makes a way through its own
thick deposits of mud. The bulk of its waters keeps to the east, and
constitutes the true Nile, the “Great River” of the hieroglyphic
inscriptions. A second arm flows close to the Libyan desert, here and
there formed into canals, elsewhere left to follow its own course. From
the head of the Delta to the village of Demt it is called the Bahr-Yûsuf;
beyond Derût—up to Gebel Silsileh—it is the Ibrâhimîyeh, the
Sohâgîyeh, the Raiân. But the ancient names are unknown to us. This
Western Nile dries up in winter throughout all its upper courses: where it
continues to flow, it is by scanty accessions from the main Nile. It also
divides north of Henassieh, and by the gorge of Illahûn sends out a branch
which passes beyond the hills into the basin of the Fayûrn. The true Nile,
the Eastern Nile, is less a river than a sinuous lake encumbered with
islets and sandbanks, and its navigable channel winds capriciously between
them, flowing with a strong and steady current below the steep, black
banks cut sheer through the alluvial earth.
There are light groves of the date-palm, groups of acacia trees and
sycamores, square patches of barley or of wheat, fields of beans or of
bersîm,[*] and here and there a long bank of sand which the least breeze
raises into whirling clouds. And over all there broods a great silence,
scarcely broken by the cry of birds, or the song of rowers in a passing
boat.
Something of human life may stir on the banks, but it is softened into
poetry by distance. A half-veiled woman, bearing a bundle of herbs upon
her head, is driving her goats before her. An irregular line of asses or
of laden camels emerges from one hollow of the undulating road only to
disappear within another. A group of peasants, crouched upon the shore, in
the ancient posture of knees to chin, patiently awaits the return of the
ferry-boat.
A dainty village looks forth smiling from beneath its palm trees. Near at
hand it is all naked filth and ugliness: a cluster of low grey huts built
of mud and laths; two or three taller houses, whitewashed; an enclosed
square shaded by sycamores; a few old men, each seated peacefully at his
own door; a confusion of fowls, children, goats, and sheep; half a dozen
boats made fast ashore. But, as we pass on, the wretchedness all fades
away; meanness of detail is lost in light, and long before it disappears
at a bend of the river, the village is again clothed with gaiety and
serene beauty. Day by day, the landscape repeats itself. The same groups
of trees alternate with the same fields, growing green or dusty in the
sunlight according to the season of the year. With the same measured flow,
the Nile winds beneath its steep banks and about its scattered islands.
One village succeeds another, each alike smiling and sordid under its
crown of foliage. The terraces of the Libyan hills, away beyond the
Western Nile, scarcely rise above the horizon, and lie like a white edging
between the green of the plain and the blue of the sky. The Arabian hills
do not form one unbroken line, but a series of mountain masses with their
spurs, now approaching the river, and now withdrawing to the desert at
almost regular intervals. At the entrance to the valley, rise Gebel
Mokattam and Gebel el-Ahmar. Gebel Hemûr-Shemûl and Gebel Shêkh Embârak
next stretch in echelon from north to south, and are succeeded by Gebel
et-Ter, where, according to an old legend, all the birds of the world are
annually assembled.[*]
Then follows Gebel Abûfêda, dreaded by the sailors for its sudden gusts.
Limestone predominates throughout, white or yellowish, broken by veins of
alabaster, or of red and grey sandstones. Its horizontal strata are so
symmetrically laid one above another as to seem more like the walls of a
town than the side of a mountain. But time has often dismantled their
summits and loosened their foundations. Man has broken into their façades
to cut his quarries and his tombs; while the current is secretly
undermining the base, wherein it has made many a breach. As soon as any
margin of mud has collected between cliffs and river, halfah and wild
plants take hold upon it, and date-palms grow there—whence their
seed, no one knows. Presently a hamlet rises at the mouth of the ravine,
among clusters of trees and fields in miniature. Beyond Siût, the light
becomes more glowing, the air drier and more vibrating, and the green of
cultivation loses its brightness. The angular outline of the dom-palni
mingles more and more with that of the common palm and of the heavy
sycamore, and the castor-oil plant increasingly abounds. But all these
changes come about so gradually that they are effected before we notice
them. The plain continues to contract. At Thebes it is still ten miles
wide; at the gorge of Gebelên it has almost disappeared, and at Gebel
Silsileh it has completely vanished. There, it was crossed by a natural
dyke of sandstone, through which the waters have with difficulty scooped
for themselves a passage. From this point, Egypt is nothing but the bed of
the Nile lying between two escarpments of naked rock.
Further on the cultivable land reappears, but narrowed, and changed almost
beyond recognition. Hills, hewn out of solid sandstone, succeed each other
at distances of about two miles, low, crushed, sombre, and formless.
Presently a forest of palm trees, the last on that side, announces Aswan
and Nubia. Five banks of granite, ranged in lines between latitude 24° and
18° N., cross Nubia from east to west, and from north-east to south-west,
like so many ramparts thrown up between the Mediterranean and the heart of
Africa. The Nile has attacked them from behind, and made its way over them
one after another in rapids which have been glorified by the name of
cataracts.
Classic writers were pleased to describe the river as hurled into the
gulfs of Syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood
were deafened by it. Even a colony of Persians, sent thither by Cambyses,
could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek a quieter
situation. The first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six
and a quarter miles in length, descending from the island of Philae to the
port of Aswan, the aspect of its approach relieved and brightened by the
ever green groves of Elephantine. Beyond Elephantine are cliffs and sandy
beaches, chains of blackened “roches moutonnées” marking out the beds of
the currents, and fantastic reefs, sometimes bare and sometimes veiled by
long grasses and climbing plants, in which thousands of birds have made
their nests. There are islets too, occasionally large enough to have once
supported something of a population, such as Amerade, Salûg, Sehêl. The
granite threshold of Nubia, is broken beyond Sehêl, but its débris, massed
m disorder against the right bank, still seem to dispute the passage of
the waters, dashing turbulently and roaring as they flow along through
tortuous channels, where every streamlet is broken up into small cascades,
ihe channel running by the left bank is always navigable.
During the inundation, the rocks and sandbanks of the right side are
completely under water, and their presence is only betrayed by eddies. But
on the river’s reaching its lowest point a fall of some six feet is
established, and there big boats, hugging the shore, are hauled up by
means of ropes, or easily drift down with the current.
All kinds of granite are found together in this corner of Africa. There
are the pink and red Syenites, porphyritic granite, yellow granite, grey
granite, both black granite and white, and granites veined with black and
veined with white. As soon as these disappear behind us, various
sandstones begin to crop up, allied to the coarsest calcaire grossier.
The hill bristle with small split blocks, with peaks half overturned, with
rough and denuded mounds. League beyond league, they stretch in low
ignoble outline. Here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert,
revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon
one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless
caravans. The now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur,
accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the rhythmic creak
of the sâkîeh.[*]
Jetties of rough stone-work, made in unknown times by an unknown people,
run out like breakwaters into midstream.
From time to time waves of sand are borne over, and drown the narrow
fields of durra and of barley. Scraps of close, aromatic pasturage,
acacias, date-palms, and dôm-palms, together with a few shrivelled
sycamores, are scattered along both banks. The ruins of a crumbling pylon
mark the site of some ancient city, and, overhanging the water, is a
vertical wall of rock honeycombed with tombs. Amid these relics of another
age, miserable huts, scattered hamlets, a town or two surrounded with
little gardens are the only evidence that there is yet life in Nubia.
South of Wâdy Halfah, the second granite bank is broken through, and the
second cataract spreads its rapids over a length of four leagues: the
archipelago numbers more than 350 islets, of which some sixty have houses
upon them and yield harvests to their inhabitants. The main
characteristics of the first two cataracts are repeated with slight
variations in the cases of the three which follow,—at Hannek, at
Guerendid, and El-Hu-mar. It is Egypt still, but a joyless Egypt bereft of
its brightness: impoverished, disfigured, and almost desolate.
There is the same double wall of hills, now closely confining the valley,
and again withdrawing from each other as though to flee into the desert.
Everywhere are moving sheets of sand, steep black banks with their narrow
strips of cultivation, villages which are scarcely visible on account of
the lowness of their huts sycamore ceases at Gebel-Barkal, date-palms
become fewer and finally disappear. The Nile alone has not changed. And it
was at Philse, so it is at Berber. Here, however, on the right bank, 600
leagues from the sea, is its first affluent, the Takazze, which
intermittently brings to it the waters of Northern Ethiopia. At Khartum,
the single channel in which the river flowed divides; and two other
streams are opened up in a southerly direction, each of them apparently
equal in volume to the main stream. Which is the true Nile? Is it the Blue
Nile, which seems to come down from the distant mountains? Or is it the
White Nile, which has traversed the immense plains of equatorial Africa.
The old Egyptians never knew. The river kept the secret of its source from
them as obstinately as it withheld it from us until a few years ago.
Vainly did their victorious armies follow the Nile for months together as
they pursued the tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide,
as full, as irresistible in its progress as ever. It was a fresh-water
sea, and sea—iaûmâ, iôma—was the name by which they
called it.
The Egyptians therefore never sought its source. They imagined the whole
universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest
diameter was from south to north, and its least from east to west. The
earth, with its alternate continents and seas, formed the bottom of the
box; it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with Egypt in
its centre. The sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, flat according
to some, vaulted according to others. Its earthward face was capriciously
sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables, and which, extinguished or
unperceived by day, were lighted, or became visible to our eyes, at night.
Since this ceiling could not remain in mid-air without support, four
columns, or rather four forked trunks of trees, similar to those which
maintained the primitive house, were supposed to uphold it. But it was
doubtless feared lest some tempest should overturn them, for they were
superseded by four lofty peaks, rising at the four cardinal points, and
connected by a continuous chain of mountains. The Egyptians knew little of
the northern peak: the Mediterranean, the “Very Green,” interposed between
it and Egypt, and prevented their coming near enough to see it. The
southern peak was named Apit the Horn of the Earth; that on the east was
called Bâkhû, the Mountain of Birth; and the western peak was known as
Manu, sometimes as Onkhit, the Region of Life.
Bâkhû was not a fictitious mountain, but the highest of those distant
summits seen from the Nile in looking towards the red Sea. In the same
way, Manu answered to some hill of the Libyan desert, whose summit closed
the horizon. When it was discovered that neither Bâkhû nor Manu were the
limits of the world, the notion of upholding the celestial roof was not on
that account given up. It was only necessary to withdraw the pillars from
sight, and imagine fabulous peaks, invested with familiar names. These
were not supposed to form the actual boundary of the universe; a great
river—analogous to the Ocean-stream of the Greeks—lay between
them and its utmost limits. This river circulated upon a kind of ledge
projecting along the sides of the box a little below the continuous
mountain chain upon which the starry heavens were sustained. On the north
of the ellipse, the river was bordered by a steep and abrupt bank, which
took its rise at the peak of Manu on the west, and soon rose high enough
to form a screen between the river and the earth. The narrow valley which
it hid from view was known as Da’it from remotest times. Eternal night
enfolded that valley in thick darkness, and filled it with dense air such
as no living thing could breathe. Towards the east the steep bank rapidly
declined, and ceased altogether a little beyond Bâkhû, while the river
flowed on between low and almost level shores from east to south, and then
from south to west. The sun was a disc of fire placed upon a boat. At the
same equable rate, the river carried it round the ramparts of the world.
Erom evening until morning it disappeared within the gorges of Daït; its
light did not then reach us, and it was night. From morning until evening
its rays, being no longer intercepted by any obstacle, were freely shed
abroad from one end of the box to the other, and it was day. The Nile
branched off from the celestial river at its southern bend;[*] hence the
south was the chief cardinal point to the Egyptians, and by that they
oriented themselves, placing sunrise to their left, and sunset to their
right.
Before they passed beyond the defiles of Gebel Silsileh, they thought that
the spot whence the celestial waters left the sky was situate between
Elephantine and Philae, and that they descended in an immense waterfall
whose last leaps were at Syene. It may be that the tales about the first
cataract told by classic writers are but a far-off echo of this tradition
of a barbarous age. Conquests carried into the heart of Africa forced the
Egyptians to recognize their error, but did not weaken their faith in the
supernatural origin of the river. They only placed its source further
south, and surrounded it with greater marvels. They told how, by going up
the stream, sailors at length reached an undetermined country, a kind of
borderland between this world and the next, a “Land of Shades,” whose
inhabitants were dwarfs, monsters, or spirits. Thence they passed into a
sea sprinkled with mysterious islands, like those enchanted archipelagoes
which Portuguese and Breton mariners were wont to see at times when on
their voyages, and which vanished at their approach. These islands were
inhabited by serpents with human voices, sometimes friendly and sometimes
cruel to the shipwrecked. He who went forth from the islands could never
more re-enter them: they were resolved into the waters and lost within the
bosom of the waves. A modern geographer can hardly comprehend such
fancies; those of Greek and Roman times were perfectly familiar with them.
They believed that the Nile communicated with the Red Sea near Suakin, by
means of the Astaboras, and this was certainly the route which the
Egyptians of old had imagined for their navigators. The supposed
communication was gradually transferred farther and farther south; and we
have only to glance over certain maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, to see clearly drawn what the Egyptians had imagined—the
centre of Africa as a great lake, whence issued the Congo, the Zambesi,
and the Nile. Arab merchants of the Middle Ages believed that a resolute
man could pass from Alexandria or Cairo to the land of the Zindjes and the
Indian Ocean by rising from river to river.[*]
Many of the legends relating to this subject are lost, while others have
been collected and embellished with fresh features by Jewish and Christian
theologians. The Nile was said to have its source in Paradise, to traverse
burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall into a sea
whence it made its way to Egypt. Sometimes it carried down from its
celestial sources branches and fruits unlike any to be found on earth. The
sea mentioned in all these tales is perhaps a less extravagant invention
than we are at first inclined to think. A lake, nearly as large as the
Victoria Nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the Bahr el-Abiad
unites with the Sobat, and with the Bahr el-Ghazal. Alluvial deposits have
filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as Birket Nû;
but, in ages preceding our era, it must still have been vast enough to
suggest to Egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea,
opening into the Indian Ocean. The mountains, whose outline was vaguely
seen far to southward on the further shores, doubtless contained within
them its mysterious source. There the inundation was made ready, and there
it began upon a fixed day. The celestial Nile had its periodic rise and
fall, on which those of the earthly Nile depended. Every year, towards the
middle of June, Isis, mourning for Osiris, let fall into it one of the
tears which she shed over her brother, and thereupon the river swelled and
descended upon earth. Isis has had no devotees for centuries, and her very
name is unknown to the descendants of her worshippers; but the tradition
of her fertilizing tears has survived her memory. Even to this day, every
one in Egypt, Mussulman or Christian, knows that a divine drop falls from
heaven during the night between the 17th and 18th of June, and forthwith
brings about the rise of the Nile. Swollen by the rains which fall in
February over the region of the Great Lakes, the White Nile rushes
northward, sweeping before it the stagnant sheets of water left by the
inundation of the previous year. On the left, the Bahr el-Ghazâl brings it
the overflow of the ill-defined basin stretching between Darfûr and the
Congo; and the Sobat pours in on the right a tribute from the rivers which
furrow the southern slopes of the Abyssinian mountains. The first swell
passes Khartum by the end of April, and raises the water-level there by
about a foot, then it slowly makes its way through Nubia, and dies away in
Egypt at the beginning of June. Its waters, infected by half-putrid
organic matter from the equatorial swamps, are not completely freed from
it even in the course of this long journey, but keep a greenish tint as
far as the Delta. They are said to be poisonous, and to give severe pains
in the bladder to any who may drink them. I am bound to say that every
June, for five years, I drank this green water from the Nile itself,
without taking any other precaution than the usual one of filtering it
through a porous jar. Neither I, nor the many people living with me, ever
felt the slightest inconvenience from it. Happily, this Green Nile
does not last long, but generally flows away in three or four days, and is
only the forerunner of the real flood. The melting of the snows and the
excessive spring rains having suddenly swollen the torrents which rise in
the central plateau of Abyssinia, the Blue Nile, into which they flow,
rolls so impetuously towards the plain that, when its waters reach Khartum
in the middle of May, they refuse to mingle with those of the White Nile,
and do not lose their peculiar colour before reaching the neighbourhood of
Abu Hamed, three hundred miles below. From that time the height of the
Nile increases rapidly day by day. The river, constantly reinforced by
floods following one upon another from the Great Lakes and from Abyssinia,
rises in furious bounds, and would become a devastating torrent were its
rage not checked by the Nubian cataracts. Here six basins, one above
another, in which the water collects, check its course, and permit it to
flow thence only as a partially filtered and moderated stream. It is
signalled at Syene towards the 8th of June, at Cairo by the 17th to the
20th, and there its birth is officially celebrated during the “Night of
the Drop.” Two days later it reaches the Delta, just in time to save the
country from drought and sterility. Egypt, burnt up by the Khamsin, a west
wind blowing continuously for fifty days, seems nothing more than an
extension of the desert. The trees are covered and choked by a layer of
grey dust. About the villages, meagre and laboriously watered patches of
vegetables struggle for life, while some show of green still lingers along
the canals and in hollows whence all moisture has not yet evaporated. The
plain lies panting in the sun—naked, dusty, and ashen—scored
with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. The Nile is only half its
usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of the volume of water
which is borne down in October. It has at first hard work to recover its
former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations that the rise is
scarcely noted. It is, however, continually gaining ground; here a
sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled, islets are outlined
where there was a continuous beach, a new stream detaches itself and gains
the old shore. The first contact is disastrous to the banks; their steep
sides, disintegrated and cracked by the heat, no longer offer any
resistance to the current, and fall with a crash, in lengths of a hundred
yards and more.
As the successive floods grow stronger and are more heavily charged with
mud, the whole mass of water becomes turbid and changes colour. In eight
or ten days it has turned from greyish blue to dark red, occasionally of
so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood. The “Red Nile” is
not unwholesome like the “Green Nile,” and the suspended mud to which it
owes its suspicious appearance deprives the water of none of its freshness
and lightness. It reaches its full height towards the 15th of July; but
the dykes which confine it, and the barriers constructed across the mouths
of canals, still prevent it from overflowing. The Nile must be considered
high enough to submerge the land adequately before it is set free. The
ancient Egyptians measured its height by cubits of twenty-one and a
quarter inches. At fourteen cubits, they pronounced it an excellent Nile;
below thirteen, or above fifteen, it was accounted insufficient or
excessive, and in either case meant famine, and perhaps pestilence at
hand. To this day the natives watch its advance with the same anxious
eagerness; and from the 3rd of July, public criers, walking the streets of
Cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made since evening. More
or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude to the opening of the
canals, in the time of the Pharaohs, was the solemn casting to the waters
of a young girl decked as for her bridal—the “Bride of the Nile.”
Even after the Arab conquest, the irruption of the river into the bosom of
the land was still considered as an actual marriage; the contract was
drawn up by a cadi, and witnesses confirmed its consummation with the most
fantastic formalities of Oriental ceremonial. It is generally between the
1st and 16th of July that it is decided to break through the dykes. When
that proceeding has been solemnly accomplished in state, the flood still
takes several days to fill the canals, and afterwards spreads over the low
lands, advancing little by little to the very edge of the desert. Egypt is
then one sheet of turbid water spreading between two lines of rock and
sand, flecked with green and black spots where there are towns or where
the ground rises, and divided into irregular compartments by raised roads
connecting the villages. In Nubia the river attains its greatest height
towards the end of August; at Cairo and in the Delta not until three weeks
or a month later. For about eight days it remains stationary, and then
begins to fall imperceptibly. Sometimes there is a new freshet in October,
and the river again increases in height. But the rise is unsustained; once
more it falls as rapidly as it rose, and by December the river has
completely retired to the limits of its bed. One after another, the
streams which fed it fail or dwindle. The Tacazze is lost among the sands
before rejoining it, and the Blue Nile, well-nigh deprived of tributaries,
is but scantily maintained by Abyssinian snows. The White Nile is indebted
to the Great Lakes for the greater persistence of its waters, which feed
the river as far as the Mediterranean, and save the valley from utter
drought in winter. But, even with this resource, the level of the water
falls daily, and its volume is diminished. Long-hidden sandbanks reappear,
and are again linked into continuous line. Islands expand by the rise of
shingly beaches, which gradually reconnect them with each other and with
the shore. Smaller branches of the river cease to flow, and form a mere
network of stagnant pools and muddy ponds, which fast dry up. The main
channel itself is only intermittently navigable; after March boats run
aground in it, and are forced to await the return of the inundation for
their release. From the middle of April to the middle of June, Egypt is
only half alive, awaiting the new Nile.
Those ruddy and heavily charged waters, rising and retiring with almost
mathematical regularity, bring and leave the spoils of the countries they
have traversed: sand from Nubia, whitish clay from the regions of the
Lakes, ferruginous mud, and the various rock-formations of Abyssinia.
These materials are not uniformly disseminated in the deposits; their
precipitation being regulated both by their specific gravity and the
velocity of the current. Flattened stones and rounded pebbles are left
behind at the cataract between Syene and Keneh, while coarser particles of
sand are suspended in the undercurrents and serve to raise the bed of the
river, or are carried out to sea and form the sandbanks which are slowly
rising at the Damietta and Rosetta mouths of the Nile. The mud and finer
particles rise towards the surface, and are deposited upon the land after
the opening of the dykes. Soil which is entirely dependent on the deposit
of a river, and periodically invaded by it, necessarily maintains but a
scanty flora; and though it is well known that, as a general rule, a flora
is rich in proportion to its distance from the poles and its approach to
the equator, it is also admitted that Egypt offers an exception to this
rule. At the most, she has not more than a thousand species, while, with
equal area, England, for instance, possesses more than fifteen hundred;
and of this thousand, the greater number are not indigenous. Many of them
have been brought From Central Africa by the river: birds and winds have
continued the work, and man himself has contributed his part in making it
more complete. From Asia he has at different times brought wheat barley
the olive, the apple, the white or pink almond, and some twenty other
species now acclimatized on the banks of the Nile. Marsh plants
predominate in the Delta; but the papyrus, and the three varieties of
blue, white, and pink lotus which once flourished there, being no longer
cultivated, have now almost entirely disappeared, and reverted to their
original habitats.
The sycamore and the date-palm, both importations from Central Africa,
have better adapted themselves to their exile, and are now fully
naturalized on Egyptian soil.
The sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as in
the midst of a well-watered country. Its roots go deep in search of water,
which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it
freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. The heavy, squat,
gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions, without ever
growing very high. Its rounded masses of compact foliage are so
wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the impression
of several grouped together; and its shade is dense, and impenetrable to
the sun. A striking contrast to the sycamore is presented by the
date-palm. Its round and slender stem rises uninterruptedly to a height of
thirteen to sixteen yards; its head is crowned with a cluster of flexible
leaves arranged in two or three tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit,
that they fail to keep off the light, and cast but a slight and
unrefreshing shadow. Few trees have so elegant an appearance, yet few are
so monotonously elegant. There are palm trees to be seen on every hand;
isolated, clustered by twos and threes at the mouths of ravines and about
the villages, planted in regular file along the banks of the river like
rows of columns, symmetrically arranged in plantations,—these are
the invariable background against which other trees are grouped,
diversifying the landscape. The feathery tamarisk[*] and the nabk, the
moringa, the carob, or locust tree several varieties of acacia and
mimosa-the sont, the mimosa habbas, the white acacia, the Acacia
Parnesxana—and the pomegranate tree, increase in number with the
distance from the Mediterranean.
The dry air of the valley is marvellously suited to them, but makes the
tissue of their foliage hard and fibrous, imparting an aerial aspect, and
such faded tints as are unknown to their growth in other climates. The
greater number of these trees do not reproduce themselves spontaneously,
and tend to disappear when neglected. The Acacia Seyal, formerly abundant
by the banks of the river, is now almost entirely confined to certain
valleys of the Theban desert, along with a variety of the kernelled
dôm-palm, of which a poetical description has come down to us from the
Ancient Egyptians. The common dôm-palm bifurcates at eight or ten yards
from the ground; these branches are subdivided, and terminate in bunches
of twenty to thirty palmate and fibrous leaves, six to eight feet long. At
the beginning of this century the tree was common in Upper Egypt, but it
is now becoming scarce, and we are within measurable distance of the time
when its presence will be an exception north of the first cataract.
Willows are decreasing in number, and the persea, one of the sacred trees
of Ancient Egypt, is now only to be found in gardens. None of the
remaining tree species are common enough to grow in large clusters; and
Egypt, reduced to her lofty groves of date-palms, presents the singular
spectacle of a country where there is no lack of trees, but an almost
entire absence of shade.
If Egypt is a land of imported flora, it is also a land of imported fauna,
and all its animal species have been brought from neighbouring countries.
Some of these—as, for example, the horse and the camel—were
only introduced at a comparatively recent period, two thousand to eighteen
hundred years before our era; the camel still later. The animals—such
as the long and short-horned oxen, together with varieties of goats and
dogs—are, like the plants, generally of African origin, and the ass
of Egypt preserves an original purity of form and a vigour to which the
European donkey has long been a stranger. The pig and the wild boar, the
long-eared hare, the hedgehog, the ichneumon, the moufflon, or maned
sheep, innumerable gazelles, including the Egyptian gazelles, and
antelopes with lyre-shaped horns, are as much West Asian as African, like
the carnivors of all sizes, whose prey they are—the wild cat, the
wolf, the jackal, the striped and spotted hyenas, the leopard, the
panther, the hunting leopard, and the lion.
On the other hand, most of the serpents, large and small, are indigenous.
Some are harmless, like the colubers; others are venomous, such as the soy
tale, the cerastes, the haje viper, and the asp. The asp was worshipped by
the Egyptians under the name of uræus. It occasionally attains to a length
of six and a half feet, and when approached will erect its head and
inflate its throat in readiness for darting forward. The bite is fatal,
like that of the cerastes; birds are literally struck down by the strength
of the poison, while the great mammals, and man himself, almost invariably
succumb to it after a longer or shorter death-struggle. The uræus is
rarely found except in the desert or in the fields; the scorpion crawls
everywhere, in desert and city alike, and if its sting is not always
followed by death, it invariably causes terrible pain. Probably there were
once several kinds of gigantic serpent in Egypt, analogous to the pythons
of equatorial Africa. They are still to be seen in representations of
funerary scenes, but not elsewhere; for, like the elephant, the giraffe,
and other animals which now only thrive far south, they had disappeared at
the beginning of historic times. The hippopotamus long maintained its
ground before returning to those equatorial regions whence it had been
brought by the Nile. Common under the first dynasties, but afterwards
withdrawing to the marshes of the Delta, it there continued to flourish up
to the thirteenth century of our era. The crocodile, which came with it,
has, like it also, been compelled to beat a retreat. Lord of the river
throughout all ancient times, worshipped and protected in some provinces,
execrated and proscribed in others, it might still be seen in the
neighbourhood of Cairo towards the beginning of our century. In 1840, it
no longer passed beyond the neighbourhood of Gebel et-Têr, nor beyond that
of Manfalût in Thirty years later, Mariette asserted that it was steadily
retreating before the guns of tourists, and the disturbance which the
regular passing of steamboats produced in the deep waters. To-day, no one
knows of a single crocodile existing below Aswan, but it continues to
infest Nubia, and the rocks of the first cataract: one of them is
occasionally carried down by the current into Egypt where it is speedily
despatched by the fellâhin, or by some traveller in quest of adventure.
The fertility of the soil, and the vastness of the lakes and marshes,
attract many migratory birds; passerinæ and palmipedes flock thither from
all parts of the Mediterranean. Our European swallows, our quails, our
geese and wild ducks, our herons—to mention only the most familiar—come
here to winter, sheltered from cold and inclement weather.
Even the non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers
acclimatized by long sojourn. Some of them—the turtledove, the
magpie, the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with
our European species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the
brightness of their colours. White and black ibises, red flamingoes,
pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate the
reedy swamps of the Delta in infinite variety. They are to be seen ranged
in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the sun;
suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles away
further off. In hollows of the hills, eagle and falcon, the merlin, the
bald-headed vulture, the kestrel, the golden sparrow-hawk, find
inaccessible retreats, whence they descend upon the plains like so many
pillaging and well-armed barons. A thousand little chattering birds come
at eventide to perch in flocks upon the frail boughs of tamarisk and
acacia.
Many sea-fish make their way upstream to swim in fresh waters-shad,
mullet, perch, and labrus—and carry their excursions far into the
Saïd. Those species which are not Mediterranean came originally, still
come annually, from the heart of Ethiopia with the of the Nile, including
two kinds of Alestes, the elled turtle, the Bagrus docmac, and the
mormyrus. Some attain to a gigantic size, the Bagrus bayad and the turtle
to about one yard, the latus to three and a half yards in length, while
others, such as the sihlrus (catfish), are noted for their electric
properties. Nature seems to have made the fahâka (the globe-fish) in a fit
of playfulness. It is a long fish from beyond the cataracts, and it is
carried by the Nile the more easily on account of the faculty it has of
filling itself with air, and inflating its body at will.
When swelled out immoderately, the fahâka overbalances, and drifts along
upside down, its belly to the wind, covered with spikes so that it looks
like a hedgehog. During the inundation, it floats with the current from
one canal to another, and is cast by the retreating waters upon the muddy
fields, where it becomes the prey of birds or of jackals, or serves as a
plaything for children.
Everything is dependent upon the river:—the soil, the produce of the
soil, the species of animals it bears, the birds which it feeds: and hence
it was the Egyptians placed the river among their gods. They personified
it as a man with regular features, and a vigorous and portly body, such as
befits the rich of high lineage. His breasts, fully developed like those
of a woman, though less firm, hang heavily upon a wide bosom where the fat
lies in folds. A narrow girdle, whose ends fall free about the thighs,
supports his spacious abdomen, and his attire is completed by sandals, and
a close-fitting head-dress, generally surmounted with a crown of
water-plants. Sometimes water springs from his breast; sometimes he
presents a frog, or libation vases; or holds a bundle of the cruces
ansato, as symbols of life; or bears a flat tray, full of offerings—bunches
of flowers, ears of corn, heaps of fish, and geese tied together by the
feet. The inscriptions call him, “Hâpi, father of the gods, lord of
sustenance, who maketh food to be, and covereth the two lands of Egypt
with his products; who giveth life, banisheth want, and filleth the
granaries to overflowing.” He is evolved into two personages, one being
sometimes coloured red, and the other blue. The former, who wears a
cluster of lotus-flowers upon his head, presides over the Egypt of the
south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus for his head-dress, and watches
over the Delta.[**]
Two goddesses, corresponding to the two Hâpis—Mirit Qimâit for
Upper, and Mirit Mîhit for Lower Egypt—personified the banks of the
river. They are often represented as standing with outstretched arms, as
though begging for the water which should make them fertile. The Nile-god
had his chapel in every province, and priests whose right it was to bury
all bodies of men or beasts cast up by the river; for the god had claimed
them, and to his servants they belonged.
Several towns were dedicated to him: Hâthâpi, Nûit-Hâpi, Nilo-polis. It
was told in the Thebaïd how the god dwelt within a grotto, or shrine
(tophit), in the island of Biggeh, whence he issued at the inundation.
This tradition dates from a time when the cataract was believed to be at
the end of the world, and to bring down the heavenly river upon earth. Two
yawning gulfs (qorîti), at the foot of the two granite cliffs (monîti)
between which it ran, gave access to this mysterious retreat. A bas-relief
from Philae represents blocks of stone piled one above another, the
vulture of the south and the hawk of the north, each perched on a summit,
wearing a panther skin, with both arms upheld in adoration. The statue is
mutilated: the end of the nose, the beard, and part of the tray have
disappeared, but are restored in the illustration. The two little birds
hanging alongside the geese, together with a bunch of ears of corn, are
fat quails, and the circular chamber wherein Hâpi crouches concealed,
clasping a libation vase in either hand. A single coil of a serpent
outlines the contour of this chamber, and leaves a narrow passage between
its overlapping head and tail through which the rising waters may overflow
at the time appointed, bringing to Egypt “all things good, and sweet, and
pure,” whereby gods and men are fed. Towards the summer solstice, at the
very moment when the sacred water from the gulfs of Syene reached
Silsileh, the priests of the place, sometimes the reigning sovereign, or
one of his sons, sacrificed a bull and geese, and then cast into the
waters a sealed roll of papyrus. This was a written order to do all that
might insure to Egypt the benefits of a normal inundation. When Pharaoh
himself deigned to officiate, the memory of the event was preserved by a
stela engraved upon the rocks. Even in his absence, the festivals of the
Nile were among the most solemn and joyous of the land. According to a
tradition transmitted from age to age, the prosperity or adversity of the
year was dependent upon the splendour and fervour with which they were
celebrated. Had the faithful shown the slightest lukewarmness, the Nile
might have refused to obey the command and failed to spread freely over
the surface of the country. Peasants from a distance, each bringing his
own provisions, ate their meals together for days, and lived in a state of
brutal intoxication as long as this kind of fair lasted. On the great day
itself, the priests came forth in procession from the sanctuary, bearing
the statue of the god along the banks, to the sound of instruments and the
chanting of hymns.
“I.—Hail to thee, Hâpi!—who appearest in the land and comest—to
give life to Egypt;—thou who dost hide thy coming in darkness—in
this very day whereon thy coming is sung,—wave, which spreadest over
the orchards created by Ra—to give life to all them that are athirst—who
refusest to give drink unto the desert—of the overflow of the waters
of heaven; as soon as thou descendest,—Sibû, the earth-god, is
enamoured of bread,—Napri, the god of grain, presents his offering,—Phtah
maketh every workshop to prosper.
“II.—Lord of the fish! as soon as he passeth the cataract—the
birds no longer descend upon the fields;—creator of corn, maker of
barley,—he prolongeth the existence of temples.—Do his fingers
cease from their labours, or doth he suffer?—then are all the
millions of beings in misery;—doth he wane in heaven? then the gods—themselves,
and all men perish.
“III.—The cattle are driven mad, and all the world—both great
and small, are in torment!—But if, on the contrary, the prayers of
men are heard at his rising—and (for them) he maketh himself Khnûmû,—when
he ariseth, then the earth shouts for joy,—then are all bellies
joyful,—each back is shaken with laughter,—and every tooth
grindeth.
“IV.—Bringing food, rich in sustenance,—creator of all good
things,—lord of all seeds of life, pleasant unto his elect,—if
his friendship is secured—he produceth fodder for the cattle,—and
he provideth for the sacrifices of all the gods,—finer than any
other is the incense which cometh from him;—he taketh possession of
the two lands—and the granaries are filled, the storehouses are
prosperous,—and the goods of the poor are multiplied.
“V.—He is at the service of all prayers to answer them,—withholding
nothing. To make boats to be that is his strength.—Stones are not
sculptured for him—nor statues whereon the double crown is placed;—he
is unseen;—no tribute is paid unto him and no offerings are brought
unto him,—he is not charmed by words of mystery;—the place of
his dwelling is unknown, nor can his shrine be found by virtue of magic
writings.
“VI.—There is no house large enough for thee,—nor any who may
penetrate within thy heart!—Nevertheless, the generations of thy
children rejoice in thee—for thou dost rule as a king—whose
decrees are established for the whole earth,—who is manifest in
presence of the people of the South and of the North,—by whom the
tears are washed from every eye,—and who is lavish of his bounties.
“VII.—Where sorrow was, there doth break forth joy—and every
heart rejoiceth. Sovkû, the crocodile, the child of Nit, leaps for
gladness;[*]—for the Nine gods who accompany thee have ordered all
things,—the overflow giveth drink unto the fields—and maketh
all men valiant; one man taketh to drink of the labour of another,—without
charge being brought against him.[**]
“IX.—If thou dost enter in the midst of songs to go forth in the
midst of gladness,—if they dance with joy when thou comest forth out
of the unknown,—it is that thy heaviness is death and corruption.—And
when thou art implored to give the water of the year,—the people of
the Thebai’d and of the North are seen side by side,—each man with
the tools of his trade,—none tarrieth behind his neighbour;—of
all those who clothed themselves, no man clotheth himself (with festive
garments)—the children of Thot, the god of riches, no longer adorn
themselves with jewels,—nor the Nine gods, but they are in the
night!—As soon as thou hast answered by the rising,—each one
anointeth himself with perfumes.
“X.—Establisher of true riches, desire of men,—here are
seductive words in order that thou mayest reply;—if thou dost answer
mankind by waves of the heavenly Ocean,—Napri, the grain-god,
presents his offering,—all the gods adore (thee),—the birds no
longer descend upon the hills;—though that which thy hand formeth
were of gold—or in the shape of a brick of silver,—it is not
lapis-lazuli that we eat,—but wheat is of more worth than precious
stones.
“XI.—They have begun to sing unto thee upon the harp,—they
sing unto thee keeping time with their hands,—and the generations of
thy children rejoice in thee, and they have filled thee with salutations
of praise;—for it is the god of Riches who adorneth the earth,—who
maketh barks to prosper in the sight of man—who rejoiceth the heart
of women with child—who loveth the increase of the flocks.
“XII.—When thou art risen in the city of the Prince,—then is
the rich man filled—the small man (the poor) disdaineth the lotus,—all
is solid and of good quality,—all herbage is for his children.—Doth
he forget to give food?—prosperity forsaketh the dwellings,—and
earth falleth into a wasting sickness.”
The word Nile is of uncertain origin. We have it from the Greeks, and they
took it from a people foreign to Egypt, either from the Phoenicians, the
Khîti, the Libyans, or from people of Asia Minor. When the Egyptians
themselves did not care to treat their river as the god Hâpi, they called
it the sea, or the great river. They had twenty terms or more by which to
designate the different phases which it assumed according to the seasons,
but they would not have understood what was meant had one spoken to them
of the Nile. The name Egypt also is part of the Hellenic tradition;
perhaps it was taken from the temple-name of Memphis, Hâikûphtah, which
barbarian coast tribes of the Mediterranean must long have had ringing in
their ears as that of the most important and wealthiest town to be found
upon the shores of their sea. The Egyptians called themselves Bomitû,
Botû, and their country Qîmit, the black land. Whence came they? How far
off in time are we to carry back the date of their arrival? The oldest
monuments hitherto known scarcely transport us further than six thousand
years, yet they are of an art so fine, so well determined in its main
outlines, and reveal so ingeniously combined a system of administration,
government, and religion, that we infer a long past of accumulated
centuries behind them. It must always be difficult to estimate exactly the
length of time needful for a race as gifted as were the Ancient Egyptians
to rise from barbarism into a high degree of culture. Nevertheless, I do
not think that we shall be misled in granting them forty or fifty
centuries wherein to bring so complicated an achievement to a successful
issue, and in placing their first appearance at eight or ten thousand
years before our era. Their earliest horizon was a very limited one. Their
gaze might wander westward over the ravine-furrowed plains of the Libyan
desert without reaching that fabled land of Manu where the sun set every
evening; but looking eastward from the valley, they could see the peak of
Bâkhû, which marked the limit of regions accessible to man.
Beyond these regions lay the beginnings of To-nûtri, the land of the gods,
and the breezes passing over it were laden with its perfumes, and
sometimes wafted them to mortals lost in the desert.[*]
Northward, the world came to an end towards the lagoons of the Delta,
whose inaccessible islands were believed to be the sojourning-place of
souls after death. As regards the south, precise knowledge of it scarcely
went beyond the defiles of Gebel Sil-sileh, where the last remains of the
granite threshold had perhaps not altogether disappeared. The district
beyond Gebel Silsileh, the province of Konûsit, was still a foreign and
almost mythic country, directly connected with heaven by means of the
cataract. Long after the Egyptians had broken through this restricted
circle, the names of those places which had as it were marked out their
frontiers, continued to be associated in their minds with the idea of the
four cardinal points. Bâkhû and Manu were still the most frequent
expressions for the extreme East and West. Nekhabit and Bûto, the most
populous towns in the neighbourhoods of Gebel Silsileh and the ponds of
the Delta, were set over against each other to designate South and North.
It was within these narrow limits that Egyptian civilization struck root
and ripened, as in a closed vessel. What were the people by whom it was
developed, the country whence they came, the races to which they belonged,
is to-day unknown. The majority would place their cradle-land in Asia,[*]
but cannot agree in determining the route which was followed in the
emigration to Africa.
Some think that the people took the shortest road across the Isthmus of
Suez, others give them longer peregrinations and a more complicated
itinerary. They would have them cross the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and
then the Abyssinian mountains, and, spreading northward and keeping along
the Nile, finally settle in the Egypt of to-day. A more minute examination
compels us to recognize that the hypothesis of an Asiatic origin, however
attractive it may seem, is somewhat difficult to maintain. The bulk of the
Egyptian population presents the characteristics of those white races
which have been found established from all antiquity on the Mediterranean
slope of the Libyan continent; this population is of African origin, and
came to Egypt from the West or South-West. In the valley, perhaps, it may
have met with a black race which it drove back or destroyed; and there,
perhaps, too, it afterwards received an accretion of Asiatic elements,
introduced by way of the isthmus and the marshes of the Delta. But
whatever may be the origin of the ancestors of the Egyptians, they were
scarcely settled upon the banks of the Nile before the country conquered,
and assimilated them to itself, as it has never ceased to do in the case
of strangers who have occupied it. At the time when their history begins
for us, all the inhabitants had long formed but one people, with but one
language.
This language seems to be connected with the Semitic tongues by many of
its roots. It forms its personal pronouns, whether isolated or suffixed,
in a similar way. One of the tenses of the conjugation, and that the
simplest and most archaic, is formed with identical affixes. Without
insisting upon resemblances which are open to doubt, it may be almost
affirmed that most of the grammatical processes used in Semitic languages
are to be found in a rudimentary condition in Egyptian. One would say that
the language of the people of Egypt and the languages of the Semitic
races, having once belonged to the same group, had separated very early,
at a time when the vocabulary and the grammatical system of the group had
not as yet taken definite shape. Subject to different influences, the two
families would treat in diverse fashion the elements common to both. The
Semitic dialects continued to develop for centuries, while the Egyptian
language, although earlier cultivated, stopped short in its growth. “If it
is obvious that there was an original connexion between the language of
Egypt and that of Asia, this connexion is nevertheless sufficiently remote
to leave to the Egyptian race a distinct physiognomy.” We recognize it in
sculptured and painted portraits, as well as in thousands of mummied
bodies out of subterranean tombs. The highest type of Egyptian was tall
and slender, with a proud and imperious air in the carriage of his head
and in his whole bearing. He had wide and full shoulders, well-marked and
vigorous pectoral muscles, muscular arms, a long, fine hand, slightly
developed hips, and sinewy legs. The detail of the knee-joint and the
muscles of the calf are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin,
and low-arched feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the
custom of going barefoot. The head is rather short, the face oval, the
forehead somewhat retreating. The eyes are wide and fully opened, the
cheekbones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight
or aquiline. The mouth is long, the lips full, and lightly ridged along
their outline; the teeth small, even, well-set, and remarkably sound; the
ears are set high on the head. At birth the skin is white, but darkens in
proportion to its exposure to the sun. Men are generally painted red in
the pictures, though, as a matter of fact, there must already have been
all the shades which we see among the present population^ from a most
delicate, rose-tinted complexion to that of a smoke-coloured bronze.
Women, who were less exposed to the sun, are generally painted yellow, the
tint paler in proportion as they rise in the social scale. The hair was
inclined to be wavy, and even to curl into little ringlets, but without
ever turning into the wool of the negro.
The beard was scanty, thick only upon the chin. Such was the highest type;
the commoner was squat, dumpy, and heavy. Chest and shoulders seem to be
enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and the hips, to such an extent as
to make the want of proportion between the upper and lower parts of the
body startling and ungraceful. The skull is long, somewhat retreating, and
slightly flattened on the top; the features are coarse, and as though
carved in flesh by great strokes of the blocking-out chisel. Small
frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round
cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips—this unattractive
and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of cunning
which recalls the shrewd face of an old French peasant, is often lighted
up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy good-nature. The external
characteristics of these two principal types in the ancient monuments, in
all varieties of modifications, may still be seen among the living. The
profile copied from a Theban mummy taken at hazard from a necropolis of
the XVIIIth dynasty, and compared with the likeness of a modern Luxor
peasant, would almost pass for a family portrait. Wandering Bisharîn have
inherited the type of face of a great noble, the contemporary of Kheops;
and any peasant woman of the Delta may bear upon her shoulders che head of
a twelfth-dynasty king. A citizen of Cairo, gazing with wonder at the
statues of Khafra or of Seti I. in the Gîzeh Museum, is himself, feature
for feature, the very image of those ancient Pharaohs, though removed from
them by fifty centuries.
Until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered
which could be attributed to the primitive races of Egypt: even the flint
weapons and implements which had been found in various places could not be
ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the Egyptians continued
to use stone long after metal was known to them. They made stone
arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of the Pharaohs, but
under the Romans, and during the whole period of the Middle Ages, and the
manufacture of them has not yet entirely died out.[**]
These objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore be
less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. But if so
far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages, we
met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony with
the general civilization of the period. A comparison of these customs with
analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon the former,
completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the successive
stages through which the Egyptian people had to pass before reaching their
highest civilization. We knew, for example, that even as late as the
Cæsars, girls belonging to noble families at Thebes were consecrated to
the service of Amon, and were thus licensed to a life of immorality,
which, however, did not prevent them from making rich marriages when age
obliged them to retire from office. Theban women were not the only people
in the world to whom such licence was granted or imposed upon them by law;
wherever in a civilized country we see a similar practice, we may
recognize in it an ancient custom which in the course of centuries has
degenerated into a religious observance. The institution of the women of
Amon is a legacy from a time when the practice of polyandry obtained, and
marriage did not yet exist. Age and maternity relieved them from this
obligation, and preserved them from those incestuous connections of which
we find examples in other races. A union of father and daughter, however,
was perhaps not wholly forbidden,[*] and that of brother and sister seems
to have been regarded as perfectly right and natural; the words brother
and sister possessing in Egyptian love-songs the same significance as
lover and mistress with us.
Paternity was necessarily doubtful in a community of this kind, and hence
the tie between fathers and children was slight; there being no family, in
the sense in which we understand the word, except as it centred around the
mother.
Maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and the
affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother alone.
When the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to one
husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many wives
as he wished, or as he was able to keep, beginning with his own sisters.
All wives did not enjoy identical rights: those born of the same parents
as the man, or those of equal rank with himself, preserved their
independence. If the law pronounced him the master, nibû, to whom
they owed obedience and fidelity, they were mistresses of the house, nîbît
pirû, as well as wives, himitû, and the two words of the title
express their condition. Each of them occupied, in fact, her own house, pirû,
which she had from her parents or her husband, and of which she was
absolute mistress, nîbît. She lived in it and performed in it
without constraint all a woman’s duties; feeding the fire, grinding the
corn, occupying herself in cooking and weaving, making clothing and
perfumes, nursing and teaching her children. When her husband visited her,
he was a guest whom she received on an equal footing. It appears that at
the outset these various wives were placed under the authority of an older
woman, whom they looked on as their mother, and who defended their rights
and interests against the master; but this custom gradually disappeared,
and in historic times we read of it as existing only in the families of
the gods. The female singers consecrated to Amon and other deities, owed
obedience to several superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow
of a king or high priest) was called chief-superior of the ladies of
the harem of Amon. Besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves
purchased or born in the house, prisoners of war, Egyptians of inferior
class, who were the chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he
wished. All the children of one father were legitimate, whether their
mother were a wife or merely a concubine, but they did not all enjoy the
same advantages; those among them who were born of a brother or sister
united in legitimate marriage, took precedence of those whose mother was a
wife of inferior rank or a slave. In the family thus constituted, the
woman, to all appearances, played the principal part. Children recognized
the parental relationship in the mother alone. The husband appears to have
entered the house of his wives, rather than the wives to have entered his,
and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks were
deceived by it. They affirmed that the woman was supreme in Egypt; the man
at the time of marriage promised obedience to her and entered into a
contract not to raise any objection to her commands.
We had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first Egyptians
were semi-savages, like those still living in Africa and America, having
an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools. A few lived in
the desert, in the oasis of Libya, or in the deep valleys of the Red Land—Doshirit,
To Doshiru—between the Nile and the sea; the poverty of the country
fostering their native savagery. Others, settled on the Black Land,
gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains
of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written
records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first
historical dynasty.
Their houses were like those of the fellahs of to-day, low huts of wattle
daubed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun. They contained
one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only aperture. Those
of the richer class only were large enough to make it needful to support
the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees, which did duty for
columns. Earthen pots, turned by hand, flint knives and other implements,
mats of reeds or plaited straw, two flat stones for grinding corn, a few
pieces of wooden furniture, stools, and head-rests for use at night,
comprised all the contents. Their ordinary pottery is heavy and almost
devoid of ornament, but some of the finer kinds have been moulded and
baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left a quaint trellis-like
impression on the surface of the clay. In many cases the vases are
bicolour, the body being of a fine smooth red, polished with a stone,
while the neck and base are of an intense black, the surface of which is
even more shining than that of the red part. Sometimes they are ornamented
with patterns in white of flowers, palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with
undulated or broken lines, or geometrical figures of a very simple nature.
More often the ground is coloured a fine yellow, and the decoration has
been traced in red lines. Jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large
cups, supports for amphorae, trays raised on a foot—in short, every
kind of form is found in use at that remote period. The men went about
nearly naked, except the nobles, who wore a panther’s skin, sometimes
thrown over the shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering
the lower part of the body, the animal’s tail touching the heels behind,
as we see later in several representations of the negroes of the Upper
Nile. They smeared their limbs with grease or oil, and they tattooed their
faces and bodies, at least in part; but in later times this practice was
retained by the lower classes only. On the other hand, the custom of
painting the face was never given up. To complete their toilet, it was
necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of kohl
(antimony powder). A similar black line surrounded and prolonged the oval
of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green coloured the
under lid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks and
lips. The hair, plaited, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease, formed
an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in that of
the woman.
Should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much
skill, was substituted for it; ostrich feathers waved on the heads of
warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear, distinguished
the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates. When the art of
weaving became common, a belt and loin-cloth of white linen replaced the
leathern garment. Fastened round the waist, but so low as to leave the
navel uncovered, the loin-cloth frequently reached to the knee; the hinder
part was frequently drawn between the legs and attached in front to the
belt, thus forming a kind of drawers. Tails of animals and wild beast’s
skin were henceforth only the insignia of authority with which priests and
princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies. The
skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed
with the movement of the body; sometimes it was carefully adjusted over
one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest
into prominence. The head of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened
by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the
waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the
thighs; the spots of the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed
stars. On going out-of-doors, a large wrap was thrown over all; this
covering was either smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the Nubians
and Abyssinians of the present day envelop themselves. It could be draped
in various ways; transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed
shawl of the Chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a
mantle.[**]
In fact, it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun or
from the rain, from the heat or from the cold. They never sought to
transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later
times with the Roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of
carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around the
body with studied grace. The Egyptian mantle when not required was thrown
aside and folded up. The material being fine and soft it occupied but a
small space and was reduced to a long thin roll; the ends being then
fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the body like
a cavalry cloak.[*]
Travellers, shepherds, all those whose occupations called them to the
fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks; once arrived
at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their
provisions until they required it. The women were at first contented with
a loin-cloth like that of the men; it was enlarged and lengthened till it
reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting
garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in
place. The feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however,
sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted
wood, adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste,
should be a little shorter.
Both men and women loved ornaments, and covered their necks, breasts,
arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets. The
bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother-of-pearl, or even flint,
very cleverly perforated. The necklaces were composed of strings of
pierced shells,[**] interspersed with seeds and little pebbles, either
sparkling or of unusual shapes.[***] Subsequently imitations in
terra-cotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were
substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round,
pear-shaped, or cylindrical: the necklaces were terminated and a uniform
distance maintained between the rows of beads, by several slips of wood,
bone, ivory, porcelain, or terra-cotta, pierced with holes, through which
ran the threads.
Weapons, at least among the nobility, were an indispensable part of
costume. Most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting: sticks, clubs,
lances furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers of
flint,[*] sabres and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed or
rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades,—inoffensive enough
to look at, but, wielded by a vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm,
crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision.[**] The
plain or triple curved bow was the favourite weapon for attack at a
distance,[***] but in addition to this there were the sling, the javelin,
and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang, we have no proof
however, that the Egyptians handled the boomerang[****] with the skill of
the Australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to bring it back
to its point of departure.[v]
Such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can
ascertain; but at a very early date copper and iron were known in
Egypt.[**] Long before historic times, the majority of the weapons in wood
were replaced by those of metal,—daggers, sabres, hatchets, which
preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments.
Those wooden weapons which were retained, were used for hunting, or were
only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected.
The war-baton became the commander’s wand of authority, and at last
degenerated into the walking-stick of the rich or noble.
The club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain,[*] while
the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, diorite,
granite, or white stone, the favourite weapons of princes, continued to
the last the most revered insignia of royalty.[**]
Life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure. Of the ponds left in the
open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less quickly
during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity of fish, the
possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with man.[***]
Other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many
vivaria in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks.
Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line,
with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by
the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the neighbouring
Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing in light canoes,
or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they
ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the
ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket
of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found
covert there.
The fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted, or
smoked, and kept for a rainy day. Like the river, the desert had its
perils and its resources. Only too frequently, the lion, the leopard, the
panther, and other large felidse were met with there.
The nobles, like the Pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their privilege
or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their
dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the
mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain
more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript
packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the
wolf-dog and the lithe Abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for
their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. At times a
hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by
one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be taken to
the village and healed of its hurt.
Such animals by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and formed
about his dwelling a motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure and mostly
for his profit, and becoming in case of necessity a ready stock of
provisions.[**]
Efforts were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to procure
animals without seriously injuring them, caused the Egyptians to use the
net for birds and the lasso and the bola for quadrupeds,[*]—weapons
less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. The bola was made by
them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap about five yards in
length. The stone once thrown, the cord twisted round the legs, muzzle, or
neck of the animal pursued, and by the attachment thus made the pursuer,
using all his strength, was enabled to bring the beast down half
strangled. The lasso has no stone attached to it, but a noose prepared
beforehand, and the skill of the hunter consists in throwing it round the
neck of his victim while running. They caught indifferently, without
distinction of size or kind, all that chance brought within their reach.
The daily chase kept up these half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats,
water-bucks, stocks, and ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by
hundreds on the monuments of the ancient empire.[**]
Experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species
from which he could draw profit, and others whose wildness made them
impossible to domesticate. The subjection of the most useful kinds had not
been finished when the historic period opened.
The ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig
was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of
special herdsmen,[*] and the religious rites preserved the remembrance of
the times in which the ox was so little tamed, that in order to capture
while grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter, it was
necessary to use the lasso.[***]
Europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use of
herbs and plants whose flavour and properties are nauseating to us: these
are mostly so many legacies from a remote past; for example, castor-oil,
with which the Berbers rub their limbs, and with which the fellahîn of the
Saïd flavour their bread and vegetables, was preferred before all others
by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic age for anointing the body and for
culinary use.[*] They had begun by eating indiscriminately every kind of
fruit which the country produced. Many of these, when their therapeutic
virtues had been learned by experience, were gradually banished as
articles of food, and their use restricted to medicine; others fell into
disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or at funeral feasts; several
varieties continue to be eaten to the present time—the acid fruits
of the nabeca and of the carob tree, the astringent figs of the sycamore,
the insipid pulp of the dam-palm, besides those which are pleasant to our
Western palates, such as the common fig and the date. The vine flourished,
at least in Middle and Lower Egypt; from time immemorial the art of making
wine from it was known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half
a dozen famous brands, red or white.[**]
Vetches, lupins, beans, chick-peas, lentils, onions, fenugreek,[*] the
bamiâ,[**] the meloukhia,[***] the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the
fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants.
Two of the species of lotus which grew in the Nile, the white and the
blue, have seed-vessels similar to those of the poppy: the capsules
contain small grains of the size of millet-seed. The fruit of the pink
lotus “grows on a different stalk from that of the flower, and springs
directly from the root; it resembles a honeycomb in form,” or, to take a
more prosaic simile, the rose of a watering-pot. The upper part has twenty
or thirty cavities, “each containing a seed as big as an olive stone, and
pleasant to eat either fresh or dried.” This is what the ancients called
the bean of Egypt. “The yearly shoots of the papyrus are also gathered.
After pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut off and rejected,
the part remaining being about a cubit in length. It is eaten as a
delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are fastidious partake
of it only after baking.” Twenty different kinds of grain and fruits,
prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded and baked to furnish
cakes or bread; these are often mentioned in the texts as cakes of nabeca,
date cakes, and cakes of figs. Lily loaves, made from the roots and seeds
of the lotus, were the delight of the gourmand, and appear on the tables
of the kings of the XIXth dynasty.[*]
Bread and cakes made of cereals formed the habitual food of the people.
Durrah is of African origin; it is the “grain of the South” of the
inscriptions. On the other hand, it is supposed that wheat and six-rowed
barley came from the region of the Euphrates. Egypt was among the first to
procure and cultivate them.[*] The soil there is so kind to man, that in
many places no agricultural toil is required.
As soon as the water of the Nile retires, the ground is sown without
previous preparation, and the grain, falling straight into the mud, grows
as vigorously as in the best-ploughed furrows. Where the earth is hard it
is necessary to break it up, but the extreme simplicity of the instruments
with which this was done shows what a feeble resistance it offered. For a
long time the hoe sufficed. It was composed either of a large stone tied
to a wooden handle, or was made of two pieces of wood of unequal length,
united at one of their extremities, and held together towards the middle
by a slack cord: the plough, when first invented was but a slightly
enlarged hoe, drawn by oxen. The cultivation of cereals, once established
on the banks of the Nile, developed, from earliest times, to such a degree
as to supplant all else: hunting, fishing, the rearing of cattle, occupied
but a secondary place compared with agriculture, and Egypt became, that
which she still remains, a vast granary of wheat. The part of the valley
first cultivated was from Gebel Silsileh to the apex of the Delta.[*]
Between the Libyan and Arabian ranges it presents a slightly convex
surface, furrowed lengthways by a depression, in the bottom of which the
Nile is gathered and enclosed when the inundation is over. In the summer,
as soon as the river had risen higher than the top of its banks, the water
rushed by the force of gravity towards the lower lands, hollowing in its
course long channels, some of which never completely dried up, even when
the Nile reached its lowest level.[*] Cultivation was easy in the
neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the
movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. The
inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which
therefore remained unproductive; it flowed rapidly over the lands of
medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became
weedy and stagnant pools.[**]
In any year the portion not watered by the river was invaded by the sand:
from the lush vegetation of a hot country, there was but one step to
absolute aridity. At the present day an ingeniously established system of
irrigation allows the agriculturist to direct and distribute the overflow
according to his needs. From Gebel Ain to the sea, the Nile and its
principal branches are bordered by long dykes, which closely follow the
windings of the river and furnish sufficiently stable embankments.
Numerous canals lead off to right and left, directed more or less
obliquely towards the confines of the valley; they are divided at
intervals by fresh dykes, starting at the one side from the river, and
ending on the other either at the Bahr Yusuf or at the rising of the
desert. Some of these dykes protect one district only, and consist merely
of a bank of earth; others command a large extent of territory, and a
breach in them would entail the ruin of an entire province. These latter
are sometimes like real ramparts, made of crude brick carefully cemented;
a few, as at Qosheish, have a core of hewn stones, which later generations
have covered with masses of brickwork, and strengthened with constantly
renewed buttresses of earth. They wind across the plain with many
unexpected and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination, however,
it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance
or caprice. Experience had taught the Egyptians the art of picking out,
upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use
against the inundation: of these they have followed carefully the
sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears singular, it is to be
ascribed to the natural configuration of the ground. Subsidiary
embankments thrown up between the principal ones, and parallel to the
Nile, separate the higher ground bordering the river from the low lands on
the confines of the valley; they divide the larger basins into smaller
divisions of varying area, in which the irrigation is regulated by means
of special trenches. As long as the Nile is falling, the dwellers on its
banks leave their canals in free communication with it; but they dam them
up towards the end of the winter, just before the return of the
inundation, and do not reopen them till early in August, when the new
flood is at its height. The waters then flowing in by the trenches are
arrested by the nearest transverse dyke and spread over the fields. When
they have stood there long enough to saturate the ground, the dyke is
pierced, and they pour into the next basin until they are stopped by a
second dyke, which in its turn forces them again to spread out on either
side. This operation is renewed from dyke to dyke, till the valley soon
becomes a series of artificial ponds, ranged one above another, and
flowing one into another from Grebel Silsileh to the apex of the Delta. In
autumn, the mouth of each ditch is dammed up anew, in order to prevent the
mass of water from flowing back into the stream. The transverse dykes,
which have been cut in various places, are also repaired, and the basins
become completely landlocked, separated by narrow causeways. In some
places, the water thus imprisoned is so shallow that it is soon absorbed
by the soil; in others, it is so deep, that after it has been kept in for
several weeks, it is necessary to let it run off into a neighbouring
depression, or straight into the river itself.
History has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggle in
which the Egyptians were engaged with the Nile, nor of the time expended
in bringing it to a successful issue. Legend attributes the idea of the
system and its partial working out to the god Osiris: then Menés, the
first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of Qosheish, on which
depends the prosperity of the Delta and Middle Egypt, and the fabulous
Mceris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to the
Fayûm. In reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making of
cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled the
valley. The kings of the historic period had only to maintain and develop
certain points of what had already been done, and Upper Egypt is to this
day chequered by the network of waterways with which its earliest
inhabitants covered it. The work must have begun simultaneously at several
points, without previous agreement, and, as it were, instinctively. A dyke
protecting a village, a canal draining or watering some small province,
demanded the efforts of but few individuals; then the dykes would join one
another, the canals would be prolonged till they met others, and the work
undertaken by chance would be improved, and would spread with the
concurrence of an ever-increasing population. What happened at the end of
last century, shows us that the system grew and was developed at the
expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed. The inhabitants of each
district carried out the part of the work most conducive to their own
interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping it and discharging it at
pleasure, without considering whether they were injuring their neighbours
by depriving them of their supply or by flooding them; hence arose
perpetual strife and fighting. It became imperative that the rights of the
weaker should be respected, and that the system of distribution should be
co-ordinated, for the country to accept a beginning at least of social
organization analogous to that which it acquired later: the Nile thus
determined the political as well as the physical constitution of Egypt.
The country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed to
be descended from the same seed (paît) and to belong to the same
family (pâîtû): the chiefs of them were called ropâîtû, the
guardians, or pastors of the family, and in later times their name became
a title applicable to the nobility in general. Families combined and
formed groups of various importance under the authority of a head chief—ropâîtû-hâ.
They were, in fact, hereditary lords, dispensing justice, levying taxes in
kind on their subordinates, reserving to themselves the redistribution of
land, leading their men to, battle, and sacrificing to the gods.[*] The
territories over which they exercised authority formed small states, whose
boundaries even now, in some places, can be pointed out with certainty.
The principality of the Terebinth[**] occupied the very heart of Egypt,
where the valley is widest, and the course of the Nile most advantageously
disposed by nature—a country well suited to be the cradle of an
infant civilization. Siaût (Siût), the capital, is built almost at the
foot of the Libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which
separates the river from the hills. A canal surrounds it on three sides,
and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls; during the
inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow causeways—shaded
with mimosas—and looking like a raft of verdure aground in the
current.[***]
The site is as happy as it is picturesque; not only does the town command
the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at will, but
from time immemorial the most frequented of the routes into Central Africa
has terminated at its gates, bringing to it the commerce of the Soudan. It
held sway, at the outset, over both banks, from range to range, northward
as far as Deyrût, where the true Bahr Yusuf leaves the Nile, and southward
to the neighbourhood of Gebel Sheikh Haridi. The extent and original
number of the other principalities is not so easily determined.
The most important, to the north of Siût, were those of the Hare and the
Oleander. The principality of the Hare never reached the dimensions of
that of its neighbour the Terebinth, but its chief town was Khmûnû, whose
antiquity was so remote, that a universally accepted tradition made it the
scene of the most important acts of creation.[*] That of the Oleander, on
the contrary, was even larger than that of the Terebinth, and from
Hininsû, its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the Fayûm and
the plains of Beni-Suef.[**] To the south, Apû on the right bank governed
a district so closely shut in between a bend of the Nile and two spurs of
the range, that its limits have never varied much since ancient times. Its
inhabitants were divided in their employment between weaving and the
culture of cereals. From early times they possessed the privilege of
furnishing clothing to a large part of Egypt, and their looms, at the
present day, still make those checked or striped “melayahs” which the
fellah women wear over their long blue tunics.[***]
Beyond Apû, Thinis, the Girgeh of the Arabs, situate on both banks of the
river, rivalled Khmûnû in antiquity and Siût in wealth: its plains still
produce the richest harvests and feed the most numerous herds of sheep and
oxen in the Said.
As we approach the cataract, information becomes scarcer. Qûbti and Aûnû
of the South, the Coptos and Hermonthis of the Greeks, shared peaceably
the plain occupied later on by Thebes and its temples, and Nekhabît and
Zobû watched over the safety of Egypt. Nekhabît soon lost its position as
a frontier town, and that portion of Nubia lying between Gebel Silsileh
and the rapids of Syene formed a kind of border province, of which
Nubît-Ombos was the principal sanctuary and Abu-Elephantine the fortress:
beyond this were the barbarians, and those inaccessible regions whence the
Nile descended upon our earth.
The organization of the Delta, it would appear, was more slowly brought
about. It must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of Equatorial
Africa, towards the confluence of the Bahr el Abiad and the Bahr el
Ghazâl. Great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or
liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with
papyrus reeds, water-lilies, and enormous plants through which the arms of
the Nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying wastes
intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation and scarcely
available for pasturing cattle. The population of such districts, engaged
in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved relatively ruder
manners, and a more rugged and savage character, impatient of all
authority. The conquest of this region began from the outer edge only. A
few principalities were established at the apex of the Delta in localities
where the soil had earliest been won from the river. It appears that one
of these divisions embraced the country south of and between the
bifurcation of the Nile: Aûnû of the North, the Heliopolis of the Greeks,
was its capital. In very early times the principality was divided, and
formed three new states, independent of each other. Those of Aûnû and the
Haunch were opposite to each other, the first on the Arabian, the latter
on the Libyan bank of the Nile. The district of the White Wall marched
with that of the Haunch on the north, and on the south touched the
territory of the Oleander. Further down the river, between the more
important branches, the governors of Sai’s and of Bubastis, of Athribis
and of Busiris, shared among themselves the primitive Delta. Two frontier
provinces of unequal size, the Arabian on the east in the Wady Tumilat,
and the Libyan on the west to the south of Lake Mareotis, defended the
approaches of the country from the attacks of Asiatic Bedâwins and of
African nomads. The marshes of the interior and the dunes of the littoral,
were not conducive to the development of any great industry or
civilization. They only comprised tracts of thinly populated country, like
the principalities of the Harpoon and of the Cow, and others whose limits
varied from century to century with the changing course of the river. The
work of rendering the marshes salubrious and of digging canals, which had
been so successful in the Nile Valley, was less efficacious in the Delta,
and proceeded more slowly. Here the embankments were not supported by a
mountain chain: they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at
every turn to admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. The
waters left their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a
fresh course for themselves across country. If the inundation were
delayed, the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it
last but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations
was for a long time undone. The Delta of one epoch rarely presented the
same aspect as that of previous periods, and Northern Egypt never became
as fully mistress of her soil as the Egypt of the south.
Click on the Image to Enlarge to Full Size
These first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet too
large to remain undivided. In those times of slow communication, the
strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its
authority did not extend over a wide radius. That part of the population
of the Terebinth, living sufficiently near to Siût to come into the town
for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages
when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the
rule of the prince who governed there. On the other hand, those who lived
outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some places
of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice in
common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the fields and
of local manufactures. Those towns which had the good fortune to become
such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to the capital,
and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so to speak,
gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the prince. When
they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the new state thus
created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition of an epithet.
The primitive territory of Siût was in this way divided into three
distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old emblem of
the tree—the Upper Terebinth, with Siût itself in the centre, and
the Lower Terebinth, with Kûsit to the north; the third, in the south and
east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in their
mountains, and called themselves the Serpent Mountain, whose chief town
was that of the Sparrow Hawk. The territory of the Oleander produced by
its dismemberment the principality of the Upper Oleander, that of the
Lower Oleander, and that of the Knife. The territory of the Harpoon in the
Delta divided itself into the Western and Eastern Harpoon. The fission in
most cases could not have been accomplished without struggles; but it did
take place, and all the principalities having a domain of any considerable
extent had to submit to it, however they may have striven to avoid it.
This parcelling out was continued as circumstances afforded opportunity,
until the whole of Egypt, except the half desert districts about the
cataract, became but an agglomeration of petty states nearly equal in
power and population.[*]
The Greeks called them nomes, and we have borrowed the word from them; the
natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term being “nûît,”
which may be translated domain, and the most common appellation in
recent times being “hospû,” which signifies district. The number of
the nomes varied considerably in the course of centuries: the hieroglyphic
monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at thirty-six,
sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty. The little
that we know of their history, up to the present time, explains the reason
of this variation. Ceaselessly quarrelled over by the princely families
who possessed them, the nomes were alternately humbled and exalted by
civil wars, marriages, and conquest, which caused them continually to pass
into fresh hands, either entire or divided. The Egyptians, whom we are
accustomed to consider as a people respecting the established order of
things, and conservative of ancient tradition, showed themselves as
restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work of the past, as the
most inconstant of our modern nations. The distance of time which
separates them from us, and the almost complete absence of documents,
gives them an appearance of immobility, by which we are liable to be
unconsciously deceived; when the monuments still existing shall have been
unearthed, their history will present the same complexity of incidents,
the same agitations, the same instability, which we suspect or know to
have been characteristic of most other Oriental nations. One thing alone
remained stable among them in the midst of so many revolutions, and which
prevented them from losing their individuality and from coalescing in a
common unity. This was the belief in and the worship of one particular
deity. If the little capitals of the petty states whose origin is lost in
a remote past—Edfû and Denderah, Nekhabît and Bûto, Siûfc, Thinis,
Khmûnû, Sais, Bubastis, Athribis—had only possessed that importance
which resulted from the presence of an ambitious petty prince, or from the
wealth of their inhabitants, they would never have passed safe and sound
through the long centuries of existence which they enjoyed from the
opening to the close of Egyptian history. Fortune raised their chiefs,
some even to the rank of rulers of the world, and in turn abased them:
side by side with the earthly ruler, whose glory was but too often
eclipsed, there was enthroned in each nome a divine ruler, a deity, a god
of the domain, “nûtir nûiti,” whose greatness never perished. The princely
families might be exiled or become extinct, the extent of the territory
might diminish or increase, the town might be doubled in size and
population or fall in ruins: the god lived on through all these
vicissitudes, and his presence alone preserved intact the rights of the
state over which he reigned as sovereign. If any disaster befell his
worshippers, his temple was the spot where the survivors of the
catastrophe rallied around him, their religion preventing them from mixing
with the inhabitants of neighbouring towns and from becoming lost among
them. The survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is
the characteristic of the Egyptian fellah, and a few years of peace
sufficed to repair losses which apparently were irreparable. Local
religion was the tie which bound together those divers elements of which
each principality was composed, and as long as it remained, the nomes
remained; when it vanished, they disappeared with it. remained; when it
vanished, they disappeared with it.
====================
CHAPTER II.—THE GODS OF EGYPT
THEIR NUMBER AND NATURE—THE FEUDAL GODS, LIVING AND DEAD—TRIADS——
THE TEMPLES AND PRIESTHOOD—THE COSMOGONIES OF THE DELTA——THE
ENNEADS OF HELIOPOLIS AND HERMOPOLIS.
Multiplicity of the Egyptian gods: the commonalty of the gods, its
varieties, human, animal, and intermediate between man and beast; gods of
foreign origin, indigenous gods, and the contradictory forms with which
they were invested in accordance with various conceptions of their nature.
The Star-gods—The Sun-god as the Eye of the Shy; as a bird, as a
calf, and as a man; its barks, voyages round the world, and encounters
with the serpent Apopi—The Moon-god and its enemies—The
Star-gods: the Haunch of the Ox, the Hippopotamus, the Lion, the five
Horus-planets; Sothis Sirius, and Sahû Orion.
The feudal gods and their classes: the Nile-gods, the earth-gods, the
sky-gods and the sun-god, the Horus-gods—The equality of feudal gods
and goddesses; their persons, alliances, and marriages: their children—The
triads and their various developments.
The nature of the gods: the double, the soul, the body, death of men
and gods, and their fate after death—The necessity for preserving
the body, mummification—Dead gods the gods of the dead—The
living gods, their temples and images—The gods of the people, trees,
serpents, family fetiches—The theory of prayer and sacrifice: the
servants of the temples, the property of the gods, the sacerdotal
colleges.
The cosmogonies of the Delta: Sibu and Naît, Osiris and Isis, SU and
Nephthys—Heliopolis and its theological schools: Ra, his
identification with Horus, his dual nature, and the conception of Atûmû—The
Heliopolitan Enneads: formation of the Great Ennead—Thot and the
Hermopolitan Ennead: creation by articulate words and by voice alone—Diffusion
of the Enneads: their connection with the local triads, the god One and
the god Eight—The one and only gods.
THE GODS OF EGYPT
The incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the
representations on the ancient monuments of Egypt is at first glance very
striking. Nearly every illustration in the works of Egyptologists brings
before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive countenance
the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. One would think that the
country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just
sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship.
On penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual
rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a limited and
almost unconscious existence. They severally represented a function, a
moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus Naprît was identified
with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**]
Maskhonît appeared by the child’s cradle at the very moment of its
birth;[*] and Raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the
newly born.[*] Neither Raninît, the fairy godmother, nor Maskhonît
exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are
accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. Every day of every
year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail; by the
other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one
which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences of evil fortune.
No sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to
another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care.
From child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single
offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more
of them. Bands of mysterious cynocephali haunting the Eastern and the
Western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing
moment of the day. They danced and chattered in the East for half an hour,
to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the West hailed him on
his entrance into night.[**]
It was the duty of certain genii to open gates in Hades, or to keep the
paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] These genii were always at their
posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that
of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. Their existence,
generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the
specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. These
being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and
were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next
occasion.[***]
Scarcely visible even by glimpses, they were not easily depicted; their
real forms being often unknown, these were approximately conjectured from
their occupations. The character and costume of an archer, or of a
spear-man, were ascribed to such as roamed through Hades, to pierce the
dead with arrows or with javelins. Those who prowled around souls to cut
their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed with
knives, carvers—donît—or else as lacerators—nokit.
Some appeared in human form; others as animals—bulls or lions, rams
or monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks; others dwelt in inanimate
things, such as trees,[*] sistrums, stakes stuck in the ground;[**] and
lastly, many betrayed a mixed origin in their combinations of human and
animal forms. These latter would be regarded by us as monsters; to the
Egyptians, they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the less
real, and their like might be encountered in the neighbourhood of
Egypt.[***]
How could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and griffins
of flesh and blood doubt that there were bull-headed and hawk-headed
divinities with human busts? The existence of such paradoxical creatures
was proved by much authentic testimony; more than one hunter had
distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest planes of the horizon,
beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was in chase; and shepherds
dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they dreaded the lions, or the
great felidse of the desert.[*]
This nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the
origin of which was known to the Egyptians themselves. They knew that
Hâthor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very
ancient times, and they called her the Lady of Pûanît, after the name of
her native country. Bîsû had followed her in course of time, and claimed
his share of honours and worship along with her. He first appeared as a
leopard; then he became a man clothed in a leopard’s skin, but of strange
countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf with high
cheek-bones, and a wide and open mouth, whence hung an enormous tongue; he
was at once jovial and martial, the friend of the dance and of battle.[*]
In historic times all nations subjugated by the Pharaohs transferred some
of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the Libyan
Shehadidi was enthroned in the valley of the Nile, in the same way as the
Semitic Baâlû and his retinue of Astartes, Anitis, Eeshephs, and Kadshûs.
These divine colonists fared like all foreigners who have sought to settle
on the banks of the Nile: they were promptly assimilated, wrought,
moulded, and made into Egyptian deities scarcely distinguishable from
those of the old race. This mixed pantheon had its grades of nobles,
princes, kings, and each of its members was representative of one of the
elements constituting the world, or of one of the forces which regulated
its government.
The sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing
and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the
universe.
They were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the
whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. But when the
people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to
particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them,
this unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, each city,
almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. Some
said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haroêris, the sparrow-hawk of
mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the
whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his name and
the word horû, which designates the human countenance, the two
senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was added
that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being
the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illumine the
night. The face shone also with a light of its own, the zodiacal light,
which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise,
and a little after sunset. These luminous beams, radiating from a common
centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide
pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but
whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. The divine face was
symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair;
these were the pillars which upbore the firmament and prevented its
falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all
tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and
earth are wedded gods, Sibû, and Nûît, from whose marriage came forth all
that has been, all that is, and all that shall be.
Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god
Sibû as extended beneath Nûît the Starry One; the goddess stretched out
her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the
clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were also
many who believed that Sibû was concealed under the form of a colossal
gander, whose mate once laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still laid it daily.
From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the
good news to all who cared to hear it—after the manner of his kind—he
had received the flattering epithet of Ngagu oîrû, the Great
Cack-ler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous
bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed
Hâthor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the good beast rises into
the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her
spine; the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the
firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are
the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world.
The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according
to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk Atonû,
by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Râ, as
was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Râ
formed the right eye of the divine face: when Horus opened his eyelids in
the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening,
the dusk and night were at hand.
Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, Râ was
considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was born
again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger to his
lips as human children were conventionally represented.
He was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the East by the
celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with
its rays.[**]
Nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not
always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come
out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful golden
sparrow-hawks of Southern Egypt. A Sun-Hawk, hovering in high heaven on
outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can
be said for a Sun-Calf? Yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted
calf, a “sucking calf of pure mouth,”[**] that the Egyptians were pleased
to describe the Sun-God when Sibu, the father, was a bull, and Hâthor a
heifer.
But the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was
likened to the life of man. The two deities presiding over the East
received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a
new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of
its life. It soon left them, and proceeded “under the belly of Nûît,”
growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had
become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. But as
night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he is
bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man
leaning upon his stick. At length he passes away beyond the horizon,
plunging westward into the mouth of Nûît, and traversing her body by night
to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he
had travelled on the preceding day.
A first bark, the saktit, awaited him at his birth, and carried him
from the Eastern to the Southern extremity of the world. Mâzît, the
second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of Manu,
which is at the entrance into Hades; other barks, with which we are less
familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at
morn.[*] Sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they
were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor
helm.[**]
Sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an Egyptian
boat—a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and
forecast the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst
to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern,
and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. Peacefully the bark
glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who
dwelt upon its shores. But, occasionally, Apôpi, a gigantic serpent, like
that which hides within the earthly Nile and devours its banks, came forth
from the depth of the waters and arose in the path of the god.[*] As soon
as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew flew to arms, and
entered upon the struggle against him with prayers and spear-thrusts. Men
in their cities saw the sun faint and fail, and sought to succour him in
his distress; they cried aloud, they were beside themselves with
excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their instruments of music,
and striking with all their strength upon every metal vase or utensil in
their possession, that their clamour might rise to heaven and terrify the
monster. After a time of anguish, Râ emerged from the darkness and again
went on his way, while Apôpi sank back into the abyss,[**] paralysed by
the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound.
Apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the
Sun-King steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws
which even his will could not change. Day after day he made his oblique
ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west.
During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he
came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther
away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to
solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god’s
departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The
Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the
nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close to that bank of the
celestial river which was nearest to men; and when the river overflowed at
the annual inundation, the sun was carried along with it outside the
regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer to Egypt. As the
inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its greatest distance
from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the waters. It was again
brought back to us by the rising strength of the next flood; and, as this
phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity of the sun’s oblique
movements was regarded as the necessary consequence of the periodic
movements of the celestial Nile.
The same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was
revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. At an interval of
twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon—Yâûhû
Aûhû—followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the
world. The moon, also, appeared in many various forms—here, as a man
born of Nûît;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it
was the left eye of Horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. Like
Râ, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile,
the hippopotamus, and the sow. But it was when at the full, about the 15th
of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril.
The sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it,
streaming with blood and tears, into the celestial Nile, where it was
gradually extinguished, and lost for days; but its twin, the sun, or its
guardian, the cyno-cephalus, immediately set forth to find it and to
restore it to Horus. No sooner was it replaced, than it slowly recovered,
and renewed its radiance; when it was well—ûzaît—the
sow again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again
revived it.
Each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour,
followed by a fortnight’s agony and ever-increasing pallor. It was born to
die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these
cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. One invariable
accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence.
Profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed
it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually.
These eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the
sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods compelling the monster to
cast up the eye before it had been destroyed.
Every evening the lunar bark issued out of Hades by the door which Râ had
passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the
star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light
here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. However many of them
there might be, there were as many Indestructibles—Akhîmû Sokû—or
Unchanging Ones—Akhîmû Ûrdû—whose charge it was to
attend upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**]
They were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them,
but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain plan,
and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star republics, each
being independent of its neighbours. They represented the outlines of
bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon the depths of night, but
shining with greater brilliancy in certain important places. The seven
stars which we liken to a chariot (Charles’s Wain) suggested to the
Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the
horizon.[*]
Two lesser stars connected the haunch—Maskhaît—with
thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female hippopotamus—Rirît—erect
upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily carrying upon her shoulders a
monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened threateningly above her head.
Eighteen luminaries of varying size and splendour, forming a group hard by
the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with
stiffened tail, its head turned to the right, and facing the Haunch.[***]
The Lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile’s tail. According to
Biot the Egyptian Lion has nothing in common with the Greek constellation
of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of smaller stars,
belonging to the Greek constellation of the Cup or to the continuation of
the Hydra, so that its head, its body, and its tail would follow the [ ]
of the Hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that constellation, or the [ ] of
the Virgin.
Most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they were
to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the same
even light.
Others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of sight
for months at a time. Five at least of our planets were known from all
antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully
noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus. Ùapshetatûi,
our Jupiter, Kahiri-(Saturn), Sobkû-(Mercury), steered their barks
straight ahead like Iâûhû and Râ; but Mars-Doshiri, the red, sailed
backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird (Yenus) had a dual personality; in the
evening it was Uati, the lonely star which is the first to rise, often
before nightfall; in the morning it became Tiûnûtiri, the god who hails
the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day.
Sahû and Sopdît, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious
world. Sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small, so
arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the fairest
of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to the
admiration of mortals.
With his right hand he flourished the crux ansata, and turning his
head towards Sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as though
inviting her to follow him. The goddess, standing sceptre in hand, and
crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant
star, answered the call of Sahû with a gesture, and quietly embarked in
pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. Sometimes she is
represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars along her
back, and Sirius flaming from between her horns.[*]
Not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted forth
in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the sky the
mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. It was then that
she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light which other
legends attributed to Horus himself. One, and perhaps the most ancient of
the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess, represented Sahû as a
wild hunter. A world as vast as ours rested upon the other side of the
iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into seas, and continents
divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races unknown to men. Sahû
traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii who presided over the
lamps forming his constellation. At his appearing “the stars prepared
themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed forward, the bones of
the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight of him,” for it was no
common game that he hunted, but the very gods themselves. One attendant
secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are caught in the pastures, while
another examined each capture to decide if it were pure and good for food.
This being determined, others bound the divine victim, cut its throat,
disembowelled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and
superintended their cooking. Sahû did not devour indifferently all that
the fortune of the chase might bring him, but classified his game in
accordance with his wants. He ate the great gods at his breakfast in the
morning, the lesser gods at his dinner towards noon, and the small ones at
his supper; the old were rendered more tender by roasting.
As each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were
transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom
strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his own
youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to
maintain the perpetual splendour of his light.
The nome gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and
formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of
these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under the
most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise
themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally discloses
the principal features of their original physiognomies. Osiris of the
Delta, Khuûmû of the Cataract, Harshâfitû of Heracleopolis, were each of
them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining Nile. Wherever
there is some important change in the river, there they are more
especially installed and worshipped: Khnûmû at the place of its entering
into Egypt, and again at the town of Hâûrît, near the point where a great
arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills
and form the Bahr-Yûsuf: Harshâfitû at the gorges of the Fayûm, where the
Bahr-Yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris at Mendes and at
Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the
true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Bûto denoted the black
vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of Egypt annually
covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*]
But the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky—the earth
with its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and
fertile lands—was represented as a man: Phtah at Memphis, Amon at
Thebes, Mînû at Coptos and at Panopolis. Amon seems rather to have
symbolized the productive soil, while Mînû reigned over the desert. But
these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his
worshippers often invested Amon with the most significant attributes of
Mînû.
The Sky-gods, like the Earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one
consisting of women: Hâthor of Denderah, or Nît of Sais; the other
composed of men identical with Horus, or derived from him: Anhûri-Shû of
Sebennytos and Thinis; Harmerati, Horus of the two eyes, at Pharbaethos;
Har-Sapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the Wâdy Tumilât;
and finally Harhûdîti at Edfû. Râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at
Heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they
were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and
resembled Horus quite as much as Râ. Whether under the name of Horus or of
Anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its
solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that of the Sun.
Horus the Sun, and Râ, the Sun-Cod of Heliopolis, had so permeated each
other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. One by
one all the functions of Râ had been usurped by Horus, and all the
designations of Horus had been appropriated by Râ. The sun was styled
Harmakhûîti, the Horus of the two mountains—that is, the Horus who
comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning, and retires at
evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or Hartimâ, Horus the Pikeman,
that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the
celestial river; or Harnûbi, the Golden Horus, the great golden
sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds to flight; and
these titles were indifferently applied to each of the feudal gods who
represented the sun.
The latter were numerous. Sometimes, as in the case of Harkhobi, Horus of
Khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic term
of Horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from the parts
which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. The sky-god
worshipped at Thinis in Upper Egypt, at Zarît and at Sebennytos in Lower
Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of Râ, and took
upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the
conqueror of the sky. He was essentially combative. Crowned with a group
of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he
advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**]
The sun-god who at Medamôfc Taûd and Erment had preceded Amon as ruler of
the Theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of Montû had reference
to his method of fighting. He was depicted as brandishing a curved sword
and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.[***]
Each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal
dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the gods,
as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but the
effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his peers
ruling over the adjacent nomes began.
The goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same
right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had
in human law.[*] Isis was entitled lady and mistress at Bûto, as Hâthor
was at Denderah, and as Nit at Sais, “the firstborn, when as yet there had
been no birth.” They enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male
gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all
bowed down before them. The animal gods, whether entirely in the form of
beasts, or having human bodies attached to animal heads, shared
omnipotence with those in human form. Horus of Hibonû swooped down upon
the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk, Hâthor of Denderah was a cow,
Bastit of Bubastis was a cat or a tigress, while Nekhabit of El Kab was a
great bald-headed vulture.[**] Hermopolis worshipped the ibis and
cynocephalus of Thot; Oxyrrhynchus the mor-myrus fish;[***] and
Ombos and the Fayûm a crocodile, under the name of Sobkû,[****] sometimes
with the epithet of Azaï, the brigand.[v]
We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to
affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Græco-Roman times,
should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siût?[**] How
came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***]
Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined
their choice.
The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and
chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost
justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with
the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the
east, or passed away in the west.
If Râ was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because he
flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central
Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the
Nile-gods, Khnûmû, Osiris, Harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram
or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these
animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving Nile
and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to understand how the
neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have
suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayûm
or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a
serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by
means of prayers and sacrifices. When instinctive terror had been
superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin
of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the
veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and
Sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the
sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to
form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs
upon the bank.
Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur,
apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned
to them later.[*]
Each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is
generally called, a triad. But there were several kinds of triads. In
nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one
wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at
once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom.
Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of
Seshaît-Safk-hîtâbûi and Hahmâûît. Tûmû divided the homage of the
inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebthôtpît and with Iûsasît. Khnûmû
seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract—Anûkît
the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and
at Syene, and Satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight
and swift as an arrow.[*] Where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad
was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. Nît
of Sai’s had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a
lion’s whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]
Hâthor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroêris and a younger
Horus, with the epithet of Ahi—he who strikes the sistrum.[*]
A triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and was
unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a curse
from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to ensure the
perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a blessed and
prosperous family, as that of gods should be. Triads of the former kind
were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new triads, each
containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine son. Two
fruitful households arose from the barren union of Thot with Safkhîtâbûi
and Nahmâûît: one composed of Thot, Safkhîtâbûi, and Harnûbi, the golden
sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other Nahmâûît and her nursling Nofirhorû
entered.
The persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form triads
were not all of the same class. Goddesses, especially, were made to order,
and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the linguistic
device to which they owe their being. From Râ, Amon, Horus, Sobkû, female
Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobkûs were derived, by the addition of the
regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names—Râît,
Amonît, Horît, Sobkît.[*] In the same way, detached cognomens of divine
fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhotpû, “he who comes in peace,”
was merely one of the epithets of Phtah before he became incarnate as the
third member of the Memphite triad.[**] In other cases, alliances were
contracted between divinities of ancient stock, but natives of different
nomes, as in the case of Isis of Bûto and the Mendesian Osiris; of
Haroêris of Edfu and Hâthor of Denderah.
In the same manner Sokhît of Letopolis and Bastît of Bubastis were
appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirtûmû being represented as
his son by both unions.[*] These improvised connections were generally
determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of conterminous
principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining
kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations, and to
establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting
hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples.
The system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned unbrokenly
up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from in any way lowering
the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means of enhancing it in
the eyes of the multitude. Powerful lords as the new-comers might be at
home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary title that they could
enter a strange city, and then only on condition of submitting to its
religious law. Hâthor, supreme at Denderah, shrank into insignificance
before Haroêris at Edfû, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate
part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**]
On the other hand, Haroêris when at Denderah descended from the supreme
rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady
Hâthor. His name came first in invocations of the triad because of his
position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession
to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place,
Hâthor was none the less the real chief of Denderah and of its divine
family.[*] Thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the one
who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the triad:
in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess.
The son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. When Isis
and Osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant Horus, naked, or
simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of hair depended
from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or else sitting,
nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.[*] Even in triads
where the son was supposed to have attained to man’s estate, he held the
lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the same respectful attitude
towards his parents as is observed by children of human race in the
presence of theirs. He took the lowest place at all solemn receptions,
spoke only with his parents’ permission, acted only by their command and
as the agent of their will. Occasionally he was vouchsafed a character of
his own, and filled a definite position, as at Memphis, where Imhotpû was
the patron of science.[**]
But, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked
individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father’s, and
possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him. Two such
contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as a matter
of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more than two
aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees of
relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family. Father,
inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue of being
its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he was at
once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother.
Gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and
body;[*] but in Egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different
times and in different schools. It might be an insect—butterfly,
bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird—the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the
human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane—bi, haï—whose
wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black shadow—khaîbît—that
is attached to every body, but which death sets free, and which
thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it can move about at
will, and go out into the open sunlight.
Finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from the
surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and coloured
projection of the human figure, a double—ka—reproducing
in minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom
it belonged.[*]
The soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially
different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed, was
moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible, but
endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same imperfections as
ours. The gods, therefore, on the whole, were more ethereal, stronger,
more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy, and to suffer than
ordinary men, but they were still men. They had bones,[**] muscles, flesh,
blood; they were hungry and ate, they were thirsty and drank; our
passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also theirs. The sa, a
mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their members, and carried with it
health, vigour, and life.
They were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less,
their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained. The
better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked
it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being
easily accomplished in the temples. The king, or any ordinary man who
wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of the
god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it. The statue then
placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making passes,
caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as in a
receiver. This rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent
renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained.
By using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their sa
of life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger,
while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond in the
northern sky, called the “pond of the Sa.”[*] Divine bodies, continually
recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigour far
beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts. Age, instead of
quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious
metals. Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold; their
hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great chiefs, was
turned into lapis-lazuli.[**]
This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do
away with the ravages of time. Decrepitude was no less irremediable with
them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the sun had
grown old “his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth, his
spittle dropped upon the ground.”
None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for mankind
the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb.[*]
The ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and
inevitable. They thought that life, once began, might go on indefinitely:
if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself? And so men
did not die in Egypt; they were assassinated. The murderer often belonged
to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some
inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which
fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. But often too the murderer was of
the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his
malignant attacks only. He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul
who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with
irresistible violence—illness being a struggle between the one
possessed and the power which possessed him. As soon as the former
succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him
no more. But had all ended for him with the moment in which he had ceased
to breathe? As to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate. It
quickly fell to decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a
skeleton. And as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was
disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the
first breath of wind. The soul might have a longer career and fuller
fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body,
and commensurate with them. Every advance made in the process of
decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself; its consciousness
gradually faded until nothing was left but a vague and hollow form that
vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared. Erom an
early date the Egyptians had endeavoured to arrest this gradual
destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end
naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without
it the existence of the soul could not be ensured. It was imperative that
during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the
flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be
free from offensive odour and secure from predatory worms.
They set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. The oldest
burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants
were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades
only. When one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully
washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic
substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then
fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to
overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.[*]
Having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave,
sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary
garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. The dead man was
placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east,
in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather
or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state. The knees
were sharply bent at an angle of 45° with the thighs, while the latter
were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to
touch the elbows. The hands are sometimes extended in front of the face,
sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the breast or neck.
In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they
almost lie parallel with the trunk. The deceased could only be made to
assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons
and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. The dryness of
the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the
flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not
prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. Seeing decay could not be
prevented, it was determined to accelerate the process, by taking the
flesh from the bones before interment. The bodies thus treated are often
incomplete; the head is missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in
another part of the pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and
the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a
heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints. The forearms and the hands were
subjected to the same treatment as the head. In many cases no trace of
them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or
scattered about haphazard. Other mutilations are frequently met with; the
ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or
the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the
ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest.
These precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the better
preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the Egyptians
felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. The human organism
thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what
remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity. It was not even a
perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but
a mere mass of bones with no connecting links. This drawback, it is true,
was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the
individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral
ceremonies. The bones were laid in their natural order; those of the feet
at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the
skull itself. But the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man,
particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the
apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the
treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this
restoration intentionally incomplete. When they had reconstructed the
entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else
they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the
deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the
living. Having taken this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt
whether the soul could really enjoy life so long as one half only of the
body remained, and the other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to
discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony
framework of the body. It had been observed that when a corpse had been
buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed
into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted
away,[*] and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance,
while its integrity ensured that of the soul.
An attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative
action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will
that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but a
useless prolongation of the death-agony. It was the god Anubis—the
jackal lord of sepulture—who was supposed to have made this
discovery. He cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most
rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected
it first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers
of linen. The victory the god had thus gained over corruption was,
however, far from being a complete one. The bath in which the dead man was
immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body: the
chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of
saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished.
When any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from
it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these
shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened
skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer’s salts, were not the
man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. As nevertheless
he was secure against immediate destruction, the Egyptians described him
as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged of all that was
evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited
him in the future. The art of Anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and
employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating
the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward
appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever, at least for an unlimited
period of time. If there were hills at hand, thither the mummied dead were
still borne, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and
of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation. In districts of
the Delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to
reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above
the marshes, and there a cemetery was founded. Where this resource failed,
the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after
being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough,
hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of
any moisture. Reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the
tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines
of the visible and invisible worlds.
Here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which
pertained to it “upon the earth:” as it had been a “double” before death,
so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal
life after its own fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed,
accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically,
rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational
desire for immortality. Unceasing regret for the bright world which it had
left disturbed its mournful and inert existence. “O my brother, withhold
not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love,
from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not
sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth? The
West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its
inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never
more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognize their fathers
or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The
living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but
stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for
me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since I came
into this funereal valley I know not where nor what I am. Give me to drink
of running water!… Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my
face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed
from its sorrow.” By day the double remained concealed within the tomb. If
it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to
revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. Its organs needed
nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed
nothing “but hunger for food, thirst for drink.”[*] Want and misery drove
it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. It prowled like a
marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring
whatever it might find on the ground—broken meats which had been
left or forgotten, house and stable refuse—and, should these meagre
resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement.[**]
This ravenous sceptre had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of
floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise and definite
shape, naked, or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon
earth, and emitting a pale light, to which it owed the name of Luminous—Khû,
Khûû.[*] The double did not allow its family to forget it, but used
all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence. It entered
their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its
sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness,[**] and
would even suck their blood like the modern vampire.
One effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing
these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various
provisions of which the double stood in need, and for which it visited
their dwellings. Funerary sacrifices and the regular cultus of the dead
originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance
of the manes after having secured their lasting existence by the
mummification of their bodies.[*]
Gazelles and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb
chapel; the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and
heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when
they began to be hungry. Vessels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh
water, purified with natron, or perfumed, were brought to them that they
might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men
bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some
neighbour too powerful to be opposed.
The gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which
death so plentifully bestows upon men. Their bodies suffered change and
gradually perished until nothing was left of them. Their souls, like human
souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became
extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found
in time. Thus, the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of
sepulture which gave the longest term of existence to their souls,
compelled the gods to the same course. At first, they were buried in the
hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those “who are
upon the sand,”[*] safe from putrefaction; afterwards, when the art of
embalming had been discovered, the gods received the benefit of the new
invention and were mummified.
Each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead god: at Thinis
there was the mummy and the tomb of Anhuri, the mummy of Osiris at Mendes,
the mummy of Tûmû at Heliopolis.[*] In some of the nomes the gods did not
change their names in altering the mode of their existence: the deceased
Osiris remained Osiris; Nit and Hâthor when dead were still Nît and
Hâthor, at Saïs and at Denderah. But Phtah of Memphis became Sokaris by
dying; Uapûaîtû, the jackal of Siût, was changed into Anubis;[**] and when
his disk had disappeared at evening, Anhûri, the sunlit sky of Thinis, was
Khontamentît, Lord of the West, until the following day.
That bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted
to the gods any more than to men. Their bodies were nothing but inert
larvae, “with unmoving heart,”[*] weak and shrivelled limbs, unable to
stand upright were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed
stiffened them into one rigid block. Their hands and heads alone were
free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh.
Their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light.
All sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and
gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive, became
pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb. When once men were bidden to
the presence of Sokaris, Khontamentîfc, or even of Osiris, “mortals come
terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him
in the face either among gods or men; for him the great are as the small.
He spareth not those who love him; he beareth away the child from its
mother, and the old man who walketh on his way; full of fear, all
creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face
towards them.” Only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding
him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape
the consequences of his furious temper. The living paid him his dues in
pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular
intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned
to extend to them. He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers,
sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was
addressed to them must first pass through his hands. When their friends
wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he
insisted that these should first be offered and formally presented to
himself; then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a
double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. He took
possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the
remainder to its destined recipient. Thus death made no change in the
relative positions of the feudal god and his worshippers. The worshipper
who called himself the amakhû of the god during life was the
subject and vassal of his mummied god even in the tomb;[*] and the god
who, while living, reigned over the living, after his death continued to
reign over the dead.
He dwelt in the city near the prince and in the midst of his subjects: Râ
living in Heliopolis along with the prince of Heliopolis; Haroêris in Edfû
together with the prince of Edfû; Nît in Saïs with the prince of Sais.
Although none of the primitive temples have come down to us, the name
given to them in the language of the time, shows what they originally
were. A temple was considered as the feudal mansion—hâît,—the
house—pirû, pi,—of the god, better cared for, and more
respected than the houses of men, but not otherwise differing from them.
It was built on a site slightly raised above the level of the plain, so as
to be safe from the inundation, and where there was no natural mound, the
want was supplied by raising a rectangular platform of earth. A layer of
sand spread uniformly on the sub-soil provided against settlements or
infiltration, and formed a bed for the foundations of the building.[*]
This was first of all a single room, circumscribed, gloomy, covered in by
a slightly vaulted roof, and having no opening but the doorway, which was
framed by two tall masts, whence floated streamers to attract from afar
the notice of worshippers; in front of its façade [*] was a court, fenced
in with palisading.
Within the temple were pieces of matting, low tables of stone, wood, or
metal, a few utensils for cooking the offerings, a few vessels for
containing the blood, oil, wine, and water with which the god was every
day regaled. As provisions for sacrifice increased, the number of chambers
increased with them, and rooms for flowers, perfumes, stuffs, precious
vessels, and food were grouped around the primitive abode; until that
which had once constituted the whole temple became no more than its
sanctuary. There the god dwelt, not only in spirit but in body,[*] and the
fact that it was incumbent upon him to live in several cities did not
prevent his being present in all of them at once. He could divide his
double, imparting it to as many separate bodies as he pleased, and these
bodies might be human or animal, natural objects or things manufactured—such
as statues of stone, metal, or wood.[**] Several of the gods were
incarnate in rams: Osiris at Mendes, Harshafitû at Heracleopolis, Khnûmû
at Elephantine. Living rams were kept in their temples, and allowed to
gratify any fancy that came into their animal brains. Other gods entered
into bulls: Râ at Heliopolis, and, subsequently, Phtah at Memphis, Minû at
Thebes, and Montû at Hermonthis. They indicated beforehand by certain
marks such beasts as they intended to animate by. their doubles, and he
who had learnt to recognize these signs was at no loss to find a living
god when the time came for seeking one and presenting it to the adoration
of worshippers in the temple.[***]
And if the statues had not the same outward appearance of actual life as
the animals, they none the less concealed beneath their rigid exteriors an
intense energy of life which betrayed itself on occasion by gestures or by
words. They thus indicated, in language which their servants could
understand, the will of the gods, or their opinion on the events of the
day; they answered questions put to them in accordance with prescribed
forms, and sometimes they even foretold the future.
Each temple held a fairly large number of statues representing so many
embodiments of the local divinity and of the members of his triad. These
latter shared, albeit in a lesser degree, all the honours and all the
prerogatives of the master; they accepted sacrifices, answered prayers,
and, if needful, they prophesied. They occupied either the sanctuary
itself, or one of the halls built about the principal sanctuary, or one of
the isolated chapels which belonged to them, subject to the suzerainty of
the feudal god. The god has his divine court to help him in the
administration of his dominions, just as a prince is aided by his
ministers in the government of his realm.
This State religion, so complex both in principle and in its outward
manifestations, was nevertheless inadequate to express the exuberant piety
of the populace. There were casual divinities in every nome whom the
people did not love any the less because of their inofficial character;
such as an exceptionally high palm tree in the midst of the desert, a rock
of curious outline, a spring trickling drop by drop from the mountain to
which hunters came to slake their thirst in the hottest hours of the day,
or a great serpent believed to be immortal, which haunted a field, a grove
of trees, a grotto, or a mountain ravine.[*]
The peasants of the district brought it bread, cakes, fruits, and thought
that they could call down the blessing of heaven upon their fields by
gorging the snake with offerings. Everywhere on the confines of cultivated
ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single
sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand.
Their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding
fawn-coloured landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun
even in summer. But, on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon
find that they drink from water which has infiltrated from the Nile, and
whose existence is in nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. They
stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them
suspects it. Egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually
worshipped them,[**] making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers,
vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and
charitable people.
Passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with a
short prayer. There were several such trees in the Memphite nome, and in
the Letopolite nome from Dashûr to Gîzeh, inhabited, as every one knew, by
detached doubles of Nûît and Hâthor. These combined districts were known
as the “Land of the Sycamore,” a name afterwards extended to the city of
Memphis; and their sacred trees are worshipped at the present day both by
Mussulman and Christian fellahîn.[*]
The most famous among them all, the Sycamore of the South—nûhît
rîsit—was regarded as the living body of Hâthor on earth. Side
by side with its human gods and prophetic statues, each nome proudly
advanced one or more sacred animals, one or more magic trees. Each family,
and almost every individual, also possessed gods and fetishes, which had
been pointed out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an
animal or an object; by a dream, or by sudden intuition. They had a place
in some corner of the house, or a niche in its walls; lamps were
continually kept burning before them, and small daily offerings were made
to them, over and above what fell to their share on solemn feast-days. In
return, they became the protectors of the household, its guardians and its
counsellors. Appeal was made to them in every exigency of daily life, and
their decisions were no less scrupulously carried out by their little
circle of worshippers, than was the will of the feudal god by the
inhabitants of his principality.
The prince was the great high priest. The whole religion of the nome
rested upon him, and originally he himself performed its ceremonies. Of
these, the chief was sacrifice,—that is to say, a banquet which it
was his duty to prepare and lay before the god with his own hands. He went
out into the fields to lasso the half-wild bull; bound it, cut its throat,
skinned it, burnt part of the carcase in front of his idol and distributed
the rest among his assistants, together with plenty of cakes, fruits,
vegetables, and wine.[*] On the occasion, the god was present both in body
and double, suffering himself to be clothed and perfumed, eating and
drinking of the best that was set on the table before him, and putting
aside some of the provisions for future use. This was the time to prefer
requests to him, while he was gladdened and disposed to benevolence by
good cheer. He was not without suspicion as to the reason why he was so
feasted, but he had laid down his conditions beforehand, and if they were
faithfully observed he willingly yielded to the means of seduction brought
to bear upon him. Moreover, he himself had arranged the ceremonial in a
kind of contract formerly made with his worshippers and gradually
perfected from age to age by the piety of new generations.[**] Above all
things, he insisted on physical cleanliness. The officiating priest must
carefully wash—ûâbû—his face, mouth, hands, and body;
and so necessary was this preliminary purification considered, that from
it the professional priest derived his name of ûîbû, the washed,
the clean.[***]
His costume was the archaic dress, modified according to circumstances.
During certain services, or at certain points in the sacrifices, it was
incumbent upon him to wear sandals, the panther-skin over his shoulder,
and the thick lock of hair falling over his right ear; at other times he
must gird himself with the loin-cloth having a jackal’s tail, and take the
shoes from off his feet before proceeding with his office, or attach a
false beard to his chin. The species, hair, and age of the victim, the way
in which it was to be brought and bound, the manner and details of its
slaughter, the order to be followed in opening its body and cutting it up,
were all minutely and unchangeably decreed. And these were but the least
of the divine exactions, and those most easily satisfied. The formulas
accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained a certain number
of words whose due sequence and harmonies might not suffer the slightest
modification whatever, even from the god himself, under penalty of losing
their efficacy.[*]
They were always recited with the same rhythm, according to a system of
chaunting in which every tone had its virtue, combined with movements
which confirmed the sense and worked with irresistible effect: one false
note, a single discord between the succession of gestures and the
utterance of the sacramental words, any hesitation, any awkwardness in the
accomplishment of a rite, and the sacrifice was vain.
Worship as thus conceived became a legal transaction, in the course of
which the god gave up his liberty in exchange for certain compensations
whose kind and value were fixed by law. By a solemn deed of transfer the
worshipper handed over to the legal representatives of the contracting
divinity such personal or real property as seemed to him fitting payment
for the favour which he asked, or suitable atonement for the wrong which
he had done. If man scrupulously observed the innumerable conditions with
which the transfer was surrounded, the god could not escape the obligation
of fulfilling his petition;[*] but should he omit the least of them, the
offering remained with the temple and went to increase the endowments in
mortmain, while the god was pledged to nothing in exchange.
Hence the officiating priest assumed a formidable responsibility as
regarded his fellows: a slip of memory, the slightest accidental impurity,
made him a bad priest, injurious to himself and harmful to those
worshippers who had entrusted him with their interests before the gods.
Since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince
constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established of
associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all
their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities whose
sum constituted the local religion. Each temple had its service of
priests, independent of those belonging to neighbouring temples, whose
members, bound to keep their hands always clean and their voices true,
were ranked according to the degrees of a learned hierarchy. At their head
was a sovereign pontiff to direct them in the exercise of their functions.
In some places he was called the first prophet, or rather the first
servant of the god—hon-nûtir topi; at Thebes he was the first
prophet of Amon, at Thinis he was the first prophet of Anhûri.[*]
But generally he bore a title appropriate to the nature of the god whose
servant he was. The chief priest of Râ at Heliopolis, and in all the
cities which adopted the Heliopolitan form of worship, was called Oîrû
maû, the master of visions, and he alone besides the sovereign of the
nome, or of Egypt, enjoyed the privilege of penetrating into the
sanctuary, of “entering into heaven and there beholding the god” face to
face. In the same way, the high priest of Anhûri at Sebennytos was
entitled the wise and pure warrior—ahûîti saû uîbu—because
his god went armed with a pike, and a soldier god required for his service
a pontiff who should be a soldier like himself.
These great personages did not always strictly seclude themselves within
the limits of the religious domain. The gods accepted, and even sometimes
solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards, orchards,
slaves, and fishponds, the produce of which assured their livelihood and
the support of their temples. There was no Egyptian who did not cherish
the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron god of his city,
“for a monument to himself,” and as an endowment for the priests to
institute prayers and perpetual sacrifices on his behalf.[*] In course of
time these accumulated gifts at length formed real sacred fiefs—hotpû-nûtir—analogous
to the wakfs of Mussulman Egypt.[**] They were administered by the
high priest, who, if necessary, defended them by force against the greed
of princes or kings. Two, three, or even four classes of prophets or heiroduli
under his orders assisted him in performing the offices of worship, in
giving religious instruction, and in the conduct of affairs. Women did not
hold equal rank with men in the temples of male deities; they there formed
a kind of harem whence the god took his mystic spouses, his concubines,
his maidservants, the female musicians and dancing women whose duty it was
to divert him and to enliven his feasts. But in temples of goddesses they
held the chief rank, and were called hierodules, or priestesses, hierodules
of Nit, hierodules of Hâthor, hierodules of Pakhît.[***]
The lower offices in the households of the gods, as in princely
households, were held by a troop of servants and artisans: butchers to cut
the throats of the victims, cooks and pastrycooks, confectioners, weavers,
shoemakers, florists, cellarers, water-carriers and milk-carriers. In
fact, it was a state within a state, and the prince took care to keep its
government in his own hands, either by investing one of his children with
the titles and functions of chief pontiff’, or by arrogating them to
himself. In that case, he provided against mistakes which would have
annulled the sacrifice by associating with himself several masters of the
ceremonies, who directed him in the orthodox evolutions before the god and
about the victim, indicated the due order of gestures and the necessary
changes of costume, and prompted him with the words of each invocation
from a book or tablet which they held in their hands.[*]
In addition to its rites and special hierarchy, each of the sacerdotal
colleges thus constituted had a theology in accordance with the nature and
attributes of its god. Its fundamental dogma affirmed the unity of the
nome god, his greatness, his supremacy over all the gods of Egypt and of
foreign lands[*]—whose existence was nevertheless admitted, and none
dreamed of denying their reality or contesting their power.
The latter also boasted of their unity, their greatness, their supremacy;
but whatever they were, the god of the nome was master of them all—their
prince, their ruler, their king. It was he alone who governed the world,
he alone kept it in good order, he alone had created it. Not that he had
evoked it out of nothing; there was as yet no concept of nothingness, and
even to the most subtle and refined of primitive theologians creation was
only a bringing of pre-existent elements into play.
The latent germs of things had always existed, but they had slept for ages
and ages in the bosom of the Nû, of the dark waters. In fulness of time
the god of each nome drew them forth, classified them, marshalled them
according to the bent of his particular nature, and made his universe out
of them by methods peculiarly his own. Nît of Saïs, who was a weaver, had
made the world of warp and woof, as the mother of a family weaves her
children’s linen.
Khnûmû, the Nile-God of the cataracts, had gathered up the mud of his
waters and therewith moulded his creatures upon a potter’s table. In the
eastern cities of the Delta these procedures were not so simple. There it
was admitted that in the beginning earth and sky were two lovers lost in
the Nû, fast locked in each other’s embrace, the god lying beneath the
goddess. On the day of creation a new god, Shu, came forth from the
primaeval waters, slipped between the two, and seizing Nûît with both
hands, lifted her above his head with outstretched arms.[*]
Though the starry body of the goddess extended in space—her head
being to the west and her loins to the east—her feet and hands hung
down to the earth. These were the four pillars of the firmament under
another form, and four gods of four adjacent principalities were in charge
of them. Osiris, or Horus the sparrow-hawk, presided over the southern,
and Sit over the northern pillar; Thot over that of the west, and Sapdi,
the author of the zodiacal light, over that of the east. They had divided
the world among themselves into four regions, or rather into four
“houses,” bounded by those mountains which surround it, and by the
diameters intersecting between the pillars. Each of these houses belonged
to one, and to one only; none of the other three, nor even the sun
himself, might enter it, dwell there, or even pass through it without
having obtained its master’s permission. Sibu had not been satisfied to
meet the irruption of Shû by mere passive resistance. He had tried to
struggle, and he is drawn in the posture of a man who has just awakened
out of sleep, and is half turning on his couch before getting up. One of
his legs is stretched out, the other is bent and partly drawn up as in the
act of rising. The lower part of the body is still unmoved, but he is
raising himself with difficulty on his left elbow, while his head droops
and his right arm is lifted towards the sky. His effort was suddenly
arrested. Rendered powerless by a stroke of the creator, Sibû remained as
if petrified in this position, the obvious irregularities of the earth’s
surface being due to the painful attitude in which he was stricken. His
sides have since been clothed with verdure, generations of men and animals
have succeeded each other upon his back, but without bringing any relief
to his pain; he suffers evermore from the violent separation of which he
was the victim when Nûît was torn from him, and his complaint continues to
rise to heaven night and day.
The aspect of the inundated plains of the Delta, of the river by which
they are furrowed and fertilized, and of the desert sands by which they
are threatened, had suggested to the theologians of Mendes and Bûto an
explanation of the mystery of creation, in which the feudal divinities of
these cities and of several others in their neighbourhood, Osiris, Sit,
and Isis, played the principal parts. Osiris first represented the wild
and fickle Nile of primitive times; afterwards, as those who dwelt upon
his banks learned to regulate his course, they emphasized the kindlier
side of his character and soon transformed him into a benefactor of
humanity, the supremely good being, Ûnnofriû, Onnophris.[*] He was lord of
the principality of Didû, which lay along the Sebennytic branch of the
river between the coast marshes and the entrance to the Wâdy Tûmilât, but
his domain had been divided; and the two nomes thus formed, namely, the
ninth and sixteenth nomes of the Delta in the Pharaonic lists, remained
faithful to him, and here he reigned without rival, at Busiris as at
Mendes. His most famous idol-form was the Didû, whether naked or clothed,
the fetish, formed of four superimposed columns, which had given its name
to the principality.[**]
They ascribed life to this Didû, and represented it with a somewhat
grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a
long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds,
and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the
other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. This, perhaps, was the most
ancient form of Osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and
supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of
water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes, which disported
themselves about the lakes of that district.[**]
The goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, Isis
the cow, or woman with cow’s horns, had not always belonged to him.
Originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at Bûto in the midst of
the ponds of Adhû. She had neither husband nor lover, but had
spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among
the reeds—a lesser Horus who was called Harsiîsît, Horus the son of
Isis, to distinguish him from Haroêris. At an early period she was married
to her neighbour Osiris, and no marriage could have been better suited to
her nature. For she personified the earth—not the earth in general,
like Sibu, with its unequal distribution of seas and mountains, deserts
and cultivated land; but the black and luxuriant plain of the Delta, where
races of men, plants, and animals increase and multiply in ever-succeeding
generations. To whom did she owe this inexhaustible productive energy if
not to her neighbour Osiris, to the Nile? The Nile rises, overflows,
lingers upon the soil; every year it is wedded to the earth, and the earth
comes forth green and fruitful from its embraces.
The marriage of the two elements suggested that of the two divinities;
Osiris wedded Isis and adopted the young Horus. But this prolific and
gentle pair were not representative of all the phenomena of nature. The
eastern part of the Delta borders upon the solitudes of Arabia, and
although it contains several rich and fertile provinces, yet most of these
owe their existence to the arduous labour of the inhabitants, their
fertility being dependent on the daily care of man, and on his regular
distribution of the water. The moment he suspends the straggle or relaxes
his watchfulness, the desert reclaims them and overwhelms them with
sterility. Sit was the spirit of the mountain, stone and sand, the red and
arid ground as distinguished from the moist black soil of the valley. On
the body of a lion or of a dog he bore a fantastic head with a slender
curved snout, upright and square-cut ears; his cloven tail rose stiffly
behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. He also assumed a human
form, or retained the animal head only upon a man’s shoulders. He was felt
to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to shrivel up the harvest with
his burning breath, and to smother Egypt beneath a shroud of shifting
sand. The contrast between this evil being and the beneficent couple,
Osiris and Isis, was striking. Nevertheless, the theologians of the Delta
soon assigned a common origin to these rival divinities of Nile and
desert, red land and black. Sibû had begotten them, Nûît had given birth
to them one after another when the demiurge had separated her from her
husband; and the days of their birth were the days of creation.[*]
At first each of them had kept to his own half of the world. Moreover Sit,
who had begun by living alone, had married, in order that he might be
inferior to Osiris in nothing.
As a matter of fact, his companion, Nephthys, did not manifest any great
activity, and was scarcely more than an artificial counterpart of the wife
of Osiris, a second Isis who bore no children to her husband;[*] for the
sterile desert brought barrenness to her as to all that it touched.
Yet she had lost neither the wish nor the power to bring forth, and sought
fertilization from another source. Tradition had it that she had made
Osiris drunken, drawn him to her arms without his knowledge, and borne him
a son; the child of this furtive union was the jackal Anubis. Thus when a
higher Nile overflows lands not usually covered by the inundation, and
lying unproductive for lack of moisture, the soil eagerly absorbs the
water, and the germs which lay concealed in the ground burst forth into
life. The gradual invasion of the domain of Sît by Osiris marks the
beginning of the strife. Sit rebels against the wrong of which he is the
victim, involuntary though it was; he surprises and treacherously slays
his brother, drives Isis into temporary banishment among her marshes, and
reigns over the kingdom of Osiris as well as over his own. But his triumph
is short-lived. Horus, having grown up, takes arms against him, defeats
him in many encounters, and banishes him in his turn. The creation of the
world had brought the destroying and the life-sustaining gods face to
face: the history of the world is but the story of their rivalries and
warfare.
None of these conceptions alone sufficed to explain the whole mechanism of
creation, nor the part which the various gods took in it. The priests of
Heliopolis appropriated them all, modified some of their details and
eliminated others, added several new personages, and thus finally
constructed a complete cosmogony, the elements of which were learnedly
combined so as to correspond severally with the different operations by
which the world had been evoked out of chaos and gradually brought to its
present state. Heliopolis was never directly involved in the great
revolutions of political history; but no city ever originated so many
mystic ideas and consequently exercised so great an influence upon the
development of civilization.[*]
It was a small town built on the plain not far from the Nile at the apex
of the Delta, and surrounded by a high wall of mud bricks whose remains
could still be seen at the beginning of the century, but which have now
almost completely disappeared.
One obelisk standing in the midst of the open plain, a few waste mounds of
débris, scattered blocks, and two or three lengths of crumbling wall,
alone mark the place where once the city stood. Ka was worshipped there,
and the Greek name of Heliopolis is but the translation of that which was
given to it by the priests—Pi-ra, City of the Sun. Its principal
temple, the “Mansion of the Prince,” rose from about the middle of the
enclosure, and sheltered, together with the god himself, those animals in
which he became incarnate: the bull Mnevis, and sometimes the Phoenix.
According to an old legend, this wondrous bird appeared in Egypt only once
in five hundred years. It is born and lives in the depths of Arabia, but
when its father dies it covers the body with a layer of myrrh, and flies
at utmost speed to the temple of Helio-polis, there to bury it.[*]
In the beginning, Râ was the sun itself, whose fires appear to be lighted
every morning in the east and to be extinguished at evening in the west;
and to the people such he always remained. Among the theologians there was
considerable difference of opinion on the point. Some held the disk of the
sun to be the body which the god assumes when presenting himself for the
adoration of his worshippers. Others affirmed that it rather represented
his active and radiant soul. Finally, there were many who defined it as
one of his forms of being—khopriû—one of his
self-manifestations, without presuming to decide whether it was his body
or his soul which he deigned to reveal to human eyes; but whether soul or
body, all agreed that the sun’s disk had existed in the Nû before
creation. But how could it have lain beneath the primordial ocean without
either drying up the waters or being extinguished by them? At this stage
the identification of Râ with Horus and his right eye served the purpose
of the theologians admirably: the god needed only to have closed his
eyelid in order to prevent his fires from coming in contact with the
water.[*]
He was also said to have shut up his disk within a lotus-bud, whose folded
petals had safely protected it. The flower had opened on the morning of
the first day, and from it the god had sprung suddenly as a child wearing
the solar disk upon his head. But all theories led the theologians to
distinguish two periods, and as it were two beings in the existence of
supreme deity: a pre-mundane sun lying inert within the bosom of the dark
waters, and our living and life-giving sun.
One division of the Heliopolitan school retained the use of traditional
terms and images in reference to these Sun-gods. To the first it left the
human form, and the title of Râ, with the abstract sense of creator,
deriving the name from the verb râ, which means to give. For the
second it kept the form of the sparrow-hawk and the name of Harma-khûîti—Horus
in the two horizons—which clearly denoted his function;[*] and it
summed up the idea of the sun as a whole in the single name of
Râ-Harmakhûîti, and in a single image in which the hawk-head of Horus was
grafted upon the human body of Râ. The other divisions of the school
invented new names for new conceptions. The sun existing before the world
they called Creator—Tûmû, Atûmû [**]—and our earthly
sun they called Khopri—He who is.
Tûmû was a man crowned and clothed with the insignia of supreme power, a
true king of gods, majestic and impassive as the Pharaohs who succeeded
each other upon the throne of Egypt. The conception of Khopri as a disk
enclosing a scarabæus, or a man with a scarabous upon his head, or a
scarabus-headed mummy, was suggested by the accidental alliteration of his
name and that of Khopirrû, the scarabæus. The difference between the
possible forms of the god was so slight as to be eventually lost
altogether. His names were grouped by twos and threes in every conceivable
way, and the scarabæus of Khopri took its place upon the head of Râ, while
the hawk headpiece was transferred from the shoulders of Harmakhûîti to
those of Tûmû. The complex beings resulting from these combinations,
Râ-Tûmû, Atûmû-Râ, Râ-Tûmû-Khopri, Râ-Harmakhûîti-Tûmû,
Tûm-Harmakhûîti-Khopri, never attained to any pronounced individuality.
They were as a rule simple duplicates of the feudal god, names rather than
persons, and though hardly taken for one another indiscriminately, the
distinctions between them had reference to mere details of their functions
and attributes. Hence arose the idea of making these gods into embodiments
of the main phases in the life of the sun during the day and throughout
the year. Râ symbolized the sun of springtime and before sunrise,
Harmakhûîti the summer and the morning sun, Atûmû the sun of autumn and of
afternoon, Khopri that of winter and of night. The people of Heliopolis
accepted the new names and the new forms presented for their worship, but
always subordinated them to their beloved Râ. For them Râ never ceased to
be the god of the nome; while Atûmû remained the god of the theologians,
and was invoked by them, the people preferred Râ. At Thinis and at
Sebennytos Anhûri incurred the same fate as befell Râ at Heliopolis. After
he had been identified with the sun, the similar identification of Shû
inevitably followed. Of old, Anhûri and Shû were twin gods, incarnations
of sky and earth. They were soon but one god in two persons—the god
Anhûri-Shû, of which the one half under the title of Auhûri represented,
like Atûmû, the primordial being; and Shû, the other half, became, as his
name indicates, the creative sun-god who upholds (shû) the sky.
Tûrnû then, rather than Râ, was placed by the Heliopolitan priests at the
head of their cosmogony as supreme creator and governor. Several versions
were current as to how he had passed from inertia into action, from the
personage of Tûmû into that of Râ. According to the version most widely
received, he had suddenly cried across the waters, “Come unto me!”[*] and
immediately the mysterious lotus had unfolded its petals, and Râ had
appeared at the edge of its open cup as a disk, a newborn child, or a
disk-crowned sparrow-hawk; this was probably a refined form of a ruder and
earlier tradition, according to which it was upon Râ himself that the
office had devolved of separating Sibû from Nûît, for the purpose of
constructing the heavens and the earth.
But it was doubtless felt that so unseemly an act of intervention was
beneath the dignity even of an inferior form of the suzerain god; Shû was
therefore borrowed for the purpose from the kindred cult of Anhûri, and at
Heliopolis, as at Sebennytos, the office was entrusted to him of seizing
the sky-goddess and raising her with outstretched arms. The violence
suffered by Nûît at the hands of Shû led to a connexion of the Osirian
dogma of Mendes with the solar dogma of Sebennytos, and thus the tradition
describing the creation of the world was completed by another, explaining
its division into deserts and fertile lands. Sîbû, hitherto concealed
beneath the body of his wife, was now exposed to the sun; Osiris and Sit,
Isis and Nephthys, were born, and, falling from the sky, their mother, on
to the earth, their father, they shared the surface of the latter among
themselves. Thus the Heliopolitan doctrine recognized three principal
events in the creation of the universe: the dualization of the supreme god
and the breaking forth of light, the raising of the sky and the laying
bare of the earth, the birth of the Nile and the allotment of the soil of
Egypt, all expressed as the manifestations of successive deities. Of these
deities, the latter ones already constituted a family of father, mother,
and children, like human families. Learned theologians availed themselves
of this example to effect analogous relationships between the rest of the
gods, combining them all into one line of descent. As Atûmû-Râ could have
no fellow, he stood apart in the first rank, and it was decided that Shû
should be his son, whom he had formed out of himself alone, on the first
day of creation, by the simple intensity of his own virile energy. Shû,
reduced to the position of divine son, had in his turn begotten Sibû and
Nûît, the two deities which he separated. Until then he had not been
supposed to have any wife, and he also might have himself brought his own
progeny into being; but lest a power of spontaneous generation equal to
that of the demiurge should be ascribed to him, he was married, and the
wife found for him was Tafnûît, his twin sister, born in the same way as
he was born. This goddess, invented for the occasion, was never fully
alive, and remained, like Nephthys, a theological entity rather than a
real person. The texts describe her as the pale reflex of her husband.
Together with him she upholds the sky, and every morning receives the
newborn sun as it emerges from the mountain of the east; she is a lioness
when Shû is a lion, a woman when he is a man, a lioness-headed woman if he
is a lion-headed man; she is angry when he is angry, appeased when he is
appeased; she has no sanctuary wherein he is not worshipped. In short, the
pair made one being in two bodies, or, to use the Egyptian expression,
“one soul in its two twin bodies.”
Hence we see that the Heliopolitans proclaimed the creation to be the work
of the sun-god, Atûmû-Râ, and of the four pairs of deities who were
descended from him. It was really a learned variant of the old doctrine
that the universe was composed of a sky-god, Horus, supported by his four
children and their four pillars: in fact, the four sons of the
Heliopolitan cosmogony, Shû and Sibû, Osiris and Sit, were occasionally
substituted for the four older gods of the “houses” of the world. This
being premised, attention must be given to the important differences
between the two systems. At the outset, instead of appearing
contemporaneously upon the scene, like the four children of Horus, the
four Heliopolitan gods were deduced one from another, and succeeded each
other in the order of their birth. They had not that uniform attribute of
supporter, associating them always with one definite function, but each of
them felt himself endowed with faculties and armed with special powers
required by his condition. Ultimately they took to themselves goddesses,
and thus the total number of beings working in different ways at the
organization of the universe was brought up to nine. Hence they were
called by the collective name of the Ennead, the Nine gods—paûit
nûtîrû,[*]—and the god at their head was entitled Paûîti,
the god of the Ennead.
When creation was completed, its continued existence was ensured by
countless agencies with whose operation the persons of the Ennead were not
at leisure to concern themselves, but had ordained auxiliaries to preside
over each of the functions essential to the regular and continued working
of all things. The theologians of Heliopolis selected eighteen from among
the innumerable divinities of the feudal cults of Egypt, and of these they
formed two secondary Enneads, who were regarded as the offspring of the
Ennead of the creation. The first of the two secondary Enneads, generally
known as the Minor Ennead, recognized as chief Harsiesis, the son of
Osiris. Harsiesis was originally an earth-god who had avenged the
assassination of his father and the banishment of his mother by Sit; that
is, he had restored fulness to the Nile and fertility to the Delta. When
Harsiesis was incorporated into the solar religions of Heliopolis, his
filiation was left undisturbed as being a natural link between the two
Enneads, but his personality was brought into conformity with the new
surroundings into which he was transplanted. He was identified with Râ
through the intervention of the older Horus, Haroêris-Harmakhis, and the
Minor Ennead, like the Great Ennead, began with a sun-god. This
assimilation was not pushed so far as to invest the younger Horus with the
same powers as his fictitious ancestor: he was the sun of earth, the
everyday sun, while Atûmû-Râ was still the sun pre-mundane and eternal.
Our knowledge of the eight other deities of the Minor Ennead is very
imperfect.
We see only that these were the gods who chiefly protected the sun-god
against its enemies and helped it to follow its regular course. Thus
Harhûditi, the Horus of Edfû, spear in hand, pursues the hippopotami or
serpents which haunt the celestial waters and menace the god. The progress
of the Sun-bark is controlled by the incantations of Thot, while Uapûaîtû,
the dual jackal-god of Siufc, guides, and occasionally tows it along the
sky from south to north. The third Ennead would seem to have included
among its members Anubis the jackal, and the four funerary genii, the
children of Horus—Hapi, Amsît, Tiûmaûtf, Kabhsonûf; it further
appears as though its office was the care and defence of the dead sun, the
sun by night, as the second Ennead had charge of the living sun. Its
functions were so obscure and apparently so insignificant as compared with
those exercised by the other Enneads, that the theologians did not take
the trouble either to represent it or to enumerate its persons. They
invoked it as a whole, after the two others, in those formulas in which
they called into play all the creative and preservative forces of the
universe; but this was rather as a matter of conscience and from love of
precision than out of any true deference. At the initial impulse of the
lord of Heliopolis, the three combined Enneads started the world and kept
it going, and gods whom they had not incorporated were either enemies to
be fought with, or mere attendants.
The doctrine of the Heliopolitan Ennead acquired an immediate and a
lasting popularity. It presented such a clear scheme of creation, and one
whose organization was so thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of
tradition, that the various sacerdotal colleges adopted it one after
another, accommodating it to the exigencies of local patriotism. Each
placed its own nome-god at the head of the Ennead as “god of the Nine,”
“god of the first time,” creator of heaven and earth, sovereign ruler of
men, and lord of all action. As there was the Ennead of Atûmû at
Heliopolis, so there was that of Anhûri at Thinis and at Sebennytos; that
of Minû at Coptos and at Panopolis; that of Haroêris at Edfû; that of
Sobkhû at Ombos; and, later, that of Phtah at Memphis and of Amon at
Thebes. Nomes which worshipped a goddess had no scruples whatever in
ascribing to her the part played by Atûmû, and in crediting her with the
spontaneous maternity of Shû and Tafnûît.
Nît was the source and ruler of the Ennead of Saïs, Isis of that of Bûto,
and Hâthor of that of Denderah.[**] Few of the sacerdotal colleges went
beyond the substitution of their own feudal gods for Atûmû. Provided that
the god of each nome held the rank of supreme lord, the rest mattered
little, and the local theologians made no change in the order of the other
agents of creation, their vanity being unhurt even by the lower offices
assigned by the Heliopolitan tradition to such powers as Osiris, Sibû, and
Sit, who were known and worshipped throughout the whole country.
The theologians of Hermopolis alone declined to borrow the new system just
as it stood, and in all its parts. Hermopolis had always been one of the
ruling cities of Middle Egypt. Standing alone in the midst of the land
lying between the Eastern and Western Mies, it had established upon each
of the two great arms of the river a port and a custom-house, where all
boats travelling either up or down stream paid toll on passing. Not only
the corn and natural products of the valley and of the Delta, but also
goods from distant parts of Africa brought to Siûfc by Soudanese caravans,
helped to fill the treasury of Hermopolis. Thot, the god of the city,
represented as ibis or baboon, was essentially a moon-god, who measured
time, counted the days, numbered the months, and recorded the years. Lunar
divinities, as we know, are everywhere supposed to exercise the most
varied powers: they command the mysterious forces of the universe; they
know the sounds, words, and gestures by which those forces are put in
motion, and not content with using them for their own benefit, they also
teach to their worshippers the art of employing them.
Thot formed no exception to this rule. He was lord of the voice, master of
words and of books, possessor or inventor of those magic writings which
nothing in heaven, on earth, or in Hades can withstand.[***]
He had discovered the incantations which evoke and control the gods; he
had transcribed the texts and noted the melodies of these incantations; he
recited them with that true intonation—mâ khrôû—which
renders them all-powerful, and every one, whether god or man, to whom he
imparted them, and whose voice he made true—smâ khrôû—became
like himself master of the universe. He had accomplished the creation not
by muscular effort to which the rest of the cosmogonical gods primarily
owed their birth, but by means of formulas, or even of the voice alone,
“the first time” when he awoke in the Nû. In fact, the articulate word and
the voice were believed to be the most potent of creative forces, not
remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing, so to
speak, into tangible substances; into bodies which were themselves
animated by creative life and energy; into gods and goddesses who lived or
who created in their turn. By a very short phrase Tûmû had called forth
the gods who order all things; for his “Come unto me!” uttered with a loud
voice upon the day of creation, had evoked the sun from within the lotus.
Thot had opened his lips, and the voice which proceeded from him had
become an entity; sound had solidified into matter, and by a simple
emission of voice the four gods who preside over the four houses of the
world had come forth alive from his mouth without bodily effort on his
part, and without spoken evocation. Creation by the voice is almost as
great a refinement of thought as the substitution of creation by the word
for creation by muscular effort. In fact, sound bears the same relation to
words that the whistle of a quartermaster bears to orders for the
navigation of a ship transmitted by a speaking trumpet; it simplifies
speech, reducing it as it were to a pure abstraction. At first it was
believed that the creator had made the world with a word, then that he had
made it by sound; but the further conception of his having made it by
thought does not seem to have occurred to the theologians. It was narrated
at Hermopolis, and the legend was ultimately universally accepted, even by
the Heliopolitans, that the separation of Nûît and Sibû had taken place at
a certain spot on the site of the city where Sibû had ascended the mound
on which the feudal temple was afterwards built, in order that he might
better sustain the goddess and uphold the sky at the proper height. The
conception of a Creative Council of five gods had so far prevailed at
Hermopolis that from this fact the city had received in remote antiquity
the name of the “House of the Five;” its temple was called the “Abode of
the Five” down to a late period in Egyptian history, and its prince, who
was the hereditary high priest of Thot, reckoned as the first of his
official titles that of “Great One of the House of the Five.”
The four couples who had helped Atûmû were identified with the four
auxiliary gods of Thot, and changed the council of Five into a Great
Hermopolitan Ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. However
artificially they had been grouped about Atûmû, they had all preserved
such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one
with another. When the universe which they had helped to build up was
finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a
considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to
preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as
were expected of him. They could not have existed and carried on their
work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born
one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as
capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them.
On the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of Hermopolis exercised but one
means of action—the voice. Having themselves come forth from the
master’s mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the
world. Apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not
been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods
of the Heliopolitan Ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of
life, almost destitute of reality. As these four gods worked after the
manner of their master, Thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along
with him as so many baboons. When associated with the lord of Hermopolis,
the eight divinities of Heliopolis assumed the character and the
appearance of the four Hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. They
were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or
as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic
attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses,
the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple Nû-Nûît answers
to Shû-Tafnûît; Hahû-Hehît to Sibû and Nûîfc; Kakû-Kakît to Osiris and
Isis; Ninû-Ninît to Sit and Nephthys. There was seldom any occasion to
invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the Eight—Khmûnû—and
it was on their account that Hermopolis was named Khmûnû, the City
of the Eight. Ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life
still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts
refer as Khomninû, the god Eight.
By degrees the Ennead of Thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part in
the adoration of the king. According to a custom common towards the
Græco-Roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like
jackals’ heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which
compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around Egypt.
As the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the Heliopolitan doctrine, so they
now generally adopted that of Hermopolis: Amon, for instance, being made
to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four
independent couples of the primitive Ennead. In both cases the process of
adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no
difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been
without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would
have been that of a single name in the Heliopolitan list, thus leaving the
number of the Ennead unaltered. But since these deities had been turned
into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to
be combined with the elements of some one or other of the Enneads without
preliminary arrangement. The two companions whom each had chosen had to be
adopted also, and the single Thot, or single Atûmû, replaced by the three
patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven.
Happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these
adaptations. We have seen that the father and the son became one and the
same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. We also know that one
of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the
other. Sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband;
sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the
offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted
in the fact that he was her husband. Two personages thus closely connected
were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two
faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. On the one
hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with
the mother. Hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and
the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons.
Thanks to this subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an Ennead was
nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the
three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to
the nine canonical divinities. Thus, the Theban Ennead of
Amon-Maut-Khonsû, Shû, Tafnûît, Sibû, Nûît, Osiris, Isis, Sît, and
Nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct as the
typical Ennead itself. In such Enneads Isis is duplicated by goddesses of
like nature, such as Hâthor, Selkît, Taninît, and yet remains but one,
while Osiris brings in his son Horus, who gathers about himself all such
gods as play the part of divine son in other triads. The theologians had
various methods of procedure for keeping the number of persons in an
Ennead at nine, no matter how many they might choose to embrace in it.
Supernumeraries were thrown in like the “shadows” at Roman suppers, whom
guests would bring without warning to their host, and whose presence made
not the slightest difference either in the provision for the feast, or in
the arrangements for those who had been formally invited.
Thus remodelled at all points, the Ennead of Heliopolis was readily
adjustable to sacerdotal caprices, and even profited by the facilities
which, the triad afforded for its natural expansion. In time the
Heliopolitan version of the origin of Shû-Tafnûît must have appeared too
primitively barbarous. Allowing for the licence of the Egyptians during
Pharaonic times, the concept of the spontaneous emission whereby Atûrnû
had produced his twin children was characterized by a superfluity of
coarseness which it was at least unnecessary to employ, since by placing
the god in a triad, this double birth could be duly explained in
conformity with the ordinary laws of life. The solitary Atûrnû of the more
ancient dogma gave place to Atûrnû the husband and father. He had, indeed,
two wives, Iûsâsît and Nebthotpît, but their individualities were so
feebly marked that no one took the trouble to choose between them; each
passed as the mother of Shû and Tafnûîfc. This system of combination, so
puerile in its ingenuity, was fraught with the gravest consequences to the
history of Egyptian religions. Shu having been transformed into the divine
son of the Heliopolitan triad, could henceforth be assimilated with the
divine sons of all those triads which took the place of Tûmû at the heads
of provincial Enneads. Thus we find that Horus the son of Isis at Bûto,
Arihosnofir the son of Nit at Sais, Khnûmû the son of Hâthor at Esneh,
were each in turn identified with Shû the son of Atûrnû, and lost their
individualities in his. Sooner or later this was bound to result in
bringing all the triads closer together, and in their absorption into one
another. Through constant reiteration of the statement that the divine
sons of the triads were identical with Shû, as being in the second rank of
the Ennead, the idea arose that this was also the case in triads
unconnected with Enneads; in other terms, that the third person in any
family of gods was everywhere and always Shû under a different name. It
having been finally admitted in the sacerdotal colleges that Tûmû and Shû,
father and son, were one, all the divine sons were, therefore, identical
with Tûmû, the father of Shû, and as each divine son was one with his
parents, it inevitably followed that these parents themselves were
identical with Tûmû. Reasoning in this way, the Egyptians naturally tended
towards that conception of the divine oneness to which the theory of the
Hermopolitan Ogdoad was already leading them. In fact, they reached it,
and the monuments show us that in comparatively early times the
theologians were busy uniting in a single person the prerogatives which
their ancestors had ascribed to many different beings. But this conception
of deity towards which their ideas were converging has nothing in common
with the conception of the God of our modern religions and philosophies.
No god of the Egyptians was ever spoken of simply as God. Tûmû was the
“one and only god”—nûtir ûâû ûâîti—at Heliopolis;
Anhûri-Shû was also the “one and only god” at Sebennytos and at Thinis.
The unity of Atûmû did not interfere with that of Anhûri-Shû, but each of
these gods, although the “sole” deity in his own domain, ceased to be so
in the domain of the other. The feudal spirit, always alert and jealous,
prevented the higher dogma which was dimly apprehended in the temples from
triumphing over local religions and extending over the whole land. Egypt
had as many “sole” deities as she had large cities, or even important
temples; she never accepted the idea of the sole God, “beside whom there
is none other.”
=================
CHAPTER III.—-THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT
THE DIVINE DYNASTIES: RÂ, SHÛ, OSIEIS, SÎT, HOEUS—THOT, AND THE
INVENTION OF SCIENCES AND WRITING—MENES, AND THE THREE FIRST HUMAN
DYNASTIES.
The Egyptians claim to Be the most ancient of peoples: traditions
concerning the creation of man and of animals—The Heliopolitan
Enneads the framework of the divine dynasties—Râ, the first King of
Egypt, and his fabulous history: he allows himself to be duped and robbed
by Isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends into heaven.
The legend of Shu and Sibil—The reign of Osiris Onnophris and of
Isis: they civilize Egypt and the world—Osiris, slain by Sit, is
entombed by Isis and avenged by Horus—The wars of Typhon and of
Horus: peace, and the division of Egypt between the two gods.
The Osirian embalmment; the kingdom of Osiris opened to the followers
of Horus—The Book of the Dead—The journeying of the soul in
search of the fields of Ialû—The judgment of the soul, the negative
confession—The privileges and duties of Osirian souls—Confusion
between Osirian and Solar ideas as to the state of the dead: the dead in
the hark of the Sun—The going forth by day—The campaigns of
Harmakhis against Sit.
Thot, the inventor: he reveals all sciences to men—Astronomy,
stellar tables; the year, its subdivisions, its defects, influence of the
heavenly bodies and the days upon human destiny—Magic arts;
incantations, amulets—-Medicine: the vitalizing spirits, diagnosis,
treatment—Writing: ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic.
The history of Egypt as handed down by tradition: Manetho, the royal
lists, main divisions of Egyptian history—The beginnings of its
early history vague and uncertain: Menés, and the legend of Memphis—The
first three human dynasties, the two Thimie and the Memphite—Character
and, origin of the legends concerning them—The famine stela—The
earliest monuments: the step pyramid of Saqgdrah.
THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT
The divine dynasties: Râ, Shû, Osiris, Sît, Horus—Thot, and the
invention of sciences and writing—Menés, and the three first human
dynasties.
The building up and diffusion of the doctrine of the Ennead, like the
formation of the land of Egypt, demanded centuries of sustained effort,
centuries of which the inhabitants themselves knew neither the number nor
the authentic history. When questioned as to the remote past of their
race, they proclaimed themselves the most ancient of mankind, in
comparison with whom all other races were but a mob of young children; and
they looked upon nations which denied their pretensions with such
indulgence and pity as we feel for those who doubt a well-known truth.
Their forefathers had appeared upon the banks of the Nile even before the
creator had completed his work, so eager were the gods to behold their
birth. No Egyptian disputed the reality of this right of the firstborn,
which ennobled the whole race; but if they were asked the name of their
divine father, then the harmony was broken, and each advanced the claims
of a different personage.[*] Phtah had modelled man with his own
hands;[**] Khnûmû had formed him on a potter’s table.[***]
Râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it
with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and
animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were
scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*]
Sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. The mud of
the Nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought forth
the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation, having
moulded itself into a thousand living forms. Then its procreative power
became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. Yet on the banks of the river,
in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose
condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger
kinds. Some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free
themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly
stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were
completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of
earth.[**]
It was not Râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. All
divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, Sit as well as Osiris or
Isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once it
had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as that
which came from the eyes of Râ.
The individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon the
nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the good gods,
evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of the mingling of
things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere
throughout the world. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Sit and his partisans
were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. Daily their eyes shed
upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as
malign influences, crime, and madness. Their saliva, the foam which fell
from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood
itself, were all no less to be feared. When any drop of it touched the
earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and
baleful—a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of
henbane. But, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or
things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity.
Wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers
secreting wax and honey, the meat and herbs which are his food, the stuffs
that clothe him, all useful things which he makes for himself, not only
emanated from the Solar Eye of Horus, but were indeed nothing more than
the Eye of Horus under different aspects, and in his name they were
presented in sacrifice. The devout generally were of opinion that the
first Egyptians, the sons and flock of Râ, came into the world happy and
perfect;[*] by degrees their descendants had fallen from that native
felicity into their present state.
Some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so many
brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life. They knew
nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by cries only, like
other animals, until the day when Thot taught them both speech and
writing.
These tales sufficed for popular edification; they provided but meagre
fare for the intelligence of the learned. The latter did not confine their
ambition to the possession of a few incomplete and contradictory details
concerning the beginnings of humanity. They wished to know the history of
its consecutive development from the very first; what manner of life had
been led by their fathers; what chiefs they had obeyed and the names or
adventures of those chiefs; why part of the nations had left the blessed
banks of the Nile and gone to settle in foreign lands; by what stages and
in what length of time those who had not emigrated rose out of native
barbarism into that degree of culture to which the most ancient monuments
bore testimony. No efforts of imagination were needful for the
satisfaction of their curiosity: the old substratum of indigenous
traditions was rich enough, did they but take the trouble to work it out
systematically, and to eliminate its most incongruous elements. The
priests of Heliopolis took this work in hand, as they had already taken in
hand the same task with regard to the myths referring to the creation; and
the Enneads provided them with a ready-made framework. They changed the
gods of the Ennead into so many kings, determined with minute accuracy the
lengths of their reigns, and compiled their biographies from popular
tales. The duality of the feudal god supplied an admirable expedient for
connecting the history of the world with that of chaos. Tûmû was
identified with Nû, and relegated to the primordial Ocean: Râ was
retained, and proclaimed the first king of the world. He had not
established his rule without difficulty. The “Children of Defeat,” beings
hostile to order and light, engaged him in fierce battles; nor did he
succeed in organizing his kingdom until he had conquered them in nocturnal
combat at Hermopolis, and even at Heliopolis itself.[*]
Pierced with wounds, Apôpi the serpent sank into the depths of Ocean at
the very moment when the new year began. The secondary members of the
Great Ennead, together with the Sun, formed the first dynasty, which began
with the dawn of the first day, and ended at the coming of Horus, the son
of Isis. The local schools of theology welcomed this method of writing
history as readily as they had welcomed the principle of the Ennead
itself. Some of them retained the Heliopolitan demiurge, and hastened to
associate him with their own; others completely eliminated him in favour
of the feudal divinity,—Amon at Thebes, Thot at Hermopolis, Phtah at
Memphis,—keeping the rest of the dynasty absolutely unchanged.[*]
The gods in no way compromised their prestige by becoming incarnate and
descending to earth. Since they were men of finer nature, and their
qualities, including that of miracle-working, were human qualities raised
to the highest pitch of intensity, it was not considered derogatory to
them personally to have watched over the infancy and childhood of primeval
man. The raillery in which the Egyptians occasionally indulged with regard
to them, the good-humoured and even ridiculous rôles ascribed to
them in certain legends, do not prove that they were despised, or that
zeal for them had cooled. The greater the respect of believers for the
objects of their worship, the more easily do they tolerate the taking of
such liberties, and the condescension of the members of the Ennead, far
from lowering them in the eyes of generations who came too late to live
with them upon familiar terms, only enhanced the love and reverence in
which they were held. Nothing shows this better than the history of Râ.
His world was ours in the rough; for since Shu was yet nonexistent, and
Nuit still reposed in the arms of Sibû, earth and sky were but one.[**]
Nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable, animal,
and human life. Egypt was there, all complete, with her two chains of
mountains, her Nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and the nomes
themselves. Then the soil was more generous; the harvests, without the
labourer’s toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when the Egyptians
of Pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any person or thing,
they said that the like had never been known since the time of Râ.
It is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst for
happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the
remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is only
known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors. Râ
dwelt in Heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of the
city, that known as the “Mansion of the Prince”—Haït Sarû,—passed
for having been his palace. His court was mainly composed of gods and
goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. It contained also
men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food, received
the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and household
affairs. It was said that the oîrû maû—the high priest of Râ,
the hankistît—his high priestess, and generally speaking all
the servants of the temple of Heliopolis, were either directly descended
from members of this first household establishment of the god, or had
succeeded to their offices in unbroken succession.
In the morning he went forth with his divine train, and, amid the
acclamations of the crowd, entered the bark in which he made his
accustomed circuit of the world, returning to his home at the end of
twelve hours after the accomplishment of his journey. He visited each
province in turn, and in each he tarried for an hour, to settle all
disputed matters, as the final judge of appeal. He gave audience to both
small and great, he decided their quarrels and adjudged their lawsuits, he
granted investiture of fiefs from the royal domains to those who had
deserved them, and allotted or confirmed to every family the income
needful for their maintenance. He pitied the sufferings of his people, and
did his utmost to alleviate them; he taught to all comers potent formulas
against reptiles and beasts of prey, charms to cast out evil spirits, and
the best recipes for preventing illness. His incessant bounties left him
at length with only one of his talismans: the name given to him by his
father and mother at his birth, which they had revealed to him alone, and
which he kept concealed within his bosom lest some sorcerer should get
possession of it to use for the furtherance of his evil spells.
But old age came on, and infirmities followed; the body of Râ grew bent,
“his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to earth and his saliva
dropped upon the ground.” Isis, who had hitherto been a mere woman-servant
in the household of the Pharaoh, conceived the project of stealing his
secret from him, “that she might possess the world and make herself a
goddess by the name of the august god.” Force would have been unavailing;
all enfeebled as he was by reason of his years, none was strong enough to
contend successfully against him. But Isis “was a woman more knowing in
her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the gods, equal
to millions of spirits, to whom as unto Râ nothing was unknown either in
heaven or upon earth.” She contrived a most ingenious stratagem. When man
or god was struck down by illness, the only chance of curing him lay in
knowing his real name, and thereby adjuring the evil being that tormented
him. Isis determined to cast a terrible malady upon Râ, concealing its
cause from him; then to offer her services as his nurse, and by means of
his sufferings to extract from him the mysterious word indispensable to
the success of the exorcism. She gathered up mud impregnated with the
divine saliva, and moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the
dust of the road. Suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily
round, the god cried out aloud, “his voice ascended into heaven and his
Nine called: ‘What is it? what is it?’ and his gods: ‘What is the matter?
what is the matter?’ but he could make them no answer so much did his lips
tremble, his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the
Nile seizeth upon the land which it invadeth.” Presently he came to
himself, and succeeded in describing his sensations. “Something painful
hath stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand
hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth it what it is, yet
have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that may
overpass it…. Fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in
flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born of
breaths of magic. Behold! let there be brought unto me children of the
gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and whose
science reacheth unto heaven.” They came, these children of the gods, all
with their books of magic. There came Isis with her sorcery, her mouth
full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of pain, her
words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said: “What is it?
what is it, O father of the gods? May it not be that a serpent hath
wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children hath lifted up
his head against thee? Surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent
incantations, and I will make him to retreat at the sight of thy rays.” On
learning the cause of his torment, the Sun-god is terrified, and begins to
lament anew: “I, then, as I went along the ways, travelling through my
double land of Egypt and over my mountains, that I might look upon that
which I have made, I was bitten by a serpent that I saw not. Fire it is
not, water it is not, yet am I colder than water, I burn more than fire,
all my members stream with sweat, I tremble, mine eye is not steady, no
longer can I discern the sky, drops roll from my face as in the season of
summer.” Isis proposes her remedy, and cautiously asks him his ineffable
name. But he divines her trick, and tries to evade it by an enumeration of
his titles. He takes the universe to witness that he is called “Khopri in
the morning, Râ at noon, Tûmû in the evening.” The poison did not recede,
but steadily advanced, and the great god was not eased. Then Isis said to
Râ: “Thy name was not spoken in that which thou hast said. Tell it to me
and the poison will depart; for he liveth upon whom a charm is pronounced
in his own name.” The poison glowed like fire, it was strong as the
burning of flame, and the Majesty of Râ said, “I grant thee leave that
thou shouldest search within me, O mother Isis! and that my name pass from
my bosom into thy bosom.” In truth, the all-powerful name was hidden
within the body of the god, and could only be extracted thence by means of
a surgical operation similar to that practised upon a corpse which is
about to be mummified. Isis undertook it, carried it through successfully,
drove out the poison, and made herself a goddess by virtue of the name.
The cunning of a mere woman had deprived Râ of his last talisman.
In course of time men perceived his decrepitude. They took counsel against
him: “Lo! his Majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his flesh is of
gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli.” As soon as his Majesty perceived that
which they were saying to each other, his Majesty said to those who were
of his train, “Call together for me my Divine Eye, Shû, Tafnûît, Sibû, and
Nûît, the father and the mother gods who were with me when I was in the
Nû, with the god Nû. Let each bring his cycle along with him; then, when
thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt take them to the great
mansion that they may lend me their counsel and their consent, coming
hither from the Nû into this place where I have manifested myself.” So the
family council comes together: the ancestors of Râ, and his posterity
still awaiting amid the primordial waters the time of their manifestation—his
children Shû and Tafnûît, his grandchildren Sibû and Nûît. They place
themselves, according to etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate,
with their foreheads to the ground, and thus their conference begins: “O
Nû, thou the eldest of the gods, from whom I took my being, and ye the
ancestor-gods, behold! men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken
counsel together against me! Tell me what ye would do, for I have bidden
you here before I slay them, that I may hear what ye would say thereto.”
Nû, as the eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the
guilty shall be brought to judgment and formally condemned. “My son Râ,
god greater than the god who made him, older than the gods who created
him, sit thou upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine
eye shall rest upon those who plot together against thee!” But Râ not
unreasonably fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice,
they may suspect the fate that awaits them, and “flee into the desert,
their hearts terrified at that which I have to say to them.” The desert
was even then hostile to the tutelary gods of Egypt, and offered an almost
inviolable asylum to their enemies. The conclave admits that the
apprehensions of Râ are well founded, and pronounces in favour of summary
execution; the Divine Eye is to be the executioner. “Let it go forth that
it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for there is no Eye
more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the form of Hâthor.” So
the Eye takes the form of Hâthor, suddenly falls upon men, and slays them
right and left with great strokes of the knife. After some hours, Râ, who
would chasten but not destroy his children, commands her to cease from her
carnage; but the goddess has tasted blood, and refuses to obey him. “By
thy life,” she replies, “when I slaughter men then is my heart right
joyful!”
That is why she was afterwards called Sokhît the slayer, and represented
under the form of a fierce lioness. Nightfall stayed her course in the
neighbourhood of Heracleopolis; all the way from Heliopolis she had
trampled through blood. As soon as she had fallen asleep, Râ hastily took
effectual measures to prevent her from beginning her work again on the
morrow. “He said: ‘Call on my behalf messengers agile and swift, who go
like the wind.’ When these messengers were straightway brought to him, the
Majesty of the god said: ‘Let them run to Elephantine and bring me
mandragora in plenty.'”[**]
** The mandragora of Elephantine was used in the manufacture of an
intoxicating and narcotic drink employed either in medicine or in magic.
In a special article, Brugsch has collected particulars preserved by the
texts as to the uses of this plant. It was not as yet credited with the
human form and the peculiar kind of life ascribed to it by western
sorcerers.
When they had brought him the mandragora, the Majesty of this great god
summoned the miller which is in Heliopolis that he might bray it; and the
women-servants having crushed grain for the beer, the mandragora, and also
human blood, were mingled with the liquor, and thereof was made in all
seven thousand jars of beer. Râ himself examined this delectable drink,
and finding it to possess the wished-for properties: “‘It is well,’ said
he; ‘therewith shall I save men from the goddess;’ then, addressing those
of his train: ‘Take these jars in your arms, and carry them to the place
where she has slaughtered men.’ Râ, the king, caused dawn to break at
midnight, so that this philtre might be poured down upon the earth; and
the fields were flooded with it to the depth of four palms, according as
it pleased the souls of his Majesty.” In the morning the goddess came,
“that she might return to her carnage, but she found that all was flooded,
and her countenance softened; when she had drunken, it was her heart that
softened; she went away drunk, without further thought of men.” There was
some fear lest her fury might return when the fumes of drunkenness were
past, and to obviate this danger Râ instituted a rite, partly with the
object of instructing future generations as to the chastisement which he
had inflicted upon the impious, partly to console Sokhît for her
discomfiture. He decreed that “on New Year’s Day there should be brewed
for her as many jars of philtre as there were priestesses of the sun. That
was the origin of all those jars of philtre, in number equal to that of
the priestesses, which, at the feast of Hâthor, all men make from that day
forth.”
Peace was re-established, but could it last long? Would not men, as soon
as they had recovered from their terror, betake themselves again to
plotting against the god? Besides, Râ now felt nothing but disgust for our
race. The ingratitude of his children had wounded him deeply; he foresaw
ever-renewed rebellions as his feebleness became more marked, and he
shrank from having to order new massacres in which mankind would perish
altogether. “By my life,” says he to the gods who accompanied him, “my
heart is too weary for me to remain with mankind, and slay them until they
are no more: annihilation is not of the gifts that I love to make.” And
the gods exclaim in surprise: “Breathe not a word of thy weariness at a
time when thou dost triumph at thy pleasure.” But Râ does not yield to
their representations; he will leave a kingdom wherein they murmur against
him, and turning towards Nû he says: “My limbs are decrepit for the first
time; I will not go to any place where I can be reached.” It was no easy
matter to find him an inaccessible retreat owing to the imperfect state in
which the universe had been left by the first effort of the demiurge. Nû
saw no other way out of the difficulty than that of setting to work to
complete the creation. Ancient tradition had imagined the separation of
earth and sky as an act of violence exercised by Shu upon Sibû and Nûît.
History presented facts after a less brutal fashion, and Shû became a
virtuous son who devoted his time and strength to upholding Nûît, that he
might thereby do his father a service. Nûît, for her part, showed herself
to be a devoted daughter whom there was no need to treat roughly in order
to teach her her duty; of herself she consented to leave her husband, and
place her beloved ancestor beyond reach. “The Majesty of Nû said: ‘Son
Shu, do as thy father Râ shall say; and thou, daughter Nûît, place him
upon thy back and hold him suspended above the earth!’ Nûît said: ‘And how
then, my father Nû?’ Thus spake Nûît, and she did that which Nû commanded
her; she changed herself into a cow, and placed the Majesty of Râ upon her
back. When those men who had not been slain came to give thanks to Râ,
behold! they found him no longer in his palace; but a cow stood there, and
they perceived him upon the back of the cow.” They found him so resolved
to depart that they did not try to turn him from his purpose, but only
desired to give him such a proof of their repentance as should assure them
of the complete pardon of their crime. “They said unto him: ‘Wait until
the morning, O Râ! our lord, and we will strike down thine enemies who
have taken counsel against thee.’ So his Majesty returned to his mansion,
descended from the cow, went in along with them, and earth was plunged
into darkness. But when there was light upon earth the next morning, the
men went forth with their bows and their arrows, and began to shoot at the
enemy. Whereupon the Majesty of this god said unto them: ‘Your sins are
remitted unto you, for sacrifice precludes the execution of the guilty.’
And this was the origin upon earth of sacrifices in which blood was shed.”
Thus it was that when on the point of separating for ever, the god and men
came to an understanding as to the terms of their future relationship. Men
offered to the god the life of those who had offended him. Human sacrifice
was in their eyes the obligatory sacrifice, the only one which could
completely atone for the wrongs committed against the godhead; man alone
was worthy to wash away with his blood the sins of men.[*] For this one
time the god accepted the expiation just as it was offered to him; then
the repugnance which he felt to killing his children overcame him, he
substituted beast for man, and decided that oxen, gazelles, birds, should
henceforth furnish the material for sacrifice.[**]
This point settled, he again mounted the cow, who rose, supported on her
four legs as on so many pillars; and her belly, stretched out above the
earth like a ceiling, formed the sky. He busied himself with organizing
the new world which he found on her back; he peopled it with many beings,
chose two districts in which to establish his abode, the Field of Reeds—Sokhît
Ialû—and the Field of Rest—Sokhît Hotpît—and
suspended the stars which were to give light by night. All this is related
with many plays upon words, intended, according to Oriental custom, as
explanations of the names which the legend assigned to the different
regions of heaven. At sight of a plain whose situation pleased him, he
cried: “The Field rests in the distance!”—and that was the origin of
the Field of Rest. He added: “There will I gather plants!”—and from
this the Field of Reeds took its name. While he gave himself up to this
philological pastime, Nûît, suddenly transported to unaccustomed heights,
grew frightened, and cried for help: “For pity’s sake give me supports to
sustain me!” This was the origin of the support-gods. They came and
stationed themselves by each of her four legs, steadying these with their
hands, and keeping constant watch over them. As this was not enough to
reassure the good beast, “Râ said, ‘My son Shû, place thyself beneath my
daughter Nûît, and keep watch on both sides over the supports, who live in
the twilight; hold thou her up above thy head, and be her guardian!'” Shû
obeyed; Nûît composed herself, and the world, now furnished with the sky
which it had hitherto lacked, assumed its present symmetrical form.
Shû and Sibû succeeded Râ, but did not acquire so lasting a popularity as
their great ancestor. Nevertheless they had their annals, fragments of
which have come down to us. Their power also extended over the whole
universe: “The Majesty of Shû was the excellent king of the sky, of the
earth, of Hades, of the water, of the winds, of the inundation, of the two
chains of mountains, of the sea, governing with a true voice according to
the precepts of his father Râ-Harmakhis.”
Only “the children of the serpent Apôpi, the impious ones who haunt the
solitary places and the deserts,” disavowed his authority. Like the
Bedawîn of later times, they suddenly streamed in by the isthmus routes,
went up into Egypt under cover of night, slew and pillaged, and then
hastily returned to their fastnesses with the booty which they had carried
off. From sea to sea Ka had fortified the eastern frontier against them.
He had surrounded the principal cities with walls, embellished them with
temples, and placed within them those mysterious talismans more powerful
for defence than a garrison of men. Thus Aît-nobsû, near the mouth of the
Wady-Tûmilât, possessed one of the rods of the Sun-god, also the living
uraeus of his crown whose breath consumes all that it touches, and,
finally, a lock of his hair, which, being cast into the waters of a lake,
was changed into a hawk-headed crocodile to tear the invader in pieces.[*]
The employment of these talismans was dangerous to those unaccustomed to
use them, even to the gods themselves. Scarcely was Sibû enthroned as the
successor of Shu, who, tired of reigning, had reascended into heaven in a
nine days’ tempest, before he began his inspection of the eastern marches,
and caused the box in which was kept the uræus of Râ to be opened. “As
soon as the living viper had breathed its breath against the Majesty of
Sibû there was a great disaster—great indeed, for those who were in
the train of the god perished, and his Majesty himself was burned in that
day. When his Majesty had fled to the north of Aît-nobsû, pursued by the
fire of this magic urasus, behold! when he came to the fields of henna,
the pain of his burn was not yet assuaged, and the gods who were behind
him said unto him: ‘O Sire! let them take the lock of Râ which is there,
when thy Majesty shall go to see it and its mystery, and his Majesty shall
be healed as soon as it shall be placed upon thee.’ So the Majesty of Sibû
caused the magic lock to be brought to Piarît,—the lock for which
was made that great reliquary of hard stone which is hidden in the secret
place of Piarît, in the district of the divine lock of the Lord Râ,—and
behold! this fire departed from the members of the Majesty of Sibû. And
many years afterwards, when this lock, which had thus belonged to Sibû,
was brought back to Piarît in Aît-nobsû, and cast into the great lake of
Piarît whose name is Aît-tostesû, the dwelling of waves, that it
might be purified, behold! this lock became a crocodile: it flew to the
water and became Sobkû, the divine crocodile of Aît-nobsû.” In this way
the gods of the solar dynasty from generation to generation multiplied
talismans and enriched the sanctuaries of Egypt with relics.
Were there ever duller legends and a more senile phantasy! They did not
spring spontaneously from the lips of the people, but were composed at
leisure by priests desirous of enhancing the antiquity of their cult, and
augmenting the veneration of its adherents in order to increase its
importance. Each city wished it to be understood that its feudal sanctuary
was founded upon the very day of creation, that its privileges had been
extended or confirmed during the course of the first divine dynasty, and
that these pretensions were supported by the presence of objects in its
treasury which had belonged to the oldest of the king-gods. Such was the
origin of tales in which the personage of the beneficent Pharaoh is often
depicted in ridiculous fashion. Did we possess all the sacred archives, we
should frequently find them quoting as authentic history more than one
document as artificial as the chronicle of Aît-nobsû. When we come to the
later members of the Ennead, there is a change in the character and in the
form of these tales. Doubtless Osiris and Sît did not escape unscathed out
of the hands of the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference
spoiled the legend concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it.
Here and there in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and
liveliness of imagination such as are never found in those of Shû and of
Sibû. This arises from the fact that the functions of these gods left them
strangers, or all but strangers, to the current affairs of the world. Shû
was the stay, Sibû the material foundation of the world; and so long as
the one bore the weight of the firmament without bending, and the other
continued to suffer the tread of human generations upon his back, the
devout took no more thought of them than they themselves took thought of
the devout. The life of Osiris, on the other hand, was intimately mingled
with that of the Egyptians, and his most trivial actions immediately
reacted upon their fortunes. They followed the movements of his waters;
they noted the turning-points in his struggles against drought; they
registered his yearly decline, yearly compensated by his aggressive
returns and his intermittent victories over Typhon; his proceedings and
his character were the subject of their minute study. If his waters almost
invariably rose upon the appointed day and extended over the black earth
of the valley, this was no mechanical function of a being to whom the
consequences of his conduct are indifferent; he acted upon reflection, and
in full consciousness of the service that he rendered. He knew that by
spreading the inundation he prevented the triumph of the desert; he was
life, he was goodness—Onnofriû—and Isis, as the partner
of his labours, became like him the type of perfect goodness. But while
Osiris developed for the better, Sit was transformed for the worse, and
increased in wickedness as his brother gained in purity and moral
elevation. In proportion as the person of Sît grew more defined, and stood
out more clearly, the evil within him contrasted more markedly with the
innate goodness of Osiris, and what had been at first an instinctive
struggle between two beings somewhat vaguely defined—the desert and
the Nile, water and drought—was changed into conscious and deadly
enmity. No longer the conflict of two elements, it was war between two
gods; one labouring to produce abundance, while the other strove to do
away with it; one being all goodness and life, while the other was evil
and death incarnate.
A very ancient legend narrates that the birth of Osiris and his brothers
took place during the five additional days at the end of the year; a
subsequent legend explained how Nûît and Sibû had contracted marriage
against the express wish of Râ, and without his knowledge. When he became
aware of it he fell into a violent rage, and cast a spell over the goddess
to prevent her giving birth to her children in any month of any year
whatever. But Thot took pity upon her, and playing at draughts with the
moon won from it in several games one seventy-second part of its fires,
out of which he made five whole days; and as these were not included in
the ordinary calendar, Nûît could then bring forth her five children, one
after another: Osiris, Haroêris, Sit, Isis, and Nephthys. Osiris was
beautiful of face, but with a dull and black complexion; his height
exceeded five and a half yards.[*]
He was born at Thebes, in the first of the additional days, and
straightway a mysterious voice announced that the lord of all—nibû-r-zarû—had
appeared. The good news was hailed with shouts of joy, followed by tears
and lamentations when it became known with what evils he was menaced.[*]
The echo reached Râ in his far-off dwelling, and his heart rejoiced,
notwithstanding the curse which he had laid upon Nûît. He commanded the
presence of his great-grandchild in Xoïs, and unhesitatingly acknowledged
him as the heir to his throne. Osiris had married his sister Isis, even,
so it was said, while both of them were still within their mother’s
womb;[**] and when he became king he made her queen regent and the partner
of all his undertakings.
The Egyptians were as yet but half civilized; they were cannibals, and
though occasionally they lived upon the fruits of the earth, they did not
know how to cultivate them. Osiris taught them the art of making
agricultural implements—the plough and the hoe,—field labour,
the rotation of crops, the harvesting of wheat and barley,[*] and vine
culture.
Isis weaned them from cannibalism, healed their diseases by means of
medicine or of magic, united women to men in legitimate marriage, and
showed them how to grind grain between two flat stones and to prepare
bread for the household. She invented the loom with the help of her sister
Nephthys, and was the first to weave and bleach linen. There was no
worship of the gods before Osiris established it, appointed the offerings,
regulated the order of ceremonies, and composed the texts and melodies of
the liturgies. He built cities, among them Thebes itself, according to
some; though others declared that he was born there. As he had been the
model of a just and pacific king, so did he desire to be that of a
victorious conqueror of nations; and, placing the regency in the hands of
Isis, he went forth to war against Asia, accompanied by Thot the ibis and
the jackal Anubis. He made little or no use of force and arms, but he
attacked men by gentleness and persuasion, softened them with songs in
which voices were accompanied by instruments, and taught them also the
arts which he had made known to the Egyptians. No country escaped his
beneficent action, and he did not return to the banks of the Nile until he
had traversed and civilized the world from one horizon to the other.
Sît-Typhon was red-haired and white-skinned, of violent, gloomy, and
jealous temper.[*] Secretly he aspired to the crown, and nothing but the
vigilance of Isis had kept him from rebellion during the absence of his
brother. The rejoicings which celebrated the king’s return to Memphis
provided Sit with his opportunity for seizing the throne.
He invited Osiris to a banquet along with seventy-two officers whose
support he had ensured, made a wooden chest of cunning workmanship and
ordered that it should be brought in to him, in the midst of the feast. As
all admired its beauty, he sportively promised to present it to any one
among the guests whom it should exactly fit. All of them tried it, one
after another, and all unsuccessfully; but when Osiris lay down within it,
immediately the conspirators shut to the lid, nailed it firmly down,
soldered it together with melted lead, and then threw it into the Tanitic
branch of the Nile, which carried it to the sea. The news of the crime
spread terror on all sides. The gods friendly to Osiris feared the fate of
their master, and hid themselves within the bodies of animals to escape
the malignity of the new king. Isis cut off her hair, rent her garments,
and set out in search of the chest. She found it aground near the mouth of
the river[*] under the shadow of a gigantic acacia, deposited it in a
secluded place where no one ever came, and then took refuge in Bûto, her
own domain and her native city, whose marshes protected her from the
designs of Typhon even as in historic times they protected more than one
Pharaoh from the attacks of his enemies. There she gave birth to the young
Horus, nursed and reared him in secret among the reeds, far from the
machinations of the wicked one.[**]
But it happened that Sît, when hunting by moonlight, caught sight of the
chest, opened it, and recognizing the corpse, cut it up into fourteen
pieces, which he scattered abroad at random. Once more Isis set forth on
her woeful pilgrimage. She recovered all the parts of the body excepting
one only, which the oxyrhynchus had greedily devoured;[*] and with the
help of her sister Nephthys, her son Horus, Anubis, and Thot, she joined
together and embalmed them, and made of this collection of his remains an
imperishable mummy, capable of sustaining for ever the soul of a god. On
his coming of age, Horus called together all that were left of the loyal
Egyptians and formed them into an army.[**]
His “Followers”—Shosûû Horû—defeated the “Accomplices
of Sît”—Samiu Sît—who were now driven in their turn to
transform themselves into gazelles, crocodiles and serpents,—animals
which were henceforth regarded as unclean and Typhonian. For three days
the two chiefs had fought together under the forms of men and of
hippopotami, when Isis, apprehensive as to the issue of the duel,
determined to bring it to an end. “Lo! she caused chains to descend upon
them, and made them to drop upon Horus. Thereupon Horus prayed aloud,
saying: ‘I am thy son Horus!’ Then Isis spake unto the fetters, saying;
‘Break, and unloose yourselves from my son Horus!’ She made other fetters
to descend, and let them fall upon her brother Sit. Forthwith he lifted up
his voice and cried out in pain, and she spake unto the fetters and said
unto them: ‘Break!’ Yea, when Sît prayed unto her many times, saying:
‘Wilt thou not have pity upon the brother of thy son’s mother?’ then her
heart was filled with compassion, and she cried to the fetters: ‘Break,
for he is my eldest brother!’ and the fetters unloosed themselves from
him, and the two foes again stood face to face like two men who will not
come to terms.” Horus, furious at seeing his mother deprive him of his
prey, turned upon her like a panther of the South. She fled before him on
that day when battle was waged with Sît the Violent, and he cut off her
head. But Thot transformed her by his enchantments and made a cow’s head
for her, thereby identifying her with her companion, Hâthor.
The war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at
length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. According to a
very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a neighbouring
city, Thot, lord of Hermopolis Parva, as the arbitrator of their quarrel.
Sît was the first to plead, and he maintained that Horus was not the son
of Osiris, but a bastard, whom Isis haô conceived after the death of her
husband. Horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy of his birth; and
Thot condemned Sît to restore, according to some, the whole of the
inheritance which he had wrongly retained,—according to others, part
of it only. The gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to the arbitrator
the title of Ûapirahûhûi: he who judges between two parties. A
legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the worship of Osiris
had spread over all Egypt, affirmed that the case had remained within the
jurisdiction of Sibû, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the
other party. Sibû, however, had pronounced the same judgment as Thot, and
divided the kingdom into halves—poshûi; Sît retained the
valley from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the first cataract, while
Horus entered into possession of the Delta. Egypt henceforth consisted of
two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the North, recognized Horus,
the son of Isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the South,
placed itself under the protection of Sît Nûbîti, the god of Ombos.[*]
The moiety of Horus, added to that of Sît, formed the kingdom which Sibû
had inherited; but his children failed to keep it together, though it was
afterwards reunited under Pharaohs of human race.
The three gods who preceded Osiris upon the throne had ceased to reign,
but not to live. Râ had taken refuge in heaven, disgusted with his own
creatures; Shû had disappeared in the midst of a tempest; and Sibû had
quietly retired within his palace when the time of his sojourning upon
earth had been fulfilled. Not that there was no death, for death, too,
together with all other things and beings, had come into existence in the
beginning, but while cruelly persecuting both man and beast, had for a
while respected the gods. Osiris was the first among them to be struck
down, and hence to require funeral rites. He also was the first for whom
family piety sought to provide a happy life beyond the tomb. Though he was
king of the living and the dead at Mendes by virtue of the rights of all
the feudal gods in their own principalities, his sovereignty after death
exempted him no more than the meanest of his subjects from that painful
torpor into which all mortals fell on breathing their last. But popular
imagination could not resign itself to his remaining in that miserable
state for ever. What would it have profited him to have Isis the great
Sorceress for his wife, the wise Horus for his son, two master-magicians—Thot
the Ibis and the jackal Anubis—for his servants, if their skill had
not availed to ensure him a less gloomy and less lamentable after-life
than that of men. Anubis had long before invented the art of mummifying,
and his mysterious science had secured the everlasting existence of the
flesh; but at what a price!
For the breathing, warm, fresh-coloured body, spontaneous in movement and
function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a
sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which
that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and
whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and
almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus applied
themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and
constraint entailed by the more primitive embalmment.
They did not dispense with the manipulations instituted by Anubis, but
endued them with new power by means of magic. They inscribed the principal
bandages with protective figures and formulas; they decorated the body
with various amulets of specific efficacy for its different parts; they
drew numerous scenes of earthly existence and of the life beyond the tomb
upon the boards of the coffin and upon the walls of the sepulchral
chamber. When the body had been made imperishable, they sought to restore
one by one all the faculties of which their previous operations had
deprived it. The mummy was set up at the entrance to the vault; the statue
representing the living person was placed beside it, and semblance was
made of opening the mouth, eyes, and ears, of loosing the arms and legs,
of restoring breath to the throat and movement to the heart. The
incantations by which these acts were severally accompanied were so
powerful that the god spoke and ate, lived and heard, and could use his
limbs as freely as though he had never been steeped in the bath of the
embalmer. He might have returned to his place among men, and various
legends prove that he did occasionally appear to his faithful adherents.
But, as his ancestors before him, he preferred to leave their towns and
withdraw into his own domain. The cemeteries of the inhabitants of Busiris
and of Mendes were called Sokhît Ialû, the Meadow of Reeds, and Sokhît
Hotpû, the Meadow of Best. They were secluded amid the marshes, in
small archipelagoes of sandy islets where the dead bodies, piled together,
rested in safety from the inundations. This was the first kingdom of the
dead Osiris, but it was soon placed elsewhere, as the nature of the
surrounding districts and the geography of the adjacent countries became
better known; at first perhaps on the Phoenician shore beyond the sea, and
then in the sky, in the Milky Way, between the North and the East, but
nearer to the North than to the East. This kingdom was not gloomy and
mournful like that of the other dead gods, Sokaris or Khontamentît, but
was lighted by sun and moon; the heat of the day was tempered by the
steady breath of the north wind, and its crops grew and throve abundantly.
Thick walls served as fortifications against the attacks of Sit and evil
genii; a palace like that of the Pharaohs stood in the midst of delightful
gardens; and there, among his own people, Osiris led a tranquil existence,
enjoying in succession all the pleasures of earthly life without any of
its pains.
The goodness which had gained him the title of Onnophris while he
sojourned here below, inspired him with the desire and suggested the means
of opening the gates of his paradise to the souls of his former subjects.
Souls did not enter into it unexamined, nor without trial. Each of them
had first to prove that during its earthly life it had belonged to a
friend, or, as the Egyptian texts have it, to a vassal of Osiris—amakhû
khir Osiri—one of those who had served Horus in his exile and
had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the Typhonian wars.
These were those followers of Horus—Shosûû Horû—so
often referred to in the literature of historic times.[*]
Horus, their master, having loaded them with favours during life, decided
to extend to them after death the same privileges which he had conferred
upon his father. He convoked around the corpse the gods who had worked
with him at the embalmment of Osiris: Anubis and Thot, Isis and Nephthys,
and his four children—Hâpi, Qabhsonûf, Amsît, and Tiûmaûtf—to
whom he had entrusted the charge of the heart and viscera. They all
performed their functions exactly as before, repeated the same ceremonies,
and recited the same formulas at the same stages of the operations, and so
effectively that the dead man became a real Osiris under their hands,
having a true voice, and henceforth combining the name of the god with his
own.
He had been Sakhomka or Menkaûrî; he became the Osiris Sakhomka, or the
Osiris Menkaûrî, true of voice. Horus and his companions then celebrated
the rites consecrated to the “Opening of the Mouth and the Eyes:” animated
the statue of the deceased, and placed the mummy in the tomb, where Anubis
received it in his arms. Recalled to life and movement, the double
reassumed, one by one, all the functions of being, came and went and took
part in the ceremonies of the worship which was rendered to him in his
tomb. There he might be seen accepting the homage of his kindred, and
clasping to his breast his soul under the form of a great human-headed
bird with features the counterpart of his own. After being equipped with
the formulas and amulets wherewith his prototype, Osiris, had been
furnished, he set forth to seek the “Field of Reeds.” The way was long and
arduous, strewn with perils to which he must have succumbed at the very
first stages had he not been carefully warned beforehand and armed against
them.
A papyrus placed with the mummy in its coffin contained the needful
topo-graphical directions and passwords, in order that he might neither
stray nor perish by the way. The wiser Egyptians copied out the principal
chapters for themselves, or learned them by heart while yet in life, in
order to be prepared for the life beyond. Those who had not taken this
precaution studied after death the copy with which they were provided; and
since few Egyptians could read, a priest, or relative of the deceased,
preferably his son, recited the prayers in the mummy’s ear, that he might
learn them before he was carried away to the cemetery. If the double
obeyed the prescriptions of the “Book of the Dead” to the letter, he
reached his goal without fail.[*] On leaving the tomb he turned his back
on the valley, and staff in hand climbed the hills which bounded it on the
west, plunging boldly into the desert, where some bird, or even a kindly
insect such as a praying mantis, a grasshopper, or a butterfly, served as
his guide. Soon he came to one of those sycamores which grow in the sand
far away from the Nile, and are regarded as magic trees by the fellahîn.
Out of the foliage a goddess—Nûît, ïïâthor, or Nît—half
emerged, and offered him a dish of fruit, loaves of bread, and a jar of
water.
By accepting these gifts he became the guest of the goddess, and could
never more retrace his steps[*] without special permission. Beyond the
sycamore were lands of terror, infested by serpents and ferocious beasts,
furrowed by torrents of boiling water, intersected by ponds and marshes
where gigantic monkeys cast their nets.
Ignorant souls, or those ill prepared for the struggle, had no easy work
before them when they imprudently entered upon it. Those who were not
overcome by hunger and thirst at the outset were bitten by a urasus, or
horned viper, hidden with evil intent below the sand, and perished in
convulsions from the poison; or crocodiles seized as many of them as they
could lay hold of at the fords of rivers; or cynocephali netted and
devoured them indiscriminately along with the fish into which the
partisans of Typhon were transformed. They came safe and sound out of one
peril only to fall into another, and infallibly succumbed before they were
half through their journey. But, on the other hand, the double who was
equipped and instructed, and armed with the true voice, confronted each
foe with the phylactery and the incantation by which his enemy was held in
check. As soon as he caught sight of one of them he recited the
appropriate chapter from his book, he loudly proclaimed himself Râ, Tûmû,
Horus, or Khopri—that god whose name and attributes were best fitted
to repel the immediate danger—and flames withdrew at his voice,
monsters fled or sank paralysed, the most cruel of genii drew in their
claws and lowered their arms before him. He compelled crocodiles to turn
away their heads; he transfixed serpents with his lance; he supplied
himself at pleasure with all the provisions that he needed, and gradually
ascended the mountains which surround the world, sometimes alone, and
fighting his way step by step, sometimes escorted by beneficent
divinities. Halfway up the slope was the good cow Hâfchor, the lady of the
West, in meadows of tall plants where every evening she received the sun
at his setting. If the dead man knew how to ask it according to the
prescribed rite, she would take him upon her shoulders[*] and carry him
across the accursed countries at full speed.
Having reached the North, he paused at the edge of an immense lake, the
lake of Kha, and saw in the far distance the outline of the Islands of the
Blest. One tradition, so old as to have been almost forgotten in
Rames-side times, told how Thot the ibis there awaited him, and bore him
away on his wings;[***] another, no less ancient but of more lasting
popularity, declared that a ferry-boat plied regularly between the solid
earth and the shores of paradise.
The god who directed it questioned the dead, and the bark itself proceeded
to examine them before they were admitted on board; for it was a magic
bark. “Tell me my name,” cried the mast; and the travellers replied: “He
who guides the great goddess on her way is thy name.” “Tell me my name,”
repeated the braces. “The Spine of the Jackal Ûapûaîtû is thy name.” “Tell
me my name,” proceeded the mast-head.
“The Neck of Amsît is thy name.” “Tell me my name,” asked the sail. “Nûît
is thy name.” Each part of the hull and of the rigging spoke in turn and
questioned the applicant regarding its name, this being generally a mystic
phrase by which it was identified either with some divinity as a whole, or
else with some part of his body.
When the double had established his right of passage by the correctness of
his answers, the bark consented to receive him and to carry him to the
further shore. There he was met by the gods and goddesses of the court of
Osiris: by Anubis, by Hathor the lady of the cemetery, by Nît, by the two
Màîts who preside over justice and truth, and by the four children of
Horus stiff-sheathed in their mummy wrappings. They formed as it were a
guard of honour to introduce him and his winged guide into an immense
hall, the ceiling of which rested on light graceful columns of painted
wood.
At the further end of the hall Osiris was seated in mysterious twilight
within a shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red
necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face
surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender
hands grasping flail and crook, the emblems of his power.
Behind him stood Isis and Nephthys watching over him with uplifted hands,
bare bosoms, and bodies straitly cased in linen. Forty-two jurors who had
died and been restored to life like their lord, and who had been chosen,
one from each of those cities of Egypt which recognized his authority,
squatted right and left, and motionless, clothed in the wrappings of the
dead, silently waited until they were addressed. The soul first advanced
to the foot of the throne, carrying on its outstretched hands the image of
its heart or of its eyes, agents and accomplices of its sins and virtues.
It humbly “smelt the earth,” then arose, and with uplifted hands recited
its profession of faith. “Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee,
great god, lord of Truth and Justice! I have come before thee, my master;
I have been brought to see thy beauties. For I know thee, I know thy name,
I know the names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in the Hall of
the Two Truths, living on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with
their blood, in that day when account is rendered before Onnophris, the
true of voice. Thy name which is thine is ‘the god whose two twins are the
ladies of the two Truths;’ and I, I know you, ye lords of the two Truths,
I bring unto you Truth, I have destroyed sins for you. I have not
committed iniquity against men! I have not oppressed the poor! I have not
made defalcations in the necropolis! I have not laid labour upon any free
man beyond that which he wrought for himself! I have not transgressed, I
have not been weak, I have not defaulted, I have not committed that which
is an abomination to the gods. I have not caused the slave to be
ill-treated of his master! I have not starved any man, I have not made any
to weep, I have not assassinated any man, I have not caused any man to be
treacherously assassinated, and I have not committed treason against any!
I have not in aught diminished the supplies of temples! I have not spoiled
the shrewbread of the gods! I have not taken away the loaves and the
wrappings of the dead! I have done no carnal act within the sacred
enclosure of the temple! I have not blasphemed! I have in nought curtailed
the sacred revenues! I have not pulled down the scale of the balance! I
have not falsified the beam of the balance! I have not taken away the milk
from the mouths of sucklings! I have not lassoed cattle on their pastures!
I have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! I have not fished in
their ponds! I have not turned back the water in its season! I have not
cut off a water-channel in its course! I have not put out the fire in its
time! I have not defrauded the Nine Gods of the choice part of victims! I
have not ejected the oxen of the gods! I have not turned back the god at
his coming forth! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! Pure as this
Great Bonû of Heracleopolis is pure!… There is no crime against me in
this land of the Double Truth! Since I know the names of the gods who are
with thee in the Hall of the Double Truth, save thou me from them!”
He then turned towards the jury and pleaded his cause before them. They
had been severally appointed for the cognizance of particular sins, and
the dead man took each of them by name to witness that he was innocent of
the sin which that one recorded. His plea ended, he returned to the
supreme judge, and repeated, under what is sometimes a highly mystic form,
the ideas which he had already advanced in the first part of his address.
“Hail unto you, ye gods who are in the Great Hall of the Double Truth, who
have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on Truth in Aûnû, and feed
your hearts upon it before the Lord God who dwelleth in his solar disc!
Deliver me from the Typhon who feedeth on entrails, O chiefs! in this hour
of supreme judgment;—grant that the deceased may come unto you, he
who hath not sinned, who hath neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed
any crime, who hath not borne false witness, who hath done nought against
himself, but who liveth on truth, who feedeth on truth. He hath spread joy
on all sides; men speak of that which he hath done, and the gods rejoice
in it. He hath reconciled the god to him by his love; he hath given bread
to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he hath given
a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods,
sepulchral meals unto the manes. Deliver him from himself, speak not
against him before the Lord of the Dead, for his mouth is pure, and his
two hands are pure!” In the middle of the Hall, however, his acts were
being weighed by the assessors. Like all objects belonging to the gods,
the balance is magic, and the genius which animates it sometimes shows its
fine and delicate little human head on the top of the upright stand which
forms its body. Everything about the balance recalls its superhuman
origin: a cynocephalus, emblematic of Thot, sits perched on the upright
and watches the beam; the cords which suspend the scales are made of
alternate cruces ansato and tats. Truth squats upon one of the
scales; Thot, ibis-headed, places the heart on the other, and always
merciful, bears upon the side of Truth that judgment may be favourably
inclined. He affirms that the heart is light of offence, inscribes the
result of the proceeding upon a wooden tablet, and pronounces the verdict
aloud. “Thus saith Thot, lord of divine discourse, scribe of the Great
Ennead, to his father Osiris, lord of eternity, ‘Behold the deceased in
this Hall of the Double Truth, his heart hath been weighed in the balance
in the presence of the great genii, the lords of Hades, and been found
true. No trace of earthly impurity hath been found in his heart. Now that
he leaveth the tribunal true of voice, his heart is restored to him, as
well as his eyes and the material cover of his heart, to be put back in
their places each in its own time, his soul in heaven, his heart in the
other world, as is the custom of the “Followers of Horus.” Henceforth let
his body lie in the hands of Anubis, who presideth over the tombs; let him
receive offerings at the cemetery in the presence of Onno-phris; let him
be as one of those favourites who follow thee; let his soul abide where it
will in the necropolis of his city, he whose voice is true before the
Great Ennead.'” In this “Negative Confession,” which the worshippers of
Osiris taught to their dead, all is not equally admirable. The material
interests of the temple were too prominent, and the crime of killing a
sacred goose or stealing a loaf from the bread offerings was considered as
abominable as calumny or murder. But although it contains traces of
priestly cupidity, yet how many of its precepts are untarnished in their
purity by any selfish ulterior motive! In it is all our morality in germ,
and with refinements of delicacy often lacking among peoples of later and
more advanced civilizations. The god does not confine his favour to the
prosperous and the powerful of this world; he bestows it also upon the
poor. His will is that they be fed and clothed, and exempted from tasks
beyond their strength; that they be not oppressed, and that unnecessary
tears be spared them. If this does not amount to the love of our neighbour
as our religions preach it, at least it represents the careful solicitude
due from a good lord to his vassals. His pity extends to slaves; not only
does he command that no one should ill-treat them himself, but he forbids
that their masters should be led to ill-treat them. This profession of
faith, one of the noblest bequeathed us by the old world, is of very
ancient origin. It may be read in scattered fragments upon the monuments
of the first dynasties, and the way in which its ideas are treated by the
compilers of these inscriptions proves that it was not then regarded as
new, but as a text so old and so well known that its formulas were current
in all mouths, and had their prescribed places in epitaphs.[*] Was it
composed in Mendes, the god’s own home, or in Heliopolis, when the
theologians of that city appropriated the god of Mendes and incorporated
him in their Ennead? In conception it certainly belongs to the Osirian
priesthood, but it can only have been diffused over the whole of Egypt
after the general adoption of the Heliopolitan Ennead throughout the
cities.
As soon as he was judged, the dead man entered into the possession of his
rights as a pure soul. On high he received from the Universal Lord all
that kings and princes here below bestowed upon their followers—rations
of food,[**] and a house, gardens, and fields to be held subject to the
usual conditions of tenure in Egypt, i.e. taxation, military service, and
the corvée.
If the island was attacked by the partisans of Sit, the Osirian doubles
hastened in a body to repulse them, and fought bravely in its defence. Of
the revenues sent to him by his kindred on certain days and by means of
sacrifices, each gave tithes to the heavenly storehouses. Yet this was but
the least part of the burdens laid upon him by the laws of the country,
which did not suffer him to become enervated by idleness, but obliged him
to labour as in the days when he still dwelt in Egypt.
He looked after the maintenance of canals and dykes, he tilled the ground,
he sowed, he reaped, he garnered the grain for his lord and for himself.
Yet to those upon whom they were incumbent, these posthumous obligations,
the sequel and continuation of feudal service, at length seemed too heavy,
and theologians exercised their ingenuity to find means of lightening the
burden. They authorized the manes to look to their servants for the
discharge of all manual labour which they ought to have performed
themselves. Barely did a dead man, no matter how poor, arrive
unaccompanied at the eternal cities; he brought with him a following
proportionate to his rank and fortune upon earth.
At first they were real doubles, those of slaves or vassals killed at the
tomb, and who had departed along with the double of the master to serve
him beyond the grave as they had served him here. A number of statues and
images, magically endued with activity and intelligence, was afterwards
substituted for this retinue of victims. Originally of so large a size
that only the rich or noble could afford them, they were reduced little by
little to the height of a few inches. Some were carved out of alabaster,
granite, diorite, fine limestone, or moulded out of fine clay and
delicately modelled; others had scarcely any human resemblance. They were
endowed with life by means of a formula recited over them at the time of
their manufacture, and afterwards traced upon their legs. All were
possessed of the same faculties. When the god who called the Osirians to
the corvée pronounced the name of the dead man to whom the figures
belonged, they arose and answered for him; hence their designation of
“Respondents “—Ûashbîti. Equipped for agricultural labour,
each grasping a hoe and carrying a seed-bag on his shoulder, they set out
to work in their appointed places, contributing the required number of
days of forced labour.
Up to a certain point they thus compensated for those inequalities of
condition which death itself did not efface among the vassals of Osiris;
for the figures were sold so cheaply that even the poorest could always
afford some for themselves, or bestow a few upon their relations; and in
the Islands of the Blest, fellah, artisan, and slave were indebted to the
Uashbîti for release from their old routine of labour and unending toil.
While the little peasants of stone or glazed ware dutifully toiled and
tilled and sowed, their masters were enjoying all the delights of the
Egyptian paradise in perfect idleness. They sat at ease by the water-side,
inhaling the fresh north breeze, under the shadow of trees which were
always green. They fished with lines among the lotus-plants; they embarked
in their boats, and were towed along by their servants, or they would
sometimes deign to paddle themselves slowly about the canals.
They went fowling among the reed-beds, or retired within their painted
pavilions to read tales, to play at draughts, to return to their wives who
were for ever young and beautiful.[**]
It was but an ameliorated earthly life, divested of all suffering under
the rule and by the favour of the true-voiced Onnophris. The feudal gods
promptly adopted this new mode of life.
Each of their dead bodies, mummified, and afterwards reanimated in
accordance with the Osirian myth, became an Osiris as did that of any
ordinary person. Some carried the assimilation so far as to absorb the god
of Mendes, or to be absorbed in him. At Memphis Phtah-Sokaris became
Phtah-Sokar-Osiris, and at Thinis Khontamentîfc became Osiris
Khontamentît. The sun-god lent himself to this process with comparative
ease because his life is more like a man’s life, and hence also more like
that of Osiris, which is the counterpart of a man’s life.
Born in the morning, he ages as the day declines, and gently passes away
at evening. From the time of his entering the sky to that of his leaving
it, he reigns above as he reigned here below in the beginning; but when he
has left the sky and sinks into Hades, he becomes as one of the dead, and
is, as they are, subjected to Osirian embalmment. The same dangers that
menace their human souls threaten his soul also; and when he has
vanquished them, not in his own strength, but by the power of amulets and
magical formulas, he enters into the fields of lalû, and ought to dwell
there for ever under the rule of Onuophris. He did nothing of the kind,
however, for daily the sun was to be seen reappearing in the east twelve
hours after it had sunk into the darkness of the west. Was it a new orb
each time, or did the same sun shine every day? In either case the result
was precisely the same; the god came forth from death and re-entered into
life. Having identified the course of the sun-god with that of man, and Râ
with Osiris for a first day and a first night, it was hard not to push the
matter further, and identify them for all succeeding days and nights,
affirming that man and Osiris might, if they so wished, be born again in
the morning, as Râ was, and together with him. If the Egyptians had found
the prospect of quitting the darkness of the tomb for the bright meadows
of Ialû a sensible alleviation of their lot, with what joy must they have
been filled by the conception which allowed them to substitute the whole
realm of the sun for a little archipelago in an out-of-the-way corner of
the universe. Their first consideration was to obtain entrance into the
divine bark, and this was the object of all the various practices and
prayers, whose text, together with that which already contained the
Osirian formulas, ensured the unfailing protection of Râ to their
possessor. The soul desirous of making use of them went straight from his
tomb to the very spot where the god left earth to descend into Hades. This
was somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of Abydos, and was reached
through a narrow gorge or “cleft” in the Libyan range, whose “mouth”
opened in front of the temple of Osiris Khontamentît, a little to the
north-west of the city. The soul was supposed to be carried thither by a
small flotilla of boats, manned by figures representing friends or
priests, and laden with food, furniture, and statues. This flotilla was
placed within the vault on the day of the funeral, and was set in motion
by means of incantations recited over it during one of the first nights of
the year, at the annual feast of the dead. The bird or insect which had
previously served as guide to the soul upon its journey now took the helm
to show the fleet the right way, and under this command the boats left
Abydos and mysteriously passed through the “cleft” into that western sea
which is inaccessible to the living, there to await the daily coming of
the dying sun-god.
As soon as his bark appeared at the last bend of the celestial Nile, the
cynocephali, who guarded the entrance into night, began to dance and
gesticulate upon the banks as they intoned their accustomed hymn. The gods
of Abydos mingled their shouts of joy with the chant of the sacred
baboons, the bark lingered for a moment upon the frontiers of day, and
initiated souls seized the occasion to secure their recognition and their
reception on board of it.[*] Once admitted, they took their share in the
management of the boat, and in the battles with hostile deities; but they
were not all endowed with the courage or equipment needful to withstand
the perils and terrors of the voyage. Many stopped short by the way in one
of the regions which it traversed, either in the realm of Khontamentît, or
in that of Sokaris, or in those islands where the good Osiris welcomed
them as though they had duly arrived in the ferry-boat, or upon the wing
of Thot. There they dwelt in colonies under the suzerainty of local gods,
rich, and in need of nothing, but condemned to live in darkness, excepting
for the one brief hour in which the solar bark passed through their midst,
irradiating them with beams of light.[**]
The few persevered, feeling that they had courage to accompany the sun
throughout, and these were indemnified for their sufferings by the most
brilliant fate ever dreamed of by Egyptian souls., Born anew with the
sun-god and appearing with him at the gates of the east, they were
assimilated to him, and shared his privilege of growing old and dying,
only to be ceaselessly rejuvenated and to live again with ever-renewed
splendour. They disembarked where they pleased, and returned at will into
the world. If now and then they felt a wish to revisit all that was left
of their earthly bodies, the human-headed sparrow-hawk descended the shaft
in full flight, alighted upon the funeral couch, and, with hands softly
laid upon the spot where the heart had been wont to beat, gazed upwards at
the impassive mask of the mummy.
This was but for a moment, since nothing compelled these perfect souls to
be imprisoned within the tomb like the doubles of earlier times, because
they feared the light. They “went forth by day,” and dwelt in those places
where they had lived; they walked in their gardens by their ponds of
running water; they perched like so many birds on the branches of the
trees which they had planted, or enjoyed the fresh air under the shade of
their sycamores; they ate and drank at pleasure; they travelled by hill
and dale; they embarked in the boat of Râ, and disembarked without
weariness, and without distaste for the same perpetual round.
This conception, which was developed somewhat late, brought the Egyptians
back to the point from which they had started when first they began to
speculate on the life to come.
The soul, after having left the place of its incarnation to which in the
beginning it clung, after having ascended into heaven and there sought
congenial asylum in vain, forsook all havens which it had found above, and
unhesitatingly fell back upon earth, there to lead a peaceful, free, and
happy life in the full light of day, and with the whole valley of Egypt
for a paradise.
The connection, always increasingly intimate between Osiris and Râ,
gradually brought about a blending of the previously separate myths and
beliefs concerning each. The friends and enemies of the one became the
friends and enemies of the other, and from a mixture of the original
conceptions of the two deities, arose new personalities, in which
contradictory elements were blent together, often without true fusion. The
celestial Horuses one by one were identified with Horus, son of Isis, and
their attributes were given to him, as his in the same way became theirs.
Apopi and the monsters—the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the wild
boar—who lay in wait for Râ as he sailed the heavenly ocean, became
one with Sît and his accomplices. Sit still possessed his half of Egypt,
and his primitive brotherly relation to the celestial Horus remained
unbroken, either ‘on account of their sharing one temple, as at Nûbît, or
because they were worshipped as one in two neighbouring nomes, as, for
example, at Oxyrrhynchos and at Heracleopolis Magna. The repulsion with
which the slayer of Osiris was regarded did not everywhere dissociate
these two cults: certain small districts persisted in this double worship
down to the latest times of paganism. It was, after all, a mark of
fidelity to the oldest traditions of the race, but the bulk of the
Egyptians, who had forgotten these, invented reasons taken from the
history of the divine dynasties to explain the fact. The judgment of Thot
or of Sibû had not put an end to the machinations of Sît: as soon as Horus
had left the earth, Sît resumed them, and pursued them, with varying
fortune, under the divine kings of the second Ennead. Now, in the year 363
of Harmakhis, the Typhonians reopened the campaign. Beaten at first near
Edfû, they retreated precipitately northwards, stopping to give battle
wherever their partisans predominated,—at Zatmîfc in the Theban
nome,[*] at Khaîtnûtrît to the north-east of Denderah, and at Hibonû in
the principality of the Gazelle.
Several bloody combats, which took place between Oxyrrhynchos and
Heracleopolis Magna, were the means of driving them finally out of the
Nile Valley; they rallied for the last time in the eastern provinces of
the Delta, were beaten at Zalû, and giving up all hope of success on land,
they embarked at the head of the Gulf of Suez, in order to return to the
Nubian Desert, their habitual refuge in times of distress. The sea was the
special element of Typhon, and upon it they believed themselves secure.
Horus, however, followed them, overtook them near Shas-hirît, routed them,
and on his return to Edfu, celebrated his victory by a solemn festival. By
degrees, as he made himself master of those localities which owed
allegiance to Sit, he took energetic measures to establish in them the
authority of Osiris and of the solar cycle. In all of them he built, side
by side with the sanctuary of the Typhonian divinities, a temple to
himself, in which he was enthroned under the particular form he was
obliged to assume in order to vanquish his enemies. Metamorphosed into a
hawk at the battle of Hibonû, we next see him springing on to the back of
Sit under the guise of a hippopotamus; in his shrine at Hibonû he is
represented as a hawk perching on the back of a gazelle, emblem of the
nome where the struggle took place. Near to Zalû he became incarnate as a
human-headed lion, crowned with the triple diadem, and having feet armed
with claws which cut like a knife; it was under the form, too, of a lion
that he was worshipped in the temple at Zalû. The correlation of Sit and
the celestial Horus was not, therefore, for these Egyptians of more recent
times a primitive religious fact; it was the consequence, and so to speak
the sanction, of the old hostility between the two gods.
Horus had treated his enemy in the same fashion that a victorious Pharaoh
treated the barbarians conquered by his arms: he had constructed a
fortress to keep his foe in check, and his priests formed a sort of
garrison as a precaution against the revolt of the rival priesthood and
the followers of the rival deity. In this manner the battles of the gods
were changed into human struggles, in which, more than once, Egypt was
deluged with blood. The hatred of the followers of Osiris to those of
Typhon was perpetuated with such implacability, that the nomes which had
persisted in adhering to the worship of Sit, became odious to the rest of
the population: the image of their master on the monuments was mutilated,
their names were effaced from the geographical lists, they were assailed
with insulting epithets, and to pursue and slay their sacred animals was
reckoned a pious act. Thus originated those skirmishes which developed
into actual civil wars, and were continued down to Roman times. The
adherents of Typhon only became more confirmed in their veneration for the
accursed god; Christianity alone overcame their obstinate fidelity to
him.[*]
The history of the world for Egypt was therefore only the history of the
struggle between the adherents of Osiris and the followers of Sît; an
interminable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of the
rival parties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a
decisive victory till the end of time. The divine kings of the second and
third Ennead devoted most of the years of their earthly reign to this end;
they were portrayed under the form of the great warrior Pharaohs, who,
from the eighteenth to the twelfth century before our era, extended their
rule from the plains of the Euphrates to the marshes of Ethiopia. A few
peaceful sovereigns are met with here and there in this line of conquerors—a
few sages or legislators, of whom the most famous was styled Thot, the
doubly great, ruler of Hermopolis and of the Hermopolitan Ennead. A legend
of recent origin made him the prime minister of Horus, son of Isis; a
still more ancient tradition would identify him with the second king of
the second dynasty, the immediate successor of the divine Horuses, and
attributes to him a reign of 3226 years. He brought to the throne that
inventive spirit and that creative power which had characterized him from
the time when he was only a feudal deity. Astronomy, divination, magic,
medicine, writing, drawing—in fine, all the arts and sciences
emanated from him as from their first source. He had taught mankind the
methodical observation of the heavens and of the changes that took place
in them, the slow revolutions of the sun, the rapid phases of the moon,
the intersecting movements of the five planets, and the shapes and limits
of the constellations which each night were lit up in the sky. Most of the
latter either remained, or appeared to remain immovable, and seemed never
to pass out of the regions accessible to the human eye. Those which were
situate on the extreme margin of the firmament accomplished movements
there analogous to those of the planets.
Every year at fixed times they were seen to sink one after another below
the horizon, to disappear, and rising again after an eclipse of greater or
less duration, to regain insensibly their original positions. The
constellations were reckoned to be thirty-six in number, the thirty-six decani
to whom were attributed mysterious powers, and of whom Sothis was queen—Sothis
transformed into the star of Isis, when Orion (Sâhû), became the star of
Osiris. The nights are so clear and the atmosphere so transparent in
Egypt, that the eye can readily penetrate the depths of space, and
distinctly see points of light which would be invisible in our foggy
climate. The Egyptians did not therefore need special instruments to
ascertain the existence of a considerable number of stars which we could
not see without the help of our telescopes; they could perceive with the
naked eye stars of the fifth magnitude, and note them upon their
catalogues.[*] It entailed, it is true, a long training and uninterrupted
practice to bring their sight up to its maximum keenness; but from very
early times it was a function of the priestly colleges to found and
maintain schools of astronomy. The first observatories established on the
banks of the Nile seem to have belonged to the temples of the sun; the
high priests of Râ—who, to judge from their title, were alone worthy
to behold the sun face to face—were actively employed from the
earliest times in studying the configuration and preparing maps of the
heavens. The priests of other gods were quick to follow their example: at
the opening of the historic period, there was not a single temple, from
one end of the valley to the other, that did not possess its official
astronomers, or, as they were called, “watchers of the night.”[**]
In the evening they went up on to the high terraces above the shrine, or
on to the narrow platforms which terminated the pylons, and fixing their
eyes continuously on the celestial vault above them, followed the
movements of the constellations and carefully noted down the slightest
phenomena which they observed. A portion of the chart of the heavens, as
known to Theban Egypt between the eighteenth and twelfth centuries before
our era, has survived to the present time; parts of it were carved by the
decorators on the ceilings of temples, and especially on royal tombs. The
deceased Pharaohs were identified with Osiris in a more intimate fashion
than their subjects. They represented the god even in the most trivial
details; on earth—where, after having played the part of the
beneficent Onnophris of primitive ages, they underwent the most complete
and elaborate embalming, like Osiris of the lower world; in Hades—where
they embarked side by side with the Sun-Osiris to cross the night and to
be born again at daybreak; in heaven—where they shone with
Orion-Sâhu under the guardianship of Sothis, and, year by year, led the
procession of the stars. The maps of the firmament recalled to them, or if
necessary taught them, this part of their duties: they there saw the
planets and the decani sail past in their boats, and the
constellations follow one another in continuous succession. The lists
annexed to the charts indicated the positions occupied each month by the
principal heavenly bodies—their risings, their culminations, and
their settings. Unfortunately, the workmen employed to execute these
pictures either did not understand much about the subject in hand, or did
not trouble themselves to copy the originals exactly: they omitted many
passages, transposed others, and made endless mistakes, which made it
impossible for us to transfer accurately to a modern map the information
possessed by the ancients.
In directing their eyes to the celestial sphere, Thot had at the same time
revealed to men the art of measuring time, and the knowledge of the
future. As he was the moon-god par excellence, he watched with
jealous care over the divine eye which had been entrusted to him by Horus,
and the thirty days during which he was engaged in conducting it through
all the phases of its nocturnal life, were reckoned as a month. Twelve of
these months formed the year, a year of three hundred and sixty days,
during which the earth witnessed the gradual beginning and ending of the
circle of the seasons. The Nile rose, spread over the fields, sank again
into its channel; to the vicissitudes of the inundation succeeded the work
of cultivation; the harvest followed the seedtime: these formed three
distinct divisions of the year, each of nearly equal duration. Thot made
of them the three seasons,—that of the waters, Shaît; that of
vegetation, Pirûît; that of the harvest, Shômû—each comprising four
months, numbered one to four; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Shaît;
the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Pirûît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
months of Shômû. The twelve months completed, a new year began, whose
birth was heralded by the rising of Sothis in the early days of August.
The first month of the Egyptian year thus coincided with the eighth of
ours. Thot became its patron, and gave it his name, relegating each of the
others to a special protecting divinity; in this manner the third month of
Shaît fell to Hathor, and was called after her; the fourth of Pirûît
belonged to Ranûît or Ramûît, the lady of harvests, and derived from her
its appellation of Pharmûti. Official documents always designated the
months by the ordinal number attached to them in each season, but the
people gave them by preference the names of their tutelary deities, and
these names, transcribed into Greek, and then into Arabic, are still used
by the Christian inhabitants of Egypt, side by side with the Mussulman
appellations. One patron for each month was, however, not deemed
sufficient: each month was subdivided into three decades, over which
presided as many decani, and the days themselves were assigned to
genii appointed to protect them. A number of festivals were set apart at
irregular intervals during the course of the year: festivals for the new
year, festivals for the beginning of the seasons, months and decades,
festivals for the dead, for the supreme gods, and for local divinities.
Every act of civil life was so closely allied to the religious life, that
it could not be performed without a sacrifice or a festival. A festival
celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another the opening of the canals, a
third the reaping of the first sheaf, or the carrying of the grain; a crop
gathered or stored without a festival to implore the blessing of the gods,
would have been an act of sacrilege and fraught with disaster. The first
year of three hundred and sixty days, regulated by the revolutions of the
moon, did not long meet the needs of the Egyptian people; it did not
correspond with the length of the solar year, for it fell short of it by
five and a quarter days, and this deficit, accumulating from twelvemonth
to twelvemonth, caused such a serious difference between the calendar
reckoning and the natural seasons, that it soon had to be corrected. They
intercalated, therefore, after the twelfth month of each year and before
the first day of the ensuing year, five epagomenal days, which they termed
the “five days over and above the year.”[*]
The legend of Osiris relates that Thot created them in order to permit
Nûît to give birth to all her children. These days constituted, at the end
of the “great year,” a “little month,” which considerably lessened the
difference between the solar and lunar computation, but did not entirely
do away with it, and the six hours and a few minutes of which the
Egyptians had not taken count gradually became the source of fresh
perplexities. They at length amounted to a whole day, which needed to be
added every four years to the regular three hundred and sixty days, a fact
which was unfortunately overlooked. The difficulty, at first only slight,
which this caused in public life, increased with time, and ended by
disturbing the harmony between the order of the calendar and that of
natural phenomena: at the end of a hundred and twenty years, the legal
year had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the 1st of Thot
anticipated the heliacal rising of Sothis by thirty days, instead of
coinciding with it as it ought. The astronomers of the Græco-Roman period,
after a retrospective examination of all the past history of their
country, discovered a very ingenious theory for obviating this unfortunate
discrepancy. If the omission of six hours annually entailed the loss of
one day every four years, the time would come, after three hundred and
sixty-five times four years, when the deficit would amount to an entire
year, and when, in consequence, fourteen hundred and sixty whole years
would exactly equal fourteen hundred and sixty-one incomplete years. The
agreement of the two years, which had been disturbed by the force of
circumstances, was re-established of itself after rather more than
fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the civil year became
identical with the beginning of the astronomical year, and this again
coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and therefore with the
official date of the inundation. To the Egyptians of Pharaonic times, this
simple and eminently practical method was unknown: by means of it hundreds
of generations, who suffered endless troubles from the recurring
difference between an uncertain and a fixed year, might have consoled
themselves with the satisfaction of knowing that a day would come when one
of their descendants would, for once in his life, see both years coincide
with mathematical accuracy, and the seasons appear at their normal times.
The Egyptian year might be compared to a watch which loses a definite
number of minutes daily. The owner does not take the trouble to calculate
a cycle in which the total of minutes lost will bring the watch round to
the correct time: he bears with the irregularity as long as his affairs do
not suffer by it; but when it causes him inconvenience, he alters the
hands to the right hour, and repeats this operation each time he finds it
necessary, without being guided by a fixed rule. In like manner the
Egyptian year fell into hopeless confusion with regard to the seasons, the
discrepancy continually increasing, until the difference became so great,
that the king or the priests had to adjust the two by a process similar to
that employed in the case of the watch.
The days, moreover, had each their special virtues, which it was necessary
for man to know if he wished to profit by the advantages, or to escape the
perils which they possessed for him. There was not one among them that did
not recall some incident of the divine wars, and had not witnessed a
battle between the partisans of Sit and those of Osiris or Râ; the
victories or the disasters which they had chronicled had as it were
stamped them with good or bad luck, and for that reason they remained for
ever auspicious or the reverse. It was on the 17th of Athyr that Typhon
had enticed his brother to come to him, and had murdered him in the middle
of a banquet. Every year, on this day, the tragedy that had taken place in
the earthly abode of the god seemed to be repeated afresh in the heights
of heaven. Just as at the moment of the death of Osiris, the powers of
good were at their weakest, and the sovereignty of evil everywhere
prevailed, so the whole of Nature, abandoned to the powers of darkness,
became inimical to man. Whatever he undertook on that day issued in
failure. If he went out to walk by the river-side, a crocodile would
attack him, as the crocodile sent by Sît had attacked Osiris. If he set
out on a journey, it was a last farewell which he bade to his family and
friends: death would meet him by the way. To escape this fatality, he must
shut himself up at home, and wait in inaction until the hours of danger
had passed and the sun of the ensuing day had put the evil one to
flight.[*]
It was to his interest to know these adverse influences; and who would
have known them all, had not Thot pointed them out and marked them in his
calendars? One of these, long fragments of which have come down to us,
indicated briefly the character of each day, the gods who presided over
it, the perils which accompanied their patronage, or the good fortune
which might be expected of them. The details of it are not always
intelligible to us, as we are still ignorant of many of the episodes in
the life of Osiris. The Egyptians were acquainted with the matter from
childhood, and were guided with sufficient exactitude by these
indications. The hours of the night were all inauspicious; those of the
day were divided into three “seasons” of four hours each, of which some
were lucky, while others were invariably of ill omen. “The 4th of Tybi: good,
good, good. Whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate.
Whosoever is born on this day, will die more advanced in years than any of
his family; he will attain to a greater age than his father. The 5th of
Tybi: inimical, inimical, inimical. This is the day on which the
goddess Sokhîfc, mistress of the double white Palace, burnt the chiefs
when they raised an insurrection, came forth, and manifested themselves.
Offerings of bread to Shû, Phtah, Thot: burn incense to Râ, and to the
gods who are his followers, to Phtah, Thot, Hû-Sû, on this day. Whatsoever
thou seest on this day will be fortunate. The 6th of Tybi: good, good,
good. Whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. The 7th of
Tybi: inimical, inimical, inimical. Do not join thyself to a woman
in the presence of the Eye of Horus. Beware of letting the fire go out
which is in thy house. The 8th of Tybi: good, good, good.
Whatsoever thou seest with thine eye this day, the Ennead of the gods will
grant to thee: the sick will recover. The 9th of Tybi: good, good, good.
The gods cry out for joy at noon this day. Bring offerings of festal cakes
and of fresh bread, which rejoice the heart of the gods and of the manes.
The 10th of Tybi: inimical, inimical, mimical. Do not set fire to
weeds on this day: it is the day on which the god Sap-hôû set fire to the
land of Btito. The 11th of Tybi: inimical, inimical, inimical. Do
not draw nigh to any flame on this day, for Râ entered the flames to
strike all his enemies, and whosoever draws nigh to them on this day, it
shall not be well with him during his whole life. The 12th of Tybi: inimical,
inimical, inimical. See that thou beholdest not a rat on this day, nor
approachest any rat within thy house: it is the day wherein Sokhît gave
forth the decrees.” In these cases a little watchfulness or exercise of
memory sufficed to put a man on his guard against evil omens; but in many
circumstances all the vigilance in the world would not protect him, and
the fatality of the day would overtake him, without his being able to do
ought to avert it. No man can at will place the day of his birth at a
favourable time; he must accept it as it occurs, and yet it exercises a
decisive influence on the manner of his death. According as he enters the
world on the 4th, 5th, or 6th of Paophi, he either dies of marsh fever, of
love, or of drunkenness. The child of the 23rd perishes by the jaws of a
crocodile: that of the 27th is bitten and dies by a serpent. On the other
hand, the fortunate man whose birthday falls on the 9th or the 29th lives
to an extreme old age, and passes away peacefully, respected by all.
Thot, having pointed out the evil to men, gave to them at the same time
the remedy. The magical arts of which he was the repository, made him
virtual master of the other gods. He knew their mystic names, their secret
weaknesses, the kind of peril they most feared, the ceremonies which
subdued them to his will, the prayers which they could not refuse to grant
under pain of misfortune or death. His wisdom, transmitted to his
worshippers, assured to them the same authority which he exercised upon
those in heaven, on earth, or in the nether world. The magicians
instructed in his school had, like the god, control of the words and
sounds which, emitted at the favourable moment with the “correct voice,”
would evoke the most formidable deities from beyond the confines of the
universe: they could bind and loose at will Osiris, Sit, Anubis, even Thot
himself; they could send them forth, and recall them, or constrain them to
work and fight for them. The extent of their power exposed the magicians
to terrible temptations; they were often led to use it to the detriment of
others, to satisfy their spite, or to gratify their grosser appetites.
Many, moreover, made a gain of their knowledge, putting it at the service
of the ignorant who would pay for it. When they were asked to plague or
get rid of an enemy, they had a hundred different ways of suddenly
surrounding him without his suspecting it: they tormented him with
deceptive or terrifying dreams; they harassed him with apparitions and
mysterious voices; they gave him as a prey to sicknesses, to wandering
spectres, who entered into him and slowly consumed him. They constrained,
even at a distance, the wills of men; they caused women to be the victims
of infatuations, to forsake those they had loved, and to love those they
had previously detested. In order to compose an irresistible charm, they
merely required a little blood from a person, a few nail-parings, some
hair, or a scrap of linen which he had worn, and which, from contact with
his skin, had become impregnated with his personality. Portions of these
were incorporated with the wax of a doll which they modelled, and clothed
to resemble their victim; thenceforward all the inflictions to which the
image was subjected were experienced by the original; he was consumed with
fever when his effigy was exposed to the fire, he was wounded when the
figure was pierced by a knife. The Pharaohs themselves had no immunity
from these spells.[*]
These machinations were wont to be met by others of the same kind, and
magic, if invoked at the right moment, was often able to annul the ills
which magic had begun. It was not indeed all-powerful against fate: the
man born on the 27th of Paophi would die of a snake-bite, whatever charm
he might use to protect himself. But if the day of his death were
foreordained, at all events the year in which it would occur was
uncertain, and it was easy for the magician to arrange that it should not
take place prematurely. A formula recited opportunely, a sentence of
prayer traced on a papyrus, a little statuette worn about the person, the
smallest amulet blessed and consecrated, put to flight the serpents who
were the instruments of fate. Those curious stelae on which we see Horus
half naked, standing on two crocodiles and brandishing in his fists
creatures which had reputed powers of fascination, were so many protecting
talismans; set up at the entrance to a room or a house, they kept off the
animals represented and brought the evil fate to nought.
Sooner or later destiny would doubtless prevail, and the moment would come
when the fated serpent, eluding all precautions, would succeed in carrying
out the sentence of death. At all events the man would have lived, perhaps
to the verge of old age, perhaps to the years of a hundred and ten, to
which the wisest of the Egyptians hoped to attain, and which period no man
born of mortal mother might exceed. If the arts of magic could thus
suspend the law of destiny, how much more efficacious were they when
combating the influences of secondary deities, the evil eye, and the
spells of man? Thot, who was the patron of sortilege, presided also over
exorcisms, and the criminal acts which some committed in his name could
have reparation made for them by others in his name. To malicious genii,
genii still stronger were opposed; to harmful amulets, those which were
protective; to destructive measures, vitalizing remedies; and this was not
even the most troublesome part of the magicians’ task. Nobody, in fact,
among those delivered by their intervention escaped unhurt from the trials
to which, he had been subjected. The possessing spirits when they quitted
their victim generally left behind them traces of their occupation, in the
brain, heart, lungs, intestines—in fact, in the whole body. The
illnesses to which the human race is prone, were not indeed all brought
about by enchanters relentlessly persecuting their enemies, but they were
all attributed to the presence of an invisible being, whether spectre or
demon, who by some supernatural means had been made to enter the patient,
or who, unbidden, had by malice or necessity taken up his abode within
him. It was needful, after expelling the intruder, to re-establish the
health of the sufferer by means of fresh remedies. The study of simples
and other materiæ medicæ would furnish these; Thot had revealed
himself to man as the first magician, he became in like manner for them
the first physician and the first surgeon.
Egypt is naturally a very salubrious country, and the Egyptians boasted
that they were “the healthiest of all mortals;” but they did not neglect
any precautions to maintain their health. “Every month, for three
successive days, they purged the system by means of emetics or clysters.
The study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each
physician attending to one kind of illness only. Every place possessed
several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head, or
the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases.” But the subdivision
was not carried to the extent that Herodotus would make us believe. It was
the custom to make a distinction only between the physician trained in the
priestly schools, and further instructed by daily practice and the study
of books,—the bone-setter attached to the worship of Sokhit who
treated fractures by the intercession of the goddess,—and the
exorcist who professed to cure by the sole virtue of amulets and magic
phrases. The professional doctor treated all kinds of maladies, but, as
with us, there were specialists for certain affections, who were consulted
in preference to general practitioners. If the number of these specialists
was so considerable as to attract the attention of strangers, it was
because the climatic character of the country necessitated it. Where
ophthalmia and affections of the intestines raged violently, we
necessarily find many oculists[*] as well as doctors for internal
maladies. The best instructed, however, knew but little of anatomy. As
with the Christian physicians of the Middle Ages, religious scruples
prevented the Egyptians from cutting open or dissecting, in the cause of
pure science, the dead body which was identified with that of Osiris. The
processes of embalming, which would have instructed them in anatomy, were
not intrusted to doctors; the horror was so great with which any one was
regarded who mutilated the human form, that the “paraschite,” on whom
devolved the duty of making the necessary incisions in the dead, became
the object of universal execration: as soon as he had finished his task,
the assistants assaulted him, throwing stones at him with such violence
that he had to take to his heels to escape with his life.[**]
The knowledge of what went on within the body was therefore but vague.
Life seemed to be a little air, a breath which was conveyed by the veins
from member to member. “The head contains twenty-two vessels, which draw
the spirits into it and send them thence to all parts of the body. There
are two vessels for the breasts, which communicate heat to the lower
parts. There are two vessels for the thighs, two for the neck, two for the
arms, two for the back of the head, two for the forehead, two for the
eyes, two for the eyelids, two for the right ear by which enter the
breaths of life, and two for the left ear which in like manner admit the
breaths of death.”
The “breaths” entering by the right ear, are “the good airs, the delicious
airs of the north;” the sea-breeze which tempers the burning of summer and
renews the strength of man, continually weakened by the heat and
threatened with exhaustion. These vital spirits, entering the veins and
arteries by the ear or nose, mingled with the blood, which carried them to
all parts of the body; they sustained the animal, and were, so to speak,
the cause of its movement. The heart, the perpetual mover—hâîti—collected
them and redistributed them throughout the body: it was regarded as “the
beginning of all the members,” and whatever part of the living body the
physician touched, “whether the head, the nape of the neck, the hands, the
breast, the arms, the legs, his hand lit upon the heart,” and he felt it
beating under his fingers. Under the influence of the good breaths, the
vessels were inflated and worked regularly; under that of the evil, they
became inflamed, were obstructed, were hardened, or gave way, and the
physician had to remove the obstruction, allay the inflammation, and
re-establish their vigour and elasticity. At the moment of death, the
vital spirits “withdrew with the soul; the blood,” deprived of air,
“became coagulated, the veins and arteries emptied themselves, and the
creature perished” for want of breaths.
The majority of the diseases from which the ancient Egyptians suffered,
are those which still attack their successors; ophthalmia, affections of
the stomach, abdomen, and bladder, intestinal worms, varicose veins,
ulcers in the leg, the Nile pimple, and finally the “divine mortal
malady,” the divinus morbus of the Latins, epilepsy. Anaemia, from
which at least one-fourth of the present population suffers, was not less
prevalent than at present, if we may judge from the number of remedies
which were used against hematuria, the principal cause of it. The
fertility of the women entailed a number of infirmities or local
affections which the doctors attempted to relieve, not always with
success.[*]
The science of those days treated externals only, and occupied itself
merely with symptoms easily determined by sight or touch; it never
suspected that troubles which showed themselves in two widely remote parts
of the body might only be different effects of the same illness, and they
classed as distinct maladies those indications which we now know to be the
symptoms of one disease. They were able, however, to determine fairly well
the specific characteristics of ordinary affections, and sometimes
described them in a precise and graphic fashion. “The abdomen is heavy,
the pit of the stomach painful, the heart burns and palpitates violently.
The clothing oppresses the sick man and he can barely support it.
Nocturnal thirsts. His heart is sick, as that of a man who has eaten of
the sycamore gum. The flesh loses its sensitiveness as that of a man
seized with illness. If he seek to satisfy a want of nature he finds no
relief. Say to this, ‘There is an accumulation of humours in the abdomen,
which makes the heart sick. I will act.'” This is the beginning of gastric
fever so common in Egypt, and a modern physician could not better diagnose
such a case; the phraseology would be less flowery, but the analysis of
the symptoms would not differ from that given us by the ancient
practitioner. The medicaments recommended comprise nearly everything which
can in some way or other be swallowed, whether in solid, mucilaginous, or
liquid form. Vegetable remedies are reckoned by the score, from the most
modest herb to the largest tree, such as the sycamore, palm, acacia, and
cedar, of which the sawdust and shavings were supposed to possess both
antiseptic and emollient properties. Among the mineral substances are to
be noted sea-salt, alum, nitre, sulphate of copper, and a score of
different kinds of stones—among the latter the “memphite stone” was
distinguished for its virtues; if applied to parts of the body which were
lacerated or unhealthy, it acted as an anaesthetic and facilitated the
success of surgical operations. Flesh taken from the living subject, the
heart, the liver, the gall, the blood—either dried or liquid—of
animals, the hair and horn of stags, were all customarily used in many
cases where the motive determining their preference above other materiæ
medicæ is unknown to us. Many recipes puzzle us by their originality
and by the barbaric character of the ingredients recommended: “the milk of
a woman who has given birth to a boy,” the dung of a lion, a tortoise’s
brains, an old book boiled in oil.[*]
The medicaments compounded of these incongruous substances were often very
complicated. It was thought that the healing power was increased by
multiplying the curative elements; each ingredient acted upon a specific
region of the body, and after absorption, separated itself from the rest
to bring its influence to bear upon that region. The physician made use of
all the means which we employ to-day to introduce remedies into the human
system, whether pills or potions, poultices, or ointments, draughts or
clysters. Not only did he give the prescriptions, but he made them up,
thus combining the art of the physician with that of the dispenser. He
prescribed the ingredients, pounded them either separately or together, he
macerated them in the proper way, boiled them, reduced them by heating,
and filtered them through linen. Fat served him as the ordinary vehicle
for ointments, and pure water for potions; but he did not despise other
liquids, such as wine, beer (fermented or un-fermented), vinegar, milk,
olive oil, “ben” oil either crude or refined, even the urine of men and
animals: the whole, sweetened with honey, was taken hot, night and
morning. The use of more than one of these remedies became worldwide; the
Greeks borrowed them from the Egyptians; we have piously accepted them
from the Greeks; and our contemporaries still swallow with resignation
many of the abominable mixtures invented on the banks of the Nile, long
before the building of the Pyramids.
It was Thot who had taught men arithmetic; Thot had revealed to them the
mysteries of geometry and mensuration; Thot had constructed instruments
and promulgated the laws of music; Thot had instituted the art of drawing,
and had codified its unchanging rules. He had been the inventor or patron
of all that was useful or beautiful in the Nile valley, and the climax of
his beneficence was reached by his invention of the principles of writing,
without which humanity would have been liable to forget his teaching, and
to lose the advantage of his discoveries. It has been sometimes questioned
whether writing, instead of having been a benefit to the Egyptians, did
not rather injure them. An old legend relates that when the god unfolded
his discovery to King Thamos, whose minister he was, the monarch
immediately raised an objection to it.
Children and young people, who had hitherto been forced to apply
themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them, now
that they possessed a means of storing up knowledge without trouble, would
cease to apply themselves, and would neglect to exercise their memories.
Whether Thamos was right or not, the criticism came too late: “the
ingenious art of painting words and of speaking to the eyes” had once for
all been acquired by the Egyptians, and through them by the greater part
of mankind. It was a very complex system, in which were united most of the
methods fitted for giving expression to thought, namely: those which were
limited to the presentment of the idea, and those which were intended to
suggest sounds.
At the outset the use was confined to signs intended to awaken the idea of
the object in the mind of the reader by the more or less faithful picture
of the object itself; for example, they depicted the sun by a centred
disc, the moon by a crescent, a lion by a lion in the act of walking, a
man by a small figure in a squatting attitude. As by this method it was
possible to convey only a very restricted number of entirely materialistic
concepts, it became necessary to have recourse to various artifices in
order to make up for the shortcomings of the ideograms properly so-called.
The part was put for the whole, the pupil in place of the whole eye, the
head of the ox instead of the complete ox. The Egyptians substituted cause
for effect and effect for cause, the instrument for the work accomplished,
and the disc of the sun signified the day; a smoking brazier the fire: the
brush, inkpot, and palette of the scribe denoted writing or written
documents. They conceived the idea of employing some object which
presented an actual or supposed resemblance to the notion to be conveyed;
thus, the foreparts of a lion denoted priority, supremacy, command; the
wasp symbolized royalty, and a tadpole stood for hundreds of thousands.
They ventured finally to use conventionalisms, as for instance when they
drew the axe for a god, or the ostrich-feather for justice; the sign in
these cases had only a conventional connection with the concept assigned
to it. At times two or three of these symbols were associated in order to
express conjointly an idea which would have been inadequately rendered by
one of them alone: a five-pointed star placed under an inverted crescent
moon denoted a month, a calf running before the sign for water indicated
thirst.
All these artifices combined furnished, however, but a very incomplete
means of seizing and transmitting thought. When the writer had written out
twenty or thirty of these signs and the ideas which they were supposed to
embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence, from which the
flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of the words were
wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number, person, and
inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech and determine
the varying relations between them. Besides this, in order to understand
for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the reader was obliged
to translate the symbols which he deciphered, by means of words which
represented in the spoken language the pronunciation of each symbol.
Whenever he looked at them, they suggested to him both the idea and the
word for the idea, and consequently a sound or group of sounds; when each
of them had thus acquired three or four invariable associations of sound,
he forgot their purely ideographic value and accustomed himself to
consider them merely as notations of sound.
The first experiment in phonetics was a species of rebus, where each of
the signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several
words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language.
The same group of articulations, Naûfir, Nofir, conveyed in
Egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the
sign expressed at once the lute and beauty.
The beetle was called Khopirru, and the verb “to be” was pronounced khopirû:
the figure of the beetle & consequently signified both the insect and
the verb, and by further combining with it other signs, the articulation
of each corresponding syllable was given in detail. The sieve Miaû,
the mat pu, pi, the mouth ra, rû, gave the formula khaû-pi-rû,
which was equivalent to the sound of khopirû, the verb “to be:”
grouped together, they denoted in writing the concept of “to be” by means
of a triple rebus. In this system, each syllable of a word could be
represented by one of several signs, all sounding alike. One-half of these
“syllables” stood for open, the other half for closed syllables, and the
use of the former soon brought about the formation of a true alphabet. The
final vowel in them became detached, and left only the remaining consonant—for
example, r in rû, h in ha, n in ni, b in bû—so that rû, ha,
bû, eventually stood for r, h, n, and b only. This process in the course
of time having been applied to a certain number of syllables, furnished a
fairly large alphabet, in which several letters represented each of the
twenty-two chief articulations, which the scribes considered sufficient
for their purposes. The signs corresponding to one and the same letter
were homophones or “equivalents in sound”—[ ] are homophones, just
as [ ] and [ ], because each of them, in the group to which it belongs,
may be indifferently used to translate to the eye the articulations m or
n. One would have thought that when the Egyptians had arrived thus far,
they would have been led, as a matter of course, to reject the various
characters which they had used each in its turn, in order to retain an
alphabet only.
But the true spirit of invention, of which they had given proof, abandoned
them here as elsewhere: if the merit of a discovery was often their due,
they were rarely able to bring their invention to perfection. They kept
the ideographic and syllabic signs which they had used at the outset, and,
with the residue of their successive notations, made for themselves a most
complicated system, in which syllables and ideograms were mingled with
letters properly so called. There is a little of everything in an Egyptian
phrase, sometimes even in a word; as, for instance, in [ ] maszirû, the
ear, or [ ] kherôû, the voice; there are the syllables [ ] kher, the
ordinary letters [ ], which complete the phonetic pronunciation, and
finally the ideograms, namely, [ ], which gives the picture of the ear by
the side of the written word for it, and [ ] which proves that the letters
represent a term designating an action of the mouth. This medley had its
advantages; it enabled the Egyptians to make clear, by the picture of the
object, the sense of words which letters alone might sometimes
insufficiently explain. The system demanded a serious effort of memory and
long years of study; indeed, many people never completely mastered it. The
picturesque appearance of the sentences, in which we see representations
of men, animals, furniture, weapons, and tools grouped together in
successive little pictures, rendered hieroglyphic writing specially
suitable for the decoration of the temples of the gods or the palaces of
kings. Mingled with scenes of worship, sacrifice, battle, or private life,
the inscriptions frame or separate groups of personages, and occupy the
vacant spaces which the sculptor or painter was at a loss to fill;
hieroglyphic writing is pre-eminently a monumental script. For the
ordinary purposes of life it was traced in black or red ink on fragments
of limestone or pottery, or on wooden tablets covered with stucco, and
specially on the fibres of papyrus. The exigencies of haste and the
unskilfulness of scribes soon changed both its appearance and its
elements; the characters when contracted, superimposed and united to one
another with connecting strokes, preserved only the most distant
resemblance to the persons or things which they had originally
represented. This cursive writing, which was somewhat incorrectly termed
hieratic, was used only for public or private documents, for
administrative correspondence, or for the propagation of literary,
scientific, and religious works.
It was thus that tradition was pleased to ascribe to the gods, and among
them to Thot—the doubly great—the invention of all the arts
and sciences which gave to Egypt its glory and prosperity. It was clear,
not only to the vulgar, but to the wisest of the nation, that, had their
ancestors been left merely to their own resources, they would never have
succeeded in raising themselves much above the level of the brutes. The
idea that a discovery of importance to the country could have risen in a
human brain, and, once made known, could have been spread and developed by
the efforts of successive generations, appeared to them impossible to
accept. They believed that every art, every trade, had remained unaltered
from the outset, and if some novelty in its aspect tended to show them
their error, they preferred to imagine a divine intervention, rather than
be undeceived. The mystic writing, inserted as chapter sixty-four in the
Book of the Dead, and which subsequently was supposed to be of
decisive moment to the future life of man, was, as they knew, posterior in
date to the other formulas of which this book was composed; they did not,
however, regard it any the less as being of divine origin. It had been
found one day, without any one knowing whence it came, traced in blue
characters on a plaque of alabaster, at the foot of the statue of Thot, in
the sanctuary of Hermopolis. A prince, Hardiduf, had discovered it in his
travels, and regarding it as a miraculous object, had brought it to his
sovereign. This king, according to some, was Hûsaphaîti of the first
dynasty, but by others was believed to be the pious Mykerinos. In the same
way, the book on medicine, dealing with the diseases of women, was held
not to be the work of a practitioner; it had revealed itself to a priest
watching at night before the Holy of Holies in the temple of Isis at
Coptos. “Although the earth was plunged into darkness, the moon shone upon
it and enveloped it with light. It was sent as a great wonder to the
holiness of King Kheops, the just of speech.” The gods had thus exercised
a direct influence upon men until they became entirely civilized, and this
work of culture was apportioned among the three divine dynasties according
to the strength of each. The first, which comprised the most vigorous
divinities, had accomplished the more difficult task of establishing the
world on a solid basis; the second had carried on the education of the
Egyptians; and the third had regulated, in all its minutiae, the religious
constitution of the country. When there was nothing more demanding
supernatural strength or intelligence to establish it, the gods returned
to heaven, and were succeeded on the throne by mortal men. One tradition
maintained dogmatically that the first human king whose memory it
preserved, followed immediately after the last of the gods, who, in
quitting the palace, had made over the crown to man as his heir, and that
the change of nature had not entailed any interruption in the line of
sovereigns. Another tradition would not allow that the contact between the
human and divine series had been so close. Between the Ennead and Menés,
it intercalated one or more lines of Theban or Thinite kings; but these
were of so formless, shadowy, and undefined an aspect, that they were
called Manes, and there was attributed to them at most only a passive
existence, as of persons who had always been in the condition of the dead,
and had never been subjected to the trouble of passing through life. Menés
was the first in order of those who were actually living. From his time,
the Egyptians claimed to possess an uninterrupted list of the Pharaohs who
had ruled over the Nile valley. As far back as the XVIIIth dynasty this
list was written upon papyrus, and furnished the number of years that each
prince occupied the throne, or the length of his life.[*]
Extracts from it were inscribed in the temples, or even in the tombs of
private persons; and three of these abridged catalogues are still extant,
two coming from the temples of Seti I. and Ramses II. at Abydos,[*] while
the other was discovered in the tomb of a person of rank named Tunari, at
Saqqâra.[**] They divided this interminable succession of often
problematical personages into dynasties, following in this division, rules
of which we are ignorant, and which varied in the course of ages. In the
time of the Ramessides, names in the list which subsequently under the
Lagides formed five groups were made to constitute one single
dynasty.[***]
Manetho of Sebennytos, who wrote a history of Europe for the use of
Alexandrine Greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division of
thirty-one dynasties from Menés to the Macedonian Conquest, and his system
has prevailed—not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but because
it is the only complete one which has come down to us.[*] All the families
inscribed in his lists ruled in succession.[**]
The country was no doubt frequently broken up into a dozen or more
independent states, each possessing its own kings during several
generations; but the annalists had from the outset discarded these
collateral lines, and recognized only one legitimate dynasty, of which the
rest were but vassals. Their theory of legitimacy does not always agree
with actual history, and the particular line of princes which they
rejected as usurpers represented at times the only family possessing true
rights to the crown.[*]
In Egypt, as elsewhere, the official chroniclers were often obliged to
accommodate the past to the exigencies of the present, and to manipulate
the annals to suit the reigning party; while obeying their orders the
chroniclers deceived posterity, and it is only by a rare chance that we
can succeed in detecting them in the act of falsification, and can
re-establish the truth.
The system of Manetho, in the state in which it has been handed down to us
by epitomizers, has rendered, and continues to render, service to science;
if it is not the actual history of Egypt, it is a sufficiently faithful
substitute to warrant our not neglecting it when we wish to understand and
reconstruct the sequence of events. His dynasties furnish the necessary
framework for most of the events and revolutions, of which the monuments
have preserved us a record. At the outset, the centre to which the affairs
of the country gravitated was in the extreme north of the valley. The
principality which extended from the entrance of the Fayûm to the apex of
the Delta, and subsequently the town of Memphis itself, imposed their
sovereigns upon the remaining nomes, served as an emporium for commerce
and national industries, and received homage and tribute from neighbouring
peoples. About the time of the VIth dynasty this centre of gravity was
displaced, and tended towards the interior; it was arrested for a short
time at Heracleo-polis (IXth and Xth dynasties), and ended by fixing
itself at Thebes (XIth dynasty). From henceforth Thebes became the
capital, and furnished Egypt with her rulers. With the exception of the
XIVth Xoïte dynasty, all the families occupying the throne from the XIth
to the XXth dynasty were Theban. When the barbarian shepherds invaded
Africa from Asia, the Thebaïd became the last refuge and bulwark of
Egyptian nationality; its chiefs struggled for many centuries against the
conquerors before they were able to deliver the rest of the valley. It was
a Theban dynasty, the XVIIIth, which inaugurated the era of foreign
conquest; but after the XIXth, a movement, the reverse of that which had
taken place towards the end of the first period, brought back the centre
of gravity, little by little, towards the north of the country. From the
time of the XXIst dynasty, Thebes ceased to hold the position of capital:
Tanis, Bubastis, Mendes, Sebennytos, and above all, Sais, disputed the
supremacy with each other, and political life was concentrated in the
maritime provinces. Those of the interior, ruined by Ethiopian and
Assyrian invasions, lost their influence and gradually dwindled away.
Thebes became impoverished and depopulated; it fell into ruins, and soon
was nothing more than a resort for devotees or travellers. The history of
Egypt is, therefore, divided into three periods, each corresponding to the
suzerainty of a town or a principality:—
I.—Memphite Period, usually called the “Ancient Empire,” from the
Ist to the Xth dynasty: kings of Memphite origin ruled over the whole of
Egypt during the greater part of this epoch.
II.—Theban Period, from the XIth to the XXth dynasty. It is divided
into two parts by the invasion of the Shepherds (XVIth dynasty):
a. The first Theban Empire (Middle Empire), from the XIth to the XIVth
dynasty.
b. The new Theban Empire, from the XVIIth to the XXth dynasty.
III.—Saïte Period, from the XXIst to the XXXth dynasty, divided into
two unequal parts by the Persian Conquest:
a. The first Saïte period, from the XXIst to the XXVIth dynasty.
b. The second Saïte period, from the XXVIIIth to the XXXth dynasty.
The Memphites had created the monarchy. The Thebans extended the rule of
Egypt far and wide, and made of her a conquering state: for nearly six
centuries she ruled over the Upper Nile and over Western Asia. Under the
Saïtes she retired gradually within her natural frontiers, and from having
been aggressive became assailed, and suffered herself to be crushed in
turn by all the nations she had once oppressed.[*]
The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to
unite the country under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the
feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups,
each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief focus
in the north, from which civilization radiated over the rich plains and
the marshes of the Delta. Its colleges of priests had collected,
condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local religions; the
Ennead to which it gave conception would never have obtained the
popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes had not
exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over the
neighbouring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the kingdom of Lower
Egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of Heliopolitan theories—the
protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from Râ, and the
enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. The Delta, owing to
its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from one
centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching like a
thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so complete
a unity. It, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed and the
lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely united,
its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to
serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained schools
of theologians who certainly played an important part in the development
of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was never widely
felt. In the south, Siût disputed their supremacy, and Heracleopolis
stopped their road to the north. These three cities thwarted and
neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a
lasting authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two kingdoms had its own
natural advantages and its system of government, which gave to it a
particular character, and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct
personality down to its latest days. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more
powerful, richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by more
active and enterprising rulers. It is to one of the latter, Mini or Menés
of Thinis, that tradition ascribes the honour of having fused the two
Egypts into a single empire, and of having inaugurated the reign of the
human dynasties. Thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least
of Egyptian cities. It barely maintained an existence on the left bank of
the Nile, if not on the exact spot now occupied by Girgeh, at least only a
short distance from it.[*]
The principality of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it was the metropolis,
occupied the valley from one mountain range to the other, and gradually
extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban Oasis. Its
inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhûri, or rather two twin gods,
Anhûri-Shû, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and
became a warlike personification of Râ. Anhûri-Shû, like all the other
solar manifestations, came to be associated with a goddess having the form
or head of a lioness—a Sokhît, who took for the occasion the epithet
of Mîhît, the northern one. Some of the dead from this city are buried on
the other side of the Nile, near the modern village of Mesheikh, at the
foot of the Arabian chain, whose steep cliffs here approach somewhat near
the river: the principal necropolis was at some distance to the east, near
the sacred town of Abydos. It would appear that, at the outset, Abydos was
the capital of the country, for the entire nome bore the same name as the
city, and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reliquary
in which the god reposed. In very early times Abydos fell into decay, and
resigned its political rank to Thinis, but its religious importance
remained unimpaired. The city occupied a long and narrow strip of land
between the canal and the first slopes of the Libyan mountains. A brick
fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the
temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls. Here, Anhûri, having
passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentît,
the chief of that western region whither souls repair on quitting this
earth. It is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what
political combinations this Sun of the Night came to be identified with
Osiris of Mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity;
it had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred
books were compiled. Osiris Khontamentît grew rapidly in popular favour,
and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. The
Great Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise,
whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. It was called
Uîfc, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual
Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in
the minds of the people, so that the “cleft,” or gorge in the mountain
through which the doubles journeyed towards it, never ceased to be
regarded as one of the gates of the other world. At the time of the New
Year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley; they
there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order to embark with him and
enter safely the dominions of Khontamentît. Abydos, even before the
historic period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose
worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them all with an equal
devotion. The excavations of the last few years have brought to light
some, at all events, of the oldest Pharaohs known to the Egyptian
annalists, namely, those whom they placed in their first human dynasties;
and the locality where the monuments of these princes were discovered,
shows us that these writers were correct in representing Thinis as playing
an important part in the history of the early ages of their country. If
the tomb of Menés—that sovereign whom we are inclined to look upon
as the first king of the official lists—lies near the village of
Nagadeh, not far from Thebes,[*] those of his immediate successors are
close to Thinis, in the cemeteries of Abydos.[**] They stand at the very
foot of the Libyan hills, near the entrance to the ravine—the
“Cleft”—through which the mysterious oasis was reached, and thither
the souls flocked in order that they might enter by a safe way the land
beyond the grave.[***]
The mass of pottery, whole and broken, which has accumulated on this site
from the offerings of centuries has obtained for it among the Fellahin the
name of Omm-el-G-aâb—”the mother of pots.” The tombs there lie in
serried ranks. They present for the most part a rough model of the
pyramids of the Memphite period—rectangular structures of bricks
without mortar rising slightly above the level of the plain. The funeral
chamber occupies the centre of each, and is partly hollowed out of the
soil, like a shallow well, the sides being bricked. It had a flat timber
roof, covered by a layer of about three feet of sand; the floor also was
of wood, and in several cases the remains of the beams of both ceiling and
pavement have been brought to light. The body of the royal inmate was laid
in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by its funeral furniture and by a
part of the offerings. The remainder was placed in the little rooms which
opened out of the principal vault, sometimes on the same level, sometimes
on one higher than itself; after their contents had been laid within them,
the entrance to these rooms was generally walled up. Human bodies have
been found inside them, probably those of slaves killed at the funeral
that they might wait upon the dead in his life beyond the grave.[*] The
objects placed in these chambers were mostly offerings, but besides these
were coarse stelae bearing the name of a person, and dictated to “the
double of his luminary.”[**] Some of them mention a dwarf[***] or a
favourite dog of the sovereign, who accompanied his master into the tomb.
Tablets of ivory or bone skilfully incised furnish us with scenes
representing some of the ceremonies of the deification of the king in his
lifetime and the sacrifices offered at the time of his burial;[****] in
rarer instances they record his exploits.
The offerings themselves were such as we meet with in burials of a
subsequent age—bread, cakes, meat, and poultry of various sorts—indeed,
everything we find mentioned in the lists inscribed in the tombs of the
later dynasties, particularly the jars of wine and liquors, on the clay
bungs of which are still legible the impression of the signet bearing the
name of the sovereign for whose use they were sealed. Besides stuffs and
mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds, stools, an enormous number of
vases, some in coarse pottery for common use, others in choice stone such
as diorite, granite, or rock crystal very finely worked, on the fragments
of all of which may be read cut in outline the names and preamble of the
Pharaoh to whom the object belonged. The ceremonial of the funerary
offering and its significance was already fully developed at this early
period; this can be gathered by the very nature of the objects buried with
the deceased, by their number, quantity, and by the manner in which they
were arranged. Like their successors in the Egypt of later times, these
ancient kings expected to continue their material existence within the
tomb, and they took precautions that life there should be as comfortable
as circumstances should permit. Access to the tomb was sometimes gained by
a sloping passage or staircase; this made it possible to see if everything
within was in a satisfactory condition. After the dead had been enclosed
in his chamber, and five or six feet of sand had been spread over the
beams which formed its roof, the position of the tomb was shown merely by
a scarcely perceptible rise in the soil of the necropolis, and its site
would soon have been forgotten, if its easternmost limits had not been
marked by two large stelae on which were carefully engraved one of the
appellations of the king—that of his double, or his Horus name.[*]
It was on this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelæ, that the
commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed on
certain days fixed by the religious law. Groups of private tombs were
scattered around,—the resting-places of the chief officers of the
sovereign, the departed Pharaoh being thus surrounded in death by the same
courtiers as those who had attended him during his earthly existence.
The princes, whose names and titles have been revealed to us by the
inscriptions on these tombs, have not by any means been all classified as
yet, the prevailing custom at that period having been to designate them by
their Horus names, but rarely by their proper names, which latter is the
only one which figures in the official lists which we possess of the
Egyptian kings. A few texts, more explicit than the rest, enable us to
identify three of them with the Usaphais, the Miebis, and the Semempses of
Manetho—the fifth, sixth, and seventh kings of the Ist dynasty.[*]
The fact that they are buried in the necropolis of Abydos apparently
justifies the opinion of the Egyptian chroniclers that they were natives
of Thinis. Is the Menés who usually figures at their head[**] also a
Thinite prince?
Several scholars believe that his ordinary name, Mini, is to be read on an
ivory tablet engraved for a sovereign whose Horus name—Ahauîti, the
warlike—is known to us from several documents, and whose tomb also
has been discovered, but at Nagadeh. It is a great rectangular structure
of bricks 165 feet long and 84 broad, the external walls of which were
originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which
score the façade of Chaldæan buildings, but the Nagadeh tomjb has a second
brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one, and thus
hides the primitive decoration of the monument. The building contains
twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently constituted
the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped around these,
serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his provisions at will. Did
the king buried within indeed bear the name of Menés,[*] and if such was
the case, how are we to reconcile the tradition of his Thinite origin with
the existence of his far-off tomb in the neighbourhood of Thebes?
Objects bearing his Horus name have been found at Omm-el-Gaâb, and it is
evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in
this necropolis. If, indeed, Menés was really his personal name, there is
no reason against his being the Menés of tradition, he whom the Pharaohs
of the glorious Theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of their purely
human ancestors. Whether he was really the first king who reigned over the
whole of Egypt, or whether he had been preceded by other sovereigns whose
monuments we may find in some site still unexplored, is a matter for
conjecture. That princes had exercised authority in various parts of the
country is still uncertain, but that the Egyptian historians did not know
them, seems to prove that they had left no written records of their names.
At any rate, a Menés lived who reigned at the outset of history, and
doubtless before long the Nile valley, when more carefully explored, will
yield us monuments recording his actions and determining his date. The
civilization of the Egypt of his time was ruder than that with which we
have hitherto been familiar on its soil, but even at that early period it
was almost as complete. It had its industries and its arts, of which the
cemeteries furnish us daily with the most varied examples: weaving,
modelling in clay, wood-carving, the incising of ivory, gold, and the
hardest stone were all carried on; the ground was cultivated with hoe and
plough; tombs were built showing us the model of what the houses and
palaces must have been; the country had its army, its administrators, its
priests, its nobles, its writing, and its system of epigraphy differs so
little from that to which we are accustomed in later ages, that we can
decipher it with no great difficulty. Frankly speaking, all that we know
at present of the first of the Pharaohs beyond the mere fact of his
existence is practically nil, and the stories related of him by the
writers of classical times are mere legends arranged to suit the fancy of
the compiler. “This Menés, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis
with dykes. For the river formerly followed the sandhills for some
distance on the Libyan side. Menés, having dammed up the reach about a
hundred stadia to the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and
conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the
two mountain ranges. Then Menés, the first who was king, having enclosed a
firm space of ground with dykes, there founded that town which is still
called Memphis; he then made a lake round it, to the north and west, fed
by the river, the city being bounded on the east by the Nile.”[*]
The history of Memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments,
differs considerably from the tradition current in Egypt at the time of
Herodotus. It appears, indeed, that at the outset, the site on which it
subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbû-hazû—the
white wall—which was dependent on Heliopolis, and in which Phtah
possessed a sanctuary. After the “white wall” was separated from the
Heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself, it assumed a certain
importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded
the Thinite. Its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the
sovereigns of the Vth and VIth dynasties fixed on it for their residence;
one of them, Papi L, there founded for himself and for his “double” after
him, a new town, which he called Minnofîrû, from his tomb. Minnofîrû,
which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of Memphis, probably
signified “the good refuge,” the haven of the good, the burying-place
where the blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris. The people soon forgot
the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall in with their taste
for romantic tales. They were rather disposed, as a rule, to discover in
the beginnings of history individuals from whom the countries or cities
with which they were familiar took their names: if no tradition supplied
them with this, they did not experience any scruple in inventing one. The
Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies, who were guided in their
philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them,
attributed the patronship of their city to a Princess Memphis, a daughter
of its founder, the fabulous Uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the
name had become altered, thought to find in Minnofîrû a “Mini Nofir,” or
“Menés the Good,” the reputed founder of the capital of the Delta. Menés
the Good, divested of his epithet, is none other than Menés, the first
king, and he owes this episode in his life to a popular attempt at
etymology. The legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom
with the construction of the city, must have originated at the time when
Memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government,
at latest about the end of the Memphite period. It must have been an old
tradition in the time of the Theban dynasties, since they admitted
unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the
northern city so marked a superiority over their own country.
When once this half-mythical Menés was firmly established in his position,
there was little difficulty in inventing a story which would portray him
as an ideal sovereign. He was represented as architect, warrior, and
statesman; he had begun the temple of Phtah, written laws and regulated
the worship of the gods, particularly that of Hâpis, and he had conducted
expeditions against the Libyans. When he lost his only son in the flower
of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him—the
“Maneros”—both the words and the tune of which were handed down from
generation to generation. He did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of
the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of
eating it in a reclining posture. One day, while hunting, his dogs,
excited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. He escaped
with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to the shore of Lake Moeris,
and was there brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them,
when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other
side.[*] In gratitude he built a new town, which he called Crocodilopolis,
and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then
erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. Other
traditions show him in a less favourable light. They accuse him of having,
by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege
that after a reign of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a
hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile.[**]
They also related that the Saïte Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition
against the Arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp
and luxuries of royal life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his
imprecations to be inscribed upon a stele set up in the temple of Amon at
Thebes. Nevertheless, in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first
Pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. He was worshipped in Memphis side
by side with Phtah and Ramses II.; his name figured at the head of the
royal lists, and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies.
His immediate successors had an actual existence, and their tombs are
there in proof of it. We know where Usaphais, Miebis, and Semempses[*]
were laid to rest, besides more than a dozen other princes whose real
names and whose position in the official lists are still uncertain. The
order of their succession was often a matter of doubt to the Egyptians
themselves, but perhaps the discoveries of the next few years will enable
us to clear up and settle definitely matters which were shrouded in
mystery in the time of the Theban Pharaohs. As a fact, the forms of such
of their names as have been handed down to us by later tradition, are curt
and rugged, indicative of an early state of society, and harmonizing with
the more primitive civilization to which they belong: Ati the Wrestler,
Teti the Runner, Qenqoni the Crusher, are suitable rulers for a people,
the first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle, and
to strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight.[**]
Some of the monuments they have left us, seem to show that their reigns
were as much devoted to war as those of the later Pharaohs. The king whose
Horus name was Nârumîr, is seen on a contemporary object which has come
down to us, standing before a heap of beheaded foes; the bodies are all
stretched out on the ground, each with his head placed neatly between his
legs: the king had overcome, apparently in some important engagement,
several thousands of his enemies, and was inspecting the execution of
their leaders. That the foes with whom these early kings contended were in
most cases Egyptian princes of the nomes, is proved by the list of city
names which are inscribed on the fragments of another document of the same
nature, and we gather from them that Dobu (Edfu), Hasutonu (Cynopolis),
Habonu (Hipponon), Hakau (Memphis) and others were successively taken and
dismantled.[*]
On this fragment King Den is represented standing over a prostrate chief
of the Bedouin, striking him with his mace. Sondi, who is classed in the
IInd dynasty, received a continuous worship towards the end of the IIIrd
dynasty. But did all those whose names preceded or followed his on the
lists, really exist as he did? and if they existed, to what extent do the
order and the relation assigned to them agree with the actual truth? The
different lists do not contain the same names in the same positions;
certain Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason. Where
Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables of the time of Seti
I. gave us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons nine kings to the IInd dynasty,
while they register only five.[*]
The monuments, indeed, show us that Egypt in the past obeyed princes whom
her annalists were unable to classify: for instance, they associate with
Sondi a Pirsenû, who is not mentioned in the annals. We must, therefore,
take the record of all this opening period of history for what it is—namely,
a system invented at a much later date, by means of various artifices and
combinations—to be partially accepted in default of a better, but
without according to it that excessive confidence which it has hitherto
received. The two Thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the first
human king Menés, furnish, like this hero himself, only a tissue of
romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history. A
double-headed stork, which had appeared in the first year of Teti, son of
Menés, had foreshadowed to Egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under
Ouenephes, and a terrible plague under Semempses, had depopulated the
country: the laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and
revolts had broken out. During the reign of Boêthos, a gulf had opened
near Bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the Nile had flowed with
honey for fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, and Sesochris was
supposed to have been a giant in stature. A few details about royal
edifices were mixed up with these prodigies. Teti had laid the foundation
of the great palace of Memphis, Ouenephes had built the pyramids of
Ko-komè near Saqqara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had published books
on theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had
made laws which lasted down to the beginning of the Christian era. One of
them was called Kakôû, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. They
explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about
the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, Hâpis of Memphis, Mnevis of
Heliopolis, and the goat of Mendes. After him, Binôthris had conferred the
right of succession upon all the women of the blood-royal. The accession
of the IIIrd dynasty, a Memphite one according to Manetho, did not at
first change the miraculous character of this history. The Libyans had
revolted against Necherophes, and the two armies were encamped before each
other, when one night the disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged,
to the great alarm of the rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign
of the anger of heaven, and yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the
successor of Necherophes, brought the hieroglyphs and the art of
stone-cutting to perfection. He composed, as Teti did, books of medicine,
a fact which caused him to be identified with the healing god Imhotpu. The
priests related these things seriously, and the Greek writers took them
down from their lips with the respect which they offered to everything
emanating from the wise men of Egypt.
What they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see,
than their accounts of the gods. Whether the legends dealt with deities or
kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination, but
in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they dealt
with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a method of
which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the monuments.
Towards the middle of the third century before our era, the Greek troops
stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the first cataract,
developed a particular veneration for Isis of Philæ. Their devotion spread
to the superior officers who came to inspect them, then to the whole
population of the Thebàid, and finally reached the court of the Macedonian
kings. The latter, carried away by force of example, gave every
encouragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a common
sanctuary, and united in one cult the two races over which they ruled.
They pulled down the meagre building of the Sa’ite period which had
hitherto sufficed for the worship of Isis, constructed at great cost the
temple which still remains almost intact, and assigned to it considerable
possessions in Nubia, which, in addition to gifts from private
individuals, made the goddess the richest landowner in Southern Egypt.
Khnûmû and his two wives, Anûkit and Satît, who, before Isis, had been the
undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jealousy their
neighbour’s prosperity: the civil wars and invasions of the centuries
immediately preceding had ruined their temples, and their poverty
contrasted painfully with the riches of the new-comer.
The priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before King Ptolemy,
to represent to him the services which they had rendered and still
continued to render to Egypt, and above all to remind him of the
generosity of the ancient Pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty of
the times, the recent Pharaohs had been unable to follow.
Doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support
their pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of
Sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the IIIrd
dynasty. This sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for
greatness. As early as the XIIth dynasty Usirtasen III. had claimed him as
“his father”—his ancestor—and had erected a statue to him; the
priests knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a
hearing. The inscription which they fabricated, set forth that in the
eighteenth year of Zosiri’s reign he had sent to Madîr, lord of
Elephantine, a message couched in these terms: “I am overcome with sorrow
for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is
afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in my time,
for the space of eight years. Corn is scarce, there is a lack of herbage,
and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his neighbours for
help, they take pains not to go. The child weeps, the young man is uneasy,
the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent.”
Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce
from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the domains
and dues which they declared had been his right? The stele shows us with
what ease the scribes could forge official documents, when the exigencies
of they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the courtiers have no
further resources; the shops formerly furnished with rich wares are now
filled only with air, all that was in them has disappeared.
“My spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks to call upon
the Saviour who was here where I am, during the centuries of the gods,
upon Thot-Ibis, that great wise one, upon Imhotpû, son of Phtah of
Memphis. Where is the place in which the Nile is born? Who is the god or
goddess concealed there? What is his likeness?”
The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He described to the
king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and
the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who
presided over it, and who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous
plight. Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the
prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted and cried
aloud, “I am Khnûmû who created thee!” and promised him a speedy return of
a high Nile and the cessation of the famine. Pharaoh was touched by the
benevolence which his divine father had shown him; he forthwith made a
decree by which he ceded to the temple all his rights of suzerainty over
the neighbouring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. Henceforward the
entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen and hunters, had to
yield the tithe of their incomes to the priests; the quarries could not be
worked without the consent of Khnûmû, and the payment of a suitable
indemnity into his coffers, and finally, all metals and precious woods
shipped thence for Egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple.
Did the daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the
same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have
been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy, every fact
related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to the supposed
inscription of Zosiri.[*]
The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches,
and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which Egypt
passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the
rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious
princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected,
classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people
were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the
historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal
traditions for their sacred archives. The monuments of these remote ages,
however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they exist in places where we
have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will
some day most certainly bring them to light. The few which we do possess
barely go back beyond the IIIrd dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri,
priest of Sondi and Pirsenû; possibly the tomb of Khûîthotpû at Saqqâra;
the Great Sphinx of Gîzeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the Wady
Maghâra, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of
Khnûmû in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or
copper mines of Sinai; and finally the Step-Pyramid where this same
Pharaoh rests.[*]
It forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly orientated, with a variation from
the true north of 4° 35′, 393 ft. 8 in. long from east to west, and 352
ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. It is composed of six cubes, with
sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than the one below
it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the
uppermost one 29 ft. 9 in. It was entirely constructed of limestone from
the neighbouring mountains. The blocks are small, and badly cut, the stone
courses being concave to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and
to shocks of earthquake. When breaches in the masonry are examined, it can
be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double
stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed. The body of the pyramid
is solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath. These chambers have
been often enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries,
and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it
is dangerous to venture without a guide. The columned porch, the galleries
and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which
the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain
the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until the beginning
of this century, the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed
pottery. Three quarters of the wall surface were covered with green tiles,
oblong and slightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the inner: a
square projection pierced with a hole, served to fix them at the back in a
horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods.
The three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles
of the Pharaoh: the hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or
yellow, on a fawn-coloured ground. Other kings had built temples, palaces,
and towns,—as, for instance, King Khâsakhimu, of whose constructions
some traces exist at Hieracônpolis, opposite to El-Kab, or King
Khâsakhmui, who preceded by a few years the Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty—but
the monuments which they raised to be witnesses of their power or piety to
future generations, have, in the course of ages, disappeared under the
tramplings and before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts: the
pyramid alone has survived, and the most ancient of the historic monuments
of Egypt is a tomb.
