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 IV.
LONDON
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS
THE FIRST CHALDEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSÔS IN EGYPT
SYRIA: THE PART PLAYED BY IT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD—
BABYLON AND THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE—THE DOMINION OF THE HYKSÔS:
ÂHMOSIS.
Syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to
neighbouring powers-Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the valley of the Orontes and
of the Litâny, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the
country about Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan and the Dead
Sea-Civilization and primitive inhabitants, Semites and Asiatics: the
almost entire absence of Egyptian influence, the predominance of that of
Chaldæa.
Babylon, its ruins and its environs—It extends its rule over
Mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with Central
Chaldæa-Elam, its geographical position, its peoples; Kutur-Nakhunta
conquers Larsam-Bimsin (Eri-Aku); Khammurabi founds the first Babylonian
empire; Ids victories, his buildings, his canals—The Elamites in
Syria: Kudurlagamar—Syria recognizes the authority of Hammurabi and
his successors.
The Hyksôs conquer Egypt at the end of the XIVth dynasty; the founding
of Avaris—Uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to
the origin of the Hyksôs: probability of their being the Khati—Their
kings adopt the manners and civilization of the Egyptians: the monuments
of Khiani and of Apôphis I. and II—The XVth dynasty.
Semitic incursions following the Hyksôs—The migration of the
Phoenicians and the Israelites into Syria: Terah, Abraham and his sojourn
in the land of Canaan—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph: the Israelites go down
into Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen.
Thébes revolts against the Hyksôs: popular traditions as to the origin
of the war, the romance of Apôphis and Saquinri—The Theban
princesses and the last Icings of the XVIIth dynasty: Tiûdqni Kamosis,
Ahmosis I.—The lords of El-Kab, and the part they played during the
war of independence—The taking of Avaris and the expulsion of the
Ilylcsôs.
The reorganization of Egypt—Ahmosis I. and his Nubian wars, the
reopening of the quarries of Turah—Amenôthes I. and his mother
Nofrîtari: the jewellery of Queen Âhhotpû—The wars of Amenôthes I.,
the apotheosis of Nofrîtari—The accession of Thûtmosis I. and the
re-generation of Egypt.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I—THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE AND
THE HYKSÔS IN EGYPTCHAPTER II—SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
EGYPTIAN CONQUESTCHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN
DYNASTYList of Illustrations
014.jpg the Most Northern Source of The
Jordan, The Naiir-el-hasbany017.jpg One of the Reaches Of The Jordan
018.jpg the Dead Sea and The Mountains of
Moab, Seen Fkom The Heights of Engedi023.jpg Asiatic Women from the Tomb of
KhnÛmhotpÛ024.jpg Two Asiatics Fkom the Tomb of
KhnÛmhoptÛ.030.jpg Plan of the Ruins Of Babylon
032.jpg the Kask Seen from The South
033.jpg the Tell of Borsippa, The Present
Birs-nimrud036.jpg the Banks of The Euphrates at
Zuleibeh045.jpg Map of ChaldÆa and Elam.
046.jpg an Ancient Susian of Negretic Race
047.jpg Native of Mixed Negritic Race from
Susiana048.jpg the Tumulus of Susa, As It Appeared
Towards The Middle of the Xixth Century057.jpg Head of a Sceptre in Copper, Bearing
the Name Of Kham-murabi079.jpg Pallate of HyksÔs Scribe
080.jpg a HyksÔs Prisoner Guiding the Plough,
at El-kab082.jpg Table of Offerings Bearing the Name
Of ApÔti ÂqnÛnrÎ084.jpg Broken Statue of Khiani
093.jpg the Traditional Oak of Abraham at
Hebron109.jpg NofrÎtari, from Tue Wooden Statuette
in the Turin Museum113.jpg the Small Gold Votive Barque of
Pharaoh KamosÛ, In the GÎzeh Museum.116.jpg the Walls of El-kab Seen from The
Tomb Of Pihiri116a.jpg Collection of Vases Modelled and
Painted in The Grand Temple. Philae Island.119.jpg the Ruins of The Pyramid Of QÛlah,
Near Mohammerieh122.jpg the Tombs of The Princes Of NekhabÎt,
in The Hillside Above El-kab130.jpg Painting in Tomb of the Kings Thebes
132.jpg a Convoy of TÛrah Quarrymen Drawing
Stone135.jpg Coffin of Ahmosis in the GÎzeh Museum
136.jpg Nofritari, Hie Black-skinned Goddess
137.jpg the Jewels and Weapons of Queen
ÂhhhotpÛ I. In The GÎzeh Museum144.jpg Statue of AmenÔthes I. In the Turin
Museum147.jpg the Coffin and Mummy of Amenothes
150.jpg ThÛtmosis I., from a Statue in the
GÎzeh Museum155.jpg Signs, Arms and Instruments
177.jpg the Fortress and Bridge of Zalu
184.jpg the Canaanite Fortresses
185.jpg the Walled City of DapÛr, in Galilee
187.jpg the Migdol of Ramses Iii. At Thebes,
in The Temple of Medinet-abul189.jpg the Modern Village of BeÎtÎn
(ancient Bethel), Seen from the South-west.196.jpg the Evergreen Oaks Between Joppa and
Carmel197.jpg Acre and the Fringe of Reefs
Sheltering The Ancient Port202.jpg the Tyrian Ladder at Ras El-abiad
206.jpg the Dyke at Baiik El-kades in Its
Present Condition212.jpg the Tell of Jerabis in Its Present
Condition215.jpg the Heads of Three Amorite Captives
216.jpg Mixture of Syrian Races
218.jpg a Caricature of the Syrian Type
220.jpg Syrians Dressed in the Loin-cloth
and Double Shawl226.jpg LotanÛ Women and Children from the
Tomb Of RakhmieÎ238.jpg a Cromlech in the Neighbourhood of
Hesban, In The Country of Moab240.jpg a Corner of the Phoenician
Neckropolis at Adlun241.jpg Valley of the Tomb Of The Kings
256a.jpg the Amphitheatre of Aphaka and The
Source Of The Nahh-ibrahim269.jpg Tyre and Its Suburbs on the Mainland
273.jpg the Sculptured Rocks of Hanaweh
282.jpg One of the KafÎti from The Tomb Of
RakhmirÎ288.jpg an Egyptian Trading Vessel of the
First Half Of The Xviiith Dynasty299.jpg One of the Daggers Discovered at
MycenÆ, Showing An Imitation of Egyptian Decoration311.jpg a Platoon (troop) of Egyptian
Spearmen at DeÎr El-baharÎ313.jpg a Platoon of Egyptian Archers at
DeÎr El-baharÎ314.jpg the Egyptian Chariot Preserved in
The Florence Museum315.jpg the King Charging on his Chariot
318.jpg an Egyptian Learning to Ride, from a
Bas-relief In the Bologna Museum319.jpg the War-dance of The Timihu at DeÎr
El-baharÎ321.jpg a Column of Troops on the March,
Chariots And Infantry322.jpg an Egyptian Fortified Camp, Forced
by the Enemy322b.jpg Two Companies on the March
325.jpg Scenes from Military Life in an
Egyptian Camp327.jpg Encounter Between Egyptian and
Asiatic Chariots336.jpg a City of Modern Nubia—the
Ancient Dongola338.jpg Arrival of an Ethiopian Queen
Bringing Tribute To The Viceroy of KÛsii341.jpg Gold Epergne Representing Scenes
from Ethiopian Life344.jpg Portrait of the Queen Âhmasi
345.jpg Queen MÛtnofrÎt in the GÎzeh Museum
346.jpg Queen HÂtshopsÎtÛ in Male Costume
347.jpg Bust of Queen HÂtshopsÎtÛ
348.jpg Painting on the Tomb of The Kings
350.jpg the Amphitheatre at DeÎr El-baharÎ,
As It Appeared Bepoee Naville’s Excavations351.jpg the Northern Collonade
353.jpg Head of the Mummy Of ThÛtmosis I.
354.jpg Head of the Mummy Of ThÛtmosis Ii.
356.jpg the Coffin of Thûtmosis I.
356b Avenue of Rams and Pylon at Karnak
361.jpg an Inhabitant of the Land Of PÛanÎt
363.jpg a Village on the Bank of The River,
With Ladders Of Incense365.jpg Prince ParihÛ and the Princess of
PuanÎt366.jpg the Embarkation of The Incense
Sycomores On Board the Egyptian Fleet369.jpg Some of the Incense Trees Brought
from PÛanÎt To DeÎr El-baiiakÎ372.jpg Thutmosis Iii., from his Statue in
the Turin Museum378.jpg an Egyptian Encampment Before a
Besieged Town380.jpg Some of the Plants and Animals
Brought Back From PuanÎt381.jpg Part of the Triumphal Lists Of
Thutmosis Iii.384.jpg Some of the Objects Carried in
Tribute to The Syrians
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSÔS IN EGYPT
Syria: the part played by it in the ancient world—Babylon and the
first Chaldæan empire—The dominion of the Hyksôs: Âhmosis.
Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle-fields
of the contending nations which environ them. Into such regions, and to
their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to century to settle
their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of supremacy which
disturb their little corner of the world. The nations around are eager for
the possession of a country thus situated; it is seized upon bit by bit,
and in the strife dismembered and trodden underfoot: at best the only
course open to its inhabitants is to join forces with one of its invaders,
and while helping the intruder to overcome the rest, to secure for
themselves a position of permanent servitude. Should some unlooked-for
chance relieve them from the presence of their foreign lord, they will
probably be quite incapable of profiting by the respite which fortune puts
in their way, or of making any effectual attempt to organize themselves in
view of future attacks. They tend to become split up into numerous rival
communities, of which even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a
perpetual frontier war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of
retaining a glorious sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains,
or some wooded ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be
scenes of bloody conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles
on behalf of petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious
animosity, that the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or
even more than, from an invasion. There will be no truce to their
struggles until they all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and,
except in the interval between two conquests, they will have no national
existence, their history being almost entirely merged in that of other
nations.
From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described, and thus
destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldæa, Egypt, Assyria, and
Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia and the
empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay hold of it.
By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most of the
military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later to come
violently into collision. Confined between the sea and the desert, Syria
offers the only route of easy access to an army marching northwards from
Africa into Asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted to Mesopotamia or
to Egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the Euphrates or the
Nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach the object of
their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal consequence of
its position, had the formation of the country permitted its tribes to
mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to the invading hosts;
but the range of mountains which forms its backbone subdivides it into
isolated districts, and by thus restricting each tribe to a narrow
existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism. The twin chains, the
Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the country down the centre,
are composed of the same kind of calcareous rocks and sandstone, while the
same sort of reddish clay has been deposited on their slopes by the
glaciers of the same geological period.*
Arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south
featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow
valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines,
which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. These ridges,
as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and offer a more
varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and the summits
less uniform in contour and colouring. Lebanon becomes white and
ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude of
perpetual snows: the highest of them, Mount Timarun, reaches 10,526 feet,
while only three others exceed 9000.* Anti-Lebanon is, speaking generally,
1000 or 1300 feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes higher, however,
towards the south, where the triple peak of Mount Hermon rises to a height
of 9184 feet. The Orontes and the Litâny drain the intermediate space. The
Orontes rising on the west side of the Anti-Lebanon, near the ruins of
Baalbek, rushes northwards in such a violent manner, that the dwellers on
its banks call it the rebel—Nahr el-Asi.** About a third of the way
towards its mouth it enters a depression, which ancient dykes help to
transform into a lake; it flows thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast,
as far as the 36th degree of latitude. There it meets the last spurs of
the Amanos, but, failing to cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to
the west, and then to the south, falling into the Mediterranean after
having received an increase to its volume from the waters of the Afrîn.
The Litâny rises a short distance from the Orontes; it flows at first
through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and
forces it into a channel between the spurs of the Lebanon and the Galilæan
hills. The water thence makes its way between two cliffs of perpendicular
rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that the branches of
the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active man could readily
leap across it. Near Yakhmur some detached rocks appear to have been
arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying buttresses against the
mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over the torrent. The basins of
the two rivers lie in one valley, extending eighty leagues in length,
divided by an almost imperceptible watershed into two beds of unequal
slope. The central part of the valley is given up to marshes. It is only
towards the south that we find cornfields, vineyards, plantations of
mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the plain, or disposed in
terraces on the hillsides. Towards the north, the alluvial deposits of,
the Orontes have gradually formed a black and fertile soil, upon which
grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other produce. Cole-Syria, after
having generously nourished the Oriental empires which had preyed upon
her, became one of the granaries of the Roman world, under the capable
rule of the Cæsars.
Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and soil.
That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous region,
with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually towards
the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over with bare
and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which open out to the
Euphrates, the Orontes, or the desert. Vast, slightly undulating plains
succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony, the streams are few in
number and contain but little water. The Sajur flows into the Euphrates,
the Afrîn and the Karasu when united yield their tribute to the Orontes,
while the others for the most part pour their waters into enclosed basins.
The Khalus of the Greeks sluggishly pursues its course southward, and
after reluctantly leaving the gardens of Aleppo, finally loses itself on
the borders of the desert in a small salt lake full of islets: about
halfway between the Khalus and the Euphrates a second salt lake receives
the Nahr ed-Dahab, the “golden river.” The climate is mild, and the
temperature tolerably uniform. The sea-breeze which rises every afternoon
tempers the summer heat: the cold in winter is never piercing, except when
the south wind blows which comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely
lies on the ground for more than twenty-four hours. It seldom rains during
the autumn and winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days
of spring. Vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to
cultivation in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever
irrigation is possible. The ancients dotted these now all but desert
spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals, and
covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous cities.
Primæval forests clothed the slopes of the Amanos, and pinewood from this
region was famous both at Babylon and in the towns of Lower Chaldæa. The
plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities, the vine throve
there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and pistachio and olive
trees grew on every slope. The desert was always threatening to invade the
plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever a prolonged war disturbed
cultivation, or when the negligence of the inhabitants slackened the work
of defence: beyond the lakes and salt marshes it had obtained a secure
hold. At the present time the greater part of the country between the
Orontes and the Euphrates is nothing but a rocky table-land, ridged with
low hills and dotted over with some impoverished oases, excepting at the
foot of Anti-Lebanon, where two rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have
served to create a garden of marvellous beauty. The Barada, dashing from
cascade to cascade, flows for some distance through gorges before emerging
on the plain: scarcely has it reached level ground than it widens out,
divides, and forms around Damascus a miniature delta, into which a
thousand interlacing channels carry refreshment and fertility. Below the
town these streams rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily
along for a day’s journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm
from whence it never again emerges. At the melting of the snows a regular
lake is formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy
margins “like a sapphire set in emeralds.” This lake dries up almost
completely in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with
gigantic rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as
unmolested as in the marshes of Chaldæa. The Awaj, unfed by any tributary,
fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to the south two other
lesser depressions receive the waters of the Anti-Lebanon and the Hauran.
Syria is protected from the encroachments of the desert by a continuous
barrier of pools and beds of reeds: towards the east the space reclaimed
resembles a verdant promontory thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand.
The extent of the cultivated area is limited on the west by the narrow
strip of rock and clay which forms the littoral. From the mouth of the
Litâny to that of the Orontes, the coast presents a rugged, precipitous,
and inhospitable appearance. There are no ports, and merely a few
ill-protected harbours, or narrow beaches lying under formidable
headlands. One river, the Nahr el-Kebir, which elsewhere would not attract
the traveller’s attention, is here noticeable as being the only stream
whose waters flow constantly and with tolerable regularity; the others,
the Leon, the Adonis,* and the Nahr el-Kelb,* can scarcely even be called
torrents, being precipitated as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to
the Mediterranean. Olives, vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while
in ancient times the heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of
oak, pine, larch, cypress, spruce, and cedar. The mountain range drops in
altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of
low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the
latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow
Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable
wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it by a
range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a valley
unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the earth has
been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a chasm which
has never since closed up. A river, unique in character—the Jordan—flows
down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed by it from end
to end.***
Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a basaltic
mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*
The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows down
among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the waters
of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it mingles
with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate marshy
meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering Lake
Huleh.*
At this point the Jordan reaches the level of the Mediterranean, but
instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the
lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. It has a fall of some
300 feet before reaching the Lake of Grenesareth, where it is only
momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong
career southwards.
Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks, as
if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in
present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends
with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62
miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of
the Mediterranean.*
Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either
bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000
feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions:
behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and
intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the Dead
Sea—the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***
The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose
inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation, with
no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a
confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes
affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and
olives. One ridge—Mount Carmel—detached from the principal
chain near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to
the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range
extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while
to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones—the
littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes—an expanse of
plain, a “Shephelah,” dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent
rivers,—and finally the mountains. The region of dunes is not
necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it—Gaza, Jaffa,
Ashdod, and Ascalon—are surrounded by flourishing orchards and
gardens. The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground
needing no manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the
hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance
southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too,
are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during
the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be
distinguished from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and
the frontiers of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and
almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and
overshadowed by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains,
however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few
weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.
We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that
Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area,
isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably
suited to become the seat of a separate independent state. In the north,
we have the country of the two rivers—the Naharaim—extending
from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or even as far as the
Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the Lebanon, lie
Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of Damascus and
Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces
bordering the valley of the Jordan.
It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to
accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the
fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics
are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find
stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour,
but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These remains,
however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite characteristics,
and they yield no information with regard to the origin or affinities of
the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the geographical nomenclature
in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals the existence, at all events
at that period, of several peoples and several languages. The mountains,
rivers, towns, and fortresses in Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated
by words of Semitic origin: it is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic
disguise which they bear on the Egyptian geographical lists, names
familiar to us in Hebrew or Assyrian.
But once across the Orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal
no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one or
other of the dialects of Asia Minor.* The tenacity with which the
place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a
certain number at least of those we know in Syria were in use there long
before they were noted down by the Egyptians, and that they must have been
heirlooms from very early peoples. As they take a Semitic or non-Semitic
form according to their geographical position, we may conclude that the
centre and south were colonized by Semites, and the north by the immigrant
tribes from beyond the Taurus. Facts are not wanting to support this
conclusion, and they prove that it is not so entirely arbitrary as we
might be inclined to believe. The Asiatic visitors who, under a king of
the XIIth dynasty, came to offer gifts to Khnûmhotpû, the Lord of
Beni-Hasan, are completely Semitic in type, and closely resemble the
Bedouins of the present day. Their chief—Abisha—bears a
Semitic name,** as too does the Sheikh Ammianshi, with whom Sinûhit took
refuge.***
Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadimâ, a word which in
Semitic denotes the East. Finally, the only one of their gods known to us,
Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we
find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus. Peoples of Semitic
speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part
of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we find still in
their possession many centuries later, at the time of the Egyptian
conquest.
For a time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. When, however,
the “lords of the sands” grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a column of
light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment,
that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years. Offenders
banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, who were in
a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and the Dead Sea. Egyptian
sailors used to set out to traffic along the seaboard, taking to piracy
when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy
stages into the interior. The accounts they gave of their journeys were
not reassuring. The traveller had first to face the solitudes which
confronted him before reaching the Isthmus, and then to avoid as best he
might the attacks of the pillaging tribes who inhabited it.
Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu—an agricultural and
settled people inhabiting the fertile region—would give the stranger
but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and the
most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from their
attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated; tracts now
denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of elephants
still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards, rendered
the route through them dangerous.
The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small game
was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their
popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook
himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess
whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarâti, chief of
Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to
engage in combat.
These merchants’ adventures and explorations, as they were not followed by
any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or
manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to the
frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power of her
attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond the
provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations looked
rather to Chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the continuous
impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which attributes
to Sargon of Agadê, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection of the
people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a slight
element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we hesitate
to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the Lebanon or
landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent of their
civilization in those western countries which are regarded as having been
under their rule. More than three thousand years before our era, the
Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnûmhotpû clothed themselves according
to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected long robes of striped and
spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had also borrowed the cuneiform
syllabary for the purposes of their official correspondence,* and if the
professional scribe with his stylus and clay tablet was to be found in
their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were, no doubt, more familiar
visitors among them than the Memphite nobles, while the Babylonian kings
sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone, precious metals, and the
timber required in the building of their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as
well as their successors and contemporaries, received large convoys of
materials from the Amanos, and if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely
utilised, it was not because their existence was unknown, but because
distance rendered their approach more difficult and transport more costly.
The Mediterranean marches were, in their language, classed as a whole
under one denomination—Martu, Amurru,** the West—but there
were distinctive names for each of the provinces into which they were
divided.
Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria,
Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their
writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and
that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their
contemporaries: a journey from Lagash to the mountains of Tidanum and to
Gubin, or to the Lebanon and beyond it to Byblos,** meant to them no
voyage of discovery. Armies undoubtedly followed the routes already
frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came
when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their
subjects had peaceably traded.
It does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of Lagash ever
extended their dominion so far. The governors of the northern cities, on
the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated that
march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the Euphrates
into collision with the dwellers on the Nile: for the first Babylonian
empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of Syria.*
Among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of Babylon is
perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague
magnificence and undefined dominion. Cities in other parts of the world,
it is true, have rivalled Babylon in magnificence and power: Egypt could
boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to
our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than Babylon ever contained
in the days of her greatest prosperity. The pyramids of Memphis and the
colossal statues of Thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and the
palaces of Chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain; but
the Egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can calculate
to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation of their
summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their enormous
size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. How is it possible to
give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is strictly
limited by exact and determined measurements? At Babylon, on the contrary,
there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a single hillock,
scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where the temple of Bel
stood erect in its splendour; another represents the hanging gardens,
while the ridges running to the right and left were once the ramparts.
The vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble, and as
soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of bricks,
enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light—in fine,
all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence of man and
to his long sojourn on the spot. But these vestiges are so mutilated and
disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings cannot be
determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for guessing their
dimensions. He who would attempt to restore the ancient appearance of the
place would find at his disposal nothing but vague indications, from which
he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased.
Palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan which
never entered the architect’s mind; the sacred towers as they rose would
be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed; the
enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have quickly
fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried so high: the
whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data, embodies the
concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting the city of blood
and tears, cursed by the Hebrew prophets. Babylon was, however, at the
outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the Euphrates, in a
low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and liable at times to
become marshy. The river at this point runs almost directly north and
south, between two banks of black mud, the base of which it is perpetually
undermining. As long as the city existed, the vertical thrust of the
public buildings and houses kept the river within bounds, and even since
it was finally abandoned, the masses of debris have almost
everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment; towards the
north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given way and sunk
beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course westwards, has
transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds originally on the
opposite side. E-sagilla, the temple of the lofty summit, the sanctuary of
Merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in the depression between the
Babil and the hill of the Kasr.*
In early times it must have presented much the same appearance as the
sanctuaries of Central Chaldæa: a mound of crude brick formed the
substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the god,
of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury, and of
the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole was
surmounted by a ziggurât. On other neighbouring platforms rose the royal
palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the crowd of
private habitations.
The houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles, on
either side of narrow lanes. A massive wall surrounded the whole, shutting
out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the Euphrates,
for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the inhabitants
from the sight of their own river. On the right bank rose a suburb, which
was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a second Babylon,
almost equalling the first in extent and population.
Beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at
length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns, Kutha
and Borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and south-west
respectively, standing isolated above the plain. Sippara on the north,
Nippur on the south, and the mysterious Agadê, completed the circle of
sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of Bel. We may
surmise with all probability that the history of Babylon in early times
resembled in the main that of the Egyptian Thebes. It was a small
seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty
neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses,
were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day came
when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its
rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of Northern and
finally those of Southern Chaldæa.
The lords of Babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious and
military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but
gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power. They were
merely the priestly representatives or administrators of Babel—shakannaku
Babili—and their authority was not considered legitimate until
officially confirmed by the god. Each ruler was obliged to go in state to
the temple of Bel Merodach within a year of his accession: there he had to
take the hands of the divine statue, just as a vassal would do homage to
his liege, and those only of the native sovereigns or the foreign
conquerors could legally call themselves Kings of Babylon—sharru
Babili—who had not only performed this rite, but renewed it
annually.*
Sargon the Elder had lived in Babylon, and had built himself a palace
there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the
glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the
Akkadian dynasties. The actual sway of Babylon, though arrested to the
south by the petty states of Lower Chaldæa, had not encountered to the
north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that
semi-fabulous period of its history. The vast plain extending between the
Euphrates and the Tigris is as it were a continuation of the Arabian
desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil impregnated
with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed upon a bed of
gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there, forming slimy pits.
Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is infrequent at any
season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage which the spring showers
have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully resist its heat, such as
the common salsola, the salsola soda, the pallasia, a small mimosa, and a
species of very fragrant wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured
vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and
affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has
set in. The Euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them.
The river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or
bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports
rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and
willows. Wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede
from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and
every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation. The aspect of the
country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but
there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the
water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would
be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.
The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small
towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the
prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that it
comes up to the horses’ girths. In some places the meadows are so covered
with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the effect
produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them in search
of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen. This fragrant
prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce excellent and abundant
honey, while the vine and olive find there a congenial soil. The
population was unequally distributed in this region. Some half-savage
tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain, dwelling in tents, and
supporting life by the chase and by the rearing of cattle; but the bulk of
the inhabitants were concentrated around the affluents of the Euphrates
and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern mountains wherever springs
could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis, Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all
the small fortified towns and nameless townlets whose ruins are scattered
over the tract of country between the Khabur and the Balikh. Kharranu, or
Harran, stood, like an advance guard of Chaldæan civilization, near the
frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.** To the north it commanded the passes
which opened on to the basins of the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it
protected the roads leading to the east and south-east in the direction of
the table-land of Iran and the Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the
route by which the commerce of Babylon reached the countries lying around
the Mediterranean. We have no means of knowing what affinities as regards
origin or race connected it with Uru, but the same moon-god presided over
the destinies of both towns, and the Sin of Harran enjoyed in very early
times a renown nearly equal to that of his namesake.
He was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an
aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the town
roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron. His
cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices;
generations after the advent to power of the Abbasside caliphs, his
faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose
heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give
oracular responses.* The government of the surrounding country was in the
hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** Chaldæan civilization
before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold of them, and
made them willing subjects to the kings of Babylon.***
These sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure personages,
without much prestige, being sometimes independent and sometimes subject
to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to those of Agadê. In
later times, when Babylon had attained to universal power, and it was
desired to furnish her kings with a continuous history, the names of these
earlier rulers were sought out, and added to those of such foreign princes
as had from time to time enjoyed the sovereignty over them—thus
forming an interminable list which for materials and authenticity would
well compare with that of the Thinite Pharaohs. This list has come down to
us incomplete, and its remains do not permit of our determining the exact
order of reigns, or the status of the individuals who composed it. We find
in it, in the period immediately subsequent to the Deluge, mention of
mythical heroes, followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as
Sargon the Elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most
part real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose
monuments were still existing in certain localities. Towards the end of
the XXVth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of
which all the members come within the range of history.*
The dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. The first
of them, Sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or
other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or
private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his
successors. Sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related
to his predecessor; but from Sumulaîlu to Sam-shusatana the kingly power
was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations,
if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.*
Contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did not
always run so smoothly. They betray the existence of at least one usurper—Immêru—who,
even if he did not assume the royal titles, enjoyed the supreme power for
several years between the reigns of Zabu and Abilsin. The lives of these
rulers closely resembled those of their contemporaries of Southern
Chaldæa. They dredged the ancient canals, or constructed new ones; they
restored the walls of their fortresses, or built fresh strongholds on the
frontier;* they religiously kept the festivals of the divinities belonging
to their terrestrial domain, to whom they annually rendered solemn homage.
They repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them
according to their means; we even know that Zabu, the third in order of
the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary Eulbar
of Anunit, in Sippara. There is evidence that they possessed the small
neighbouring kingdoms of Kishu, Sippara, and Kuta, and that they had
consolidated them into a single state, of which Babylon was the capital.
To the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings of Uru, but
the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an important
city such as Nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell under the
dominion of the southern provinces. Perpetual war was waged in the narrow
borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting apparently in
the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between them under the
immediate successors of Sumuabîm* —the obscure Sumulaîlu, Zabum, the
usurper Immeru, Abîlsin and Sinmuballit—until the reign of
Khammurabi (the son of Sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to his
side.** The struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many
vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive,
since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who had
considerable forces at his disposal. Birnsin*** was, in reality, of
Elamite race, and as he held the province of Yamutbal in appanage, he was
enabled to muster, in addition to his Chaldæan battalions, the army of
foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the
Tigris and the Euphrates.
It was not the first time that Elam had audaciously interfered in the
affairs of her neighbours. In fabulous times, one of her mythical kings—Khumbaba
the Ferocious—had oppressed. Uruk, and Gilgames with all his valour
was barely able to deliver the town. Sargon the Elder is credited with
having subdued Elam; the kings and vicegerents of Lagash, as well as those
of Uru and. Larsam, had measured forces with Anshan, but with no decisive
issue. From time to time they obtained an advantage, and we find recorded
in the annals victories gained by Gudea, Inê-sin, or Bursin, but to be
followed only by fresh reverses; at the close of such campaigns, and in
order to seal the ensuing peace, à princess of Susa would be sent as a
bride to one of the Chaldæan cities, or a Chaldæan lady of royal birth
would enter the harem of a king of Anshân. Elam was protected along the
course of the Tigris and on the shores of the Nâr-Marratum by a wide
marshy region, impassable except at a few fixed and easily defended
places. The alluvial plain extending behind the marshes was as rich and
fertile as that of Chaldæa. Wheat and barley ordinarily yielded an hundred
and at times two hundredfold; the towns were surrounded by a shadeless
belt of palms; the almond, fig, acacia, poplar, and willow extended in
narrow belts along the rivers’ edge. The climate closely resembles that of
Chaldaja: if the midday heat in summer is more pitiless, it is at least
tempered by more frequent east winds. The ground, however, soon begins to
rise, ascending gradually towards the north-east. The distant and uniform
line of mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and
the hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with
thick forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre
vegetation. They comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges,
resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the Tigris and
the table-land of Iran. The intervening valleys were formerly lakes,
having had for the most part no communication with each other and no
outlet into the sea. In the course of centuries they had dried up, leaving
a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds, from which
sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. The rivers—the Uknu,* the
Ididi,** and the Ulaî***—which water this region are, on reaching
more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly shifting their
beds in the light soil of the Susian plain: they soon attain a width equal
to that of the Euphrates, but after a short time lose half their volume in
swamps, and empty themselves at the present day into the Shatt-el-Arab.
They flowed formerly into that part of the Persian Gulf which extended as
far as Kornah, and the sea thus formed the southern frontier of the
kingdom.
From earliest times this country was inhabited by three distinct peoples,
whose descendants may still be distinguished at the present day, and
although they have dwindled in numbers and become mixed with elements of
more recent origin, the resemblance to their forefathers is still very
remarkable. There were, in the first place, the short and robust people of
well-knit figure, with brown skins, black hair and eyes, who belonged to
that negritic race which inhabited a considerable part of Asia in
prehistoric times.*
These prevailed in the lowlands and the valleys, where the warm, damp
climate favoured their development; but they also spread into the mountain
region, and had pushed their outposts as far as the first slopes of the
Iranian table-land. They there contact with white-skinned of medium
height, who were probably allied to the nations of Northern and Central
Asia—to the Scythians,* for instance, if it is permissible to use a
vague term employed by the Ancients.
Semites of the same stock as those of Chaldæa pushed forward as far as the
east bank of the Tigris, and settling mainly among the marshes led a
precarious life by fishing and pillaging.* The country of the plain was
called Anzân, or Anshân,** and the mountain region Numma, or Ilamma, “the
high lands:” these two names were subsequently used to denote the whole
country, and Ilamma has survived in the Hebrew word Elam.*** Susa, the
most important and flourishing town in the kingdom, was situated between
the Ulaî and the Ididi, some twenty-five or thirty miles from the nearest
of the mountain ranges.
Its fortress and palace were raised upon the slopes of a mound which
overlooked the surrounding country:* at its base, to the eastward,
stretched the town, with its houses of sun-dried bricks.**
Further up the course of the Uknu, lay the following cities: Madaktu, the
Badaca of classical authors,* rivalling Susa in strength and importance;
Naditu,** Til-Khumba,*** Dur-Undash,**** Khaidalu.^—all large walled
towns, most of which assumed the title of royal cities. Elam in reality
constituted a kind of feudal empire, composed of several tribes—the
Habardip, the Khushshi, the Umliyash, the people of Yamutbal and of
Yatbur^^—all independent of each other, but often united under the
authority of one sovereign, who as a rule chose Susa as the seat of
government.
The language is not represented by any idioms now spoken, and its
affinities with the Sumerian which some writers have attempted to
establish, are too uncertain to make it safe to base any theory upon
them.*
The little that we know of Elamite religion reveals to us a mysterious
world, full of strange names and vague forms. Over their hierarchy there
presided a deity who was called Shushinak (the Susian), Dimesh or Samesh,
Dagbag, As-siga, Adaene, and possibly Khumba and Æmmân, whom the Chaldæns
identified with their god Ninip; his statue was concealed in a sanctuary
inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from thence by
Assurbanipal of Nineveh in the VIIth century B.C.* This deity was
associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into two
triads—Shumudu, Lagamaru, Partikira; Ammankasibar, Uduran, and
Sapak: of these names, the least repellent, Ammankasibar, may possibly be
the Memnon of the Greeks. The dwelling of these divinities was near Susa,
in the depths of a sacred forest to which the priests and kings alone had
access: their images were brought out on certain days to receive solemn
homage, and were afterwards carried back to their shrine accompanied by a
devout and reverent multitude. These deities received a tenth of the spoil
after any successful campaign—the offerings comprising statues of
the enemies’ gods, valuable vases, ingots of gold and silver, furniture,
and stuffs. The Elamite armies were well organized, and under a skilful
general became irresistible. In other respects the Elamites closely
resembled the Chaldæans, pursuing the same industries and having the same
agricultural and commercial instincts. In the absence of any bas-reliefs
and inscriptions peculiar to this people, we may glean from the monuments
of Lagash and Babylon a fair idea of the extent of their civilization in
its earliest stages.
The cities of the Euphrates, therefore, could have been sensible of but
little change, when the chances of war transferred them from the rule of
their native princes to that of an Elamite. The struggle once over, and
the resulting evils repaired as far as practicable, the people of these
towns resumed their usual ways, hardly conscious of the presence of their
foreign ruler. The victors, for their part, became assimilated so rapidly
with the vanquished, that at the close of a generation or so the
conquering dynasty was regarded legitimate and national one, loyally
attached to the traditions and religion of its adopted country. In the
year 2285 B.C., towards the close of the reign of Nurrammân, or in the
earlier part of that of Siniddinam, a King of Elam, by name
Kudur-nakhunta, triumphantly marched through Chaldæa from end to end,
devastating the country and sparing neither town nor temple: Uruk lost its
statue of Nana, which was carried off as a trophy and placed in the
sanctuary of Susa. The inhabitants long mourned the detention of their
goddess, and a hymn of lamentation, probably composed for the occasion by
one of their priests, kept the remembrance of the disaster fresh in their
memories. “Until when, oh lady, shall the impious enemy ravage the
country!—In thy queen-city, Uruk, the destruction is accomplished,—in
Eulbar, the temple of thy oracle, blood has flowed like water,—upon
the whole of thy lands has he poured out flame, and it is spread abroad
like smoke.—Oh, lady, verily it is hard for me to bend under the
yoke of misfortune!—? Oh, lady, thou hast wrapped me about, thou
hast plunged me, in sorrow!—The impious mighty one has broken me in
pieces like a reèd,—and I know not what to resolve, I trust not in
myself,—like a bed of reeds I sigh day and night!—I, thy
servant, I bow myself before thee!” It would appear that the whole of
Chaldæa, including Babylon itself, was forced to acknowledge the supremacy
of the invader;* a Susian empire thus absorbed Chaldæa, reducing its
states to feudal provinces, and its princes to humble vassals.
Kudur-nakhunta having departed, the people of Larsa exerted themselves to
the utmost to repair the harm that he had done, and they succeeded but too
well, since their very prosperity was the cause only a short time after of
the outburst of another storm. Siniddinam, perhaps, desired to shake off
the Elamite yoke. Simtishilkhak, one of the successors of Kudur-nakhunta,
had conceded the principality of Yamutbal as a fief to Kudur-mabug, one of
his sons. Kudur-mabug appears to have been a conqueror of no mean ability,
for he claims, in his inscriptions, the possession of the whole of
Syria.**
He obtained a victory over Siniddinam, and having dethroned him, placed
the administration of the kingdom in the hands of his own son Eimsin. This
prince, who was at first a feudatory, afterwards associated in the
government with his father, and finally sole monarch after the latter’s
death, married a princess of Chaldæan blood, and by this means
legitimatized his usurpation in the eyes of his subjects. His domain,
which lay on both sides of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, comprised,
besides the principality of Yamutbal, all the towns dependent on Sumer and
Accad—Uru, Larsa, Uruk, and Nippur, He acquitted himself as a good
sovereign in the sight of gods and men: he repaired the brickwork in the
temple of Nannar at Uru; he embellished the temple of Shamash at Larsa,
and caused two statues of copper to be cast in honour of the god; he also
rebuilt Lagash and Grirsu. The city of Uruk had been left a heap of ruins
after the withdrawal of Kudur-nakhunta: he set about the work of
restoration, constructed a sanctuary to Papsukal, raised the ziggurât of
Nana, and consecrated to the goddess an entire set of temple furniture to
replace that carried off by the Elamites. He won the adhesion of the
priests by piously augmenting their revenues, and throughout his reign
displayed remarkable energy. Documents exist which attribute to him the
reduction of Durilu, on the borders of Elam and the Chaldæan states;
others contain discreet allusions to a perverse enemy who disturbed his
peace in the north, and whom he successfully repulsed. He drove
Sinmuballit out of Ishin, and this victory so forcibly impressed his
contemporaries, that they made it the starting-point of a new
semi-official era; twenty-eight years after the event, private contracts
still continued to be dated by reference to the taking of Ishin.
Sinmuballit’s son, Khammurabi, was more fortunate. Eimsin vainly appealed
for help against him to his relative and suzerain Kudur-lagamar, who had
succeeded Simtishilkhak at Susa. Eimsin was defeated, and disappeared from
the scene of action, leaving no trace behind him, though we may infer that
he took refuge in his fief of Yamutbal. The conquest by Khammurabi was by
no means achieved at one blow, the enemy offering an obstinate resistance.
He was forced to destroy several fortresses, the inhabitants of which had
either risen against him or had refused to do him homage, among them being
those of Meîr* and Malgu. When the last revolt had been put down, all the
countries speaking the language of Chaldæa and sharing its civilization
were finally united into a single kingdom, of which Khammurabi proclaimed
himself the head. Other princes who had preceded him had enjoyed the same
opportunities, but their efforts had never been successful in establishing
an empire of any duration; the various elements had been bound together
for a moment, merely to be dispersed again after a short interval. The
work of Khammurabi, on the contrary, was placed on a solid foundation, and
remained unimpaired under his successors. Not only did he hold sway
without a rival in the south as in the north, but the titles indicating
the rights he had acquired over Sumer and Accad were inserted in his
Protocol after those denoting his hereditary possessions,—the city
of Bel and the four houses of the world. Khammurabi’s victory marks the
close of those long centuries of gradual evolution during which the
peoples of the Lower Euphrates passed from division to unity. Before his
reign there had been as many states as cities, and as many dynasties as
there were states; after him there was but one kingdom under one line of
kings.
Khammurabi’s long reign of fifty-five years has hitherto yielded us but a
small number of monuments—seals, heads of sceptres, alabaster vases,
and pompous inscriptions, scarcely any of them being of historical
interest. He was famous for the number of his campaigns, no details of
which, however, have come to light, but the dedication of one of his
statues celebrates his good fortune on the battlefield. “Bel has lent thee
sovereign majesty: thou, what awaitest thou?—Sin has lent thee
royalty: thou, what awaitest thou?—Ninip has lent thee his supreme
weapon: thou, what awaitest thou?—The goddess of light, Ishtar, has
lent thee the shock of arms and the fray: thou, what awaitest thou?—Shamash
and Bamman are thy varlets: thou, what awaitest thou?—It is
Khammurabi, the king, the powerful chieftain—who cuts the enemies in
pieces,—the whirlwind of battle—who overthrows the country of
the rebels—who stays combats, who crushes rebellions,—who
destroys the stubborn like images of clay,—who overcomes the
obstacles of inaccessible mountains.” The majority of these expeditions
were, no doubt, consequent on the victory which destroyed the power of
Kimsin. It would not have sufficed merely to drive back the Elamites
beyond the Tigris; it was necessary to strike a blow within their own
territory to avoid a recurrence of hostilities, which might have
endangered the still recent work of conquest. Here, again, Khammurabi
seems to have met with his habitual success.
Ashnunak was a border district, and shared the fate of all the provinces
on the eastern bank of the Tigris, being held sometimes by Elam and
sometimes by Chaldæa; properly speaking, it was a country of Semitic
speech, and was governed by viceroys owning allegiance, now to Babylon,
now to Susa.* Khammurabi seized this province, and permanently secured its
frontier by building along the river a line of fortresses surrounded by
earthworks. Following the example of his predecessors, he set himself to
restore and enrich the temples.
The house of Zamama and Ninni, at Kish, was out of repair, and the
ziggurât threatened to fall; he pulled it down and rebuilt it, carrying it
to such a height that its summit “reached the heavens.” Merodach had
delegated to him the government of the faithful, and had raised him to the
rank of supreme ruler over the whole of Chaldæa. At Babylon, close to the
great lake which served as a reservoir for the overflow of the Euphrates,
the king restored the sanctuary of Esagilla, the dimensions of which did
not appear to him to be proportionate to the growing importance of the
city. “He completed this divine dwelling with great joy and delight, he
raised the summit to the firmament,” and then enthroned Merodach and his
spouse, Zarpanit, within it, amid great festivities. He provided for the
ever-recurring requirements of the national religion by frequent gifts;
the tradition has come down to us of the granary for wheat which he built
at Babylon, the sight of which alone rejoiced the heart of the god. While
surrounding Sippar with a great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly
inhabitants, he did not forget Shamash and Malkatu, the celestial patrons
of the town. He enlarged in their honour the mysterious Ebarra, the sacred
seat of their worship, and that which no king from the earliest times had
known how to build for his divine master, that did he generously for
Shamash his master. He restored Ezida, the eternal dwelling of Merodach,
at Borsippa; Eturka-lamma, the temple of Anu, Ninni, and Nana, the
suzerains of Kish; and also Ezikalamma, the house of the goddess Ninna, in
the village of Zarilab. In the southern provinces, but recently added to
the crown,—at Larsa, Uruk, and Uru,—he displayed similar
activity.
He had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he
did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by the
prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in
securing for him the people’s obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak of
a revolt. He had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting to
allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil discord
and foreign conquest. The irrigation of the country demanded constant
attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed the work
with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the country into
small states, their respective resources could not be combined in such
general operations as were needed for controlling the inundations and
effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of water. Khammurabi
witnessed the damage done to the whole province of Umliyash by one of
those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage the regions of the
Lower Tigris,* and possibly it may have been to prevent the recurrence of
such a disaster that he undertook the work of canalization.
He was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce to a
single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which
intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between Babylon
and the sea. Already, more than half a century previously, Siniddinam had
enlarged the canal on which Larsa was situated, while Bimsin had provided
an outlet for the “River of the Gods” into the Persian Gulf:* by the
junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the Euphrates
and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus waters of the
inundation. Khammurabi informs us how Anu and Bel, having confided to him
the government of Sumer and Accad, and having placed in his hands the
reins of power, he dug the Nâr-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to the
people, which brings abundance of water to the country of Sumir and Accad.
“I turned both its banks into cultivated ground, I heaped up mounds of
grain and I furnished perpetual water for the people of Sumir and Accad.
The country of Sumer and Accad, I gathered together its nations who were
scattered, I gave them pasture and drink, I ruled over them in riches and
abundance, I caused them to inhabit a peaceful dwelling-place. Then it was
that Khammurabi, the powerful king, the favourite of the great gods, I
myself, according to the prodigious strength with which Merodach had
endued me, I constructed a high fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit
rises to the height of the mountains, at the head of the Nâr-Khammurabi,
the source of wealth to the people. This fortress I called
Dur-Sinmuballit-abim-uâlidiya, the Fortress of Sinmuballit, the father who
begat me, so that the name of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may
endure in the habitations of the world.”
This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining those
of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain in its
entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side along its
course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its banks were
enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously had been
useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor importance pierced
the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the Euphrates in the
neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest contented with these; a
system of secondary canals doubtless completed the whole scheme of
irrigation which he had planned after the achievement of his conquest, and
his successors had merely to keep up his work in order to ensure an
unrivalled prosperity to the empire.
Their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. Samsuîluna, the son
of Khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three fresh canals, one
at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen centuries later; it
is mentioned in the documents of the second Assyrian empire in the time of
Assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of it may still be found at
the present day. Abiêshukh,* Ammisatana,** Ammizadugga,*** and
Samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate the network planned by
their ancestors, or applied themselves to the better distribution of the
overflow in those districts where cultivation was still open to
improvement.
We should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times
been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by
reference to important national events. They appear to have chosen by
preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for
instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one of
the great divinities, such as Shamash, Merodach, Ishtar, or Nana, as the
eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn festival,
or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered allusions to works
of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of the country was
jealously watched over.* These sovereigns appear to have enjoyed long
reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and twenty years; and
when at length the death of any king occurred, he was immediately replaced
by his son, the notaries’ acts and the judicial documents which have come
down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal delay in the course of
affairs. We may, therefore, conclude that the last century and a half of
the dynasty was a period of peace and of material prosperity. Chaldæa was
thus enabled to fully reap the advantage of being united under the rule of
one individual. It is quite possible that those cities—Uru, Larsa,
Ishin, Uruk, and Nippur—which had played so important a part in the
preceding centuries, suffered from the loss of their prestige, and from
the blow dealt to their traditional pretensions.
Up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the history
of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves for the
supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which had raised
each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any one of them to
such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of supplanting it
and of enjoying the highest place. The rise of Babylon destroyed the last
chance which any of them had of ever becoming the capital; the new city
was so favourably situated, and possessed so much wealth and so many
soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious energy, that its
neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign themselves to the
subordinate position of leading provincial towns. They gave a loyal
obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and sank gradually
into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy being somewhat
compensated for by the religious respect in which they were always held.
Their ancient divinities—Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra—were adopted,
if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the protection of
these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of Nebo, and prided
themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the inhabitants of
Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal, their appeal to
these deities might be regarded as productive of more substantial results
than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The increase of the national
wealth and the concentration, under one head, of armies hitherto owning
several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of
the whole of Chaldæa, to offer an invincible resistance to foreign
enemies, and to establish their dominion in countries where their
ancestors had enjoyed merely a precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never
completely ceased between Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they
broke out again in some frontier disturbance, at times speedily
suppressed, but at others entailing violent consequences and ending in a
regular war. No document furnishes us with any detailed account of these
outbreaks, but it would appear that the balance of power was maintained on
the whole with tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each
generation finding themselves in much the same position as they had
occupied at its commencement. The two empires were separated from south to
north by the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the
present village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains.
Durîlu probably fell ordinarily under Chaldæan jurisdiction. Umliyash was
included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason to
believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every
probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising
Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples
scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them
homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty, and
we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended northwards
as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of the
Euphrates.
At what period the Chaldæans first crossed that river is as yet unknown.
Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains
over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions.
Kudur-mabug proclaims himself “adda” of Martu, Lord of the countries of
the West, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest the
idea of a great Blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some period
over Western Asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted at by the
Greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous Memnon.* Contemporary
records are still wanting which might show whether Kudur-mabug inherited
these distant possessions from one of his predecessors—such as
Kudur-nakhunta, for instance—or whether he won them himself at the
point of the sword; but a fragment of an old chronicle, inserted in the
Hebrew Scriptures, speaks distinctly of another Elamite, who made war in
person almost up to the Egyptian frontier.** This is the Kudur-lagamar
(Chedorlaomer) who helped Eimsin against Hammurabi, but was unable to
prevent his overthrow.
In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the Dead
Sea—Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboîm, and Belâ—revolted against
him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldæa,
Ariôch of Ellasar,* Tida’lo the Guti, and marched with them to the
confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes then
inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. They
are represented as being giants—Rephalm; men of prodigious strength—Zuzîm;
as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech—Zamzummîm; as
formidable monsters**—Emîm or Anakîm, before whom other nations
appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horîm who were encamped on the
confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites who ranged over the
mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar defeated them one
after another—the Rephaîm near to Ashtaroth-Karnaîm, the Zuzîm near
Ham,**** the Amîm at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horîm on the spurs of
Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing his footsteps, he entered
the country of the Amalekites by way of En-mishpat, and pillaged the
Amorites of Hazazôn-Tamar.
In the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their
troops in the vale of Siddîm, and were there resolutely awaiting
Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the
fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil
abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains.
Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on
all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding that he
was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan by the patriarch Abraham.*
After his victory over Kudur-lagamar, Khammurabi assumed the title of King
of Martu,* which we find still borne by Ammisatana sixty years later.** We
see repeated here almost exactly what took place in Ethiopia at the time
of its conquest by Egypt: merchants had prepared the way for military
occupation, and the civilization of Babylon had taken hold on the people
long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful to claim them as
vassals. The empire may be said to have been virtually established from
the day when the states of the Middle and Lower Euphrates formed but one
kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. We must not, however, imagine it
to have been a compact territory, divided into provinces under military
occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws and statutes, and administered
throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders
from Babylon or Susa, according as the chances of war favoured the
ascendency of Chaldæa or Elam. It was in reality a motley assemblage of
tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was subjection to a
common yoke.
They were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military
contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their
particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected: they
had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to live in
their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the empire
forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where the
internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his
suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a
year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the
obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt
would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to
suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far
and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual re-conquests, and its
extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs, or with the resources
which were for the moment available.
Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, Egypt
loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. Her natural
fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and
perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well known by
the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her
treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts. Egypt
had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line
of princes who governed her had little in common with the Pharaohs who had
rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth dynasty. She was now under
the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the
Delta, and extended merely in name over the Said and Nubia. The feudal
lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central
power waned, shared between them the possession of the Nile valley below
Memphis: the princes of Thebes, who were probably descendants of
Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may
have prevented them from donning the pschënt or placing their names within
a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. A
favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the
Chaldæans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among
themselves.* They stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of
Syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important
result: distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the
Elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for
such a momentous undertaking. What they had not dared to venture, others
more audacious were to accomplish. At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian
record, “there came to us a king named Timaios. Under this king, then, I
know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in
the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble race,
came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and
without fighting.”
It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their
armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African—the war-chariot—and
before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way in a body.* The
invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the Nile. Towns
and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all
they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women
and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king Salatis,
one of their chiefs.** He established a semblance of regular government,
chose Memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon the vanquished. Two
perils, however, immediately threatened the security of his triumph: in
the south the Theban lords, taking matters into their own hands after the
downfall of the Xoites, refused the oath of allegiance to Salatis, and
organized an obstinate resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures
to protect himself against an attack of the Chaldæans or of the Élamites
who were oppressing Chaldæa.****
From the natives of the Delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their
reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself,
therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the Nile
valley in order to keep the Thebans in check, he led the main body of his
troops to the frontier on the isthmus. Pacific immigrations had already
introduced Asiatic settlers into the Delta, and thus prepared the way for
securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of these strangers,
and on the ruins of the ancient town of Hâwârît-Avaris, in the Sethro’ifce
nome—a place connected by tradition with the myth of Osiris and
Typhon—Salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp, capable of
sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. He visited it yearly to
witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and to preside over
the distribution of rations. This permanent garrison protected him from a
Chaldæan invasion, a not unlikely event as long as Syria remained under
the supremacy of the Babylonian kings; it furnished his successors also
with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers, thus enabling them to
complete the conquest of Lower Egypt. Years elapsed before the princes of
the south would declare themselves vanquished, and five kings—Anôn,
Apachnas, Apôphis I., Iannas, and Asses—passed their lifetime “in a
perpetual warfare, desirous of tearing up Egypt to the very root.” These
Theban kings, who were continually under arms against the barbarians, were
subsequently classed in a dynasty by themselves, the XVth of Manetho, but
they at last succumbed to the invader, and Asses became master of the
entire country. His successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the XVIth,
the few remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length
and breadth of the valley from the shores of the Mediterranean to the
rocks of the first cataract.
The Egyptians who witnessed the advent of this Asiatic people called them
by the general term Amûû, Asiatics, or Monâtiû, the men of the desert.*
They had already given the Bedouin the opprobrious epithet of Shaûsû—pillagers
or robbers—which aptly described them;** and they subsequently
applied the same name to the intruders—Hiq Shaûsû—from which
the Greeks derived their word Hyksôs, or Hykoussôs, for this people.***
But we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin.
The writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on
these questions: some confounded the Hyksôs with the Phoenicians, others
regarded them as Arabs.* Modern scholars have put forward at least a dozen
contradictory hypotheses on the matter. The Hyksôs have been asserted to
have been Canaanites, Elamites, Hittites, Accadians, Scythians. The last
opinion found great favour with the learned, as long as they could believe
that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette represented Apôphis or one of his
predecessors. As a matter of fact, these monuments present all the
characteristics of the Mongoloid type of countenance—the small and
slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the
pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips
slightly depressed at the corners.** These peculiarities are also observed
in the three heads found at Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at
Mit-Farês in the Fayum, in the twin figures of the Nile removed to the
Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the
collection at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome. The same foreign type of face is
also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages
scattered over the eastern part of the Delta, particularly on the shores
of Lake Menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the
direct descendants of the Hyksôs.
This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the
sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for
Amenemhâît III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. In spite of the facts we
possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of
the Hyksôs is as mysterious as ever. We gather, however, that the third
millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable
migratory movements. The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldæan
princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the
regions over which they passed. They must have encountered by the way many
nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace. An
impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the
movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either
displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering
momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.*
A tradition, picked up by Herodotus on his travels, relates that the
Phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of the
Persian Gulf;* it was also said that Indathyrses, a Scythian king, had
victoriously scoured the whole of Asia, and had penetrated as far as
Egypt.** Either of these invasions may have been the cause of the Syrian
migration. In. comparison with the meagre information which has come down
to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much actual
fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause of the
movement and the mode of its execution. The least improbable hypothesis is
that which attributes the appearance of the Shepherds about the XXIIIrd
century B.C., to the arrival in Naharaim of those Khati who subsequently
fought so obstinately against the armies both of the Pharaohs and the
Ninevite kings. They descended from the mountain region in which the Halys
and the Euphrates take their rise, and if the bulk of them proceeded no
further than the valleys of the Taurus and the Amanos, some at least must
have pushed forward as far as the provinces on the western shores of the
Dead Sea. The most adventurous among them, reinforced by the Canaanites
and other tribes who had joined them on their southward course, crossed
the isthmus of Suez, and finding a people weakened by discord, experienced
no difficulty in replacing the native dynasties by their own barbarian
chiefs.***
Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians, but
the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of
“she-maû,” * strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague
appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula,—Monâtiû,
the shepherds, or Sâtiû, the archers. They succeeded in hiding the
original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they
themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity.
The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their
conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho
after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the
“Plagues” or “Pests,” and every possible crime and impiety was attributed
to them.
But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon
lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. Those of them stationed
in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities and
characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to
their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long
hair, thick beard, and marked features. Their sovereigns seemed to have
realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the
country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to
understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the
services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public
accounts under the native kings.* Once schooled to the new state of
affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life.
The court of the Pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of
officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new
sovereign;* the titles of the Amenemhâîts and the Usirtasens, adapted to
these “princes of foreign lands,” ** legitimatised them as descendants of
Horus and sons of the Sun.*** They respected the local religions, and went
so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect
them with some of their own barbarous divinities. The chief deity of their
worship was Baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his
resemblance to Sit, the brother and enemy of Osiris, was so marked, that
he was identified with the Egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional
title of Sutkhû, the Great Sit.^
He was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of
circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the
emblematic animal of Sît, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted
the deserts of the Thebaid. His temples were erected in the cities of the
Delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at
Bubastis and at Tanis. Tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces,
and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls.
Apôphis Aq-nûnrî, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings
in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing
colossi of the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties.
He was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his
predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works
belonging to the Amenemhâîts or to Mirmâshâû. Khianî, who is possibly the
Iannas of Manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* The statue
bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by Naville
at Bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of
his contemporaries. It is a work possessing no originality, though of very
commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum;
the artist who conceived it took ‘his inspiration with considerable
cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the Delta
under the Sovkhotpfts and the Nofirhotpûs. But a small grey granite lion,
also of the reign of Khianî, which by a strange fate had found its way to
Bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the
Hyksôs period.
It is heavy in form, and the muzzle in no way recalls the fine profile of
the lions executed by the sculptors of earlier times. The pursuit of
science and the culture of learning appear to have been more successfully
perpetuated than the fine arts; a treatise on mathematics, of which a copy
has come down to us, would seem to have been recopied, if not remodelled,
in the twenty-second year of Apôphis IL Aûsirrî. If we only possessed more
monuments or documents treating of this period, we should doubtless
perceive that their sojourn on the banks of the Nile was instrumental in
causing a speedy change in the appearance and character of the Hyksôs. The
strangers retained to a certain extent their coarse countenances and rude
manners: they showed no aptitude for tilling the soil or sowing grain, but
delighted in the marshy expanses of the Delta, where they gave themselves
up to a semi-savage life of hunting and of tending cattle. The nobles
among them, clothed and schooled after the Egyptian fashion, and holding
fiefs, or positions at court, differed but little from the native feudal
chiefs. We see here a case of what generally happens when a horde of
barbarians settles down in a highly organised country which by a stroke of
fortune they may have conquered; as soon as the Hyksôs had taken complete
possession of Egypt, Egypt in her turn took possession of them, and those
who survived the enervating effect of her civilization were all but
transformed into Egyptians.
If, in the time of the native Pharaohs, Asiatic tribes had been drawn
towards Egypt, where they were treated as subjects or almost as slaves,
the attraction which she possessed for them must have increased in
intensity under the shepherds. They would now find the country in the
hands of men of the same races as themselves—Egyptianised, it is
true, but not to such an extent as to have completely lost their own
language and the knowledge of their own extraction. Such immigrants were
the more readily welcomed, since there lurked a feeling among the Hyksôs
that it was necessary to strengthen themselves against the slumbering
hostility of the indigenous population. The royal palace must have more
than once opened its gates to Asiatic counsellors and favourites.
Canaanites and Bedouin must often have been enlisted for the camp at
Avaris. Invasions, famines, civil wars, all seem to have conspired to
drive into Egypt not only isolated individuals, but whole families and
tribes. That of the Beni-Israel, or Israelites, who entered the country
about this time, has since acquired a unique position in the world’s
history. They belonged to that family of Semitic extraction which we know
by the monuments and tradition to have been scattered in ancient times
along the western shores of the Persian Gulf and on the banks of the
Euphrates. Those situated nearest to Chaldæa and to the sea probably led a
settled existence; they cultivated the soil, they employed themselves in
commerce and industries, their vessels—from Dilmun, from Mâgan, and
from Milukhkha—coasted from one place to another, and made their way
to the cities of Sumer and Accad. They had been civilized from very early
times, and some of their towns were situated on islands, so as to be
protected from sudden incursions. Other tribes of the same family occupied
the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and delighted in the
unsettled life of nomads. There appeared to be in this distant corner of
Arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which periodically
overflowed its borders and spread over the world. It was from this very
region that we see the Kashdim, the true Chaldæans, issuing ready armed
for combat,—a people whose name was subsequently used to denote
several tribes settled between the lower waters of the Tigris and the
Euphrates. It was there, among the marshes on either side of these rivers,
that the Aramoans established their first settlements after quitting the
desert. There also the oldest legends of the race placed the cradle of the
Phoenicians; it was even believed, about the time of Alexander, that the
earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the
Bahrein Islands, the largest of which, Tylos and Arados, bore names
resembling the two great ports of Tyre and Arvad. We are indebted to
tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they
reached the Mediterranean. The occurrence of violent earthquakes forced
them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the Lake of Syria,
where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest
till they had reached the sea, where they founded Sidon. The question
arises as to the position of the Lake of Syria on whose shores they
rested, some believing it to be the Bahr-î-Nedjif and the environs of
Babylon; others, the Lake of Bambykês near the Euphrates, the emigrants
doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having
approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier.
Another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of Merom,
the Lake of Galilee, or the Dead Sea; in this case the horde must have
crossed the neck of the Arabian peninsula, from the Euphrates to the
Jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which
afforded an occasional route for caravans.* Several writers assure us that
the Phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by Herodotus,
and that the sea which they remembered on reaching Tyre was not the
Persian Gulf, but the Dead Sea. If this had been the case, they need not
have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other
documents. The Bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of
Kudur-lagamar, the anger of God being kindled by the wickedness of Sodom
and Gomorrah, He resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the
valley of Siddim. A cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and
consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as “of a furnace,” had passed
away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** Previous to their
destruction, the lake into which the Jordan empties itself had had but a
restricted area: the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been
occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged
it to its present dimensions. The earthquake which caused the Phoenicians
to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm,
and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our Dead Sea.
One fact, however, appears to be certain in the midst of many hypotheses,
and that is that the Phoenicians had their origin in the regions bordering
on the Persian Gulf. It is useless to attempt, with the inadequate
materials as yet in our possession, to determine by what route they
reached the Syrian coast, though we may perhaps conjecture the period of
their arrival. Herodotus asserts that the Tyrians placed the date of the
foundation of their principal temple two thousand three hundred years
before the time of his visit, and the erection of a sanctuary for their
national deity would probably take place very soon after their settlement
at Tyre: this would bring their arrival there to about the XXVIIIth
century before our era. The Elamite and Babylonian conquests would
therefore have found the Phoenicians already established in the country,
and would have had appreciable effect upon them.
The question now arises whether the Beni-Israel belonged to the group of
tribes which included the Phoenicians, or whether they were of Chaldæan
race. Their national traditions leave no doubt upon that point. They are
regarded as belonging to an important race, which we find dispersed over
the country of Padan-Aram, in Northern Mesopotamia, near the base of Mount
Masios, and extending on both sides of the Euphrates.*
Their earliest chiefs bore the names of towns or of peoples,—N
akhor, Peleg, and Serug:* all were descendants of Arphaxad,** and it was
related that Terakh, the direct ancestor of the Israelites, had dwelt in
Ur-Kashdîm, the Ur or Uru of the Chaldæans.*** He is said to have had
three sons—Abraham, Nakhôr, and Harân. Harân begat Lot, but died
before his father in Ur-Kashdîm, his own country; Abraham and Nakhor both
took wives, but Abraham’s wife remained a long time barren. Then Terakh,
with his son Abraham, his grandson Lot, the son of Harân, and his
daughter-in-law Sarah,**** went forth from Ur-Kashdîm (Ur of the Chaldees)
to go into the land of Canaan.
And they came unto Kharân, and dwelt there, and Terakh died in Kharân.* It
is a question whether Kharân is to be identified with Harrân in
Mesopotamia, the city of the god Sin; or, which is more probable, with the
Syrian town of Haurân, in the neighbourhood of Damascus. The tribes who
crossed the Euphrates became subsequently a somewhat important people.
They called themselves, or were known by others, as the ‘Ibrîm, or
Hebrews, the people from beyond the river;** and this appellation, which
we are accustomed to apply to the children of Israel only, embraced also,
at the time when the term was most extended, the Ammonites, Moabites,
Edomites, Ishmaelites, Midianites, and many other tribes settled on the
borders of the desert to the east and south of the Dead Sea.
These peoples all traced their descent from Abraham, the son of Terakh,
but the children of Israel claimed the privilege of being the only
legitimate issue of his marriage with Sarah, giving naïve or derogatory
accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common
ancestor; Ammon and Moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous
union of Lot and his daughters. Midian and his sons were descended from
Keturah, who was merely a concubine, Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian
slave, while the “hairy” Esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of
the Edomites to his brother Jacob, and consequently to the Israelites, for
a dish of lentils. Abraham left Kharân at the command of Jahveh, his God,
receiving from Him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above
all others. Abraham pursued his way into the heart of Canaan till he
reached Shechem, and there, under the oaks of Moreh, Jahveh, appearing to
him a second time, announced to him that He would give the whole land to
his posterity as an inheritance. Abraham virtually took possession of it,
and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at Shechem, Bethel,
and Mamre, the places where God had revealed Himself to him, treating as
his equals the native chiefs, Abîmelech of Gerar and Melchizedek of
Jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the Jordan as a place of pasturage
to his nephew Lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** His nomadic
instinct having led him into Egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by
Pharaoh.***
On his return he purchased the field of Ephron, near Kirjath-Arba, and the
cave of Machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family*
Kirjath-Arba, the Hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his
favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the Elamites
invaded the valley of Siddîm, and carried off Lot among their prisoners.
Abraham set out in pursuit of them, and succeeded in delivering his
nephew.* God (Jahveh) not only favoured him on every occasion, but
expressed His will to extend over Abraham’s descendants His sheltering
protection. He made a covenant with him, enjoining the use on the occasion
of the mysterious rites employed among the nations when effecting a treaty
of peace. Abraham offered up as victims a heifer, a goat, and a
three-year-old ram, together with a turtle-dove and a young pigeon; he cut
the animals into pieces, and piling them in two heaps, waited till the
evening. “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham;
and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him,” and a voice from on
high said to him: “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a
land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them
four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I
judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance…. And it
came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a
smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.”
Jahveh sealed the covenant by consuming the offering.
Two less important figures fill the interval between the Divine prediction
of servitude and its accomplishment. The birth of one of them, Isaac, was
ascribed to the Divine intervention at a period when Sarah had given up
all hope of becoming a mother. Abraham was sitting at his tent door in the
heat of the day, when three men presented themselves before him, whom he
invited to repose under the oak while he prepared to offer them
hospitality. After their meal, he who seemed to be the chief of the three
promised to return within a year, when Sarah should be blessed with the
possession of a son. The announcement came from Jahveh, but Sarah was
ignorant of the fact, and laughed to herself within the tent on hearing
this amazing prediction; for she said, “After I am waxed old shall I have
pleasure, my lord being old also?” The child was born, however, and was
called Isaac, “the laugher,” in remembrance of Sarah’s mocking laugh.*
There is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his
father.** Like Abraham he dwelt near Hebron,*** and departing thence
wandered with his household round the wells of Beersheba. Like him he was
threatened with the loss of his wife.
Like him, also, he renewed relations with Abîmelech of Gerar.* He married
his relative Rebecca, the granddaughter of Nâkhor and the sister of
Laban.** After twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins,
Esau and Jacob, who contended with each other from their mother’s womb,
and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud. We know how Esau, under
the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his
birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the
Edomites. Jacob spent a portion of his youth in Padan-Aram; here he served
Laban for the hands of his cousins Rachel and Leah; then, owing to the bad
faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years’ service,
taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks. At first he wandered
aimlessly along the eastern bank of the Jordan, where Jahveh revealed
Himself to him in his troubles. Laban pursued and overtook him, and,
acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight.
Jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at
Mizpah to after-ages as the “Stone of Witness “—G-al-Ed (Galeed).***
This having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother
Esau, who bore him no good will.
One night, at the ford of the Jabbok, when he had fallen behind his
companions, “there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day,”
without prevailing against him. The stranger endeavoured to escape before
daybreak, but only succeeded in doing so at the cost of giving Jacob his
blessing. “What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name
shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God
and with men, and hast prevailed.” Jacob called the place Penîel, “for,”
said he, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” The
hollow of his thigh was “strained as he wrestled with him,” and he became
permanently lame.* Immediately after the struggle he met Esau, and
endeavoured to appease him by his humility, building a house for him, and
providing booths for his cattle, so as to secure for his descendants the
possession of the land. From this circumstance the place received the name
of Succôth—the “Booths “—by which appellation it was
henceforth known. Another locality where Jahveh had met Jacob while he was
pitching his tents, derived from this fact the designation of the “Two
Hosts”—Mahanaîm.** On the other side of the river, at Shechem,*** at
Bethel,**** and at Hebron, near to the burial-place of his family, traces
of him are everywhere to be found blent with those of Abraham.
By his two wives and their maids he had twelve sons. Leah was the mother
of Keuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zabulon; Gad. and Asher were
the children of his slave Zilpah; while Joseph and Benjamin were the only
sons of Rachel—Dan and Naphtali being the offspring of her servant
Bilhah. The preference which his father showed to him caused Joseph to be
hated by his brothers; they sold him to a caravan of Midianites on their
way to Egypt, and persuaded Jacob that a wild beast had devoured him.
Jahveh was, however, with Joseph, and “made all that he did to prosper in
his hand.” He was bought by Potiphar, a great Egyptian lord and captain of
Pharaoh’s guard, who made him his overseer; his master’s wife, however,
“cast her eyes upon Joseph,” but finding that he rejected her shameless
advances, she accused him of having offered violence to her person. Being
cast into prison, he astonished his companions in misfortune by his skill
in reading dreams, and was summoned to Court to interpret to the king his
dream of the seven lean kine who had devoured the seven fat kine, which he
did by representing the latter as seven years of abundance, of which the
crops should be swallowed up by seven years of famine. Joseph was
thereupon raised by Pharaoh to the rank of prime minister. He stored up
the surplus of the abundant harvests, and as soon as the famine broke out,
distributed the corn to the hunger-stricken people in exchange for their
silver and gold, and for their flocks and fields. Hence it was,that the
whole of the Nile valley, with the exception of the lands belonging to the
priests, gradually passed into the possession of the royal treasury.
Meanwhile his brethren, who also suffered from the famine, came down into
Egypt to buy corn. Joseph revealed himself to them, pardoned the wrong
they had done him, and presented them to the Pharaoh. “And Pharaoh said
unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go,
get you unto the land of Canaan: and take your father and your household,
and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and
ye shall eat the fat of the land.” Jacob thereupon raised his camp and
came to Beersheba, where he offered sacrifices to the God of his father
Isaac; and Jahveh commanded him to go down into Egypt, saying, “I will
there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt:
and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand
upon thine eyes.” The whole family were installed by Pharaoh in the
province of Goshen, as far as possible from the centres of the native
population, “for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.”
In the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the Hebrews
of the times of the Kings delighted to trace the history of their remote
ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the Beni-Israel
quitted Southern Syria and settled on the banks of the Nile. They had
remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains
of Judah. Hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but
scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert,
were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the
neighbouring towns. Every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to
browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing
them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. The
women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and
devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled
beyond the usual period. The men lived like the Bedouin—periods of
activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily
routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to
quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing
well.
A comparatively ancient tradition relates that the Hebrews arrived in
Egypt during the reign of Aphôbis, a Hyksôs king, doubtless one of the
Apôpi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the Theban
Pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of Amenemhâît III. and on
the colossi of Mîrmâshâû.* The land which the Hebrews obtained is that
which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who
find there an uncertain hospitality.
The tribes of the isthmus of Suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting
from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are
merely temporary. The lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them
within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact. Should
the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their
liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert. The
district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to
desolation. Probably the same state of things existed in ancient times,
and the border nomes on the east of the Delta were in turn inhabited or
deserted by the Bedouin of the period. The towns were few in number, but a
series of forts protected the frontier. These were mere
village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded
by a strip of cornland. Beyond the frontier extended a region of bare
rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of
the inundation. The land of Goshen was bounded by the cities of Heliopolis
on the south, Bubastis on the west, and Tanis and Mendes on the north: the
garrison at Avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order
within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions
of the Monatiû and the Hîrû-Shâîtû.*
The Beni-Israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their
traditional tastes. Even if their subsequent importance as a nation has
been over-estimated, they did not at least share the fate of many foreign
tribes, who, when transplanted into Egypt, waned and died out, or, at the
end of two or three generations, became merged in the native population.*
In pursuing their calling as shepherds, almost within sight of the rich
cities of the Nile valley, they never forsook the God of their fathers to
bow down before the Enneads or Triads of Egypt; whether He was already
known to them as Jahveh, or was worshipped under the collective name of
Elohîm, they served Him with almost unbroken fidelity even in the presence
of Râ and Osiris, of Phtah and Sûtkhû.
The Hyksôs conquest had not in any way modified the feudal system of the
country. The Shepherd-kings must have inherited the royal domain just as
they found it at the close of the XIVth dynasty, but doubtless the whole
Delta, from Avaris to Sais, and from Memphis to Buto, was their personal
appanage. Their direct authority probably extended no further south than
the pyramids, and their supremacy over the fiefs of the Said was at best
precarious. The turbulent lords who shared among them the possession of
the valley had never lost their proud or rebellious spirit, and under the
foreign as under the native Pharaohs regulated their obedience to their
ruler by the energy he displayed, or by their regard for the resources at
his disposal. Thebes had never completely lost the ascendency which it
obtained over them at the fall of the Memphite dynasty. The accession of
the Xoite dynasty, and the arrival of the Shepherd-kings, in relegating
Thebes unceremoniously to a second rank, had not discouraged it, or
lowered its royal prestige in its own eyes or in those of others: the
lords of the south instinctively rallied around it, as around their
natural citadel, and their resources, combined with its own, rendered it
as formidable a power as that of the masters of the Delta. If we had
fuller information as to the history of this period, we should doubtless
see that the various Theban princes took occasion, as in the
Heracleopolitan epoch, to pick a quarrel with their sovereign lord, and
did not allow themselves to be discouraged by any check.*
The period of hegemony attributed by the chronicles to the Hyksôs of the
XVIth dynasty was not probably, as far as they were concerned, years of
perfect tranquillity, or of undisputed authority. In inscribing their sole
names on the lists, the compilers denoted merely the shorter or longer
period during which their Theban vassals failed in their rebellious
efforts, and did not dare to assume openly the title or ensigns of
royalty. A certain Apôphis, probably the same who took the prsenomen of
Aqnûnrî, was reigning at Tanis when the decisive revolt broke out, and
Saqnûnrî Tiûâa I., who was the leader on the occasion, had no other title
of authority over the provinces of the south than that of hiqu, or
regent. We are unacquainted with the cause of the outbreak or with its
sequel, and the Egyptians themselves seem to have been not much better
informed on the subject than ourselves. They gave free flight to their
fancy, and accommodated the details to their taste, not shrinking from the
introduction of daring fictions into the account. A romance, which was
very popular with the literati four or five hundred years later, asserted
that the real cause of the war was a kind of religious quarrel. “It
happened that the land of Egypt belonged to the Fever-stricken, and, as
there was no supreme king at that time, it happened then that King
Saqnûnrî was regent of the city of the south, and that the Fever-stricken
of the city of Râ were under the rule of Râ-Apôpi in Avaris. The Whole
Land tribute to the latter in manufactured products, and the north did the
same in all the good things of the Delta. Now, the King Râ-Apôpi took to
himself Sûtkhû for lord, and he did not serve any other god in the Whole
Land except Sûtkhû, and he built a temple of excellent and everlasting
work at the gate of the King Râ-Apôpi, and he arose every morning to
sacrifice the daily victims, and the chief vassals were there with
garlands of flowers, as it was accustomed to be done for the temple of
Phrâ-Harmâkhis.” Having finished the temple, he thought of imposing upon
the Thebans the cult of his god, but as he shrank from employing force in
such a delicate matter, he had recourse to stratagem. He took counsel with
his princes and generals, but they were unable to propose any plan. The
college of diviners and scribes was more complaisant: “Let a messenger go
to the regent of the city of the South to tell him: The King Râ-Apôpi
commands thee: ‘That the hippopotami which are in the pool of the town are
to be exterminated in the pool, in order that slumber may come to me by
day and by night.’ He will not be able to reply good or bad, and thou
shalt send him another messenger: The King Râ-Apôpi commands thee: ‘If the
chief of the South does not reply to my message, let him serve no longer
any god but Sûtkhû. But if he replies to it, and will do that which I tell
him to do, then I will impose nothing further upon him, and I will not in
future bow before any other god of the Whole Land than Amonrâ, king of the
gods!’” Another Pharaoh of popular romance, Nectanebo, possessed, at a
much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of
Babylon, and his friend Lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to
wring the necks of the cocks of Memphis:* the hippopotami of the Theban
lake, which troubled the rest of the King of Tanis, were evidently of
close kin to these extraordinary animals.
The sequel is unfortunately lost. We may assume, however, without much
risk of error, that Saqnûnrî came forth safe and sound from the ordeal;
that Apôpi was taken in his own trap, and saw himself driven to the dire
extremity of giving up Sûtkhû for Amonrâ or of declaring war. He was
likely to adopt the latter alternative, and the end of the manuscript
would probably have related his defeat.
Hostilities continued for a century and a half from the time when Saqnûnrî
Tiûâa declared himself son of the Sun and king of the two Egypts. From the
moment in which he surrounded his name with a cartouche, the princes of
the Said threw in their lot with him, and the XVIIth dynasty had its
beginning on the day of his proclamation. The strife at first was
undecisive and without marked advantage to either side: at length the
Pharaoh whom the Greek copyists of Manetho call Alisphragmouthosis,
defeated the barbarians, drove them away from Memphis and from the western
plains of the Delta, and shut them up in their entrenched camp at Avaris,
between the Sebennytic branch of the Nile and the Wady Tumilât. The
monuments bearing on this period of strife and misery are few in number,
and it is a fortunate circumstance if some insignificant object tarns up
which would elsewhere be passed over as unworthy of notice. One of the
officials of Tiûâa I. has left us his writing palette, on which the
cartouches of his master are incised with a rudeness baffling description.
We have also information of a prince of the blood, a king’s son, Tûaû, who
accompanied this same Pharaoh in his expeditions; and the Gîzeh Museum is
proud of having in its possession the i wooden sabre which this individual
placed on the mummy of a certain Aqhorû, to enable him to defend himself
against the monsters of the lower world. A second Saqnûnrî Tiûâa succeeded
the first, and like him was buried in a little brick pyramid on the border
of the Theban necropolis. At his death the series of rulers was broken,
and we meet with several names which are difficult to classify—Sakhontinibrî,
Sanakhtû-niri, Hotpûrî, Manhotpûrî, Eâhotpû.*
As we proceed, however, information becomes more plentiful, and the list
of reigns almost complete. The part which the princesses of older times
played in the transmission of power had, from the XIIth dynasty downward,
considerably increased in importance, and threatened to overshadow that of
the princes. The question presents itself whether, during these centuries
of perpetual warfare, there had not been a moment when, all the males of
the family having perished, the women alone were left to perpetuate the
solar race on the earth and to keep the succession unbroken. As soon as
the veil over this period of history begins to be lifted, we distinguish
among the personages emerging from the obscurity as many queens as kings
presiding over the destinies of Egypt. The sons took precedence of the
daughters when both were the offspring of a brother and sister born of the
same parents, and when, consequently, they were of equal rank; but, on the
other hand, the sons forfeited this equality when there was any
inferiority in origin on the maternal side, and their prospect of
succession to the throne diminished in proportion to their mother’s
remoteness from the line of Râ. In the latter case all their sisters, born
of marriages which to us appear incestuous, took precedence of them, and
the eldest daughter became the legitimate Pharaoh, who sat in the seat of
Horus on the death of her father, or even occasionally during his
lifetime. The prince whom she married governed for her, and discharged
those royal duties which could be legally performed by a man only,—such
as offering worship to the supreme gods, commanding the army, and
administering justice; but his wife never ceased to be sovereign, and
however small the intelligence or firmness of which she might be
possessed, her husband was obliged to leave to her, at all events on
certain occasions, the direction of affairs.
At her death her children inherited the crown: their father had formally
to invest the eldest of them with royal, authority in the room of the
deceased, and with him he shared the externals, if not the reality, of
power.* It is doubtful whether the third Saq-nûnrî Tiûâa known to us—he
who added an epithet to his name, and was commonly known as Tiûâqni,
“Tiûâa the brave” ** —united in his person all the requisites of a
Pharaoh qualified to reign in his own right. However this may have been,
at all events his wife, Queen Ahhotpû, possessed them.
His eldest son Ahmosû died prematurely; the two younger brothers, Kamosû
and a second Ahmosû, the Amosis of the Greeks, assumed the crown after
him. It is possible, as frequently happened, that their young sister
Ahmasi-Nofrîtari entered the harem of both brothers consecutively.
We cannot be sure that she was united to Kamosû, but at all events she
became the wife of Ahmosis, and the rights which she possessed, together
with those which her husband had inherited from their mother Ahhotpû, gave
him a legal claim such as was seldom enjoyed by the Pharaohs of that
period, so many of them being sovereigns merely de facto, while he
was doubly king by right.
Tiûâqni, Kamosû,* and Ahmosis** quickly succeeded each other. Tiûâqni very
probably waged war against the Shepherds, and it is not known whether he
fell upon the field of battle or was the victim of some plot; the
appearance of his mummy proves that he died a violent death when about
forty years of age. Two or three men, whether assassins or soldiers, must
have surrounded and despatched him before help was available. A blow from
an axe must have severed part of his left cheek, exposed the teeth,
fractured the jaw, and sent him senseless to the ground; another blow must
have seriously injured the skull, and a dagger or javelin has cut open the
forehead on the right side, a little above the eye. His body must have
remained lying where it fell for some time: when found, decomposition had
set in, and the embalming had to be hastily performed as best it might.
The hair is thick, rough, and matted; the face had been shaved on the
morning of his death, but by touching the cheek we can ascertain how harsh
and abundant the hair must have been. The mummy is that of a fine,
vigorous man, who might have lived to a hundred years, and he must have
defended himself resolutely against his assailants; his features bear even
now an expression of fury. A flattened patch of exuded brain appears above
one eye, the forehead is wrinkled, and the lips, which are drawn back in a
circle about the gums, reveal the teeth still biting into the tongue.
Kamosû did not reign long;’we know nothing of the events of his life, but
we owe to him one of the prettiest examples of the Egyptian goldsmith’s
art—the gold boat mounted on a carriage of wood and bronze, which
was to convey his double on its journeys through Hades. This boat was
afterwards appropriated by his mother Ahhotpû.
Ahmosisa must have been about twenty-five years of age when he ascended
the throne; he was of medium height, as his body when mummied measured
only 5 feet 6 inches in length, but the development of the neck and chest
indicates extraordinary strength. The head is small in proportion to the
bust, the forehead low and narrow, the cheek-bones project, and the hair
is thick and wavy. The face exactly resembles that of Tiûâcrai, and the
likeness alone would proclaim the affinity, even if we were ignorant of
the close relationship which united these two Pharaohs.* Ahmosis seems to
have been a strong, active, warlike man; he was successful in all the wars
in which we know him to have been engaged, and he ousted the Shepherds
from the last towns occupied by them. It is possible that modern writers
have exaggerated the credit due to Ahmosis for expelling the Hyksôs. He
found the task already half accomplished, and the warfare of his
forefathers for at least a century must have prepared the way for his
success; if he appears to have played the most important rôle in
the history of the deliverance, it is owing to our ignorance of the work
of others, and he thus benefits by the oblivion into which their deeds
have passed. Taking this into consideration, we must still admit that the
Shepherds, even when driven into Avaris, were not adversaries to be
despised. Forced by the continual pressure of the Egyptian armies into
this corner of the Delta, they were as a compact body the more able to
make a protracted resistance against very superior forces.
The impenetrable marshes of Menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the
Red Sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting
network of the branches of the Nile, together with the artificial canals,
protected them as by a series of moats in front, while Syria in their rear
offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their troops, or
levying recruits among tribes of kindred race. As long as they could hold
their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible; one victory would
bring them to Memphis, and the whole valley would again fall under
then-suzerainty. Ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold,
averted this danger. It is, therefore, not without reason that the
official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and
made him the head of a new dynasty.
His predecessors had in reality been merely Pharaohs on sufferance, ruling
in the south within the confines of their Theban principality, gaining in
power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the
suzerainty of the whole country. They were reckoned in the XVIIth dynasty
together with the Hyksôs sovereigns of uncontested legitimacy, while their
successors were chosen to constitute the XVIIIth, comprising Pharaohs with
full powers, tolerating no competitors, and uniting under their firm rule
the two regions of which Egypt was composed—the possessions of Sit
and the possessions of Horus.*
The war of deliverance broke out on the accession of Ahmosis, and
continued during the first five years of his reign.* One of his
lieutenants, the king’s namesake—Âhmosi-si-Abîna—who belonged
to the family of the lords of Nekhabît, has left us an account, in one of
the inscriptions in his tomb, of the numerous exploits in which he took
part side by side with his royal master, and thus, thanks to this
fortunate record of his vanity, we are not left in complete ignorance of
the events which took place during this crucial struggle between the
Asiatic settlers and their former subjects. Nekhabît had enjoyed
considerable prosperity in the earlier ages of Egyptian history, marking
as it did the extreme southern limit of the kingdom, and forming an
outpost against the barbarous tribes of Nubia. As soon as the progress of
conquest had pushed the frontier as far south as the first cataract, it
declined in importance, and the remembrance of its former greatness found
an echo only in proverbial expressions or in titles used at the Pharaonic
court.* The nomes situated to the south of Thebes, unlike those of Middle
Egypt, did not comprise any extensive fertile or well-watered territory
calculated to enrich its possessors or to afford sufficient support for a
large population: they consisted of long strips of alluvial soil, shut in
between the river and the mountain range, but above the level of the
inundation, and consequently difficult to irrigate.
These nomes were cultivated, moreover, by a poor and sparse population. It
needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from
their poverty-stricken condition—either a war, which would bring
into prominence their strategic positions; or the establishment of
markets, such as those of Syênê and Elephantine, where the commerce of
neighbouring regions would naturally centre; or the erection, as at Ombos
or Adfû, of a temple which would periodically attract a crowd of pilgrims.
The principality of the Two Feathers comprised, besides Nekhabît, ât least
two such towns—Anît, on its northern boundary, and Nekhnît almost
facing Nekhabît on the left bank of the river.* These three towns
sometimes formed separate estates for as many independent lords:** even
when united they constituted a fiefdom of but restricted area and of
slender revenues, its chiefs ranking below those of the great feudal
princes of Middle Egypt. The rulers of this fiefdom led an obscure
existence during the whole period of the Memphite empire, and when at
length Thebes gained the ascendency, they rallied to the latter and
acknowledged her suzerainty. One of them, Sovkûnakhîti, gained the favour
of Sovkhotpû III. Sakhemûaztaûirî, who granted him lands which made the
fortune of his house; another of them, Aï, married Khonsu, one of the
daughters of Sovkûmsaûf I. and his Queen Nûbkhâs, and it is possible that
the misshapen pyramid of Qûlah, the most southern in Egypt proper, was
built for one of these royally connected personages.
The descendants of Aï attached themselves faithfully to the Pharaohs of
the XVIIth dynasty, and helped them to the utmost in their struggle
against the invaders. Their capital, Nekhabît, was situated between the
Nile and the Arabian chain, at the entrance to a valley which penetrates
some distance into the desert, and leads to the gold-mines on the Red Sea.
The town profited considerably from the precious metals brought into it by
the caravans, and also from the extraction of natron, which from
prehistoric times was largely employed in embalming. It had been a
fortified place from the outset, and its walls, carefully repaired by
successive ages, were still intact at the beginning of this century. They
described at this time a rough quadrilateral, the two longer sides of
which measured some 1900 feet in length, the two shorter being about
one-fourth less. The southern face was constructed in a fashion common in
brick buildings in Egypt, being divided into alternate panels of
horizontally laid courses, and those in which the courses were concave; on
the north and west façades the bricks were so laid as to present an
undulating arrangement running uninterruptedly from one end to the other.
The walls are 33 feet thick, and their average height 27 feet; broad and
easy steps lead to the foot-walk on the top. The gates are unsymmetrically
placed, there being one on the north, east, and west sides respectively;
while the southern side is left without an opening. These walls afforded
protection to a dense but unequally distributed population, the bulk of
which was housed towards the north and west sides, where the remains of an
immense number of dwellings may still be seen. The temples were crowded
together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the
enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to Nekhabît, the
vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* This enclosure formed a
kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had
fallen into the enemy’s hands. The times were troublous; the open country
was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek
shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to
lie fallow.
Famine constantly resulted from these disturbances, and it taxed all the
powers of the ruling prince to provide at such times for his people. A
chief of the Commissariat, Bebî by name, who lived about this period,
gives us a lengthy account of the number of loaves, oxen, goats, and pigs,
which he allowed to all the inhabitants both great and little, down even
to the quantity of oil and incense, which he had taken care to store up
for them: his prudence was always justified by the issue, for “during the
many years in which the famine recurred, he distributed grain in the city
to all those who hungered.”
Babaî, the first of the lords of El-Kab whose name has come down to us,
was a captain in the service of Saqnûnrî Tiûâqni.* His son Ahmosi, having
approached the end of his career, cut a tomb for himself in the hill which
overlooks the northern side of the town. He relates on the walls of his
sepulchre, for the benefit of posterity, the most praiseworthy actions of
his long life. He had scarcely emerged from childhood when he was called
upon to act for his father, and before his marriage he was appointed to
the command of the barque The Calf. From thence he was promoted to
the ship The North, and on account of his activity he was chosen to
escort his namesake the king on foot, whenever he drove in his chariot. He
repaired to his post at the moment when the decisive war against the
Hyksôs broke out.
The tradition current in the time of the Ptolemies reckoned the number of
men under the command of King Ahmosis when he encamped before Avaris at
480,000. This immense multitude failed to bring matters to a successful
issue, and the siege dragged on indefinitely. The king afc length
preferred to treat with the Shepherds, and gave them permission to retreat
into Syria safe and sound, together with their wives, their children, and
all their goods. This account, however, in no way agrees with the all too
brief narration of events furnished by the inscription in the tomb. The
army to which Egypt really owed its deliverance was not the undisciplined
rabble of later tradition, but, on the contrary, consisted of troops
similar to those which subsequently invaded Syria, some 15,000 to 20,000
in number, fully equipped and ably officered, supported, moreover, by a
fleet ready to transfer them across the canals and arms of the river in a
vigorous condition and ready for the battle.*
As soon as this fleet arrived at the scene of hostilities, the engagement
began. Ahmosi-si-Abîna conducted the manouvres under the king’s eye, and
soon gave such evidence of his capacity, that he was transferred by royal
favour to the Rising in Memphis—a vessel with a high
freeboard. He was shortly afterwards appointed to a post in a division
told off for duty on the river Zadiku, which ran under the walls of the
enemy’s fortress.* Two successive and vigorous attacks made in this
quarter were barren of important results. Ahmosi-si-Abîna succeeded in
each of the attacks in killing an enemy, bringing back as trophies a hand
of each of his victims, and his prowess, made known to the king by one of
the heralds, twice procured for him, “the gold of valour,” probably in the
form of collars, chains, or bracelets.**
The assault having been repulsed in this quarter, the Egyptians made their
way towards the south, and came into conflict with the enemy at the
village of Taqimît.* Here, again, the battle remained undecided, but
Ahmosi-si-Abîna had an adventure. He had taken a prisoner, and in bringing
him back lost himself, fell into a muddy ditch, and, when he had freed
himself from the dirt as well as he could, pursued his way by mistake for
some time in the direction of Avaris. He found out his error, however,
before it was too late, came back to the camp safe and sound, and received
once more some gold as a reward of his brave conduct. A second attack upon
the town was crowned with complete success; it was taken by storm, given
over to pillage, and Ahmosi-si-Abîna succeeded in capturing one man and
three women, who were afterwards, at the distribution of the spoil, given
to him as slaves.** The enemy evacuated in haste the last strongholds
which they held in the east of the Delta, and took refuge in the Syrian
provinces on the Egyptian frontier. Whether it was that they assumed here
a menacing attitude, or whether Ahmosis hoped to deal them a crushing blow
before they could find time to breathe, or to rally around them sufficient
forces to renew the offensive, he made up his mind to cross the frontier,
which he did in the 5th year of his reign.
It was the first time for centuries that a Pharaoh had trusted himself in
Asia, and the same dread of the unknown which had restrained his ancestors
of the XIIth dynasty, doubtless arrested Ahmosis also on the threshold of
the continent. He did not penetrate further than the border provinces of
Zahi, situated on the edge of the desert, and contented himself with
pillaging the little town of Sharûhana.* Ahmosi-si-Abîna was again his
companion, together with his cousin, Ahmosi-Pannekhabit, then at the
beginning of his career, who brought away on this occasion two young girls
for his household.**
The expedition having accomplished its purpose, the Egyptians returned
home with their spoil, and did not revisit Asia for a long period. If the
Hyksôs generals had fostered in their minds the idea that they could
recover their lost ground, and easily re-enter upon the possession of
their African domain, this reverse must have cruelly disillusioned them.
They must have been forced to acknowledge that their power was at an end,
and to renounce all hope of returning to the country which had so
summarily ejected them. The majority of their own people did not follow
them into exile, but remained attached to the soil on which they lived,
and the tribes which had successively settled down beside them—including
the Beni-Israel themselves—no longer dreamed of a return to their
fatherland. The condition of these people varied according to their
locality. Those who had taken up a position in the plain of the Delta were
subjected to actual slavery. Ahmosis destroyed the camp at Avails,
quartered his officers in the towns, and constructed forts at strategic
points, or rebuilt the ancient citadels to resist the incursions of the
Bedouin. The vanquished people in the Delta, hemmed in as they were by a
network of fortresses, were thus reduced to a rabble of serfs, to be taxed
and subjected to the corvée without mercy. But further north, the
fluctuating population which roamed between the Sebennytic and Pelusiac
branches of the Nile were not exposed to such rough treatment. The marshes
of the coast-line afforded them a safe retreat, in which they could take
refuge at the first threat of exactions on the part of the royal
emissaries. Secure within dense thickets, upon islands approached by
interminable causeways, often covered with water, or by long tortuous
canals concealed in the thick growth of reeds, they were able to defy with
impunity the efforts of the most disciplined troops, and treason alone
could put them at the mercy of their foes. Most of the Pharaohs felt that
the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the
difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would
be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few
hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of
nets and worm-eaten boats. The kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close
watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations
were kept within reasonable limits, they were left unmolested to their
wild and precarious life.
The Asiatic invasion had put a sudden stop to the advance of Egyptian rule
in the vast plains of the Upper Nile. The Theban princes, to whom Nubia
was directly subject, had been too completely engrossed in the wars
against their hereditary enemy, to devote much time to the continuation of
that work of colonization in the south which had been carried on so
vigorously by their forefathers of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties. The
inhabitants of the Nile valley, as far as the second cataract, rendered
them obedience, but without any change in the conditions and mode of their
daily life, which appear to have remained unaltered for centuries. The
temples of Usirtasen and Amenemhaît were allowed to fall into decay one
after another, the towns waned in prosperity, and were unable to keep
their buildings and monuments in repair; the inundation continued to bring
with it periodically its fleet of boats, which the sailors of Kûsh had
laden with timber, gum, elephants’ tusks, and gold dust: from time to time
a band of Bedouin from Uaûaît or Mazaiû would suddenly bear down upon some
village and carry off its spoils; the nearest garrison would be called to
its aid, or, on critical occasions, the king himself, at the head of his
guards, would fall on the marauders and drive them back into the
mountains. Ahrnosis, being greeted on his return from Syria by the news of
such an outbreak, thought it a favourable moment to impress upon the
nomadic tribes of Nubia the greatness of his conquest. On this occasion it
was the people of Khonthanûnofir, settled in the wadys east of the Nile,
above Semneh, which required a lesson. The army which had just expelled
the Hyksôs was rapidly conveyed to the opposite borders of the country by
the fleet, the two Ahmosi of Nekhabît occupying the highest posts. The
Egyptians, as was customary, landed at the nearest point to the enemy’s
territory, and succeeded in killing a few of the rebels. Ahmosi-si-Abîna
brought back two prisoners and three hands, for which he was rewarded by a
gift of two female Bedouin slaves, besides the “gold of valour.” This
victory in the south following on such decisive success in the north,
filled the heart of the Pharaoh with pride, and the view taken of it by
those who surrounded him is evident even in the brief sentences of the
narrative. He is described as descending the river on the royal galley,
elated in spirit and flushed by his triumph in Nubia, which had followed
so closely on the deliverance of the Delta. But scarcely had he reached
Thebes, when an unforeseen catastrophe turned his confidence into alarm,
and compelled him to retrace his steps. It would appear that at the very
moment when he was priding himself on the successful issue of his
Ethiopian expedition, one of the sudden outbreaks, which frequently
occurred in those regions, had culminated in a Sudanese invasion of Egypt.
We are not told the name of the rebel leader, nor those of the tribes who
took part in it. The Egyptian people, threatened in a moment of such
apparent security by this inroad of barbarians, regarded them as a fresh
incursion of the Hyksôs, and applied to these southerners the opprobrious
term of “Fever-stricken,” already used to denote their Asiatic conquerors.
The enemy descended the Nile, committing terrible atrocities, and
polluting every sanctuary of the Theban gods which came within their
reach. They had reached a spot called Tentoâ,* before they fell in with
the Egyptian troops. Ahmosi-si-Abîna again distinguished himself in the
engagement. The vessel which he commanded, probably the Rising in
Memphis, ran alongside the chief galliot of the Sudanese fleet, and
took possession of it after a struggle, in which Ahmosi made two of the
enemy’s sailors prisoners with his own hand. The king generously rewarded
those whose valour had thus turned the day in his favour, for the danger
had appeared to him critical; he allotted to every man on board the
victorious vessel five slaves, and five ancra of land situated in his
native province of each respectively. The invasion was not without its
natural consequences to Egypt itself.
A certain Titiânu, who appears to have been at the head of a powerful
faction, rose in rebellion at some place not named in the narrative, but
in the rear of the army. The rapidity with which Ahmosis repulsed the
Nubians, and turned upon his new enemy, completely baffled the latter’s
plans, and he and his followers were cut to pieces, but the danger had for
the moment been serious.* It was, if not the last expedition undertaken in
this reign, at least the last commanded by the Pharaoh in person. By his
activity and courage Ahmosis had well earned the right to pass the
remainder of his days in peace.
A revival of military greatness always entailed a renaissance in art,
followed by an age of building activity. The claims of the gods upon the
spoils of war must be satisfied before those of men, because the victory
and the booty obtained through it were alike owing to the divine help
given in battle. A tenth, therefore, of the slaves, cattle, and precious
metals was set apart for the service of the gods, and even fields, towns,
and provinces were allotted to them, the produce of which was applied to
enhance the importance of their cult or to repair and enlarge their
temples. The main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons
were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to
architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed.
Sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations
during the centuries of Egypt’s humiliation, and whose hands had lost
their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. They had
probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling,
and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models,
which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old
traditions. A few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose
originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed
themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools.
Ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his
wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of
temple-building. The accession to power of the great Theban families had
been of little advantage to Thebes itself. Its Pharaohs, on assuming the
sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native
city, and had made Heracleopolis, the Fayum or even Memphis, their seat of
government, only returning to Thebes in the time of the XIIIth dynasty,
when the decadence of their power had set in. The honour of furnishing
rulers for its country had often devolved on Thebes, but the city had
reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of
fortune was to be turned. The other cities of Egypt had come to regard
Thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had temples. The main
body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the
original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the
co-operation of other artificers soon followed. Sculptors and painters
whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of
Egypt’s humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of
practice, were now once more in demand. They had probably never completely
lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings
furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy
faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. A few years after this
revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more
patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior
to the masters of the older schools. Ahmosis could not be accused of
ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary
leisure, he began his work of temple-building. The accession to power of
the great Theban families had been of little advantage to Thebes itself.
Its Pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not
hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made Heracleopolis, the
Fayum or even Memphis, their seat of government, only returning to Thebes
in the time of the XIIIth dynasty, when the decadence of their power had
set in. The honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved
on Thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this
time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned.
The other cities of Egypt had come to regard Thebes as their metropolis
from the time when they had learned to rally round its princes to wage war
against the Hyksôs. It had been the last town to lay down arms at the time
of the invasion, and the first to take them up again in the struggle for
liberty. Thus the Egypt which vindicated her position among the nations of
the world was not the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties. It was the great
Egypt of the Amenemhâîts and the Usirtasens, still further aggrandised by
recent victories. Thebes was her natural capital, and its kings could not
have chosen a more suitable position from whence to command effectually
the whole empire. Situated at an equal distance from both frontiers, the
Pharaoh residing there, on the outbreak of a war either in the north or
south, had but half the length of the country to traverse in order to
reach the scene of action. Ahmosis spared no pains to improve the city,
but his resources did not allow of his embarking on any very extensive
schemes; he did not touch the temple of Amon, and if he undertook any
buildings in its neighbourhood, they must have been minor edifices. He
could, indeed, have had but little leisure to attempt much else, for it
was not till the XXIInd year of his reign that he was able to set
seriously to work.*
An opportunity then occurred to revive a practice long fallen into disuse
under the foreign kings, and to set once more in motion an essential part
of the machinery of Egyptian administration. The quarries of Turah, as is
well known, enjoyed the privilege of furnishing the finest materials to
the royal architects; nowhere else could be found limestone of such
whiteness, so easy to cut, or so calculated to lend itself to the carving
of delicate inscriptions and bas-reliefs. The commoner veins had never
ceased to be worked by private enterprise, gangs of quarrymen being always
employed, as at the present day, in cutting small stone for building
purposes, or in ruthlessly chipping it to pieces to burn for lime in the
kilns of the neighbouring villages; but the finest veins were always kept
for State purposes. Contemporary chroniclers might have formed a very just
estimate of national prosperity by the degree of activity shown in working
these royal preserves; when the amount of stone extracted was lessened,
prosperity was on the wane, and might be pronounced to be at its lowest
ebb when the noise of the quarryman’s hammer finally ceased to be heard.
Every dynasty whose resources were such as to justify their resumption of
the work proudly recorded the fact on stelae which lined the approaches to
the masons’ yards. Ahmosis reopened the Tûrah quarry-chambers, and
procured for himself “good stone and white” for the temples of Anion at
Thebes and of Phtah at Memphis. No monument has as yet been discovered to
throw any light on the fate of Memphis subsequent to the time of the
Amenemhâîts. It must have suffered quite as much as any city of the Delta
from the Shepherd invasion, and from the wars which preceded their
expulsion, since it was situated on the highway of an invading army, and
would offer an attraction for pillagers. By a curious turn of fortune it
was the “Fankhûi,” or Asiatic prisoners, who were set to quarry the stone
for the restoration of the monuments which their own forefathers had
reduced to ruins.* The bas-reliefs sculptured on the stelæ of Ahmosis show
them in full activity under the corvée; we see here the stone block
detached from the quarry being squared by the chisel, or transported on a
sledge drawn by oxen.
Ahmosis had several children by his various wives; six at least owned
Nofrîtari for their mother and possessed near claims to the crown, but she
may have borne him others whose existence is unrecorded. The eldest
appears to have been a son, Sipiri; he received all the honours due to an
hereditary prince, but died without having reigned, and his second
brother, Amenhotpû—called by the Greeks Amenôthes*—took his
place.
Ahmosis was laid to rest in the chapel which he had prepared for himself
in the cemetery of Drah-abu’l-Neggah, among the modest pyramids of the
XIth, XIIIth, and XVIIth dynasties.* He was venerated as a god, and his
cult was continued for six or eight centuries later, until the increasing
insecurity of the Theban necropolis at last necessitated the removal of
the kings from their funeral chambers.** The coffin of Ahmosis was found
to be still intact, though it was a poorly made one, shaped to the
contours of the body, and smeared over with yellow; it represents the king
with the false beard depending from his chin, and his breast covered with
a pectoral ornament, the features, hair, and accessories being picked out
in blue. His name has been hastily inscribed in ink on the front of the
winding-sheet, and when the lid was removed, garlands of faded pink
flowers were still found about the neck, laid there as a last offering by
the priests who placed the Pharaoh and his compeers in their secret
burying-place.
Amenôthes I. had not attained his majority when his father “thus winged
his way to heaven,” leaving him as heir to the throne.* Nofrîtari assumed
the authority; after having shared the royal honours for nearly
twenty-five years with her husband, she resolutely refused to resign
them.** She was thus the first of those queens by divine right who,
scorning the inaction of the harem, took on themselves the right to fulfil
the active duties of a sovereign, and claimed the recognition of the
equality or superiority of their titles to those of their husbands or
sons.
The aged Ahhotpu, who, like Nofrîtari, was of pure royal descent, and who
might well have urged her superior rank, had been content to retire in
favour of her children; she lived to the tenth year of her grandson’s
reign, respected by all her family, but abstaining from all interference
in political affairs. When at length she passed away, full of days and
honour, she was embalmed with special care, and her body was placed in a
gilded mummy-case, the head of which presented a faithful copy of her
features. Beside her were piled the jewels she had received in her
lifetime from her husband and son. The majority of them a fan with a
handle plated with gold, a mirror of gilt bronze with ebony handle,
bracelets and ankle-rings, some of solid and some of hollow gold, edged
with fine chains of plaited gold wire, others formed of beads of gold,
lapis-lazuli, cornelian, and green felspar, many of them engraved with the
cartouche of Ahmosis. Belonging also to Ahmosis we have a beautiful
quiver, in which figures of the king and the gods stand out in high relief
on a gold plaque, delicately chased with a graving tool; the background is
formed of small pieces of lapis and blue glass, cunningly cut to fit each
other. One bracelet in particular, found on the queen’s wrist, consisted
of three parallel bands of solid gold set with turquoises, and having, a
vulture with extended wings on the front. The queen’s hair was held in
place by a gold circlet, scarcely as large as a bracelet; a cartouche was
affixed to the circlet, bearing the name of Ahmosis in blue paste, and
flanked by small sphinxes, one on each side, as supporters. A thick
flexible chain of gold was passed several times round her neck, and
attached to it as a pendant was a beautiful scarab, partly of gold and
partly of blue porcelain striped with gold. The breast ornament was
completed by a necklace of several rows of twisted cords, from which
depended antelopes pursued by tigers, sitting jackals, hawks, vultures,
and the winged urasus, all attached to the winding-sheet by means of a
small ring soldered on the back of each animal. The fastening of this
necklace was formed of the heads of two gold hawks, the details of the
heads being worked out in blue enamel. Both weapons and amulets were found
among the jewels, including three gold flies suspended by a thin chain,
nine gold and silver axes, a lion’s head in gold of most minute
workmanship, a sceptre of black wood plated with gold, daggers to defend
the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard
wood, and the battle-axe of Ahmosis. Besides these, there were two boats,
one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the Pharaoh Kamosû—models
of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the Nile to reach its last
resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the gods on the western sea.
Nofrîtari thus reigned conjointly with Amenôthes, and even if we have no
record of any act in which she was specially concerned, we know at least
that her rule was a prosperous one, and that her memory was revered by her
subjects. While the majority of queens were relegated after death to the
crowd of shadowy ancestors to whom habitual sacrifice was offered, the
worshippers not knowing even to which sex these royal personages belonged,
the remembrance of Nofrîtari always remained distinct in their minds, and
her cult spread till it might be said to have become a kind of popular
religion. In this veneration Ahmosis was rarely associated with the queen,
but Amenôthes and several of her other children shared in it—her son
Sipiri, for instance, and her daughters Sîtamon,* Sîtkamosi, and
Marîtamon; Nofrîtari became, in fact, an actual goddess, taking her place
beside Amon, Khonsû, and Maut,** the members of the Theban Triad, or
standing alone as an object of worship for her devotees.
She was identified with Isis, Hathor, and the mistresses of Hades, and
adopted their attributes, even to the black or blue coloured skin of these
funerary divinities.*
Considerable endowments were given for maintaining worship at her tomb,
and were administered by a special class of priests. Her mummy reposed
among those of the princes of her family, in the hiding-place at
Deîr-el-Baharî: it was enclosed in an enormous wooden sarcophagus covered
with linen and stucco, the lower part being shaped to the body, while the
upper part representing the head and arms could be lifted off in one
piece. The shoulders are covered with a network in relief, the meshes of
which are painted blue on a yellow background. The Queen’s hands are
crossed over her breast, and clasp the crux ansata, the symbol of
life. The whole mummy-case measures a little over nine feet from the sole
of the feet to the top of the head, which is furthermore surmounted by a
cap, and two long ostrich-feathers. The appearance is not so much that of
a coffin as of one of those enormous caryatides which we sometimes find
adorning the front of a temple.
We may perhaps attribute to the influence of Nofrîtari the lack of zest
evinced by Amenôthes for expeditions into Syria. Even the most energetic
kings had always shrunk from penetrating much beyond the isthmus. Those
who ventured so far as to work the mines of Sinai had nevertheless felt a
secret fear of invading Asia proper—a dread which they never
succeeded in overcoming. When the raids of the Bedouin obliged the
Egyptian sovereign to cross the frontier into their territory, he would
retire as soon as possible, without attempting any permanent conquest.
After the expulsion of the Hyksôs, Ahmosis seemed inclined to pursue a
less timorous course. He made an advance on Sharûhana and pillaged it, and
the booty he brought back ought to have encouraged him to attempt more
important expeditions; but he never returned to this region, and it would
seem that when his first enthusiasm had subsided, he was paralysed by the
same fear which had fallen on his ancestors. Nofrîtari may have counselled
her son not to break through the traditions which his father had so
strictly followed, for Amenôthes I. confined his campaigns to Africa, and
the traditional battle-fields there. He embarked for the land of Kûsh on
the vessel of Ahmosi-si-Abîna “for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers
of Egypt.” It was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign,
conducted according to the strictest precedents of the XIIth dynasty. The
Pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy,
and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their
lives dearly, but were unable to protect their country from pillage, the
victors carrying off whatever they could seize—men, women, and
cattle. The pursuit of the enemy had led the army some distance into the
desert, as far as a halting-place called the “Upper cistern”—Khnûmît
hirît; instead of retracing his steps to the Nile squadron, and
returning slowly by boat, Amenôthes resolved to take a short cut
homewards. Ahmosi conducted him back overland in two days, and was
rewarded for his speed by the gift of a quantity of gold, and two female
slaves. An incursion into Libya followed quickly on the Ethiopian
campaign.
The tribe of the Kihaka, settled between Lake Mareotis and the Oasis of
Amon, had probably attacked in an audacious manner the western provinces
of the Delta; a raid was organized against them, and the issue was
commemorated by a small wooden stele, on which we see the victor
represented as brandishing his sword over a barbarian lying prostrate at
his feet. The exploits of Amenôthes appear to have ended with this raid,
for we possess no monument recording any further victory gained by him.
This, however, has not prevented his contemporaries from celebrating him
as a conquering and ‘victorious king. He is portrayed standing erect in
his chariot ready to charge, or as carrying off two barbarians whom he
holds half suffocated in his sinewy arms, or as gleefully smiting the
princes of foreign lands. He acquitted himself of the duties of the chase
as became a true Pharaoh, for we find him depicted in the act of seizing a
lion by the tail and raising him suddenly in mid-air previous to
despatching him. These are, indeed, but conventional pictures of war, to
which we must not attach an undue importance. Egypt had need of repose in
order to recover from the losses it had sustained during the years of
struggle with the invaders. If Amenôthes courted peace from preference and
not from political motives, his own generation profited as much by his
indolence as the preceding one had gained by the energy of Ahrnosis. The
towns in his reign resumed their ordinary life, agriculture flourished,
and commerce again followed its accustomed routes. Egypt increased its
resources, and was thus able to prepare for future conquest. The taste for
building had not as yet sufficiently developed to become a drain upon the
public treasury. We have, however, records showing that Amenôthes
excavated a cavern in the mountain of Ibrîm in Nubia, dedicated to Satît,
one of the goddesses of the cataract.
It is also stated that he worked regularly the quarries of Silsileh, but
we do not know for what buildings the sandstone thus extracted was
destined.* Karnak was also adorned with chapels, and with at least one
colossus,** while several chambers built of the white limestone of Tûrah
were added to Ombos. Thebes had thus every reason to cherish the memory of
this pacific king.
As Nofrîtari had been metamorphosed into a form of Isis, Amenôthes was
similarly represented as Osiris, the protector of the Necropolis, and he
was depicted as such with the sombre colour of the funerary divinities;
his image, moreover, together with those of the other gods, was used to
decorate the interiors of coffins, and to protect the mummies of his
devotees.*
One of his statues, now in the Turin Museum, represents him sitting on his
throne in the posture of a king giving audience to his subjects, or in
that of a god receiving the homage of his worshippers. The modelling of
the bust betrays a flexibility of handling which is astonishing in a work
of art so little removed from barbaric times; the head is a marvel of
delicacy and natural grace. We feel that the sculptor has taken a delight
in chiselling the features of his sovereign, and in reproducing the
benevolent and almost dreamy expression which characterised them.* The
cult of Amenôthes lasted for seven or eight centuries, until the time when
his coffin was removed and placed with those of the other members of his
family in the place where it remained concealed until our own times.**
It is shaped to correspond with the form of the human body and painted
white; the face resembles that of his statue, and the eyes of enamel,
touched with kohl, give it a wonderful appearance of animation. The body
is swathed in orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish
linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to
match the exterior of the coffin. Long garlands of faded flowers deck the
mummy from head to foot. A wasp, attracted by their scent, must have
settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the
lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the
balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled
through the long centuries.
Amenôthes had married Ahhotpû II, his sister by the same father and
mother;* Ahmasi, the daughter born of this union, was given in marriage to
Thûtmosis, one of her brothers, the son of a mere concubine, by name
Sonisonbû.** Ahmasi, like her ancestor Nofrîtari, had therefore the right
to exercise all the royal functions, and she might have claimed precedence
of her husband. Whether from conjugal affection or from weakness of
character, she yielded, however, the priority to Thûtmosis, and allowed
him to assume the sole government.
He was crowned at Thebes on the 21st of the third month of Pirît; and a
circular, addressed to the representatives of the ancient seignorial
families and to the officers of the crown, announced the names assumed by
the new sovereign. “This is the royal rescript to announce to you that my
Majesty has arisen king of the two Egypts, on the seat of the Horus of the
living, without equal, for ever, and that my titles are as follows: The
vigorous bull Horus, beloved of Mâît, the Lord of the Vulture and of the
Uraeus who raises itself as a flame, most valiant,—the golden Horns,
whose years are good and who puts life into all hearts, king of the two
Egypts, Akhopirkerî, son of the Sun, Thûtmosis, living for ever.* Cause,
therefore, sacrifices to be offered to the gods of the south and of
Elephantine,** and hymns to be chanted for the well-being of the King
Akhopirkerî, living for ever, and then cause the oath to be taken in the
name of my Majesty, born of the royal mother Sonisonbû, who is in good
health.—This is sent to thee that thou mayest know that the royal
house is prosperous, and in good health and condition, the 1st year, the
21st of the third month of Pirît, the day of coronation.”
The new king was tall in stature, broad-shouldered, well knit, and capable
of enduring the fatigues of war without flagging. His statues represent
him as having a full, round face, long nose, square chin, rather thick
lips, and a smiling but firm expression. Thûtmosis brought with him on
ascending the throne the spirit of the younger generation, who, born
shortly after the deliverance from the Hyksôs, had grown up in the
peaceful days of Amenôthes, and, elated by the easy victories obtained
over the nations of the south, were inspired by ambitions unknown to the
Egyptians of earlier times. To this younger race Africa no longer offered
a sufficiently wide or attractive field; the whole country was their own
as far as the confluence of the two Niles, and the Theban gods were
worshipped at Napata no less devoutly than at Thebes itself. What remained
to be conquered in that direction was scarcely worth the trouble of
reducing to a province or of annexing as a colony; it comprised a number
of tribes hopelessly divided among themselves, and consequently, in spite
of their renowned bravery, without power of resistance. Light columns of
troops, drafted at intervals on either side of the river, ensured order
among the submissive, or despoiled the refractory of their possessions in
cattle, slaves, and precious stones. Thûtmosis I. had to repress, however,
very shortly after his accession, a revolt of these borderers at the
second and third cataracts, but they were easily overcome in a campaign of
a few days’ duration, in which the two Âhmosis of Al-Kab took an
honourable part. There was, as usual, an encounter of the two fleets in
the middle of the river: the young king himself attacked the enemy’s
chief, pierced him with his first arrow, and made a considerable number of
prisoners. Thûtmosis had the corpse of the chief suspended as a trophy in
front of the royal ship, and sailed northwards towards Thebes, where,
however, he was not destined to remain long.* An ample field of action
presented itself to him in the north-east, affording scope for great
exploits, as profitable as they were glorious.**
Syria offered to Egyptian cupidity a virgin prey in its large commercial
towns inhabited by an industrious population, who by maritime trade and
caravan traffic had amassed enormous wealth. The country had been
previously subdued by the Chaldæans, who still exercised an undisputed
influence over it, and it was but natural that the conquerors of the
Hyksôs should act in their turn as invaders. The incursion of Asiatics
into Egypt thus provoked a reaction which issued in an Egyptian invasion
of Asiatic soil. Thûtmosis and his contemporaries had inherited none of
the instinctive fear of penetrating into Syria which influenced Ahmosis
and his successor: the Theban legions were, perhaps, slow to advance, but
once they had trodden the roads of Palestine, they were not likely to
forego the delights of conquest. From that time forward there was
perpetual warfare and pillaging expeditions from the plains of the Blue
Nile to those of the Euphrates, so that scarcely a year passed without
bringing to the city of Amon its tribute of victories and riches gained at
the point of the sword. One day the news would be brought that the
Amorites or the Khâti had taken the field, to be immediately followed by
the announcement that their forces had been shattered against the valour
of the Egyptian battalions. Another day, Pharaoh would re-enter the city
with the flower of his generals and veterans; the chiefs whom he had taken
prisoners, sometimes with his own hand, would be conducted through the
streets, and then led to die at the foot of the altars, while fantastic
processions of richly clothed captives, beasts led by halters, and slaves
bending under the weight of the spoil would stretch in an endless line
behind him.
Meanwhile the Timihû, roused by some unknown cause, would attack the
outposts stationed on the frontier, or news would come that the Peoples of
the Sea had landed on the western side of the Delta; the Pharaoh had again
to take the field, invariably with the same speedy and successful issue.
The Libyans seemed to fare no better than the Syrians, and before long
those who had survived the defeat would be paraded before the Theban
citizens, previous to being sent to join the Asiatic prisoners in the
mines or quarries; their blue eyes and fair hair showing from beneath
strangely shaped helmets, while their white skins, tall stature, and
tattooed bodies excited for a few hours the interest and mirth of the idle
crowd. At another time, one of the customary raids into the land of Kûsh
would take place, consisting of a rapid march across the sands of the
Ethiopian desert and a cruise along the coasts of Pûanîfc. This would be
followed by another triumphal procession, in which fresh elements of
interest would appear, heralded by flourish of trumpets and roll of drums:
Pharaoh would re-enter the city borne on the shoulders of his officers,
followed by negroes heavily chained, or coupled in such a way that it was
impossible for them to move without grotesque contortions, while the
acclamations of the multitude and the chanting of the priests would
resound from all sides as the cortege passed through the city gates
on its way to the temple of Amon. Egypt, roused as it were to warlike
frenzy, hurled her armies across all her frontiers simultaneously, and her
sudden appearance in the heart of Syria gave a new turn to human history.
The isolation of the kingdoms of the ancient world was at an end; the
conflict of the nations was about to begin.
SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST
NINEVEH AND THE FIRST COSSÆAN KINGS-THE PEOPLES OF SYRIA, THEIR TOWNS,
THEIR CIVILIZATION, THEIR RELIGION-PHOENICIA.
The dynasty of Uruazagga-The Cossseans: their country, their gods,
their conquest of Chaldæa-The first sovereigns of Assyria, and the first
Cossæan Icings: Agumhakrimê.
The Egyptian names for Syria: Kharâ, Zahi, Lotanû, Kefâtiu-The military
highway from the Nile to the Euphrates: first section from Zalu to
Gaza-The Canaanites: their fortresses, their agricultural character: the
forest between Jaffa and Mount Carmel, Megiddo-The three routes beyond
Megiddo: Qodshu-Alasia, Naharaim, Garchemish; Mitanni and the countries
beyond the Euphrates.
Disintegration of the Syrian, Canaanite, Amorite, and Khdti
populations; obliteration of types-Influence of Babylon on costumes,
customs, and religion—Baalim and Astarte, plant-gods and
stone-gods-Religion, human sacrifices, festivals; sacred stones—Tombs
and the fate of man after death-Phoenician cosmogony.
Phoenicia—Arad, Marathus, Simyra, Botrys—Byblos, its
temple, its goddess, the myth of Adonis: Aphaka and the valley of the
Nahr-Ibrahim, the festivals of the death and resurrection of Adonis—Berytus
and its god El; Sidon and its suburbs—Tyre: its foundation, its
gods, its necropolis, its domain in the Lebanon.
Isolation of the Phoenicians with regard to the other nations of Syria;
their love of the sea and the causes which developed it—Legendary
accounts of the beginning of their colonization—Their commercial
proceedings, their banks and factories; their ships—Cyprus, its
wealth, its occupations—The Phoenician colonies in Asia Minor and
the Ægean Sea: purple dye—The nations of the Ægean.
CHAPTER II—SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST
Nineveh and the first Cossæan kings—The peoples of Syria, their
towns, their civilization, their religion—Phoenicia.
The world beyond the Arabian desert presented to the eyes of the
enterprising Pharaohs an active and bustling scene. Babylonian
civilization still maintained its hold there without a rival, but
Babylonian rule had ceased to exercise any longer a direct control, having
probably disappeared with the sovereigns who had introduced it. When
Ammisatana died, about the year 2099, the line of Khammurabi became
extinct, and a family from the Sea-lands came into power.*
This unexpected revolution of affairs did not by any means restore to the
cities of Lower Chaldæa the supreme authority which they once possessed.
Babylon had made such good use of its centuries of rule that it had gained
upon its rivals, and was not likely now to fall back into a secondary
place. Henceforward, no matter what dynasty came into power, as soon as
the fortune of war had placed it upon the throne, Babylon succeeded in
adopting it, and at once made it its own. The new lord of the country,
Ilumaîlu, having abandoned his patrimonial inheritance, came to reside
near to Merodach.*
He was followed during the four next centuries by a dynasty of ten
princes, in uninterrupted succession. Their rule was introduced and
maintained without serious opposition. The small principalities of the
south were theirs by right, and the only town which might have caused them
any trouble—Assur—was dependent on them, being satisfied with
the title of vicegerents for its princes,—Khallu, Irishum, Ismidagan
and his son Sarnsiramman I., Igurkapkapu and his son Sarnsiramman II.* As
to the course of events beyond the Khabur, and any efforts Ilumaîlu’s
descendants may have made to establish their authority in the direction of
the Mediterranean, we have no inscriptions to inform us, and must be
content to remain in ignorance. The last two of these princes,
Melamkurkurra and Eâgamîl, were not connected with each other, and had no
direct relationship with their predecessors.** The shortness of their
reigns presents a striking contrast with the length of those preceding
them, and probably indicates a period of war or revolution. When these
princes disappeared, we know not how or why, about the year 1714 B.C.,
they were succeeded by a king of foreign extraction; and one of the
semi-barbarous race of Kashshu ascended the throne which had been occupied
since the days of Khammurabi by Chaldæans of ancient stock.***
These Kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the
earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of Zagros, on the
confines of Elymai’s and Media, where the Cossæans of the classical
historians flourished in the time of Alexander.*
* The Kashshu are identified with the Cossæans by Sayce, by Schrader, by
Fr. Delitzsch, by Halévy, by Tiele, by Hommel, and by Jensen. Oppert
maintains that they answer to the Kissians of Herodotus, that is to say,
to the inhabitants of the district of which Susa is the capital. Lehmann
supports this opinion. Winckler gives none, and several Assyriologists
incline to that of Kiepert, according to which the Kissians are identical
with the Cossæans.
It was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to
defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of
moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides
were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half
the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the
rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and
autumn. The entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified
passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men
needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow
goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single
file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among
the rocks and trees. The tribes who were entrenched behind this natural
rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat
pastures of Chaldæa: they dashed through the country, pillaging and
burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their
hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the
frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* These tribes were
governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king—ianzi—whose
will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a
slight veneer of Chaldæan civilization, while among the rest almost every
stage of barbarism might be found. The remains of their language show that
it was remotely allied to the dialect of Susa, and contained many Semitic
words.*** What is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second
hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the
Babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.****
They worshipped twelve great gods, of whom the chief—Kashshu, the
lord of heaven-gave his name to the principal tribe, and possibly to the
whole race:* Shûmalia, queen of the snowy heights, was enthroned beside
him,** and the divinities next in order were, as in the cities of the
Euphrates, the Moon, the Sun (Sakh or Shuriash), the air or the tempest
(Ubriash), and Khudkha.*** Then followed the stellar deities or secondary
incarnations of the sun,—Mirizir, who represented both Istar and
Beltis; and Khala, answering to Gula.****
The Chaldæan Ninip corresponded both to Gidar and Maruttash, Bel to Kharbe
and Turgu, Merodach to Shipak, Nergal to Shugab.* The Cossæan kings,
already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a
warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,**
must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop
down on the rich country which lay at their feet. We are ignorant of the
course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led
to their gaining possession of it. The Cossæan king who seized on Babylon
was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are
cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. They
cover the pivot stones on which Sargon of Agadê or one of the Bursins had
hung the doors of the temple of Nippur, but which Gandish dedicated afresh
in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the
work of these sovereigns.***
Bel found favour in the eyes of the Cossæans who saw in him Kharbê or
Turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason
Gandish and his successors regarded Bel with peculiar devotion. These
kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient
temple of Ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of
purely Babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most
venerated Chaldæan sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning
the hearts of the conquered people.*
The Cossæan rule over the countries of the Euphrates was doubtless similar
in its beginnings to that which the Hyksôs exercised at first over the
nomes of Egypt. The Cossæan kings did not merely bring with them an army
to protect their persons, or to occupy a small number of important posts;
they were followed by the whole nation, and spread themselves over the
entire country. The bulk of the invaders instinctively betook themselves
to districts where, if they could not resume the kind of life to which
they were accustomed in their own land, they could, at least give full
rein to their love of a free and wild existence. As there were no
mountains in the country, they turned to the marshes, and, like the Hyksôs
in Egypt, made themselves at home about the mouths of the rivers, on the
half-submerged low lands, and on the sandy islets of the lagoons which
formed an undefined borderland between the alluvial region and the Persian
Gulf. The covert afforded, by the thickets furnished scope for the chase
which these hunters had been accustomed to pursue in the depths of their
native forests, while fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an
additional element of food. When their depredations drew down upon them
reprisals from their neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses,
and surrounded by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as
their former strongholds on the lofty sides of the Zagros. They made
alliances with the native Aramæans—with those Kashdi, properly
called Chaldæans, whose name we have imposed upon all the nations who,
from a very early date, bore rule on the banks of the Lower Euphrates.
Here they formed themselves into a State—Karduniash—whose
princes at times rebelled, against all external authority, and at other
times acknowledged the sovereignty of the Babylonian monarchs.*
The people of Sumir and Akkad, already a composite of many different
races, absorbed thus another foreign element, which, while modifying its
homogeneity, did not destroy its natural character. Those Cossæan tribes
who had not quitted their own country retained their original barbarism,
but the hope of plunder constantly drew them from their haunts, and they
attacked and devastated the cities of the plain unhindered by the thought
that they were now inhabited by their fellow-countrymen. The raid once
over, many of them did not return home, but took service under some
distant foreign ruler—the Syrian princes attracting many, who
subsequently became the backbone of their armies,* while others remained
at Babylon and enrolled themselves in the body-guard of the kings.
To the last they were an undisciplined militia, dangerous, and difficult
to please: one day they would hail their chiefs with acclamations, to kill
them the next in one of those sudden outbreaks in which they were
accustomed to make and unmake their kings.* The first invaders were not
long in acquiring, by means of daily intercourse with the old inhabitants,
the new civilization: sooner or later they became blended with the
natives, losing all their own peculiarities, with the exception of their
outlandish names, a few heroic legends,** and the worship of two or three
gods—Shûmalia, Shugab, and Shukamuna.
As in the case of the Hyksôs in Africa, the barbarian conquerors thus
became merged in the more civilized people which they had subdued. This
work of assimilation seems at first to have occupied the whole attention
of both races, for the immediate successors of Gandish were unable to
retain under their rule all the provinces of which the empire was formerly
composed. They continued to possess the territory situated on the middle
course of the Euphrates as far as the mouth of the Balikh, but they lost
the region extending to the east of the Khabur, at the foot of the Masios,
and in the upper basin of the Tigris: the vicegerents of Assur also
withdrew from them, and, declaring that they owed no obedience excepting
to the god of their city, assumed the royal dignity. The first four of
these kings whose names have come down to us, Sulili, Belkapkapu, Adasi,
and Belbâni,* appear to have been but indifferent rulers, but they knew
bow to hold their own against the attacks of their neighbours, and when,
after a century of weakness and inactivity, Babylon reasserted herself,
and endeavoured to recover her lost territory, they had so completely
established their independence that every attack on it was unsuccessful.
The Cossæan king at that time—an active and enterprising prince,
whose name was held in honour up to the days of the Ninevite supremacy—was
Agumkakrimê, the son of Tassigurumash.**
This “brilliant scion of Shukamuna” entitled himself lord of the Kashshu
and of Akkad, of Babylon the widespread, of Padan, of Alman, and of the
swarthy Guti.* Ashnunak had been devastated; he repeopled it, and the four
“houses of the world” rendered him obedience; on the other hand, Elam
revolted from its allegiance, Assur resisted him, and if he still
exercised some semblance of authority over Northern Syria, it was owing to
a traditional respect which the towns of that country voluntarily rendered
to him, but which did not involve either subjection or control. The people
of Khâni still retained possession of the statues of Merodach and of his
consort Zarpanit, which had been stolen, we know not how, some time
previously from Chaldæa.** Agumkakrimê recovered them and replaced them in
their proper temple. This was an important event, and earned him the good
will of the priests.
The king reorganised public worship; he caused new fittings for the
temples to be made to take the place of those which had disappeared, and
the inscription which records this work enumerates with satisfaction the
large quantities of crystal, jasper, and lapis-lazuli which he lavished on
the sanctuary, the utensils of silver and gold which he dedicated,
together with the “seas” of wrought bronze decorated with monsters and
religious emblems.* This restoration of the statues, so flattering to the
national pride and piety, would have been exacted and insisted upon by a
Khammurabi at the point of the sword, but Agumkakrimê doubtless felt that
he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore sent an
embassy to the Khâni, and such was the prestige which the name of Babylon
still possessed, from the deserts of the Caspian to the shores of the
Mediterranean, that he was able to obtain a concession from that people
which he would probably have been powerless to extort by force of arms.**
The Egyptians had, therefore, no need to anticipate Chaldæan interference
when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first
time into the heart of Syria. Not only was Babylon no longer supreme
there, but the coalition of those cities on which she had depended for
help in subduing the West was partially dissolved, and the foreign princes
who had succeeded to her patrimony were so far conscious of their
weakness, that they voluntarily kept aloof from the countries in which,
previous to their advent, Babylon had held undivided sway. The Egyptian
conquest of Syria had already begun in the days of Agumkakrimê, and it is
possible that dread of the Pharaoh was one of the chief causes which
influenced the Cossæans to return a favourable answer to the Khâni.
Thûtmosis I., on entering Syria, encountered therefore only the native
levies, and it must be admitted that, in spite of their renowned courage,
they were not likely to prove formidable adversaries in Egyptian
estimation. Not one of the local Syrian dynasties was sufficiently
powerful to collect all the forces of the country around its chief, so as
to oppose a compact body of troops to the attack of the African armies.
The whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex
group of peoples and territories which even the Egyptians themselves never
completely succeeded in disentangling. They classed the inhabitants,
however, under three or four very comprehensive names—Kharû, Zahi,
Lotanû, and Kefâtiû—all of which frequently recur in the
inscriptions, but without having always that exactness of meaning we look
for in geographical terms. As was often the case in similar circumstances,
these names were used at first to denote the districts close to the
Egyptian frontier with which the inhabitants of the Delta had constant
intercourse. The Kefâtiû seem to have been at the outset the people of the
sea-coast, more especially of the region occupied later by the
Phoenicians, but all the tribes with whom the Phoenicians came in contact
on the Asiatic and European border were before long included under the
same name.*
Zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime
plain on the north-east of Egypt which was coasted by the fleets, or
traversed by the armies of Egypt, as they passed to and fro between Syria
and the banks of the Nile. This region had been ravaged by Ahmosis during
his raid upon Sharuhana, the year after the fall of Avaris. To the
south-east of Zahi lay Kharû; it included the greater part of Mount Seir,
whose wadys, thinly dotted over with oases, were inhabited by tribes of
more or less stationary habits. The approaches to it were protected by a
few towns, or rather fortified villages, built in the neighbourhood of
springs, and surrounded by cultivated fields and poverty-stricken gardens;
but the bulk of the people lived in tents or in caves on the
mountain-sides. The Egyptians constantly confounded those Khauri, whom the
Hebrews in after-times found scattered among the children of Edom, with
the other tribes of Bedouin marauders, and designated them vaguely as
Shaûsû. Lotanû lay beyond, to the north of Kharû and to the north-east of
Zahi, among the hills which separate the “Shephelah” from the Jordan.*
As it was more remote from the isthmus, and formed the Egyptian horizon in
that direction, all the new countries with which the Egyptians became
acquainted beyond its northern limits were by degrees included under the
one name of Lotanû, and this term was extended to comprise successively
the entire valley of the Jordan, then that of the Orontes, and finally
even that of the Euphrates. Lotanû became thenceforth a vague and
fluctuating term, which the Egyptians applied indiscriminately to widely
differing Asiatic nations, and to which they added another indefinite
epithet when they desired to use it in a more limited sense: that part of
Syria nearest to Egypt being in this case qualified as Upper Lotanû, while
the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in Lower
Lotanû. In the same way the terms Zahi and Kharû were extended to cover
other and more northerly regions. Zahi was applied to the coast as far as
the mouth of the Nahr el-Kebir and to the country of the Lebanon which lay
between the Mediterranean and the middle course of the Orontes. Kharû ran
parallel to Zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include
most of the countries which were at first ranged under Upper Lotanû; it
was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of Mount Tabor,
nor to the trans-Jordanie provinces. The three names in their wider sense
preserved the same relation to each other as before, Zahi lying to the
west and north-west of Kharû, and Lower Lotanû to the north of Kharû and
north-east of Zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old
conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of
those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some
far-off Theban temple the victories of the Pharaoh would sometimes write
Zahi where they should have inscribed Kharû, and it is a difficult matter
for us always to detect their mistakes. It would be unjust to blame them
too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of
determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states
with which the Egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on
Syrian soil?
A choice of several routes into Asia, possessing unequal advantages, was
open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town
of Zalû. The old entrenchments running from the Ked Sea to the marshes of
the Pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming
an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was
constructed. This was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and
no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and
rank, signified the business which took him into Syria or Egypt, and shown
the letters with which he was entrusted.*
It was from Zalû that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when
summoned to Kharû by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalû they returned
triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they
were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. The road ran for some
distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile
during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some
distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the Mediterranean and the
swamp which writers of the Greek period called the Lake of Sirbonis.*
This stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the Sirbonian
Lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were
constantly shifting. When the canals which connected it with the open sea
happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from
evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud,
often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert.
Travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the Greek
historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it.
About halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of Mount
Casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly
undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells
containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and
disagreeable to drink.
Beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of
miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. The bed of the
torrent often served as the boundary between Africa and Asia, and the town
was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals,
condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the Greeks
assure us that it owed its name of Rhinocolûra to the number of noseless
convicts who were to be seen there.*
At this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is
flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their way,
obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. Here and there, under the
shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller would have
found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the confines of Syria
he arrived at the fortified village of Raphia, standing like a sentinel to
guard the approach to Egypt. Beyond Raphia vegetation becomes more
abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and clusters of date-palms
appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with fields and orchards are
seen on all sides, while the bed of a river, blocked with gravel and
fallen rocks, winds its way between the last fringes of the desert and the
fruitful Shephelah;* on the further bank of the river lay the suburbs of
Gaza, and, but a few hundred yards beyond, Gaza itself came into view
among the trees standing on its wall-crowned hill.**
The Egyptians, on their march from the Nile valley, were wont to stop at
this spot to recover from their fatigues; it was their first halting-place
beyond the frontier, and the news which would reach them here prepared
them in some measure for what awaited them further on. The army itself,
the “troop of Râ,” was drawn from four great races, the most distinguished
of which came, of course, from the banks of the Nile: the Amû, born of
Sokhît, the lioness-headed goddess, were classed in the second rank; the
Nahsi, or negroes of Ethiopia, were placed in the third; while the Timihû,
or Libyans, with the white tribes of the north, brought up the rear. The
Syrians belonged to the second of these families, that next in order to
the Egyptians, and the name of Amu, which for centuries had been given
them, met so satisfactorily all political, literary, or commercial
requirements, that the administrators of the Pharaohs never troubled
themselves to discover the various elements concealed beneath the term. We
are, however, able at the present time to distinguish among them several
groups of peoples and languages, all belonging to the same family, but
possessing distinctive characteristics. The kinsfolk of the Hebrews, the
children of Ishmael and Edom, the Moabites and Ammonites, who were all
qualified as Shaûsû, had spread over the region to the south and east of
the Dead Sea, partly in the desert, and partly on the confines of the
cultivated land. The Canaanites were not only in possession of the coast
from Gaza to a point beyond the Nahr el-Kebir, but they also occupied
almost the whole valley of the Jordan, besides that of the Litâny, and
perhaps that of the Upper Orontes.* There were Aramaean settlements at
Damascus, in the plains of the Lower Orontes, and in Naharaim.**
The country beyond the Aramaean territory, including the slopes of the
Amanos and the deep valleys of the Taurus, was inhabited by peoples of
various origin; the most powerful of these, the Khâti, were at this time
slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the
country between the Afrîn and the Euphrates.*
The Canaanites were the most numerous of all these groups, and had they
been able to amalgamate under a single king, or even to organize a lasting
confederacy, it would have been impossible for the Egyptian armies to have
broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of Asia;
but, unfortunately, so far from showing the slightest tendency towards
unity or concentration, the Canaanites were more hopelessly divided than
any of the surrounding nations. Their mountains contained nearly as many
states as there were valleys, while in the plains each town represented a
separate government, and was built on a spot carefully selected for
purposes of defence. The land, indeed, was chequered with these petty
states, and so closely were they crowded together, that a horseman,
travelling at leisure, could easily pass through two or three of them in a
day’s journey.**
Not only were the royal cities fenced with walls, but many of the
surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or migdols*
built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the
openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and
the aptitude for self-defence shown by the inhabitants.
The aspect of these migdols, or forts, must have appeared strange to the
first Egyptians who beheld them. These strongholds bore no resemblance to
the large square or oblong enclosures to which they were accustomed, and
which in their eyes represented the highest skill of the engineer. In
Syria, however, the positions suitable for the construction of fortresses
hardly ever lent themselves to a symmetrical plan. The usual sites had to
be adapted in each case to suit the particular configuration of the
ground.
It was usually a mere wall of stone or dried brick, with towers at
intervals; the wall measuring from nine to twelve feet thick at the base,
and from thirty to thirty-six feet high, thus rendering an assault by
means of portable ladders, nearly impracticable.*
The gateway had the appearance of a fortress in itself. It was composed of
three large blocks of masonry, forming a re-entering face, considerably
higher than the adjacent curtains, and pierced near the top with square
openings furnished with mantlets, so as to give both a front and flank
view of the assailants. The wooden doors in the receded face were covered
with metal and raw hides, thus affording a protection against axe or
fire.*
The building was strong enough not only to defy the bands of adventurers
who roamed the country, but was able to resist for an indefinite time the
operations of a regular siege. Sometimes, however, the inhabitants when
constructing their defences did not confine themselves to this rudimentary
plan, but threw up earthworks round the selected site. On the most exposed
side they raised an advance wall, not exceeding twelve or fifteen feet in
height, at the left extremity of which the entrance was so placed that the
assailants, in endeavouring to force their way through, were obliged to
expose an unprotected flank to the defenders. By this arrangement it was
necessary to break through two lines of fortification before the place
could be entered. Supposing the enemy to have overcome these first
obstacles, they would find themselves at their next point of attack
confronted with a citadel which contained, in addition to the sanctuary of
the principal god, the palace of the sovereign himself. This also had a
double enclosing wall and massively built gates, which could be forced
only at the expense of fresh losses, unless the cowardice or treason of
the garrison made the assault an easy one.*
Of these bulwarks of Canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by
hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen
to-day. They may have been razed to the ground during one of those
destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their
remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty
centuries of change have raised over them.*
The records of victories graven on the walls of the Theban temples
furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the
notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very
confused character had not one of the last of the conquering Pharaohs,
Ramses III., taken it into his head to have one built at Thebes itself, to
contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for
the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship. In the Greek and
Roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external
wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate,
which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and
flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which
jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support. Having passed through
these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a migdol of
cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court
between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the
point of approach by a series of abutments. A careful examination of the
place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited
knowledge of the Egyptians would hardly permit us to expect. We discover,
for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a
sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet.
This served two purposes: it increased, in the first place, the strength
of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons
launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface,
thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance. The whole structure has
an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects
charged with carrying out their sovereign’s idea brought to their task an
attention to detail for which the people from whom the plan was borrowed
had no capacity, and at the same time preserved the arrangements of their
model so faithfully that we can readily realise what it must have been.
Transport this migdol of Ramses III. into Asia, plant it upon one of those
hills which the Canaanites were accustomed to select as a site for their
fortifications, spread out at its base some score of low and miserable
hovels, and we have before us an improvised pattern of a village which
recalls in a striking manner Zerîn or Beîtîn, or any other small modern
town which gathers the dwellings of its fellahin round some central stone
building—whether it be a hostelry for benighted travellers, or an
ancient castle of the Crusading age.
There were on the littoral, to the north of Gaza, two large walled towns,
Ascalon and Joppa, in whose roadsteads merchant vessels were accustomed to
take hasty refuge in tempestuous weather.* There were to be found on the
plains also, and on the lower slopes of the mountains, a number of similar
fortresses and villages, such as Iurza, Migdol, Lachish, Ajalon, Shocho,
Adora, Aphukîn, Keilah, Gezer, and Ono; and, in the neighbourhood of the
roads which led to the fords of the Jordan, Gibeah, Beth-Anoth, and
finally Urusalim, our Jerusalem.** A tolerably dense population of active
and industrious husbandmen maintained themselves upon the soil.
The plough which they employed was like that used by the Egyptians and
Babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were
harnessed.* The scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the
tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of
the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. Almost the only remains of
these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells
and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.**
Fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken
in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond,
the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by
side.
Jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of Solomon, are
the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned.
But these are long posterior to the XVIIIth dynasty. Good judges, however,
attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of
the wells of Beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at
least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the Cæsars; the olive
and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the Roman
empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions
correspond with what we know of such presses from the Bible.
If the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone
dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform
the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the
other. Here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their
clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. It was, indeed, a land of
milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the Egyptian
geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of
its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called Aubila, “the
meadow;” while others bear such names as Ganutu, “the gardens;” Magraphut,
“the mounds;” and Karman, “the vineyard.” The further we proceed towards
the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with
richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly
coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure,
which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble
on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers
the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each
object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed
in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy
soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts—which
preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to
Carmel across the plain—the records of the conquerors only casually
mention a few of them, such as Bîtshaîlu, Birkana, and Dutîna.**
Beyond Ono reddish-coloured sandy clay took the place of the dark and
compact loam: oaks began to appear, sparsely at first, but afterwards
forming vast forests, which the peasants of our own days have thinned and
reduced to a considerable extent. The stunted trunks of these trees are
knotted and twisted, and the tallest of them do not exceed some thirty
feet in height, while many of them may be regarded as nothing more
imposing than large bushes.* Muddy rivers, infested with crocodiles,
flowed slowly through the shady woods, spreading out their waters here and
there in pestilential swamps. On reaching the seaboard, their exit was
impeded by the sands which they brought down with them, and the banks
which were thus formed caused the waters to accumulate in lagoons
extending behind the dunes. For miles the road led through thickets,
interrupted here and there by marshy places and clumps of thorny shrubs.
Bands of Shaûsû were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the
bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. Towards Aluna
the way began to ascend Mount Carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in
the rocky side of the precipice.**
Beyond the Mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with corn
and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a series of
undulations, to the foot of Tabor, where it came to an end. Two side
ranges running almost parallel—little Hermon and Glilboa—disposed
in a line from east to west, and united by an almost imperceptibly rising
ground, serve rather to connect the plain of Megiddo with the valley of
the Jordan than to separate them. A single river, the Kishon, cuts the
route diagonally—or, to speak more correctly, a single river-bed,
which is almost waterless for nine months of the year, and becomes swollen
only during the winter rains with the numerous torrents bursting from the
hillsides. As the flood approaches the sea it becomes of more manageable
proportions, and finally distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons
formed behind the sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over
by the sacred summit of Carmel.*
No corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary engagements,
or has witnessed century after century so many armies crossing its borders
and coming into conflict with one another. Every military leader who,
after leaving Africa, was able to seize Gaza and Ascalon, became at once
master of Southern Syria. He might, it is true, experience some local
resistance, and come into conflict with bands or isolated outposts of the
enemy, but as a rule he had no need to anticipate a battle before he
reached the banks of the Kishon.
Here, behind a screen of woods and mountain, the enemy would concentrate
his forces and prepare resolutely to meet the attack. If the invader
succeeded in overcoming resistance at this point, the country lay open to
him as far as the Orontes; nay, often even to the Euphrates. The position
was too important for its defence to have been neglected. A range of
forts, Ibleâm, Taanach, and Megiddo,* drawn like a barrier across the line
of advance, protected its southern face, and beyond these a series of
strongholds and villages followed one another at intervals in the bends of
the valleys or on the heights, such as Shunem, Kasuna, Anaharath, the two
Aphuls, Cana, and other places which we find mentioned on the triumphal
lists, but of which, up to the present, the sites have not been fixed.
From this point the conqueror had a choice of three routes. One ran in an
oblique direction to the west, and struck the Mediterranean near Acre,
leaving on the left the promontory of Carmel, with the sacred town,
Rosh-Qodshu, planted on its slope.
Acre was the first port where a fleet could find safe anchorage after
leaving the mouths of the Nile, and whoever was able to make himself
master of it had in his hands the key of Syria, for it stood in the same
commanding position with regard to the coast as that held by Megiddo in
respect of the interior. Its houses were built closely together on a spit
of rock which projected boldly into the sea, while fringes of reefs formed
for it a kind of natural breakwater, behind which ships could find a safe
harbourage from the attacks of pirates or the perils of bad weather. From
this point the hills come so near the shore that one is sometimes obliged
to wade along the beach to avoid a projecting spur, and sometimes to climb
a zig-zag path in order to cross a headland. In more than one place the
rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the
appearance of a vast ladder.* Below this precipitous path the waves dash
with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the
rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. The
majority of the towns, such as Aksapu (Ecdippa), Mashal, Lubina,
Ushu-Shakhan, lay back from the sea on the mountain ridges, out of the
reach of pirates; several, however, were built on the shore, under the
shelter of some promontory, and the inhabitants of these derived a
miserable subsistence from fishing and the chase. Beyond the Tyrian Ladder
Phoenician territory began. The country was served throughout its entire
length, from town to town, by the coast road, which turning at length to
the right, and passing through the defile formed by the Nahr-el-Kebîr,
entered the region of the middle Orontes.
The second of the roads leading from Megiddo described an almost
symmetrical curve eastwards, crossing the Jordan at Beth-shan, then the
Jab-bok, and finally reaching Damascus after having skirted at some
distance the last of the basaltic ramparts of the Haurân. Here extended a
vast but badly watered pasture-land, which attracted the Bedouin from
every side, and scattered over it were a number of walled towns, such as
Hamath, Magato, Ashtaroth, and Ono-Eepha.*
Probably Damascus was already at this period the dominant authority over
the region watered by these two rivers, as well as over the villages
nestling in the gorges of Hermon,—Abila, Helbôn of the vineyards,
and Tabrûd,—but it had not yet acquired its renown for riches and
power. Protected by the Anti-Lebanon range from its turbulent neighbours,
it led a sort of vegetative existence apart from invading hosts, forgotten
and hushed to sleep, as it were, in the shade of its gardens.
The third road from Megiddo took the shortest way possible. After crossing
the Kishon almost at right angles to its course, it ascended by a series
of steep inclines to arid plains, fringed or intersected by green and
flourishing valleys, which afforded sites for numerous towns,—Pahira,
Merom near Lake Huleh, Qart-Nizanu, Beerotu, and Lauîsa, situated in the
marshy district at the head-waters of the Jordan.* From this point forward
the land begins to fall, and taking a hollow shape, is known as
Coele-Syria, with its luxuriant vegetation spread between the two ranges
of the Lebanon. It was inhabited then, as at the time of the Babylonian
conquest, by the Amorites, who probably included Damascus also in their
domain.**
Their capital, the sacred Qodshu, was situated on the left bank of the
Orontes, about five miles from the lake which for a long time bore its
name, Bahr-el-Kades.* It crowned one of those barren oblong eminences
which are so frequently met with in Syria. A muddy stream, the Tannur,
flowed, at some distance away, around its base, and, emptying itself into
the Orontes at a point a little to the north, formed a natural defence for
the town on the west. Its encompassing walls, slightly elliptic in form,
were strengthened by towers, and surrounded by two concentric ditches
which kept the sapper at a distance.
A dyke running across the Orontes above the town caused the waters to rise
and to overflow in a northern direction, so as to form a shallow lake,
which acted as an additional protection from the enemy. Qodshu was thus a
kind of artificial island, connected with the surrounding country by two
flying bridges, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. Once the
bridges were raised and the gates closed, the boldest enemy had no
resource left but to arm himself with patience and settle down to a
lengthened siege. The invader, fresh from a victory at Megiddo, and
following up his good fortune in a forward movement, had to reckon upon
further and serious resistance at this point, and to prepare himself for a
second conflict. The Amorite chiefs and their allies had the advantage of
a level and firm ground for the evolutions of their chariots during the
attack, while, if they were beaten, the citadel afforded them a secure
rallying-place, whence, having gathered their shattered troops, they could
regain their respective countries, or enter, with the help of a few
devoted men, upon a species of guerilla warfare in which they excelled.
The road from Damascus led to a point south of Quodshu, while that from
Phonicia came right up to the town itself or to its immediate
neighbourhood. The dyke of Bahr el-Kades served to keep the plain in a dry
condition, and thus secured for numerous towns, among which Hamath stood
out pre-eminently, a prosperous existence. Beyond Hamath, and to the left,
between the Orontes and the sea, lay the commercial kingdom of Alasia,
protected from the invader by bleak mountains.*
On the right, between the Orontes and the Balikh, extended the land of
rivers, Naharaim. Towns had grown up here thickly,—on the sides of
the torrents from the Amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or
wells—wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture
possible. The fragments of the Egyptian chronicles which have come down to
us number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the
records have perished with the crumbling Theban walls upon which the
Pharaohs had their names incised! Khalabu was the Aleppo of our own day,**
and grouped around it lay Turmanuna, Tunipa, Zarabu, Nîi, Durbaniti,
Nirabu, Sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon it, or upon
one of its rivals. The boundaries of this portion of the Lower Lotanû have
come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and they must also,
moreover, have been subject to continual modifications from the results of
tribal conflicts.
We are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were
accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether
we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that Lord of Naharaim of
whom the Egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.*
Carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by Megiddo in
relation to Kharû, and by Qodshu among the Amorites; that is to say, it
was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country. Whoever could
make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet.
It lay upon the Euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its
southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a
deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across
the intervening region. Like Qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of
an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper.
The encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly
measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the
midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of
peace an abode for the surplus population. The wall still rises some five
and twenty to thirty feet above the plain. Two mounds divided by a ravine
command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins
of two fine buildings—a temple and a palace.* Carchemish was the
last stage in a conqueror’s march coming from the south.
For an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first
station. He had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for
crossing the Euphrates. That of Thapsacus, at the bend of the river where
it turns eastward to the Arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it
could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region
where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst.
For an invader proceeding from Asia Minor, or intending to make his way
through the defiles of the Taurus, Samosata offered a convenient
fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had Naharaim
or the kingdoms of Chaldæa in view, to make a long detour, and although
the Assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions
to the valleys of the Halys, the Egyptians do not seem ever to have
travelled by this road. Carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about
equally distant from Thapsacus and Samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile
province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not
be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. Hither
pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world
were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was
perpetuated for centuries. On the left bank of the river, and almost
opposite Carchemish, lay the region of Mitânni,* which was already
occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it
would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes
of the Upper Tigris and Upper Euphrates.** Harran bordered on Mitânni, and
beyond Harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined Singar, Assur,
Arrapkha, and Babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the
ancient Chaldæan Empire.***
The Carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed
bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. It was a far cry from
Memphis to Carchemish, and for the Egyptians this town continued to be a
limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to
chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the
flames.*
It would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the
distribution of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Aramæans, and to indicate
the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of
non-Semitic stock. Frontiers between races and languages can never be very
easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of Syria.
They are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in
neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to
find at every step representatives of all the others. Four or five
townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would
often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective
inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as
great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of
a continent.
It would appear that the breaking up of these populations had not been
carried so far in ancient as in modern times, but the confusion must
already have been great if we are to judge from the number of different
sites where we encounter evidences of people of the same language and
blood. The bulk of the Khâti had not yet departed from the Taurus region,
but some stray bands of them, carried away by the movement which led to
the invasion of the Hyksôs, had settled around Hebron, where the rugged
nature of the country served to protect them from their neighbours.*
The Amorites* had their head-quarters Qodshul in Coele-Syria, but one
section of them had taken up a position on the shores of the Lake of
Tiberias in Galilee, others had established themselves within a short
distance of Jaffa** on the Mediterranean, while others had settled in the
neighbourhood of the southern Hittites in such numbers that their name in
the Hebrew Scriptures was at times employed to designate the western
mountainous region about the Dead Sea and the valley of the Jordan. Their
presence was also indicated on the table-lands bordering the desert of
Damascus, in the districts frequented by Bedouin of the tribe of Terah,
Ammon and Moab, on the rivers Yarmuk and Jabbok, and at Edrei and
Heshbon.***
The fuller, indeed, our knowledge is of the condition of Syria at the time
of the Egyptian conquest, the more we are forced to recognise the mixture
of races therein, and their almost infinite subdivisions. The mutual
jealousies, however, of these elements of various origin were not so
inveterate as to put an obstacle in the way, I will not say of political
alliances, but of daily intercourse and frequent contracts. Owing to
intermarriages between the tribes, and the continual crossing of the
results of such unions, peculiar characteristics were at length
eliminated, and a uniform type of face was the result. From north to south
one special form of countenance, that which we usually call Semitic,
prevailed among them.
The Syrian and Egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different
ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high
stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in
old age. Their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially
flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the Lebanon.
Their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue
or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. The lower part of
the face is square and somewhat heavy, but it is often concealed by a
thick and curly beard. The forehead is rather low and retreating, while
the nose has a distinctly aquiline curve. The type is not on the whole so
fine as the Egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the Chaldæans in
the time of Gudea. The Theban artists have represented it in their
battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or Asiatic prisoner
with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much
intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of a common parentage.
One feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one
common family. They associated with their efforts after true and exact
representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to
substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their
adversaries. On the walls of the Pylons, and in places where the majesty
of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official
gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel
the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they
followed behind the triumphal chariot of the Pharaoh on his return from
his Syrian campaigns.*
Where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to
the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to
caricature. It is an Amorite or Canaanite—that thick-lipped,
flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull—who
serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the Louvre. The
stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the
most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been
subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated. The model which served
for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in
order to excite the laughter of Pharaoh’s subjects.*
The idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the
faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study
their costumes. Men and women—we may say all Syrians according to
their condition of life—had a choice between only two or three modes
of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed
never to change. On closer examination slight shades of difference in cut
and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that
fashion ran even in ancient Syria through as many capricious evolutions as
with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of
the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to
classify the people, or to fix their date. The peasants and the lower
class of citizens required no other clothing than a loin-cloth similar to
that of the Egyptians,* or a shirt of a yellow or white colour, extending
below the knees, and furnished with short sleeves. The opening for the
neck was cruciform, and the hem was usually ornamented with coloured
needlework or embroidery. The burghers and nobles wore over this a long
strip of cloth, which, after passing closely round the hips and chest, was
brought up and spread over the shoulders as a sort of cloak. This was not
made of the light material used in Egypt, which offered no protection from
cold or rain, but was composed of a thick, rough wool, like that employed
in Chaldæa, and was commonly adorned with stripes or bands of colour, in
addition to spots and other conspicuous designs.
Rich and fashionable folk substituted for this cloth two large shawls—one
red and the other blue—in which they dexterously arrayed themselves
so as to alternate the colours: a belt of soft leather gathered the folds
around the figure. Red morocco buskins, a soft cap, a handkerchief, a kejfîyeh
confined by a fillet, and sometimes a wig after the Egyptian fashion,
completed the dress.
Beards were almost universal among the men, but the moustache was of rare
occurrence. In many of the figures represented on the monuments we find
that the head was carefully shaved, while in others the hair was allowed
to grow, arranged in curls, frizzed and shining with oil or sweet-smelling
pomade, sometimes thrown back behind the ears and falling on the neck in
bunches or curly masses, sometimes drawn out in stiff spikes so as to
serve as a projecting cover over the face.
The women usually tired their hair in three great masses, of which the
thickest was allowed to fall freely down the back; while the other two
formed a kind of framework for the face, the ends descending on each side
as far as the breast. Some of the women arranged their hair after the
Egyptian manner, in a series of numerous small tresses, brought together
at the ends so as to form a kind of plat, and terminating in a flower made
of metal or enamelled terracotta. A network of glass ornaments, arranged
on a semicircle of beads, or on a background of embroidered stuff, was
frequently used as a covering for the top of the head.*
The shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it left
half of the arm exposed. Children of tender years had their heads shaved,
as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the little ones
among the Egyptians. With the exception of bracelets, anklets, rings on
the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings, the Syrians, both
men and women, wore little jewellery. The Chaldæa women furnished them
with models of fashion to which they accommodated themselves in the choice
of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or petticoats, arrangement of the
hair, and the use of cosmetics for the eyes and cheeks. In spite of
distance, the modes of Babylon reigned supreme. The Syrians would have
continued to expose their right shoulder to the weather as long as it
pleased the people of the Lower Euphrates to do the same; but as soon as
the fashion changed in the latter region, and it became customary to cover
the shoulder, and to wrap the upper part of the person in two or three
thicknesses of heavy wool, they at once accommodated themselves to the new
mode, although it served to restrain the free motion of the body. Among
the upper classes, at least, domestic arrangements were modelled upon the
fashions observed in the palaces of the nobles of Car-chemish or Assur:
the same articles of toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the
same luxurious habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among
both.*
From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from
the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before us
as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be
a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions.
The religion of the Syrians was subject to the same influences as their
customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture of
their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same names
and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of Chaldæa.
The myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least to our modern
ideas: the general characteristics of the principal divinities alone stand
out, and seem fairly well defined. As with the other Semitic races, the
deity in a general sense, the primordial type of the godhead, was called
El or Ilû, and his feminine counterpart Ilât, but we
find comparatively few cities in which these nearly abstract beings
enjoyed the veneration of the faithful.* The gods of Syria, like those of
Egypt and of the countries watered by the Euphrates, were feudal princes
distributed over the surface of the earth, their number corresponding with
that of the independent states. Each nation, each tribe, each city,
worshipped its own lord—Adoni** —or its master—Baal***
—and each of these was designated by a special title to distinguish
him from neighbouring Baalîm, or masters.
The Baal who ruled at Zebub was styled “Master of Zebub,” or Baal-Zebub;*
and the Baal of Hermon, who was an ally of Gad, goddess of fortune, was
sometimes called Baal-Hermon, or “Master of Hermon,” sometimes Baal-G-ad,
or “Master of Gad;” ** the Baal of Shechem, at the time of the Israelite
invasion, was “Master of the Covenant”—Baal-Berîth—doubtless
in memory of some agreement which he had concluded with his worshippers in
regard to the conditions of their allegiance.***
The prevalent conception of the essence and attributes of these deities
was not the same in all their sanctuaries, but the more exalted among them
were regarded as personifying the sky in the daytime or at night, the
atmosphere, the light,* or the sun, Shamash, as creator and prime mover of
the universe; and each declared himself to be king—melek—over
the other gods.** Bashuf represented the lightning and the thunderbolt;***
Shalmân, Hadad, and his double Bimmôn held sway over the air like the
Babylonian.
Rammânu;* Dagon, patron god of fishermen and husbandmen, seems to have
watched over the fruitfulness of the sea and the land.** We are beginning
to learn the names of the races whom they specially protected: Rashuf the
Amorites, Hadad and Rimmon the Aramæans of Damascus, Dagon the peoples of
the coast between Ashkelon and the forest of Carmel. Rashûf is the only
one whose appearance is known to us. He possessed the restless temperament
usually attributed to the thunder-gods, and was, accordingly, pictured as
a soldier armed with javelin and mace, bow and buckler; a gazelle’s head
with pointed horns surmounts his helmet, and sometimes, it may be, serves
him as a cap.
Each god had for his complement a goddess, who was proclaimed “mistress”
of the city, Baalat, or “queen,” Milkat, of heaven, just as
the god himself was recognised as “master” or “king.” * As a rule, the
goddess was contented with the generic name of Astartê; but to this was
often added some epithet, which lent her a distinct personality, and
prevented her from being confounded with the Astartês of neighbouring
cities, her companions or rivals.**
Thus she would be styled the “good” Astartê, Ashtoreth Naamah, or the
“horned” Astartê, Ashtoreth Qarnaîm, because of the lunar crescent which
appears on her forehead, as a sort of head-dress.* She was the goddess of
good luck, and was called Gad;** she was Anat,*** or Asîti,**** the chaste
and the warlike.
The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman’s head, but
more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or
encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers
or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses—a
faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service,
the Qedeshôt. She was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather
in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled Qaddishat
the Holy, like the hetairæ of her family; Qodshu, the Amorite capital, was
consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with Rashuf, the
thunder-god.*
But she often comes before us as a warlike Amazon, brandishing a club,
lance, or shield, mounted on horseback like a soldier, and wandering
through the desert in quest of her prey.* This dual temperament rendered
her a goddess of uncertain attributes and of violent contrasts; at times
reserved and chaste, at other times shameless and dissolute, but always
cruel, always barren, for the countless multitude of her excesses for ever
shut her out from motherhood: she conceives without ceasing, but never
brings forth children.** The Baalim and Astartês frequented by choice the
tops of mountains, such as Lebanon, Carmel, Hermon, or Kasios:*** they
dwelt near springs, or hid themselves in the depths of forests.**** They
revealed themselves to mortals through the heavenly bodies, and in all the
phenomena of nature: the sun was a Baal, the moon was Astartê, and the
whole host of heaven was composed of more or less powerful genii, as we
find in Chaldæa.
They required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them at the
high places,* but they were also pleased—and especially the
goddesses—to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes
bare and branchless (ashêrah), long continued to be living emblems
of the local Astartês among the peoples of Southern Syria. Side by side
with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the
temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into
pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric
origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house
of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his
intelligence and vital force.
The worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more
bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. The Baalim
thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common blood
such as generally contented their brethren in Chaldæa or Egypt: they
imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. Among several of
the Syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the firstborn male of
each family;* this right was generally commuted, either by a money payment
or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.**
At important junctures, however, this pretence of bloodshed would fail to
appease them, and the death of the child alone availed. Indeed, in times
of national danger, the king and nobles would furnish, not merely a single
victim, but as many as the priests chose to demand.* While they were being
burnt alive on the knees of the statue, or before the sacred emblem, their
cries of pain were drowned by the piping of flutes or the blare of
trumpets, the parents standing near the altar, without a sign of pity, and
dressed as for a festival: the ruler of the world could refuse nothing to
prayers backed by so precious an offering, and by a purpose so determined
to move him. Such sacrifices were, however, the exception, and the
shedding of their own blood by his priests sufficed, as a rule, for the
daily wants of the god. Seizing their knives, they would slash their arms
and breasts with the view of compelling, by this offering of their own
persons, the good will of the Baalim.**
The Astartês of all degrees and kinds were hardly less cruel; they imposed
frequent flagellations, self-mutilation, and sometimes even emasculation,
on their devotees. Around the majority of these goddesses was gathered an
infamous troop of profligates (kedeshîm), “dogs of love” (kelabîm),
and courtesans (kedeshôt). The temples bore little resemblance to
those of the regions of the Lower Euphrates: nowhere do we find traces of
those ziggurat which serve to produce the peculiar jagged outline
characteristic of Chaldæan cities. The Syrian edifices were stone
buildings, which included, in addition to the halls and courts reserved
for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood, and storehouses
for provisions: though not to be compared in size with the sanctuaries of
Thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds in time of need, and
were capable of resisting the attacks of a victorious foe.* A numerous
staff, consisting of priests, male and female singers, porters, butchers,
slaves, and artisans, was assigned to each of these temples: here the god
was accustomed to give forth his oracles, either by the voice of his
prophets, or by the movement of his statues.** The greater number of the
festivals celebrated in them were closely connected with the pastoral and
agricultural life of the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close,
the principal operations of the year—the sowing of seed, the
harvest, the vintage, the shearing of the sheep. At Shechem, when the
grapes were ripe, the people flocked out of the town into the vineyards,
returning to the temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when
the fruit had been trodden in the winepress.***
In times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a
famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high
places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom
they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their
dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.*
Almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the Jordan, were
monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious reverence.
Such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call them, “menhirs,”
reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of a tableland; dolmens,
formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two roughly hewn supports,
cromlechs, or, that is to say, stone circles, in the centre of which might
be found a beth-el. We know not by whom were set up these monuments there,
nor at what time: the fact that they are in no way different from those
which are to be met with in Western Europe and the north of Africa has
given rise to the theory that they were the work of some one primeval race
which wandered ceaselessly over the ancient world. A few of them may have
marked the tombs of some forgotten personages, the discovery of human
bones beneath them confirming such a conjecture; while others seem to have
been holy places and altars from the beginning. The nations of Syria did
not in all cases recognise the original purpose of these monuments, but
regarded them as marking the seat of an ancient divinity, or the precise
spot on which he had at some time manifested himself. When the children of
Israel caught sight of them again on their return from Egypt, they at once
recognised in them the work of their patriarchs. The dolmen at Shechem was
the altar which Abraham had built to the Eternal after his arrival in the
country of Canaan. Isaac had raised that at Beersheba, on the very spot
where Jehovah had appeared in order to renew with him the covenant that He
had made with Abraham. One might almost reconstruct a map of the
wanderings of Jacob from the altars which he built at each of his
principal resting-places—at Gilead [Galeed], at Ephrata, at Bethel,
and at Shechem.* Each of such still existing objects probably had a
history of its own, connecting it inseparably with some far-off event in
the local annals.
Most of them were objects of worship: they were anointed with oil, and
victims were slaughtered in their honour; the faithful even came at times
to spend the night and sleep near them, in order to obtain in their dreams
glimpses of the future.*
Men and beasts were supposed to be animated, during their lifetime, by a
breath or soul which ran in their veins along with their blood, and served
to move their limbs; the man, therefore, who drank blood or ate bleeding
flesh assimilated thereby the soul which inhered in it. After death the
fate of this soul was similar to that ascribed to the spirits of the
departed in Egypt and Chaldæa. The inhabitants of the ancient world were
always accustomed to regard the surviving element in man as something
restless and unhappy—a weak and pitiable double, doomed to hopeless
destruction if deprived of the succour of the living. They imagined it as
taking up its abode near the body wrapped in a half-conscious lethargy; or
else as dwelling with the other rephaim (departed spirits) in some
dismal and gloomy kingdom, hidden in the bowels of the earth, like the
region ruled by the Chaldæan Allât, its doors gaping wide to engulf new
arrivals, but allowing none to escape who had once passed the threshold.*
There it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of
inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the Phoenician idea,
was Mout (Death),* the grandson of El; there the slave became the equal of
his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything which could
raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted on their
entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night before
them.
The corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in
linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition,
was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid
rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a
sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets,
jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household
utensils, together with meat and drink. The entrance was then closed, and
on the spot a cippus was erected—in popular estimation sometimes
held to represent the soul—or a monument was set up on a scale
proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had
belonged.* On certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the
tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by
virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the
gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger and thirst of
the dead man.** The chapels and stellæ which marked the exterior of these
“eternal” *** houses have disappeared in the course of the various wars by
which Syria suffered so heavily: in almost all cases, therefore, we are
ignorant as to the sites of the various cities of the dead in which the
nobles and common people of the Canaanite and Amorite towns were laid to
rest.****
In Phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the
vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something of
their original arrangement. Sometimes the site chosen was on level ground:
perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down to low-roofed
chambers, the number of which varied according to circumstances: they were
often arranged in two stories, placed one above the other, fresh vaults
being probably added as the old ones were filled up. They were usually
rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly arched ceilings; niches
cut in the walls received the dead body and the objects intended for its
use in the next world, and were then closed with a slab of stone.
Elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with sides of fine
homogeneous limestone, was selected.*
In this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of façade similar to
that of the Egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at external
ornament. The vaults were on the ground-level, but were not used as
chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the dead: they were
walled up after every funeral, and all access to them forbidden, until
such time as they were again required for the purposes of burial. Except
on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom “the mouth of the pit had
devoured” dreaded the visits of the living, and resorted to every means
afforded by their religion to protect themselves from them. Their
inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor silver, nor any
object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to be found within
their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to deprive them of
such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to turn them out of
their chambers in order to make room for others, with all sorts of
vengeance, divine and human. These imprecations have not, however, availed
to save them from the desecration the danger of which they foresaw, and
there are few of their tombs which were not occupied by a succession of
tenants between the date of their first making and the close of the Roman
supremacy. When the modern explorer chances to discover a vault which has
escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker, it is hardly ever the case that
the bodies whose remains are unearthed prove to be those of the original
proprietors.
The gods and legends of Chaldæa had penetrated to the countries of Amauru
and Canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and their system
of writing: the stories of Adapa’s struggles against the south-west wind,
or of the incidents which forced Irishkigal, queen of the dead, to wed
Nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts of Syrian princes.
Chaldæan theology, therefore, must have exercised influence on individual
Syrians and on their belief; but although we are forced to allow the
existence of such influence, we cannot define precisely the effects
produced by it. Only on the coast and in the Phoenician cities do the
local religions seem to have become formulated at a fairly early date, and
crystallised under pressure of this influence into cosmogonie theories.
The Baalim and Astartês reigned there as on the banks of the Jordan or
Orontes, and in each town Baal was “the most high,” master of heaven and
eternity, creator of everything which exists, though the character of his
creating acts was variously defined according to time and place. Some
regarded him as the personification of Justice, Sydyk, who established the
universe with the help of eight indefatigable Cabiri. Others held the
whole world to be the work of a divine family, whose successive
generations gave birth to the various elements. The storm-wind, Colpias,
wedded to Chaos, had begotten two mortals, Ulom (Time) and Kadmôn (the
First-Born), and these in their turn engendered Qên and Qênath, who dwelt
in Phoenicia: then came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the
Sun, imploring him, as Lord of the Heavens (Baalsamîn), to put an
end to their woes. At Tyre it was thought that Chaos existed at the
beginning, but chaos of a dark and troubled nature, over which a Breath (rûakh)
floated without affecting it; “and this Chaos had no ending, and it was
thus for centuries and centuries.—Then the Breath became enamoured
of its own principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this
change was called Desire:—now Desire was the principle which created
all things, and the Breath knew not its own creation.—The Breath and
Chaos, therefore, became united, and Mot the Clay was born, and from this
clay sprang all the seed of creation, and Mot was the father of all
things; now Mot was like an egg in shape.—And the Sun, the Moon, the
stars, the great planets, shone forth.* There were living beings devoid of
intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings, who
were called Zophesamîn, or ‘watchers of the heavens.‘Now the
thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent
beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began
to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea.”
A scholar of the Roman epoch, Philo of Byblos, using as a basis some old
documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been
classified by Sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed
these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the
world was brought out of Chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of
civilization in Phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. No
doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in
accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved
their substance more or less faithfully. Beneath the veneer of abstraction
with which the Greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus
quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met
with in most Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian or Babylonian. At first
we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the
primordial Nû or Apsû; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and
clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the Nile under the hand? of
Khnûmû; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent
generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the Lakhmû, the Anshar,
and the Illinu of Chaldæan speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of
intelligent beings.
The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean,
with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which
differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it
presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as
swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest,
at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in
fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. No sooner had the
earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the
north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. It
was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its
descent from the winds.
In Phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough to
furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of
gardens. Mount Lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost
entirely from Coele-Syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long
narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of
the sea. At frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the
principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front: these cut up
the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller
provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own
independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history. To the
north were the Zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave,
and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel
against an alien master, be he who he might. Arvad,* which was used by
them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an
island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand yards
in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited
space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories.
An Astartê reigned there, as also a sea-Baal, half man, half fish, but not
a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.**
The whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost
ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. The
courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of
any kind. This bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of
sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset of
hostile fleets and the surges of the Mediterranean.*
There was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the
inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored in
cisterns—still in use among their descendants. In the event of
prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in
time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in
mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was
fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the
fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and
rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt water.*
The harbour opened to the east, facing the mainland: it was divided into
two basins by a stone jetty, and was doubtless insufficient for the
sea-traffic, but this was the less felt inasmuch as there was a safe
anchorage outside it—the best, perhaps, to be found in these waters.
Opposite to Arvad, on an almost continuous line of coast some ten or
twelve miles in length, towns and villages occurred at short intervals,
such as Marath, Antarados, Enhydra, and Karnê, into which the surplus
population of the island overflowed. Karnê possessed a harbour, and would
have been a dangerous neighbour to the Arvadians had they themselves not
occupied and carefully fortified it.*
The cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the slope
of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain celebrated
for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: Lebanon, with its
wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the east the
mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a pass
through which ran the road which joined the great military highway not far
from Qodshu. The influence of Arvad penetrated by means of this pass into
the valley of the Orontes, and is believed to have gradually extended as
far as Hamath itself—in other words, over the whole of Zahi. For the
most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast between G-abala and
the Nahr el-Kebîr; Simyra at one time acknowledged its suzerainty, at
another became a self-supporting and independent state, strong enough to
compel the respect of its neighbours.* Beyond the Orontes, the coast
curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a group of wind-swept hills
ending in a promontory called Phaniel,** the reputed scene of a divine
manifestation, marked the extreme limit of Arabian influence to the north,
if, indeed, it ever reached so far.
Half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, Arka,* Siani,** Mahallat,
Kaiz, Maîza, and Botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland on
the bend of some minor stream. Botrys,**** the last of the six, barred the
roads which cross the Phaniel headland, and commanded the entrance to the
holy ground where Byblos and Berytus celebrated each year the amorous
mysteries of Adonis.
Gublu, or—as the Greeks named it—Byblos,* prided itself on
being the most ancient city in the world. The god El had founded it at the
dawning of time, on the flank of a hill which is visible from some
distance out at sea. A small bay, now filled up, made it an important
shipping centre. The temple stood on the top of the hill, a few fragments
of its walls still serving to mark the site; it was, perhaps, identical
with that of which we find the plan engraved on certain imperial coins.**
Two flights of steps led up to it from the lower quarters of the town, one
of which gave access to a chapel in the Greek style, surmounted by a
triangular pediment, and dating, at the earliest, from the time of the
Seleucides; the other terminated in a long colonnade, belonging to the
same period, added as a new façade to an earlier building, apparently in
order to bring it abreast of more modern requirements.
The sanctuary which stands hidden behind this incongruous veneer is, as
represented on the coins, in a very archaic style, and is by no means
wanting in originality or dignity. It consists of a vast rectangular court
surrounded by cloisters. At the point where lines drawn from the centres
of the two doors seem to cross one another stands a conical stone mounted
on a cube of masonry, which is the beth-el animated by the spirit of the
god: an open-work balustrade surrounds and protects it from the touch of
the profane. The building was perhaps not earlier than the Assyrian or
Persian era, but in its general plan it evidently reproduced the
arrangements of some former edifice.*
At an early time El was spoken of as the first king of G-ablu in the same
manner as each one of his Egyptian fellow-gods had been in their several
nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable prelude to the
beginning of human history. Grandson of Eliûn who had brought Chaos into
order, son of Heaven and Earth, he dispossessed, vanquished, and mutilated
his father, and conquered the most distant regions one after another—the
countries beyond the Euphrates, Libya, Asia Minor and Greece: one year,
when the plague was ravaging his empire, he burnt his own son on the altar
as an expiatory victim, and from that time forward the priests took
advantage of his example to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of
public danger or calamity.
He was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut in
an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from his
shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. He was the incarnation of time,
which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer sun,
cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the fields.
An Astartê reigned with him over Byblos—Baalat-Gublu, his own
sister; like him, the child of Earth and Heaven. In one of her aspects she
was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness and
chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented
with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hâthor; but in her other
aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the Greeks
recognised the popular concept of Aphroditê. Tradition tells us how, one
spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by
the title of Adoni, or “My Lord.” We scarce know what to make of
the origin of Adonis, and of the legends which treat him as a hero—the
representation of him as the incestuous offspring of a certain King
Kinyras and his own daughter Myrrha is a comparatively recent element
grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness of two lovers had
lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put to it by the tusks
of a monstrous wild boar. Baalat-Gublu wept over her lover’s body and
buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and Adonis, ransomed by
her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less passionate than it
had been before the catastrophe. This is nothing else than the Chaldæan
legend of Ishtar and Dûmûzi presented in a form more fully symbolical of
the yearly marriage of Earth and Heaven. Like the Lady of Byblos at her
master’s approach, Earth is thrilled by the first breath of spring, and
abandons herself without shame to the caresses of Heaven: she welcomes him
to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours forth the abundance of her
flowers and fruits. Them comes summer and kills the spring: Earth is burnt
up and withers, she strips herself of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness
departs till the gloom and icy numbness of winter have passed away. Each
year the cycle of the seasons brings back with it the same joy, the same
despair, into the life of the world; each year Baalat falls in love with
her Adonis and loses him, only to bring him back to life and lose him
again in the coming year.
The whole neighbourhood of Byblos, and that part of Mount Lebanon in which
it lies, were steeped in memories of this legend from the very earliest
times. We know the precise spot where the goddess first caught sight of
her lover, where she unveiled herself before him, and where at the last
she buried his mutilated body, and chanted her lament for the dead. A
river which flows southward not far off was called the Adonis, and the
valley watered by it was supposed to have been the scene of this tragic
idyll. The Adonis rises near Aphaka,* at the base of a narrow
amphitheatre, issuing from the entrance of an irregular grotto, the
natural shape of which had, at some remote period, been altered by the
hand of man; in three cascades it bounds into a sort of circular basin,
where it gathers to itself the waters of the neighbouring springs, then it
dashes onwards under the single arch of a Roman bridge, and descends in a
series of waterfalls to the level of the valley below.
The temple rises opposite the source of the stream on an artificial mound,
a meteorite fallen from heaven having attracted the attention of the
faithful to the spot. The mountain falls abruptly away, its summit
presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of
summer sun and winter frost. As the slopes approach the valley they become
clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every
fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the
mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet
sunny Spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too
steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing mould. It would be hard to
find, even among the most picturesque spots of Europe, a landscape in
which wildness and beauty are more happily combined, or where the mildness
of the air and sparkling coolness of the streams offer a more perfect
setting for the ceremonies attending the worship of Astartê.*
In the basin of the river and of the torrents by which it is fed, there
appears a succession of charming and romantic scenes—gaping chasms
with precipitous ochre-coloured walls; narrow fields laid out in terraces
on the slopes, or stretching in emerald strips along the ruddy
river-banks; orchards thick with almond and walnut trees; sacred grottoes,
into which the priestesses, seated at the corner of the roads, endeavour
to draw the pilgrims as they proceed on their way to make their prayers to
the goddess;* sanctuaries and mausolea of Adonis at Yanukh, on the
table-land of Mashnaka, and on the heights of Ghineh. According to the
common belief, the actual tomb of Adonis was to be found at Byblos
itself,** where the people were accustomed to assemble twice a year to
keep his festivals, which lasted for several days together.
At the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the
divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the
priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made
ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of Adonis—terra-cotta
pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were
sown. These were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of
the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect
of the sun, and soon withered away. For several days troops of women and
young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in
rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified
with knives, went about over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving
utterance to cries of despair, and to endless appeals: “Ah, Lord! Ah,
Lord! what is become of thy beauty.” Once having found the image, they
brought it to the feet of the goddess, washed it while displaying its
wound, anointed it with sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and
woollen shroud, placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around
the bier their feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at
fanerais, placed it solemnly in the tomb.*
The close and dreary summer passes away. With the first days of September
the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the
ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the
hollows of the valleys. The Adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy
waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it. The wind
from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it
to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson
fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious
stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more
their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them
that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was brought back from the
shades into new life. Shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the
people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears
and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous
delight. Wives and virgins—all the women who had refused during the
week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair—were obliged to
atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the
strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their
service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.**
Berytus shared with Byblos the glory of having had El for its founder.*
The road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its
course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky
summits: before reaching Palai-Byblos, it passes over a headland by a
series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of “ladder” similar to
that which is encountered lower down, between Acre and the plains of Tyre.
The river Lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of this
steep headland. It forms at the present time a torrent, fed by the melting
snows of Mount Sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. It was better
circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early years of the
Boman conquest, sailors from Arvad (Arados) were accustomed to sail up it
as far as one of the passes of the lower Lebanon, leading into Cole-Syria.
Berytus was installed at the base of a great headland which stands out
boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking promontory to be met with
in these regions from Carmel to the vicinity of Arvad. The port is nothing
but an open creek with a petty roadstead, but it has the advantage of a
good supply of fresh water, which pours down from the numerous springs to
which it is indebted for its name.* According to ancient legends, it was
given by El to one of his offspring called Poseidon by the Greeks.
Adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the
attempt, and the maritime Baal secured the permanence of his rule by
marrying one of his sisters—the Baalat-Beyrut who is represented as
a nymph on Græco-Roman coins.* The rule of the city extended as far as the
banks of the Tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in
ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at him to
prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. The bar formed of
shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were regarded as
evidences of this conflict.**
Beyond the southern bank of the river, Sidon sits enthroned as “the
firstborn of Canaan.” In spite of this ambitious title it was at first
nothing but a poor fishing village founded by Bel, the Agenor of the
Greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely
towards the south-west.* It grew from year to year, spreading out over the
plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief cities
of the country—a “mother” in Phoenicia.**
The port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken
reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula, continue
parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow passages in these
reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island, which is always
above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke of rocks, and
furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the continental city.*
The necropolis on the mainland extends to the east and north, and consists
of an irregular series of excavations made in a low line of limestone
cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves of the Mediterranean long
prior to the beginning of history. These tombs are crowded closely
together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and are separated from each
other by such thin walls that one expects every moment to see them give
way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. Many date back to a very early
period, while all of them have been re-worked and re-appropriated over and
over again. The latest occupiers were contemporaries of the Macedonian
kings or the Roman Cæsars. Space was limited and costly in this region of
the dead: the Sidonians made the best use they could of the tombs, burying
in them again and again, as the Egyptians were accustomed to do in their
cemeteries at Thebes and Memphis. The surrounding plain is watered by the
“pleasant Bostrênos,” and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be
the most beautiful in all Syria—at least after those of Damascus:
their praises were sung even in ancient days, and they had then earned for
the city the epithet of “the flowery Sidon.” **
Here, also, an Astartê ruled over the destinies of the people, but a
chaste and immaculate Astartê, a self-restrained and warlike virgin,
sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid
morning star.* In addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped a
Baal-Sidon, and other divinities of milder character—an Astartê
Shem-Baal, wife of the supreme Baal, and Eshmun, a god of medicine—each
of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some
neighbouring village in the mountain. Baal delighted in travel, and was
accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of Phoenicia in
order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. The immodest
Astartê, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her
claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she
became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at
Byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately coarse character
by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. She possessed in the suburbs her
chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides, where she was served
by the usual crowd of Ephébæ and sacred courtesans. Some half-dozen
towns or fortified villages, such as Bitzîti,** the Lesser Sidon, and
Sarepta, were scattered along the shore, or on the lowest slopes of the
Lebanon.
Sidonian territory reached its limit at the Cape of Sarepta, where the
high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins into
which Phoenicia is divided. Passing beyond this cape, we come first upon a
Tyrian outpost, the Town of Birds;* then upon the village of Nazana** with
its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain hemmed in by low
hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and gardens in the
suburbs of Autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of boats moored at a
short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs and islands
furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and temples of
Tyre, and a protection from its foes.
It was already an ancient town at the beginning of the Egyptian conquest.
As in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of
the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in
the world. After the period of the creating gods, there followed
immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of
minor deities—heroes of light and flame—who had learned how to
subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated
with the giant peaks of Kasios, Lebanon, Hermon, and Brathy;* after which
were born two male children—twins: Samem-rum, the lord of the
supernal heaven, and Usôos, the hunter. Human beings at this time lived a
savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices.
Samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later
times the Tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or
other reeds: Usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of
wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their
skins. A conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the
inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the
husbandman attached to the soil.
Usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took
the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub
against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and
the forest was set on fire. Usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of
its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing
him, the first of his race, with it.
Landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to
fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. He poured out
at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his
death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had
inaugurated.
The town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called Tyre,
the “Rock,” and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a
long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. It
was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it
rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. Two peaks looked down upon it—the
“Ambrosian Rocks”—between which grew the olive tree of Astartê,
sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. An eagle perched
thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island
would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the
bird in honour of the gods. Usôos, the Herakles, destroyer of monsters,
taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them;
he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself
spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the
earth, Tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. Coins of the
Roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the
eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and
sometimes the two stelæ only. From this time forward the gods never ceased
to reside on the holy island; Astartê herself was born there, and one of
the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star—an
aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys.
Baal was called the Melkarth. king of the city, and the Greeks after»
wards identified him with their Herakles. His worship was of a severe and
exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his
priests, like those of the Egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore
garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused
permission to married women to approach the altars.*
Festivals, similar to those of Adonis at Byblos, were held in his honour
twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his
glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb,
giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the
severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing
coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with
great joy. His temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the
islands furthest away from the mainland. It served to remind the people of
the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation
almost to the period of the arrival of the Phoenicians on the shores of
the Mediterranean. The town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no
submarine spring like that of Arvad to provide a resource in time of
necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were
fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. The
waters of the well of Eas el-Aîn had been led down to the shore and dammed
up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in
time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the
cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain
seasons.**
The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven
hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points of
its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader
channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance
of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened
siege.
Like the coast region opposite Arvad, the shore which faced Tyre, lying
between the mouth of the Litany and ras el-Aîn, was an actual suburb of
the city itself—with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its
cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. Here the inhabitants of
the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired
for refreshment during the heat of the summer. To the north the little
town of Mahalliba, on the southern bank of the Litâny, and almost hidden
from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the Bekaa,
and the high-road to Coele-Syria.* To the south, at Ras el-Aîn, Old Tyre
(Palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into Galilee by way of the
mountains.**
Eastwards Autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to
protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was
built, facing the insular temple of Melkarth, protector of mariners, a
sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the
mainland.* The latter divinity was probably the representative of the
legendary Samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while Usôos
had founded his on the ocean. He was the Baalsamîm of starry tunic, lord
of heaven and king of the sun.
As was customary, a popular Astartê was associated with these deities of
high degree, and tradition asserted that Melkarth purchased her favour by
the gift of the first robe of Tyrian purple which was ever dyed.
Priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and in
several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained the
devotees of the goddess. Behind Autu the ground rises abruptly, and along
the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood, are the
remains of the most important of the Tyrian burying-places, consisting of
half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries, where whole
families lie together in their last sleep. In some spots the chalky mass
has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger, and regular
lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of the strata, after
the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of Upper Egypt. They present a bare and
dismal appearance both within and without. The entrances are narrow and
arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and colourless, unrelieved by
moulding, picture, or inscription. At one place only, near the modern
village of Hanaweh, a few groups of figures and coarsely cut stelae are to
be found, indicating, it would seem, the burying-place of some chief of
very early times.
These figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild
ravine. They vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies
being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn,
at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the Asiatic
garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in
profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of a
certain skill. Whether they are to be regarded as the product of a
primitive Amorite art or of a school of Phoenician craftsmen, we are
unable to determine. In the time of their prosperity the Tyrians certainly
pushed their frontier as far as this region. The wind-swept but fertile
country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of the Lebanon
bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable industry—remains
of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns, pits, millstones and
vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields, interspersed with oil and
wine presses. The Phoenicians took naturally to agriculture, and carried
it to such a high state of perfection as to make it an actual science, to
which the neighbouring peoples of the Mediterranean were glad to
accommodate their modes of culture in later times.*
Among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully practised,
and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them no other
cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat and
barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. From Arvad
to Tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central parts of
the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying breadth, where
fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and shady woods. The
whole region was independent and self-supporting, the inhabitants having
no need to address themselves to their neighbours in the interior, or to
send their children to seek their fortune in distant lands. To insure
prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of labour and freedom
from the devastating influence of war.
The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from
the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria. Along almost the entire
eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of defence
running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the
additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebîr and Litany. Its slopes
were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and
brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow.
Hunters’ or shepherds’ paths led here and there in tortuous courses from
one side of the mountain to the other. Near the middle of the country two
roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the
littoral and the plain of the interior. They branched off on either side
from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south of Qodshu,
and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This region was
inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at one time
Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the same
appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the desert.
The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by
oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of
the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned
lions known to Asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course,
crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called Shaua,
which is probably the Sannîn of our times. While one of these roads,
running north along the lake of Yamuneh and through the gorge of Akura,
then proceeded along the Adonis* to Byblos, the other took a southern
direction, and followed the Nahr el-Kelb to the sea.
Towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the
river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the
passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date
leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the
summit of the promontory. Commerce followed these short and direct routes,
but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they
offered access into the very heart of Phoenicia. Invaders would encounter
here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself readily
to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the foot of the Lebanon
range, they would find themselves entrapped in a region of slippery
defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the rock, and almost
inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in places that a handful
of resolute men could have held them for a long time against whole
battalions. The enemy preferred to make for the two natural breaches at
the respective extremities of the line of defence, and for the two insular
cities which flanked the approaches to them—Tyre in the case of
those coming from Egypt, Arvad and Simyra for assailants from the
Euphrates. The Arvadians, bellicose by nature, would offer strong
resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves to be conquered
without a brave struggle with the enemy, however powerful he might be.*
When the disproportion of the forces which they could muster against the
enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting an open conflict, their
island-home offered them a refuge where they would be safe from any
attacks.
Sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland
might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but such
submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest occasion for
regaining their liberty. Conquered again and again on account of the
smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged by their reverses,
and Phoenicia owed all its military history for a long period to their
prowess. The Tyrians were of a more accommodating nature, and there is no
evidence, at least during the early centuries of their existence, of the
display of those obstinate and blind transports of bravery by which the
Arvadians were carried away.*
Their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question, which
they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial interests.
As soon as they had learned from a short experience that a certain Pharaoh
had at his disposal armies against which they could offer no serious
opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and thought only of obtaining
the greatest profit from the vassalage to which they were condemned. The
obligation to pay tribute did not appear to them so much in the light of a
burthen or a sacrifice, as a means of purchasing the right to go to and
fro freely in Egypt, or in the countries subject to its influence. The
commerce acquired by these privileges recouped them more than a
hundredfold for all that their overlord demanded from them. The other
cities of the coast—Sidon, Berytus, Byblos—usually followed
the example of Tyre, whether from mercenary motives, or from their
naturally pacific disposition, or from a sense of their impotence; and the
same intelligent resignation with which, as we know, they accepted the
supremacy of the great Egyptian empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier
centuries in their submission to the Babylonians. Their records show that
they did not accept this state of things merely through cowardice or
indolence, for they are represented as ready to rebel and shake off the
yoke of their foreign master when they found it incompatible with their
practical interests. But their resort to war was exceptional; they
generally preferred to submit to the powers that be, and to accept from
them as if on lease the strip of coast-line at the base of the Lebanon,
which served as a site for their warehouses and dockyards. Thus they did
not find the yoke of the stranger irksome—the sea opening up to them
a realm of freedom and independence which compensated them for the
limitations of both territory and liberty imposed upon them at home.
The epoch which was marked by their first venture on the Mediterranean,
and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. The gods had
taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had taken to
the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.* They were
not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or inspired
thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. They had at home sufficient corn
and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and even to administer
to a life of luxury. And if they lacked cattle, the abundance of fish
within their reach compensated for the absence of flesh-meat.
Nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast which
induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were badly
protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the wind set in
from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource against the
wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. It was the nature of the
country itself which contributed more than anything else to make them
mariners. The precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from
another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served
also as lurking-places for robbers. Commerce endeavoured to follow,
therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this
highwayman’s region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily
because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people
with every nook and corner on the coast. The continual wash of the surge
had worn away the bases of the limestone cliffs, and the superincumbent
masses tumbling down into the sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising
above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs,
against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It
required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one
of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the
earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was
attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally
to the other towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, from
the VIth Egyptian dynasty onwards, when the Pharaohs no longer hesitated
to embark troops at the mouth of the Nile for speedy transmission to the
provinces of Southern Syria, and it was by this coasting route that the
tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of Egypt.
The trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those mysterious
Kefâtiu of whom the name only was known in later times. When the
Phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the Lebanon, they had
probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow the
beaten tracks which they had already made. We have every reason to believe
that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in the
country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization readily
to the exigencies of a maritime career.*
In their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign
element, both of slaves and freemen, but the Egyptians confounded them all
under one name, Kefâtiu, whether they were Cypriotes, Asiatics, or
Europeans, or belonged to the true Tyrian and Sidonian race. The costume
of the Kafîti was similar to that worn by the people of the interior—the
loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in tiring the hair
they adopted certain refinements, specially a series of curls which the
men arranged in the form of an aigrette above their foreheads. This motley
collection of races was ruled over by an oligarchy of merchants and
shipowners, whose functions were hereditary, and who usually paid homage
to a single king, the representative of the tutelary god, and absolute
master of the city.*
The industries pursued in Phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of
other parts of Syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at Tyre and
Sidon could not be distinguished from those of Hamath or of Carchemish.
All manufactures bore the impress of Babylonian influence, and their
implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same as
those in use among the Chaldæans. The products of the country were,
however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed from Phoenicia
every year bound for all parts of the known world, and additional supplies
had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring peoples, who thus became
used to pour into Tyre and Sidon the surplus of their manufactures, or of
the natural wealth of their country. The Phoenicians were also accustomed
to send caravans into regions which they could not reach in their caracks,
and to establish trading stations at the fords of rivers, or in the passes
over mountain ranges. We know of the existence of such emporia at Laish
near the sources of the Jordan, at Thapsacus, and at Nisibis, and they
must have served the purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of
the world. The settlements of the Phoenicians always assumed the character
of colonies, and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the
colonists never lost the manners and customs of their native country. They
collected together into their okels or storehouses such wares and
commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and,
transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all
parts of the world.
Not only were they acquainted with every part of the Mediterranean, but
they had even made voyages beyond its limits. In the absence, however, of
any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they followed
must be a subject of conjecture. They were accustomed to relate that the
gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation, had shown
them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their example to make
voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. El of Byblos was the first to
leave Syria; he conquered Greece and Egypt, Sicily and Libya, civilizing
their inhabitants, and laying the foundation of cities everywhere. The
Sidonian Astartê, with her head surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the
next to begin her wanderings over the inhabited earth. Melkarth completed
the task of the gods by discovering and subjugating those countries which
had escaped the notice of his predecessors. Hundreds of local traditions,
to be found on all the shores of the Mediterranean down to Roman times,
bore witness to the pervasive influence of the old Canaanite colonisation.
At Cyprus, for instance, wo find traces of the cultus of Kinyras, King of
Byblos and father of Adonis; again, at Crete, it is the daughter of a
Prince of Sidon, Buropa, who is carried off by Zeus under the form of a
bull; it was Kadmos, sent forth to seek Buropa, who visited Cyprus,
Rhodes, and the Cyclades before building Thebes in Boeotia and dying in
the forests of Illyria. In short, wherever the Phoenicians had obtained a
footing, their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon
the mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous
thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious
speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing
vessels. They made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping
in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to
the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night
under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their
vessels up the beach until the morrow. They did not shrink when it was
necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their course
by the Pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long distances out
of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short time voyages
previously deemed long and costly.
It is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as pirates—indeed,
they hardly knew themselves—and their peaceful or warlike attitude
towards vessels which they encountered on the seas, or towards the people
whose countries they frequented, was probably determined by the
circumstances of the moment.* If on arrival at a port they felt themselves
no match for the natives, the instinct of the merchant prevailed, and that
of the pirate was kept in the background. They landed peaceably, gained
the good will of the native chief and his nobles by small presents, and
spreading out their wares, contented themselves, if they could do no
better, with the usual advantage obtained in an exchange of goods.
They were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had
exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety
how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer.
Their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised
or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces,
amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs dyed purple or
embroidered with gay colours. At times the natives, whose cupidity was
excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt to gain
possession of them either by craft or by violence. They would kill the men
who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during the night. But
more often it was the Phoenicians who took advantage of the friendliness
or the weakness of their hosts.
They would turn treacherously upon the unarmed crowd when absorbed in the
interest of buying and selling; robbing and killing the old men, they
would make prisoners of the young and strong, the women and children,
carrying them off to sell them in those markets where slaves were known to
fetch the highest price. This was a recognised trade, but it exposed the
Phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an
undying hatred. When on these distant expeditions they were subject to
trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. A mast might
break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force
them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such
predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to
obtain help in any of the places they might visit, their prospects were of
a desperate character. They soon, therefore, learned the necessity of
establishing cities of refuge at various points in the countries with
which they traded—stations where they could go to refit and
revictual their vessels, to fill up the complement of their crews, to take
in new freight, and, if necessary, pass the winter or wait for fair
weather before continuing their voyage. For this purpose they chose by
preference islands lying within easy distance of the mainland, like their
native cities of Tyre and Arvad, but possessing a good harbour or
roadstead. If an island were not available, they selected a peninsula with
a narrow isthmus, or a rock standing at the extremity of a promontory,
which a handful of men could defend against any attack, and which could be
seen from a considerable distance by their pilots. Most of their stations
thus happily situated became at length important towns. They were
frequented by the natives from the interior, who allied themselves with
the new-comers, and furnished them not only with objects of trade, but
with soldiers, sailors, and recruits for their army; and such was the
rapid spread of these colonies, that before long the Mediterranean was
surrounded by an almost unbroken chain of Phoenician strongholds and
trading stations.
All the towns of the mother country—Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Tyre,
and Sidon—possessed vessels engaged in cruising long before the
Egyptian conquest of Syria. We have no direct information from any
existing monument to show us what these vessels were like, but we are
familiar with the construction of the galleys which formed the fleets of
the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty. The art of shipbuilding had made
considerable progress since the times of the Memphite kings. Prom the
period when Egypt aspired to become one of the great powers of the world,
she doubtless endeavoured to bring her naval force to the same pitch of
perfection as her land forces could boast of, and her fleets probably
consisted of the best vessels which the dockyards of that day could turn
out. Phoenician vessels of this period may therefore be regarded with
reason as constructed on lines similar to those of the Egyptian ships,
differing from them merely in the minor details of the shape of the hull
and manner of rigging. The hull continued to be built long and narrow,
rising at the stem and stern. The bow was terminated by a sort of hook, to
which, in time of peace, a bronze ornament was attached, fashioned to
represent the head of a divinity, gazelle, or bull, while in time of war
this was superseded by a metal cut-water made fast to the hull by several
turns of stout rope, the blade rising some couple of yards above the level
of the deck.* The poop was ornamented with a projection firmly attached to
the body of the vessel, but curved inwards and terminated by an open
lotus-flower. An upper deck, surrounded by a wooden rail, was placed at
the bow and stern to serve as forecastle and quarterdecks respectively,
and in order to protect the vessel from the danger of heavy seas the ship
was strengthened by a structure to which we find nothing analogous in the
shipbuilding of classical times: an enormous cable attached to the
gammonings of the bow rose obliquely to a height of about a couple of
yards above the deck, and, passing over four small crutched masts, was
made fast again to the gammonings of the stern. The hull measured from the
blade of the cut-water to the stern-post some twenty to five and twenty
yards, but the lowest part of the hold did not exceed five feet in depth.
There was no cabin, and the ballast, arms, provisions, and spare-rigging
occupied the open hold.**
The bulwarks were raised to a height of some two feet, and the thwarts of
the rowers ran up to them on both the port and starboard sides, leaving an
open space in the centre for the long-boat, bales of merchandise,
soldiers, slaves, and additional passengers.* A double set of
steering-oars and a single mast completed the equipment. The latter, which
rose to a height of some twenty-six feet, was placed amidships, and was
held in an upright position by stays. The masthead was surmounted by two
arrangements which answered respectively to the top [“gabie”] and calcet
of the masts of a galley.** There were no shrouds on each side from the
masthead to the rail, but, in place of them, two stays ran respectively to
the bow and stern. The single square-sail was extended between two yards
some sixty to seventy feet long, and each made of two pieces spliced
together at the centre. The upper yard was straight, while the lower
curved upward at the ends. The yard was hoisted and lowered by two
halyards, which were made fast aft at the feet of the steersmen. The yard
was kept in its place by two lifts which came down from the masthead, and
were attached respectively about eight feet from the end of each yard-arm.
When the yard was hauled up it was further supported by six auxiliary
lifts, three being attached to each yard-arm. The lower yard, made fast to
the mast by a figure-of-eight knot, was secured by sixteen lifts, which,
like those of the upper yard, worked through the “calcet.”
The crew comprised thirty rowers, fifteen on each side, four top-men, two
steersmen, a pilot at the bow, who signalled to the men at the helm the
course to steer, a captain and a governor of the slaves, who formed,
together with ten soldiers, a total of some fifty men.* In time of battle,
as the rowers would be exposed to the missiles of the enemy, the bulwarks
were further heightened by a mantlet, behind which the oars could be
freely moved, while the bodies of the men were fully protected, their
heads alone being visible above it. The soldiers were stationed as
follows: two of them took their places on the forecastle, a third was
perched on the masthead in a sort of cage improvised on the bars forming
the top, while the remainder were posted on the deck and poop, from which
positions and while waiting for the order to board they could pour a
continuous volley of arrows on the archers and sailors of the enemy.**
The first colony of which the Phoenicians made themselves masters was that
island of Cyprus whose low, lurid outline they could see on fine summer
evenings in the glow of the western sky. Some hundred and ten miles in
length and thirty-six in breadth, it is driven like a wedge into the angle
which Asia Minor makes with the Syrian coast: it throws out to the
north-east a narrow strip of land, somewhat like an extended finger
pointing to where the two coasts meet at the extremity of the gulf of
Issos. A limestone cliff, of almost uniform height throughout, bounds, for
half its length at least, the northern side of the island, broken
occasionally by short deep valleys, which open out into creeks deeply
embayed. A scattered population of fishermen exercised their calling in
this region, and small towns, of which we possess only the Greek or
Grecised names—Karpasia, Aphrodision, Kerynia, Lapethos—led
there a slumbering existence. Almost in the centre of the island two
volcanic peaks, Troodes and Olympos, face each other, and rise to a height
of nearly 7000 feet, the range of mountains to which they belong—that
of Aous—forming the framework of the island. The spurs of this range
fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out either into
stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into great maritime
flats fringed with brackish lagoons. The valley which lies on the northern
side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an almost unbroken level. A
scarcely perceptible watershed divides the valley into two basins similar
to those of Syria, the larger of the two lying opposite to the Phoenician
coast. The soil consists of black mould, as rich as that of Egypt, and
renewed yearly by the overflowing of the Pediæos and its affluents. Thick
forests occupied the interior, promising inexhaustible resources to any
naval power. Even under the Koman emperors the Cypriotes boasted that they
could build and fit out a ship from the keel to the masthead without
looking to resources beyond those of their own island. The ash, pine,
cypress, and oak flourished on the sides of the range of Aous, while
cedars grew there to a greater height and girth than even on the Lebanon.
Wheat, barley, olive trees, vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the
altar, medicinal plants such as the poppy and the ladanum, henna
for staining with a deep orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and
fingertips of the women, all found here a congenial habitat; while a
profusion everywhere of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air
with their penetrating odours—spring violets, many-coloured
anemones, the lily, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose—led
the Greeks to bestow upon the island the designation of “the balmy
Cyprus.” Mines also contributed their share to the riches of which the
island could boast. Iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and
other precious stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times
the neighbourhood of Tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the
Romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name “Cyprium,” and
the word passed from them into all the languages of Europe. It is not easy
to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the island
belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the Kefâtiu, who
frequented the Asiatic shores of the Mediterranean from a very remote
period. In the time of Egyptian supremacy they called their country Asi,
and this name inclines one to connect the people with the Ægeans.* An
examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs of the island
seems to confirm this opinion. These consist, for the most part, of
weapons and implements of stone—knives, hatchets, hammers, and
arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different
kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design—pitchers
with contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail
variety, provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles.
The pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it
consists of incised geometrical designs. Copper and bronze, where we find
examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the
manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making daggers.
There is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and yet Cyprus had
already at this time entered into relations with the civilized nations of
the continent.* According to Chaldæan tradition, it was conquered about
the year 3800 B.C. by Sargon of Agadê: without insisting upon the reality
of this conquest, which in any case must have been ephemeral in its
nature, there is reason to believe that the island was subjected from an
early period to the influence of the various peoples which lived one after
another on the slopes of the Lebanon. Popular legend attributes to King
Kinyras and to the Giblites [i.e. the people of Byblos] the establishment
of the first Phoenician colonies in the southern region of the island—one
of them being at Paphos, where the worship of Adonis and Astartê continued
to a very late date. The natives preserved their own language and customs,
had their own chiefs, and maintained their national independence, while
constrained to submit at the same time to the presence of Phoenician
colonists or merchants on the coast, and in the neighbourhood of the mines
in the mountains. The trading centres of these settlers—Kition,
Amathus, Solius, Golgos, and Tamassos—were soon, however, converted
into strongholds, which ensured to Phonicia the monopoly of the immense
wealth contained in the island.**
Tyre and Sidon had no important centres of industry on that part of the
Canaanite coast which extended to the south of Carmel, and Egypt, even in
the time of the shepherd kings, would not have tolerated the existence on
her territory of any great emporium not subject to the immediate
supervision of her official agents. We know that the Libyan cliffs long
presented an obstacle to inroads into Egyptian territory, and baffled any
attempts to land to the westwards of the Delta: the Phoenicians
consequently turned with all the greater ardour to those northern regions
which for centuries had furnished them with most valuable products—bronze,
tin, amber, and iron, both native and wrought. A little to the north of
the Orontes, where the Syrian border is crossed and Asia Minor begins, the
coast turns due west and runs in that direction for a considerable
distance. The Phoenicians were accustomed to trade along this region, and
we may attribute, perhaps, to them the foundation of those obscure cities—Kibyra,
Masura, Euskopus, Sylion, Mygdalê, and Sidyma*—all of which
preserved their apparently Semitic names down to the time of the Roman
epoch. The whole of the important island of Rhodes fell into their power,
and its three ports, Ialysos, Lindos*, and Kamiros, afforded them a
well-situated base of operations for further colonisation. On leaving
Rhodes, the choice of two routes presented itself to them. To the
south-west they could see the distant outline of Karpathos, and on the far
horizon behind it the summits of the Cretan chain. Crete itself bars on
the south the entrance to the Ægean, and is almost a little continent,
self-contained and self-sufficing.
It is made up of fertile valleys and mountains clothed with forests, and
its inhabitants could employ themselves in mines and fisheries. The
Phoenicians effected a settlement on the coast at Itanos, at Kairatos, and
at Arados, and obtained possession of the peak of Cythera, where, it is
said, they raised a sanctuary to Astartê. If, on leaving Rhodes, they had
chosen to steer due north, they would soon have come into contact with
numerous rocky islets scattered in the sea between the continents of Asia
and Europe, which would have furnished them with as many stations, less
easy of attack, and more readily defended than posts on the mainland. Of
these the Giblites occupied Melos, while the Sidonians chose Oliaros and
Thera, and we find traces of them in every island where any natural
product, such as metals, sulphur, alum, fuller’s earth, emery, medicinal
plants, and shells for producing dyes, offered an attraction. The purple
used by the Tyrians for dyeing is secreted by several varieties of
molluscs common in the Eastern Mediterranean; those most esteemed by the
dyers were the Murex trunculus and the Murex Brandaris, and
solid masses made up of the detritus of these shells are found in enormous
quantities in the neighbourhood of many Phoenician towns. The colouring
matter was secreted in the head of the shellfish. To obtain it the shell
was broken by a blow from a hammer, and the small quantity of slightly
yellowish liquid which issued from the fracture was carefully collected
and stirred about in salt water for three days.
It was then boiled in leaden vessels and reduced by simmering over a slow
fire; the remainder was strained through a cloth to free it from the
particles of flesh still floating in it, and the material to be dyed was
then plunged into the liquid. The usual tint thus imparted was that of
fresh blood, in some lights almost approaching to black; but careful
manipulation could produce shades of red, dark violet, and amethyst.
Phoenician settlements can be traced, therefore, by the heaps of shells
upon the shore, the Cyclades and the coasts of Greece being strewn with
this refuse. The veins of gold in the Pangaion range in Macedonia
attracted them off the Thracian coast* received also frequent visits from
them, and they carried their explorations even through the tortuous
channel of the Hellespont into the Propontis, drawn thither, no doubt by
the silver mines in the Bithynian mountains** which were already being
worked by Asiatic miners.
Beyond the calm waters of the Propontis, they encountered an obstacle to
their progress in another narrow channel, having more the character of a
wide river than of a strait; it was with difficulty that they could make
their way against the violence of its current, which either tended to
drive their vessels on shore, or to dash them against the reefs which
hampered the navigation of the channel. When, however, they succeeded in
making the passage safely, they found themselves upon a vast and stormy
sea, whose wooded shores extended east and west as far as eye could reach.
From the tribes who inhabited them, and who acted as intermediaries, the
Phoenician traders were able to procure tin, lead, amber, Caucasian gold,
bronze, and iron, all products of the extreme north—a region which
always seemed,to elude their persevering efforts to discover it. We cannot
determine the furthest limits reached by the Phoenician traders, since
they were wont to designate the distant countries and nations with which
they traded by the vague appellations of “Isles of the Sea” and “Peoples
of the Sea,” refusing to give more accurate information either from
jealousy or from a desire to hide from other nations the sources of their
wealth.
The peoples with whom they traded were not mere barbarians, contented with
worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants of the
iEgean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the East, possessed an
independent and growing civilization, traces of which are still coming to
light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses, palaces, utensils,
ornaments, representations of the gods, and household and funerary
furniture,—not only in the Cyclades, but on the mainland of Asia
Minor and of Greece. No inferior goods or tinsel wares would have
satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities as Troy
and Mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of Egypt and
Syria—costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought
weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate design—such
objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the sovereigns and
nobles of Memphis or of Babylon. For articles to offer in exchange they
were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products of their own
country. Their craftsmen, though less successful in general technique than
their Oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable artistic
intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. Accustomed at first merely
to copy the objects sold to them by the Phoenicians, they soon developed a
style of their own; the Mycenaean dagger in the illustration on page 299,
though several centuries later in date than that of the Pharaoh Ahmosis,
appears to be traceable to this ancient source of inspiration, although it
gives evidence of new elements in its method of decoration and in its
greater freedom of treatment. The inhabitants of the valleys of the Nile
and of the Orontes, and probably also those of the Euphrates and Tigris,
agreed in the, high value they set upon these artistic objects in gold,
silver, and bronze, brought to them from the further shores of the
Mediterranean, which, while reproducing their own designs, modified them
to a certain extent; for just as we now imitate types of ornamental work
in vogue among nations less civilized than ourselves, so the iEgean people
set themselves the task through their potters and engravers of reproducing
exotic models. The Phoenician traders who exported to Greece large
consignments of objects made under various influences in their own
workshops, or purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back
as a return cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the
towns of the West, which eventually found their way into the various
markets of Asia and Africa. These energetic merchants were not the first
to ply this profitable trade of maritime carriers, for from the time of
the Memphite empire the products of northern regions had found their way,
through the intermediation of the Haûinibû, as far south as the cities of
the Delta and the Thebaid. But this commerce could not be said to be
either regular or continuous; the transmission was carried on from one
neighbouring tribe to another, and the Syrian sailors were merely the last
in a long chain of intermediaries—a tribal war, a migration, the
caprice of some chief, being sufficient to break the communication, and
even cause the suspension of transit for a considerable period. The
Phoenicians desired to provide against such risks by undertaking
themselves to fetch the much-coveted objects from their respective
sources, or, where this was not possible, from the ports nearest the place
of their manufacture. Reappearing with each returning year in the
localities where they had established emporia, they accustomed the natives
to collect against their arrival such products as they could profitably
use in bartering with one or other of their many customers. They thus
established, on a fixed line of route, a kind of maritime trading service,
which placed all the shores of the Mediterranean in direct communication
with each other, and promoted the blending of the youthful West with the
ancient East.
THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY THÛTMOSIS I. AND HIS ARMY—HÂTSHOPSITÛ
AND THÛTMOSIS III.
Thutmosis I.‘s campaign in Syria—The organisation of the Egyptian
army: the infantry of the line, the archers, the horses, and the
charioteers—The classification of the troops according to their arms—Marching
and encampment in the enemy’s country: battle array—Chariot-charges—The
enumeration and distribution of the spoil—The vice-royalty of Rush
and the adoption of Egyptian customs by the Ethiopian tribes.
The first successors of Thutmosis I.: Ahmasi and Hatshopsitit,
Thûtmosis II—The temple of Deîr el-Bahari and the buildings of
Karnah—The Ladders of Incense—The expedition to Pûanît:
bartering with the natives, the return of the fleet.
Thûtmosis III.: his departure for Asia, the battle of Megiddo and the
subjection of Southern Syria—The year 23 to the year 28 of his reign—Conquest
of Lotanû and of Mitânni—The campaign of the 33rd year of the king’s
reign.
CHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY
Thûtmosis I. and his army—Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis III.
The account of the first expedition undertaken by Thûtmosis in Asia, a
region at that time new to the Egyptians, would be interesting if we could
lay our hands upon it. We should perhaps find in the midst of official
documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some
indication of the impression which the country produced upon its
conquerors.
With the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from Thebes
to Memphis had any other idea of Asia than that which could be gathered
from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the
preceding age. The actual sight of the country must have been a
revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the
majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike
expedition into Ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the Red
Sea. Instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two
mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the Nile
which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide
irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to
occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of
varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation;
mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with
forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow
even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where
everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from
each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched
upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far
excelling that which they encountered anywhere in Africa outside their own
boundaries. Thûtmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a
limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken
by him in this campaign—from Gaza to Megiddo, from Megiddo to
Qodshû, from Qodshû to Carchemish—was that which was followed
henceforward by the Egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the
Euphrates. Of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no
information. On arriving at Naharaim, however, we know that he came into
contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a
single general—perhaps the King of Mitanni himself, or one of the
lieutenants of the “Cossæan King of Babylon”—who had collected
together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the
advance of the intruder. The contest was hotly fought out on both sides,
but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable
prisoners fell into their hands. The veteran Âhmosi, son of Abîna, who was
serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, Âhmosi Pannekhabît,
distinguished themselves according to their wont. The former, having
seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied
it, to the Pharaoh, and received once more “the collar of gold;” the
latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as
trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a
valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets,
sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. A stele, erected on
the banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked
the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the
frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes with immense booty, by which
gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the
embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sight of the spoil
undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had
cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thûtmosis was held up by
his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact
with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the
Egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and
travellers. The aspect of the great river of the Naharaim, which could be
compared with the Nile for the volume of its waters, excited their
admiration. They were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from
north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of
reversing the terms employed in Egypt to express going up or down the
river. This first Syrian campaign became the model for most of those
subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. It took the form of a bold
advance of troops, directed from Zalû towards the north-east, in a
diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which
might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of
capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended—pillaging,
burning, and slaying on every side. There was no suspension of
hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the
expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of
having to begin fresh operations in the following year should the
vanquished break out into revolt.*
The troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any others
hitherto put into the field. The Egyptian army, inured to war by its long
struggle with the Shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of
Âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the Ethiopian or
Libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the Syrians; not that
the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their
limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the
country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as
those of the Egyptians. Egyptian military organisation had remained
practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted,
firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of
personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign;
secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps,
distributed respectively between the Sa’id and the Delta. Those companies
which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at Thebes
or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in
readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. The number of
natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by “generations,” or
as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand
men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the
army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a
time, and probably on ordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen
thousand.**
The infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the line and
light troops. The former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls,
or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows;
the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was
wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were
protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides,
and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt. A buckler of moderate
dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier
Theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid
metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present
to the enemy’s lances and javelins. Their weapons consisted of pikes about
five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of
flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters
were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber
themselves with either buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an
occasionally a bow.
The light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen—pidâtû—the
celebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly
skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver, of the
use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the
Asiatics, probably from the Hyksôs, and was carried hanging at the side or
slung over the shoulder. Both spearmen and archers were for the most part
pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal strength,
each of which usually bore the name of some god—as, for example, the
regiment of Ra or of Phtah, of Arnon or of Sûtkhû*—in which the
feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought
side by side with the king’s soldiers furnished from the royal domains.
The effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the
tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes of the Upper Nile.**
These auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but their
numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated more
troops to carry them on. The tribes from which they were drawn supplied
the Pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were courageous, active,
indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it had not been for their
turbulent nature, which incited them to continual internal dissensions,
they might readily have shaken off the yoke of the Egyptians. Incorporated
into the Egyptian army, and placed under the instruction of picked
officers, who subjected them to rigorous discipline, and accustomed them
to the evolutions of regular troops, they were transformed from
disorganised hordes into tried and invincible battalions.*
The old army, which had conquered Nubia in the days of the Papis and
Usirtasens, had consisted of these three varieties of foot-soldiers only,
but since the invasion of the Shepherds, a new element had been
incorporated into the modern army in the-shape of the chariotry, which
answered to some extent to the cavalry of our day as regards their
tactical employment and efficacy. The horse, when once introduced into
Egypt, soon became fairly adapted to its environment. It retained both its
height and size, keeping the convex forehead—which gave the head a
slightly curved profile—the slender neck, the narrow hind-quarters,
the lean and sinewy legs, and the long flowing tail which had
characterised it in its native country. The climate, however, was
enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new
blood from Syria, to prevent the breed from deteriorating.*
The Pharaohs kept studs of horses in the principal cities of the Nile
valley, and the great feudal lords, following their example, vied with
each other in the possession of numerous breeding stables. The office of
superintendent to these establishments, which was at the disposal of the
Master of the Horse, became in later times one of the most important State
appointments.*
The first chariots introduced into Egypt were, like the horses, of foreign
origin, but when built by Egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant,
if not stronger than their models. Lightness was the quality chiefly aimed
at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man
to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. The materials for
them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal,
whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, being used but sparingly, and then
only for purposes of ornamentation. The wheels usually had six, but
sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally only four. The axle consisted of a
single stout pole of acacia. The framework of the chariot was composed of
two pieces of wood mortised together so as to form a semicircle or
half-ellipse, and closed by a straight bar; to this frame was fixed a
floor of sycomore wood or of plaited leather thongs. The sides of the
chariot were formed of upright panels, solid in front and open at the
sides, each provided with a handrail. The pole, which was of a single
piece of wood, was bent into an elbow at about one-fifth of its length
from the end, which was inserted into the centre of the axletree. On the
gigantic T thus formed was fixed the body of the chariot, the hinder part
resting on the axle, and the front attached to the bent part of the pole,
while the whole was firmly bound together with double leather thongs. A
yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, to which the horses were harnessed,
was fastened to the other extremity of the pole. The Asiatics placed three
men in a chariot, but the Egyptians only two; the warrior—sinni—whose
business it was to fight, and the shield-bearer—qazana—who
protected his companion with a buckler during the engagement. A complete
set of weapons was carried in the chariot—lances, javelins, and
daggers, curved spear, club, and battle-axe—while two bow-cases as
well as two large quivers were hung at the sides. The chariot itself was
very liable to upset, the slightest cause being sufficient to overturn it.
Even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook
it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of
skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. At such times
the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right
foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole,
so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to
balance himself. To carry all this into practice long education was
necessary, for which there were special schools of instruction, and those
who were destined to enter the army were sent to these schools when little
more than children. To each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all
the difficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of
horses were granted, for which he was responsible to the Pharaoh or to his
generals, and he might then return to his home until the next call to
arms. The warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both were
considered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, like the
cavalry of the present day, was the aristocratic branch of the army, in
which the royal princes, together with the nobles and their sons,
enlisted. No Egyptian ever willingly trusted himself to the back of a
horse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot was
broken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that a
warrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. There appear, however,
to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers or
aides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but were
provided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seat on
horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in his
chariot.
The infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commanded
by an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented either a
sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divine figure
placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of worship to
the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. We are unable to ascertain how
many of these platoons, either of infantry or of chariotry, went to form a
company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the different grades were
distinguished from each other, or what was their relative order of rank.
Bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty, are sometimes represented
on the monuments, but this may be merely by chance, or because the
draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the proper number accurately.
The inferior officers were equipped very much like the soldiers, with the
exception of the buckler, which they do not appear to have carried, and
certainly did not when on the march: the superior officers might be known
by their umbrella or flabellum, a distinction which gave them the right of
approaching the king’s person.
The military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed probably
differed but little from those which were in vogue with the armies of the
Ancient Empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing, jumping, running
either singly or in line at regular distances from each other, manual
exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the war-dance had ceased to
be in use among the Egyptian regiments as a military exercise, but it was
practised by the Ethiopian and Libyan auxiliaries. At the beginning of
each campaign, the men destined to serve in it were called out by the
military scribes, who supplied them with arms from the royal arsenals.
Then followed the distribution of rations. The soldiers, each carrying a
small linen bag, came up in squads before the commissariat officers, and
each received his own allowance.*
Once in the enemy’s country the army advanced in close order, the infantry
in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariots either on the
right or left flank, or in the intervals between divisions. Skirmishers
thrown out to the front cleared the line of march, while detached parties,
pushing right and left, collected supplies of cattle, grain, or
drinking-water from the fields and unprotected villages. The main body was
followed by the baggage train; it comprised not only supplies and stores,
but cooking-utensils, coverings, and the entire paraphernalia of the
carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops necessary for repairing bows, lances,
daggers, and chariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts
drawn by asses or oxen. The army was accompanied by a swarm of
non-combatants, scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians,
servants, and women of loose life, who were a serious cause of
embarrassment to the generals, and a source of perpetual danger to
military discipline. At nightfall they halted in a village, or more
frequently bivouacked in an entrenched camp, marked out to suit the
circumstances of the case. This entrenchment was always rectangular, its
length being twice as great as its width, and was surrounded by a ditch,
the earth from which, being banked up on the inside, formed a rampart from
five to six feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced
with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. The entrance
to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank
served as a bridge across the trench, close to which two detachments
mounted guard, armed with clubs and naked swords.
The royal quarters were situated at one end of the camp. Here, within an
enclosure, rose an immense tent, where the Pharaoh found all the luxury to
which he was accustomed in his palaces, even to a portable chapel, in
which each morning he could pour out water and burn incense to his father,
Amon-Râ of Thebes. The princes of the blood who formed his escort, his
shield-bearers and his generals, were crowded together hard by, and
beyond, in closely packed lines, were the horses and chariots, the draught
bullocks, the workshops and the stores.
The soldiers, accustomed from childhood to live in the open air, erected
no tents or huts of boughs for themselves in these temporary encampments,
but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on the façades of the
Theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way in which they employed
themselves when off duty. Here one man, while cleaning his armour,
superintends the cooking. Another, similarly engaged, drinks from a skin
of wine held up by a slave. A third has taken his chariot to pieces, and t
is replacing some portion the worse for wear. Some are sharpening their
daggers or lances; others mend their loin-cloths or sandals, or exchange
blows with fists and sticks. The baggage, linen, arms, and provisions are
piled in disorder on the ground; horses, oxen, and asses are eating or
chewing the cud at their ease; while here and there a donkey, relieved of
his burden, rolls himself on the ground and brays with delight.*
The success of the Egyptians in battle was due more to the courage and
hardihood of the men than to the strategical skill of their commanders. We
find no trace of manouvres, in the sense in which we understand the word,
either in their histories or on their bas-reliefs, but they joined battle
boldly with the enemy, and the result was decided by a more or less bloody
conflict. The heavy infantry was placed in the centre, the chariots were
massed on the flanks, while light troops thrown out to the front began the
action by letting fly volleys of arrows and stones, which through the
skill of the bowmen and slingers did deadly execution; then the pikemen
laid their spears in rest, and pressing straight forward, threw their
whole weight against the opposing troops. At the same moment the
charioteers set off at a gentle trot, and gradually quickened their pace
till they dashed at full speed upon the foe, amid the confused rumbling of
wheels and the sharp clash of metal.
The Egyptians, accustomed by long drilling to the performance of such
evolutions, executed these charges as methodically as though they were
still on their parade-ground at Thebes; if the disposition of the ground
were at all favourable, not a single chariot would break the line, and the
columns would sweep across the field without swerving or falling into
disorder. The charioteer had the reins tied round his body, and could, by
throwing his weight either to the right or the left, or by slackening or
increasing the pressure through a backward or forward motion, turn, pull
up, or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins: he went into
battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear, the arrow levelled
ready to let fly, while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the
chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his
comrade. It would seem that the Syrians were less skilful; their bows did
not carry so far as those of their adversaries, and consequently they came
within the enemy’s range some moments before it was possible for them to
return the volley with effect. Their horses would be thrown down, their
drivers would fall wounded, and the disabled chariots would check the
approach of those following and overturn them, so that by the time the
main body came up with the enemy the slaughter would have been serious
enough to render victory hopeless. Nevertheless, more than one charge
would be necessary finally to overturn or scatter the Syrian chariots,
which, once accomplished, the Egyptian charioteer would turn against the
foot-soldiers, and, breaking up their ranks, would tread them down under
the feet of his horses.*
Nor did the Pharaoh spare himself in the fight; his splendid dress, the
urasus on his forehead, and the nodding plumes of his horses made him a
mark for the blows of the enemy, and he would often find himself in
positions of serious danger. In a few hours, as a rule, the conflict would
come to an end.
Once the enemy showed signs of giving way, the Egyptian chariots dashed
upon them precipitously, and turned the retreat into a rout: the pursuit
was, however, never a long One; some fortress was always to be found close
at hand where the remnant of the defeated host could take refuge.* The
victors, moreover, would be too eager to secure the booty, and to strip
the bodies of the dead, to allow time for following up the foe.
The prisoners were driven along in platoons, their arms bound in strange
and contorted attitudes, each under the charge of his captor; then came
the chariots, arms, slaves, and provisions collected on the battle-field
or in the camp, then other trophies of a kind unknown in modern warfare.
When an Egyptian killed or mortally wounded any one, he cut off, not the
head, but the right hand or the phallus, and brought it to the royal
scribes. These made an accurate inventory of everything, and even Pharaoh
did not disdain to be present at the registration. The booty did not
belong to the persons who obtained it, but was thrown into a common stock
which was placed at the disposal of the sovereign: one part he reserved
for the gods, especially for his father Amon of Thebes, who had given him
the victory; another part he kept for himself, and the remainder was
distributed among his army. Each man received a reward in proportion to
his rank and services, such as male or female slaves, bracelets,
necklaces, arms, vases, or a certain measured weight of gold, known as the
“gold of bravery.” A similar sharing of the spoil took place after every
successful engagement: from Pharaoh to the meanest camp-follower, every
man who had contributed to the success of a campaign returned home richer
than he had set out, and the profits which he derived from a war were a
liberal compensation for the expenses in which it had involved him.
The results of the first expedition of Thûtmosis I. were of a decisive
character; so much so, indeed, that he never again, it would seem, found
it necessary during the remainder of his life to pass the isthmus.
Northern Syria, it is true, did not remain long under tribute, if indeed
it paid any at all after the departure of the Egyptians, but the southern
part of the country, feeling itself in the grip of the new master,
accepted its defeat: Gaza became the head-quarters of a garrison which
secured the door of Asia for future invasion,* and Pharaoh, freed from
anxiety in this quarter, gave his whole time to the consolidation of his
power in Ethiopia.
The river and desert tribes of this region soon forgot the severe lesson
which he had given them: as soon as the last Egyptian soldier had left
their territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series of
inroads which had to be repressed anew year after year. Thûtmosis I. had
several times to drive them back in the years II. and III., but was able
to make short work of their rebellions. An inscription at Tombos on the
Nile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in brave
words what he was, and what he had done since he had come to the throne.
Wherever he had gone, weapon in hand, “seeking a warrior, he had found
none to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknown to
his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearers of
the double diadem.” All this would have produced but little effect had he
not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measures to restrain
the insolence of the barbarians. Tombos lies opposite to Hannek, at the
entrance to that series of rapids known as the Third Cataract. The course
of the Nile is here barred by a formidable dyke of granite, through which
it has hollowed out six winding channels of varying widths, dotted here
and there with huge polished boulders and verdant islets. When the
inundation is at its height, the rocks are covered and the rapids
disappear, with the exception of the lowest, which is named Lokoli, where
faint eddies mark the place of the more dangerous reefs; and were it not
that the fall here is rather more pronounced and the current somewhat
stronger, few would suspect the existence of a cataract at the spot. As
the waters go down, however, the channels gradually reappear. When the
river is at its lowest, the three westernmost channels dry up almost
completely, leaving nothing but a series of shallow pools; those on the
east still maintain their flow, but only one of them, that between the
islands of Tombos and Abadîn, remains navigable. Here Thûtmosis built,
under invocation of the gods of Heliopolis, one of those brickwork
citadels, with its rectangular keep, which set at nought all the efforts
and all the military science of the Ethiopians: attached to it was a
harbour, where each vessel on its way downstream put in for the purpose of
hiring a pilot.*
The monarchs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties had raised fortifications
at the approaches to Wady Haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose the
sites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the Nubian pirates
that part of the Nile which lay between Wady Haifa and Philse.*
Henceforward the garrison at Tombos was able to defend the mighty curve
described by the river through the desert of Mahas, together with the
island of Argo, and the confines of Dongola. The distance between Thebes
and this southern frontier was a long one, and communication was slow
during the winter months, when the subsidence of the waters had rendered
the task of navigation difficult for the Egyptian ships. The king was
obliged, besides, to concentrate his attention mainly on Asiatic affairs,
and was no longer able to watch the movements of the African races with
the same vigilance as his predecessors had exercised before Egyptian
armies had made their way as far as the banks of the Euphrates. Thutmosis
placed the control of the countries south of Assuan in the hands of a
viceroy, who, invested with the august title of “Royal Son of Kûsh,” must
have been regarded as having the blood of Râ himself running in his
veins.*
Sura, the first of these viceroys whose name has reached us, was in office
at the beginning of the campaign of the year III.* He belonged, it would
seem, to a Theban family, and for several centuries afterwards his
successors are mentioned among the nobles who were in the habit of
attending the court. Their powers were considerable: they commanded
armies, built or restored temples, administered justice, and received the
homage of loyal sheikhs or the submission of rebellious ones.** The period
for which they were appointed was not fixed by law, and they held office
simply at the king’s pleasure. During the XIXth dynasty it was usual to
confer this office, the highest in the state, on a son of the sovereign,
preferably the heir-apparent. Occasionally his appointment was purely
formal, and he continued in attendance on his father, while a trusty
substitute ruled in his place: often, however, he took the government on
himself, and in the regions of the Upper Nile served an apprenticeship to
the art of ruling.
This district was in a perpetual state of war—a war without danger,
but full of trickery and surprises: here he prepared himself for the
larger arena of the Syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship
more perfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground.
Moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as by
political considerations. The presumptive heir to the throne was to his
father what Horus had been to Osiris—his lawful successor, or, if
need be, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty of
vengeance: and was it not in Ethiopia that Horus had gained his first
victories over Typhon? To begin like Horus, and flesh his maiden steel on
the descendants of the accomplices of Sit, was, in the case of the future
sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality of his
divine extraction.*
As at the commencement of the Theban dynasties, it was the river valley
only in these regions of the Upper Nile which belonged to the Pharaohs.
From this time onward it gave support to an Egyptian population as far as
the juncture of the two Niles: it was a second Egypt, but a poorer one,
whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we
find to-day in the towns of Nubia. The tribes scattered right and left in
the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two Niles among
the plains of Sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and
paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the
natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed invasion.*
Among these races were still to be found descendants of the Mazaiû and
Ûaûaîû, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victorious
Egyptians: the name of the Uaûaîû was, indeed, used as a generic term to
distinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between the
Nile and the Red Sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyond the
boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the Egyptians into
contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirect commercial
relations in former times.
Some of these were light-coloured men of a type similar to that of the
modern Abyssinians or Gallas: they had the same haughty and imperious
carriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same love
of fighting. Most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and such of
them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroes
inhabiting Central Africa at the present day.
They have the same elongated skull, the low prominent forehead, hollow
temples, short flattened nose, thick lips, broad shoulders, and salient
breast, the latter contrasting sharply with the undeveloped appearance of
the lower part of the body, which terminates in thin legs almost devoid of
calves. Egyptian civilization had already penetrated among these tribes,
and, as far as dress and demeanour were concerned, their chiefs differed
in no way from the great lords who formed the escort of the Pharaoh. We
see these provincial dignitaries represented in the white robe and
petticoat of starched, pleated, and gauffered linen; an innate taste for
bright colours, even in those early times, being betrayed by the red or
yellow scarf in which they wrapped themselves, passing it over one
shoulder and round the waist, whence the ends depended and formed a kind
of apron. A panther’s skin covered the back, and one or two
ostrich-feathers waved from the top of the head or were fastened on one
side to the fillet confining the hair, which was arranged in short curls
and locks, stiffened with gum and matted with grease, so as to form a sort
of cap or grotesque aureole round the skull. The men delighted to load
themselves with rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, while from
their arms, necks, and belts hung long strings of glass beads, which
jingled with every movement of the wearer. They seem to have frequently
chosen a woman as their ruler, and her dress appears to have closely
resembled that of the Egyptian ladies. She appeared before her subjects in
a chariot drawn by oxen, and protected from the sun by an umbrella edged
with fringe. The common people went about nearly naked, having merely a
loin-cloth of some woven stuff or an animal’s skin thrown round their
hips. Their heads were either shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair
stiffened with gum. The children of both sexes wore no clothes until the
age of puberty; the women wrapped themselves in a rude garment or in a
covering of linen, and carried their children on the hip or in a basket of
esparto grass on the back, supported by a leather band which passed across
the forehead. One characteristic of all these tribes was their love of
singing and dancing, and their use of the drum and cymbals; they were
active and industrious, and carefully cultivated the rich soil of the
plain, devoting themselves to the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen,
whose horns they were accustomed to train fantastically into the shapes of
lyres, bows, and spirals, with bifurcations at the ends, or with small
human figures as terminations. As in the case of other negro tribes, they
plied the blacksmith’s and also the goldsmith’s trade, working up both
gold and silver into rings, chains, and quaintly shaped vases, some
specimens of their art being little else than toys, similar in design to
those which delighted the Byzantine Caesars of later date.
A wall-painting remains of a gold epergne, which represents men and
monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dôm-palms. Two
individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the
rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro
prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their
head and shoulders from the ground. This, doubtless, represents a scene
from the everyday life of the people of the Upper Nile, and gives a
faithful picture of what took place among many of its tribes during a
rapid inroad of some viceroy of Kush or a raid by his lieutenants.
The resources which Thûtmosis I. was able to draw regularly from these
southern regions, in addition to the wealth collected during his Syrian
campaign, enabled him to give a great impulse to building work. The
tutelary deity of his capital—Amon-Râ—who had ensured him the
victory in all his battles, had a prior claim on the bulk of the spoil; he
received it as a matter of course, and his temple at Thebes was thereby
considerably enlarged; we are not, however, able to estimate exactly what
proportion fell to other cities, such as Kummeh, Elephantine,* Abydos,**
and Memphis, where a few scattered blocks of stone still bear the name of
the king. Troubles broke out in Lower Egypt, but they were speedily
subdued by Thûtmosis, and he was able to end his days in the enjoyment of
a profound peace, undisturbed by any care save that of ensuring a regular
succession to his throne, and of restraining the ambitions of those who
looked to become possessed of his heritage.***
His position was, indeed, a curious one; although de facto absolute
in power, his children by Queen Ahmasi took precedence of him, for by her
mother’s descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband, and
legally the king should have retired in favour of hie sons as soon as they
were old enough to reign. The eldest of them, Uazmosû, died early.* The
second, Amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; he was allowed to
share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latter’s
reign, and he also held a military command in the Delta,** but before long
he also died, and Thûtmosis I. was left with only one son—a
Thûtmosis like himself—to succeed him. The mother of this prince was
a certain Mûtnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his father’s side, who
enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her
to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother’s side,
however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being
recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the “seat of Horus”
reverted once more to a woman, Hâtshopsîtû, the eldest daughter of Âhmasi.
Hâtshopsîtû herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Her
maternal ancestor, Sonisonbû, had not been a scion of the royal house, and
this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of
the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of birth could
only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate
in the earthly father at the moment of conception, had to condescend to
infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner.
* A similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the case of
two other sovereigns, viz. Amenôthes III., whose father, Titmosis IV., was
born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of Thûtmosis
I.; and Ptolemy Caesarion, whose father, Julius Cæsar, was not of Egyptian
blood.
The inscriptions with which Hâtshopsîtû decorated her chapel relate how,
on that fateful night, Amon descended upon Ahmasi in a flood of perfume
and light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on
leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in whom
his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below. The
sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures before our eyes.
The protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct
the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her
face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this
portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world amid
shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her
double constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time, her
earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and presents
to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt and the world.*
From henceforth Hâtshopsîtû adopts every possible device to conceal her
real sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herself
Hâtshopsîû, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of Hâtshopsîtû, the chief of
the favourites. She becomes the King Mâkerî, and on the occasion of all
public ceremonies she appears in male costume. We see her represented on
the Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing
the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her
closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin.
She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and
also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the
betrothed of Amon—khnûmît Amaûnû.*
Her father united her while still young to her brother Thûtmosis, who
appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very
subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. When Thûtmosis I. died,
Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs,
and this youth succeeded his father in office: but Hâtshopsîtû, while
relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her
husband,* kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands. The
portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined
features, with a proud and energetic expression. The oval of the face is
elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the
arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed.
She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt nor its foreign
vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her
authority. One raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a
rising of the Shaûsû in Central Syria, while the usual expeditions
maintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia, and quenched any attempt
which they might make to revolt. When in the second year of his reign the
news was brought to Thutmosis II. that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile
had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon
them, he “became furious as a panther,” and assembling his troops set out
for war without further delay. The presence of the king with the army
filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to
their attempt at rebelling.
The earlier kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had chosen for their last
resting-place a spot on the left bank of the Nile at Thebes, where the
cultivated land joined the desert, close to the pyramids built by their
predecessors. Probably, after the burial of Amenôthes, the space was fully
occupied, for Thutmosis I. had to seek his burying-ground some way up the
ravine, the mouth of which was blocked by their monuments. The Libyan
chain here forms a kind of amphitheatre of vertical cliffs, which descend
to within some ninety feet of the valley, where a sloping mass of detritus
connects them by a gentle declivity with the plain.
The great lords and the queens in the times of the Antufs and the
Usirtasens had taken possession of this spot, but their chapels were by
this period in ruins, and their tombs almost all lay buried under the
waves of sand which the wind from the desert drives perpetually over the
summit of the cliffs. This site was seized on by the architects of
Thûtmosis, who laid there the foundations of a building which was destined
to be unique in the world. Its ground plan consisted of an avenue of
sphinxes, starting from the plain and running between the tombs till it
reached a large courtyard, terminated on the west by a colonnade, which
was supported by a double row of pillars.
Above and beyond this was the vast middle platform,* connected with the
upper court by the central causeway which ran through it from end to end;
this middle platform, like that below it, was terminated on the west by a
double colonnade, through which access was gained to two chapels hollowed
out of the mountain-side, while on the north it was bordered with
excellent effect by a line of proto-Dorio columns ranged against the face
of the cliff.
This northern colonnade was never completed, but the existing part is of
as exquisite proportions as anything that Greek art has ever produced. At
length we reach the upper platform, a nearly square courtyard, cutting on
one side into the mountain slope, the opposite side being enclosed by a
wall pierced by a single door, while to right and left ran two lines of
buildings destined for purposes connected with the daily worship of the
temple. The sanctuary was cut out of the solid rock, but the walls were
faced with white limestone; some of the chambers are vaulted, and all of
them decorated with bas-reliefs of exquisite workmanship, perhaps the
finest examples of this period. Thûtmosis I. scarcely did more than lay
the foundations of this magnificent building, but his mummy was buried in
it with great pomp, to remain there until a period of disturbance and
general insecurity obliged those in charge of the necropolis to remove the
body, together with those of his family, to some securer hiding-place.*
The king was already advanced in age at the time of his death, being over
fifty years old, to judge by the incisor teeth, which are worn and
corroded by the impurities of which the Egyptian bread was full.
The body, though small and emaciated, shows evidence of unusual muscular
strength; the head is bald, the features are refined, and the mouth still
bears an expression characteristic of shrewdness and cunning.*
Thûtmosis II. carried on the works begun by his father, but did not long
survive him.* The mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling and
amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show his
descent from the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty.
His statues bear the same expression, which indeed is that of the mummy
itself. He resembles Thûtmosis I., but his features are not so marked, and
are characterised by greater gentleness. He had scarcely reached the age
of thirty when he fell a victim to a disease of which the process of
embalming could not remove the traces. The skin is scabrous in patches,
and covered with scars, while the upper part of the skull is bald; the
body is thin and somewhat shrunken, and appears to have lacked vigour and
muscular power. By his marriage with his sister, Thûtmosis left daughters
only,* but he had one son, also a Thûtmosis, by a woman of low birth,
perhaps merely a slave, whose name was Isis.** Hâtshopsîtû proclaimed this
child her successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite
her jealousy. She betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, Hâtshopsîtû
II., and having thus settled the succession in the male line, she
continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a minor,
as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother.
Her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition of
things was owing to the ability of her political administration or to her
fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. She pressed forward
the work of building with great activity, under the direction of her
architect Sanmût, not only at Deîr el-Baharî, but at Karnak, and indeed
everywhere in Thebes. The plans of the building had been arranged under
Thûtmosis I., and their execution had been carried out so quickly, that in
many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculptural ornamentation on
the all but completed walls.
This work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to Egyptian
custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she
had of her own powers is exhibited with great naiveness in her
inscriptions. She loves to pose as premeditating her actions long
beforehand, and as never venturing on the smallest undertaking without
reference to her divine father.
This is what I teach to mortals who shall live in centuries to come, and
whose hearts shall inquire concerning the monument which I have raised to
my father, speaking and exclaiming as they contemplate it: as for me, when
I sat in the palace and thought upon him who created me, my heart prompted
me to raise to him two obelisks of electrum, whose apices should pierce
the firmaments, before the noble gateway which is between the two great
pylons of the King Thûtmosis I. And my heart led me to address these words
to those who shall see my monuments in after-years and who shall speak of
my great deeds: Beware of saying, ‘I know not, I know not why it was
resolved to carve this mountain wholly of gold!’ These two obelisks, My
Majesty has made them of electrum for my father Anion, that my name may
remain and live on in this temple for ever and ever; for this single block
of granite has been cut, without let or obstacle, at the desire of My
Majesty, between the first of the second month of Pirîfc of the Vth year,
and the 30th of the fourth month of Shomû of the VIth year, which makes
seven months from the day when they began to, quarry it. One of these two
monoliths is still standing among the ruins of Karnak, and the grace of
its outline, the finish of its hieroglyphics, and the beauty of the
figures which cover it, amply justify the pride which the queen and her
brother felt in contemplating it.
The tops of the pyramids were gilt, so that “they could be seen from both
banks of the river,” and “their brilliancy lit up the two lands of Egypt:”
needless to say these metal apices have long disappeared.
Later on, in the the queen’s reign, Amon enjoined a work which was more
difficult to carry out. On a day when Hâtshopsîtû had gone to the temple
to offer prayers, “her supplications arose up before the throne of the
Lord of Karnak, and a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the
god himself, that the ways which lead to Pûanît should be explored, and
that the roads to the ‘Ladders of Incense’ should be trodden.” *
Gums required for the temple service had hitherto reached the Theban
priests solely by means of foreign intermediaries; so that in the slow
transport across Africa they lost much of their freshness, besides being
defiled by passing through impure hands. In addition to these drawbacks,
the merchants confounded under the one term “Anîti” substances which
differed considerably both in value and character, several of them,
indeed, scarcely coming under the category of perfumes, and hence being
unacceptable to the gods. One kind, however, found favour with them above
all others, being that which still abounds in Somali-land at the present
day—a gum secreted by the incense sycomore.*
It was accounted a pious work to send and obtain it direct from the
locality in which it grew, and if possible to procure the plants
themselves for acclimatisation in the Nile valley. But the relations
maintained in former times with the people of these aromatic regions had
been suspended for centuries. “None now climbed the ‘Ladders of Incense,’
none of the Egyptians; they knew of them from hearsay, from the stories of
people of ancient times, for these products were brought to the kings of
the Delta, thy fathers, to one or other of them, from the times of thy
ancestors the kings of the Said who lived of yore.” All that could be
recalled of this country was summed up in the facts, that it lay to the
south or to the extreme east, that from thence many of the gods had come
into Egypt, while from out of it the sun rose anew every morning. Amon, in
his omniscience, took upon himself to describe it and give an exact
account of its position. “The ‘Ladders of Incense’ is a secret province of
Tonûtir, it is in truth a place of delight. I created it, and I thereto
lead Thy Majesty, together with Mût, Hâthor, Uîrît, the Lady of Pûanît,
Uîrît-hikaû, the magician and regent of the gods, that the aromatic gum
may be gathered at will, that the vessels may be laden joyfully with
living incense trees and with all the products of this earth.” Hâtshopsîtû
chose out five well-built galleys, and manned them with picked crews. She
caused them to be laden with such merchandise as would be most attractive
to the barbarians, and placing the vessels under the command of a royal
envoy, she sent them forth on the Bed Sea in quest of the incense.
We are not acquainted with the name of the port from which the fleet set
sail, nor do we know the number of weeks it took to reach the land of
Pûanît, neither is there any record of the incidents which befell it by
the way. It sailed past the places frequented by the mariners of the XIIth
dynasty—Suakîn, Massowah, and the islands of the Ked Sea; it touched
at the country of the Ilîm which lay to the west of the Bab el-Mandeb,
went safely through the Straits, and landed at last in the Land of
Perfumes on the Somali coast.* There, between the bay of Zeîlah and Bas
Hafun, stretched the Barbaric region, frequented in later times by the
merchants of Myos Hormos and of Berenice.
The first stations which the latter encountered beyond Cape Direh—Avails,
Malao, Mundos, and Mosylon—were merely open roadsteads offering no
secure shelter; but beyond Mosylon, the classical navigators reported the
existence of several wadys, the last of which, the Elephant River, lying
between Bas el-Eîl and Cape Guardafui, appears to have been large enough
not only to afford anchorage to several vessels of light draught, but to
permit of their performing easily any evolutions required. During the
Roman period, it was there, and there only, that the best kind of incense
could be obtained, and it was probably at this point also that the
Egyptians of Hâtshopsîtû’s time landed. The Egyptian vessels sailed up the
river till they reached a place beyond the influence of the tide, and then
dropped anchor in front of a village scattered along a bank fringed with
sycomores and palms.*
The huts of the inhabitants were of circular shape, each being surmounted
with a conical roof; some of them were made of closely plaited osiers, and
there was no opening in any of them save the door. They were built upon
piles, as a protection from the rise of the river and from wild animals,
and access to them was gained by means of moveable ladders. Oxen chewing
the cud rested beneath them. The natives belonged to a light-coloured
race, and the portraits we possess of them resemble the Egyptian type in
every particular. They were tall and thin, and of a colour which varied
between brick-red and the darkest brown. Their beards were pointed, and
the hair was cut short in some instances, while in others it was arranged
in close rows of curls or in small plaits. The costume of the men
consisted of a loin-cloth only, while the dress of the women was a yellow
garment without sleeves, drawn in at the waist and falling halfway below
the knee.
The royal envoy landed under an escort of eight soldiers and an officer,
but, to prove his pacific intentions, he spread out upon a low table a
variety of presents, consisting of five bracelets two gold necklaces, a
dagger with strap and sheath complete, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of
glass beads.
The inhabitants, dazzled by the display of so many valuable objects, ran
to meet the new-comers, headed by their sheikh, and expressed a natural
astonishment at the sight of the strangers. “How is it,” they exclaimed,
“that you have reached this country hitherto unknown to men? Have you come
down by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of the Tonûtir
Sea? You have followed the path of the sun, for as for the king of the
land of Egypt, it is not possible to elude him, and we live, yea, we
ourselves, by the breath which he gives us.” The name of their chief was
Parihû, who was distinguished from his subjects by the boomerang which he
carried, and also by his dagger and necklace of beads: his right leg,
moreover, appears to have been covered with a kind of sheath composed of
rings of some yellow metal, probably gold.* He was accompanied by his wife
Ati, riding on an ass, from which she alighted in order to gain a closer
view of the strangers. She was endowed with a type of beauty much admired
by the people of Central Africa, being so inordinately fat that the shape
of her body was scarcely recognisable under the rolls of flesh which hung
down from it. Her daughter, who appeared to be still young, gave promise
of one day rivalling, if not exceeding, her mother in size.**
After an exchange of compliments, the more serious business of the
expedition was introduced. The Egyptians pitched a tent, in which they
placed the objects of barter with which they were provided, and to prevent
these from being too great a temptation to the natives, they surrounded
the tent with a line of troops.
The main conditions of the exchange were arranged at a banquet, in which
they spread before the barbarians a sumptuous display of Egyptian
delicacies, consisting of bread, beer, wine, meat, and carefully prepared
and flavoured vegetables. Payment for every object was to be made at the
actual moment of purchase. For several days there was a constant stream of
people, and asses groaned beneath their burdens. The Egyptian purchases
comprised the most varied objects: ivory tusks, gold, ebony, cassia,
myrrh, cynocephali and green monkeys, greyhounds, leopard skins, large
oxen, slaves, and last, but not least, thirty-one incense trees, with
their roots surrounded by a ball of earth and placed in large baskets. The
lading of the ships was a long and tedious affair. All available space
being at length exhausted, and as much cargo placed on board as was
compatible with the navigation of the vessel, the squadron set sail and
with all speed took its way northwards.
The Egyptians touched at several places on the coast on their return
journey, making friendly alliances with the inhabitants; the Him added a
quota to their freight, for which room was with difficulty found on board,—it
consisted not only of the inevitable gold, ivory, and skins, but also of
live leopards and a giraffe, together with plants and fruits unknown on
the banks of the Nile.*
The fleet at length made its reappearance in Egyptian ports, having on
board the chiefs of several tribes on whose coasts the sailors had landed,
and “bringing back so much that the like had never been brought of the
products of Pûanît to other kings, by the supreme favour of the venerable
god, Amon Râ, lord of Karnak.” The chiefs mentioned were probably young
men of superior family, who had been confided to the officer in command of
the squadron by local sheikhs, as pledges to the Pharaoh of good will or
as commercial hostages. National vanity, no doubt, prompted the Egyptians
to regard them as vassals coming to do homage, and their gifts as tributes
denoting subjection. The Queen inaugurated a solemn festival in honour of
the explorers. The Theban militia was ordered out to meet them, the royal
flotilla escorting them as far as the temple landing-place, where a
procession was formed to carry the spoil to the feet of the god. The good
Theban folk, assembled to witness their arrival, beheld the march past of
the native hostages, the incense sycomores, the precious gum itself, the
wild animals, the giraffe, and the oxen, whose numbers were doubtless
increased a hundredfold in the accounts given to posterity with the usual
official exaggeration. The trees were planted at Deîr el-Baharî, where a
sacred garden was prepared for them, square trenches being cut in the rock
and filled with earth, in which the sycomore, by frequent watering, came
to flourish well.*
The great heaps of fresh resin were next the objects of special attention.
Hâtshopsîtû “gave a bushel made of electrum to gauge the mass of gum, it
being the first time that they had the joy of measuring the perfumes for
Amon, lord of Karnak, master of heaven, and of presenting to him the
wonderful products of Pûanît. Thot, the lord of Hermo-polis, noted the
quantities in writing; Safkhîtâbûi verified the list. Her Majesty herself
prepared from it, with her own hands, a perfumed unguent for her limbs;
she gave forth the smell of the divine dew, her perfume reached even to
Pûanît, her skin became like wrought gold,* and her countenance shone like
the stars in the great festival hall, in the sight of the whole earth.”
Hâtshopsîtû commanded the history of the expedition to be carved on the
wall of the colonnades which lay on the west side of the middle platform
of her funerary chapel: we there see the little fleet with sails spread,
winging its way to the unknown country, its safe arrival at its
destination, the meeting with the natives, the animated palavering, the
consent to exchange freely accorded; and thanks to the minuteness with
which the smallest details have been portrayed, we can as it were witness,
as if on the spot, all the phases of life on board ship, not only on
Egyptian vessels, but, as we may infer, those of other Oriental nations
generally. For we may be tolerably sure that when the Phoenicians ventured
into the distant parts of the Mediterranean, it was after a similar
fashion that they managed and armed their vessels.
Although the natural features of the Asiatic or Greek coast on which they
effected a landing differed widely from those of Pûanît, the Phoenician
navigators were themselves provided with similar objects of exchange, and
in their commercial dealings with the natives the methods of procedure of
the European traders were doubtless similar to those of the Egyptians with
the barbarians of the Red Sea.
Hâtshopsîtû reigned for at least eight years after this memorable
expedition, and traces of her further activity are to be observed in every
part of the Nile valley. She even turned her attention to the Delta, and
began the task of reorganising this part of her kingdom, which had been
much neglected by her predecessors. The wars between the Theban princes
and the lords of Avaris had lasted over a century, and during that time no
one had had either sufficient initiative or leisure to superintend the
public works, which were more needed here than in any other part of Egypt.
The canals were silted up with mud, the marshes and the desert had
encroached on the cultivated lands, the towns had become impoverished, and
there were some provinces whose population consisted solely of shepherds
and bandits. Hâtshopsîtû desired to remedy these evils, if only for the
purpose of providing a practicable road for her armies marching to Zalû en
route for Syria.*
She also turned her attention to the mines of Sinai, which had not been
worked by the Egyptian kings since the end of the XIIth dynasty. In the
year XVI. an officer of the queen’s household was despatched to the Wady
Magharah, the site of the ancient works, with orders to inspect the
valleys, examine the veins, and restore there the temple of the goddess
Hâthor; having accomplished his mission, he returned, bringing with him a
consignment of those blue and green stones which were so highly esteemed
by the Egyptians.
Meanwhile, Thûtmosis III. was approaching manhood, and his aunt, the
queen, instead of abdicating in his favour, associated him with herself
more frequently in the external acts of government.*
She was forced to yield him precedence in those religious ceremonies which
could be performed by a man only, such as the dedication of one of the
city gates of Ombos, and the foundation and marking out of a temple at
Medinet-Habû; but for the most part she obliged him to remain in the
background and take a secondary place beside her. We are unable to
determine the precise moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end. It
was still existent in the XVIth year of the reign, but it had ceased
before the XXIInd year. Death alone could take the sceptre from the hands
that held it, and Thûtmosis had to curb his impatience for many a long day
before becoming the real master of Egypt. He was about twenty-five years
of age when this event took place, and he immediately revenged himself for
the long repression he had undergone, by endeavouring to destroy the very
remembrance of her whom he regarded as a usurper. Every portrait of her
that he could deface without exposing himself to being accused of
sacrilege was cut away, and he substituted for her name either that of
Thûtmosis I. or of Thûtmosis II.
A complete political change was effected both at home and abroad from the
first day of his accession to power. Hâtshopsîtû had been averse to war.
During the whole of her reign there had not been a single campaign
undertaken beyond the isthmus of Suez, and by the end of her life she had
lost nearly all that her father had gained in Syria; the people of Kharu
had shaken off the yoke,* probably at the instigation of the king of the
Amorites,** and nothing remained to Egypt of the Asiatic province but
Gaza, Sharûhana,*** and the neighbouring villages. The young king set out
with his army in the latter days of the year XXII. He reached Gaza on the
3rd of the month of Pakhons, in time to keep the anniversary of his
coronation in that town, and to inaugurate the 24th year of his reign by
festivals in honour of his father Amon.**** They lasted the usual length
of time, and all the departments of State took part in them, but it was
not a propitious moment for lengthy ceremonies.
The king left Gaza the following day, the 5th of Pakhons; he marched but
slowly at first, following the usual caravan route, and despatching troops
right and left to levy contributions on the cities of the Plain—Migdol,
Yapu (Jaffa), Lotanû, Ono—and those within reach on the mountain
spurs, or situated within the easily accessible wadys, such as Sauka
(Socho), Hadid, and Harîlu. On the 16th day he had not proceeded further
than Yahmu, where he received information which caused him to push quickly
forward. The lord of Qodshû had formed an alliance with the Syrian princes
on the borders of Naharaim, and had extorted from them promises of help;
he had already gone so far as to summon contingents from the Upper
Orontes, the Litany, and the Upper Jordan, and was concentrating them at
Megiddo, where he proposed to stop the way of the invading army. Thûtmosis
called together his principal officers, and having imparted the news to
them, took counsel with them as to a plan of attack. Three alternative
routes were open to him. The most direct approached the enemy’s position
on the front, crossing Mount Carmel by the saddle now known as the Umm
el-Fahm; but the great drawback attached to this route was its being so
restricted that the troops would be forced to advance in too thin a file;
and the head of the column would reach the plain and come into actual
conflict with the enemy while the rear-guard would only be entering the
defiles in the neighbourhood of Aluna. The second route bore a little to
the east, crossing the mountains beyond Dutîna and reaching the plain near
Taânach; but it offered the same disadvantages as the other. The third
road ran north of Zafîti, to meet the great highway which cuts the
hill-district of Nablûs, skirting the foot of Tabor near Jenîn, a little
to the north of Megiddo. It was not so direct as the other two, but it was
easier for troops, and the king’s generals advised that it should be
followed. The king was so incensed that he was tempted to attribute their
prudence to cowardice. “By my life! by the love that Râ hath for me, by
the favour that I enjoy from my master Amon, by the perpetual youth of my
nostril in life and power, My Majesty will go by the way of Aluna, and let
him that will go by the roads of which ye have spoken, and let him that
will follow My Majesty. What will be said among the vile enemies detested
of Râ: ‘Doth not His Majesty go by another way? For fear of us he gives us
a wide berth,’ they will cry.” The king’s counsellors did not insist
further. “May thy father Amon of Thebes protect thee!” they exclaimed; “as
for us, we will follow Thy Majesty whithersoever thou goest, as it
befitteth a servant to follow his master.” The word of command was given
to the men; Thûtmosis himself led the vanguard, and the whole army,
horsemen and foot-soldiers, followed in single file, wending their way
through the thickets which covered the southern slopes of Mount Carmel.*
They pitched their camp on the evening of the 19th near Aluna, and on the
morning of the 20th they entered the wild defiles through which it was
necessary to pass in order to reach the enemy. The king had taken
precautionary measures against any possible attempt of the natives to cut
the main column during this crossing of the mountains. His position might
at any moment have become a critical one, had the allies taken advantage
of it and attacked each battalion as it issued on to the plain before it
could re-form. But the Prince of Qodshû, either from ignorance of his
adversary’s movements, or confident of victory in the open, declined to
take the initiative. Towards one o’clock in the afternoon, the Egyptians
found themselves once more united on the further side of the range, close
to a torrent called the Qina, a little to the south of Megiddo. When the
camp was pitched, Thûtmosis announced his intention of engaging the enemy
on the morrow. A council of war was held to decide on the position that
each corps should occupy, after which the officers returned to their men
to see that a liberal supply of rations was served out, and to organise an
efficient system of patrols. They passed round the camp to the cry: “Keep
a good heart: courage! Watch well, watch well! Keep alive in the camp!”
The king refused to retire to rest until he had been assured that “the
country was quiet, and also the host, both to south and north.” By dawn
the next day the whole army was in motion. It was formed into a single
line, the right wing protected by the torrent, the left extended into the
plain, stretching beyond Megiddo towards the north-west. Thûtmosis and his
guards occupied the centre, standing “armed in his chariot of electrum
like unto Horus brandishing his pike, and like Montû the Theban god.” The
Syrians, who had not expected such an early attack, were seized with
panic, and fled in the direction of the town, leaving their horses and
chariots on the field; but the citizens, fearing lest in the confusion the
Egyptians should effect an entrance with the fugitives, had closed their
gates and refused to open them. Some of the townspeople, however, let down
ropes to the leaders of the allied party, and drew them up to the top of
the ramparts: “and would to heaven that the soldiers of His Majesty had
not so far forgotten themselves as to gather up the spoil left by the vile
enemy! They would then have entered Megiddo forthwith; for while the men
of the garrison were drawing up the Lord of Qodshû and their own prince,
the fear of His Majesty was upon their limbs, and their hands failed them
by reason of the carnage which the royal urous carried into their ranks.”
The victorious soldiery were dispersed over the fields, gathering together
the gilded and silvered chariots of the Syrian chiefs, collecting the
scattered weapons and the hands of the slain, and securing the prisoners;
then rallying about the king, they greeted him with acclamations and filed
past to deliver up the spoil. He reproached them for having allowed
themselves to be drawn away from the heat of pursuit. “Had you carried
Megiddo, it would have been a favour granted to me by Râ my father this
day; for all the kings of the country being shut up within it, it would
have been as the taking of a thousand towns to have seized Megiddo.” The
Egyptians had made little progress in the art of besieging a stronghold
since the times of the XIIth dynasty. When scaling failed, they had no
other resource than a blockade, and even the most stubborn of the Pharaohs
would naturally shrink from the tedium of such an undertaking. Thûtmosis,
however, was not inclined to lose the opportunity of closing the campaign
by a decisive blow, and began the investment of the town according to the
prescribed modes.
His men were placed under canvas, and working under the protection of
immense shields, supported on posts, they made a ditch around the walls,
strengthening it with a palisade. The king constructed also on the east
side a fort which he called “Manakhpirrî-holds-the-Asiatics.” Famine soon
told on the demoralised citizens, and their surrender brought about the
submission of the entire country. Most of the countries situated between
the Jordan and the sea—Shunem, Cana, Kinnereth, Hazor, Bedippa,
Laish, Merom, and Acre—besides the cities of the Haurân—Hamath,
Magato, Ashtarôth, Ono-repha, and even Damascus itself—recognised
the suzerainty of Egypt, and their lords came in to the camp to do
homage.*
The Syrian losses did not amount to more than 83 killed and 400 prisoners,
showing how easily they had been routed; but they had abandoned
considerable supplies, all of which had fallen into the hands of the
victors. Some 724 chariots, 2041 mares, 200 suits of armour, 602 bows, the
tent of the Prince of Qodshû with its poles of cypress inlaid with gold,
besides oxen, cows, goats, and more than 20,000 sheep, were among the
spoil. Before quitting the plain of Bsdraelon, the king caused an official
survey of it to be made, and had the harvest reaped. It yielded 208,000
bushels of wheat, not taking into account what had been looted or damaged
by the marauding soldiery. The return homewards of the Egyptians must have
resembled the exodus of some emigrating tribe rather than the progress of
a regular army
Thûtmosis caused a long list of the vanquished to be engraved on the walls
of the temple which he was building at Karnak, thus affording the good
people of Thebes an opportunity for the first time of reading on the
monuments the titles of the king’s Syrian subjects written in
hieroglyphics. One hundred and nineteen names follow each other in
unbroken succession, some of them representing mere villages, while others
denoted powerful nations; the catalogue, however, was not to end even
here. Having once set out on a career of conquest, the Pharaoh had no
inclination to lay aside his arms. From the XXIIth year of his reign to
that of his death, we have a record of twelve military expeditions, all of
which he led in person. Southern Syria was conquered at the outset—the
whole of Kharû as far as the Lake of Grennesareth, and the Amorite power
was broken at one blow.
The three succeeding campaigns consolidated the rule of Egypt in the
country of the Negeb, which lay to the south-west of the Dead Sea, in
Phoenicia, which prudently resigned itself to its fate, and in that part
of Lotanii occupying the northern part of the basin of the Orontes.**
None of these expeditions appear to have been marked by any successes
comparable to the victory at Megiddo, for the coalition of the Syrian
chiefs did not survive the blow which they then sustained; but Qodshû long
remained the centre of resistance, and the successive defeats which its
inhabitants suffered never disarmed for more than a short interval the
hatred which they felt for the Egyptian.
During these years of glorious activity considerable tribute poured in to
both Memphis and Thebes; not only ingots of gold and silver, bars and
blocks of copper and lead, blocks of lapis-lazuli and valuable vases, but
horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and useful animals of every kind, in addition
to all of which we find, as in Hâtshopsîtû’s reign, the mention of rare
plants and shrubs brought back from countries traversed by the armies in
their various expeditions. The Theban priests and savants exhibited
much interest in such curiosities, and their royal pupil gave orders to
his generals to collect for their benefit all that appeared either rare or
novel. They endeavoured to acclimatise the species or the varieties likely
to be useful, and in order to preserve a record of these experiments, they
caused a representation of the strange plants or animals to be drawn on
the walls of one of the chapels which they were then building to one of
their gods. These pictures may still be seen there in interminable lines,
portraying the specimens brought from the Upper Lotanû in the XXVth year
of Thûtmosis, and we are able to distinguish, side by side with many
plants peculiar to the regions of the Euphrates, others having their
habitat in the mountains and valleys of tropical Africa.
This return to an aggressive policy on the part of the Egyptians, after
the weakness they had exhibited during the later period of Hâtshopsîtû’s
regency, seriously disconcerted the Asiatic sovereigns. They had vainly
flattered themselves that the invasion of Thûtmosis I. was merely the
caprice of an adventurous prince, and they hoped that when his love of
enterprise had expended itself, Egypt would permanently withdraw within
her traditional boundaries, and that the relations of Elam with Babylon,
Carchemish with Qodshû, and the barbarians of the Persian Gulf with the
inhabitants of the Iranian table-land would resume their former course.
This vain delusion was dispelled by the advent of a new Thûtmosis, who
showed clearly by his actions that he intended to establish and maintain
the sovereignty of Egypt over the western dependencies, at least, of the
ancient Chaldæan empire, that is to say, over the countries which bordered
the middle course of the Euphrates and the coasts of the Mediterranean.
The audacity of his marches, the valour of his men, the facility with
which in a few hours he had crushed the assembled forces of half Syria,
left no room to doubt that he was possessed of personal qualities and
material resources sufficient to carry out projects of the most ambitious
character. Babylon, enfeebled by the perpetual dissensions of its Cossæan
princes, was no longer in a position to contest with him the little
authority she still retained over the peoples of Naharaim or of
Coele-Syria; protected by the distance which separated her from the Nile
valley, she preserved a sullen neutrality, while Assyria hastened to form
a peaceful alliance with the invading power. Again and again its kings
sent to Thûtmosis presents in proportion to their resources, and the
Pharaoh naturally treated their advances as undeniable proofs of their
voluntary vassalage. Each time that he received from them a gift of metal
or lapis-lazuli, he proudly recorded their tribute in the annals of his
reign; and if, in exchange, he sent them some Egyptian product, it was in
smaller quantities, as might be expected from a lord to his vassal.*
Sometimes there would accompany the convoy, surrounded by an escort of
slaves and women, some princess, whom the king would place in his harem or
graciously pass on to one of his children; but when, on the other hand, an
even distant relative of the Pharaoh was asked in marriage for some king
on the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates, the request was met with a
disdainful negative: the daughters of the Sun were of too noble a race to
stoop to such alliances, and they would count it a humiliation to be sent
in marriage to a foreign court.
Free transit on the main road which ran diagonally through Kharû was
ensured by fortresses constructed at strategic points,* and from this time
forward Thûtmosis was able to bring the whole force of his army to bear
upon both Coele-Syria and Naharaim.** He encamped, in the year XXVII., on
the table-land separating the Afrîn and the Orontes from the Euphrates,
and from that centre devastated the district of Ûânît,*** which lay to the
west of Aleppo; then crossing “the water of Naharaim” in the neighbourhood
of Carchemish, he penetrated into the heart of Mitanni.
The following year he reappeared in the same region. Tunipa, which had
made an obstinate resistance, was taken, together with its king, and 329
of his nobles were forced to yield themselves prisoners. Thûtmosis “with a
joyous heart” was carrying them away captive, when it occurred to him that
the district of Zahi, which lay away for the most part from the great
military highroads, was a tempting prey teeming with spoil. The barns were
stored with wheat and barley, the cellars were filled with wine, the
harvest was not yet gathered in, and the trees bent under the weight of
their fruit. Having pillaged Senzaûrû on the Orontes,* he made his way to
the westwards through the ravine formed by the Ishahr el-Kebîr, and
descended suddenly on the territory of Arvad. The towns once more escaped
pillage, but Thutmosis destroyed the harvests, plundered the orchards,
carried off the cattle, and pitilessly wasted the whole of the maritime
plain.
There was such abundance within the camp that the men were continually
getting drunk, and spent their time in anointing themselves with oil,
which they could do only in Egypt at the most solemn festivals. They
returned to Syria in the year XXX., and their good fortune again favoured
them. The stubborn Qodshû was harshly dealt with; Simyra and Arvad, which
hitherto had held their own, now opened their gates to him; the lords of
Upper Lotanû poured in their contributions without delay, and gave up
their sons and brothers as hostages. In the year XXXI., the city of Anamut
in Tikhisa, on the shores of Lake Msrana, yielded in its turn;* on the 3rd
of Pakhons, the anniversary of his coronation, the Lotanû renewed their
homage to him in person.
The return of the expedition was a sort of triumphal procession. At every
halting-place the troops found quarters and provisions prepared for them,
bread and cakes, perfumes, oil, wine, and honey being provided in such
quantities that they were obliged on their departure to leave the greater
part behind them. The scribes took advantage of this peaceful state of
affairs to draw up minute accounts of the products of Lotanû—corn,
barley, millet, fruits, and various kinds of oil—prompted doubtless
by the desire to arrive at a fairly just apportionment of the tribute.
Indeed, the results of the expedition were considered so satisfactory that
they were recorded on a special monument dedicated in the palace at
Thebes. The names of the towns and peoples might change with every war,
but the spoils suffered no diminution. In the year XXXIII., the kingdoms
situated to the west of the Euphrates were so far pacified that Thutmosis
was able without risk to carry his arms to Mesopotamia. He entered the
country by the fords of Carchemish, near to the spot where his
grandfather, Thutmosis I., had erected his stele half a century
previously. He placed another beside this, and a third to the eastward to
mark the point to which he had extended the frontier of his empire.. The
Mitanni, who exercised a sort of hegemony over the whole of Naharaim, were
this time the objects of his attack. Thirty-two of their towns fell one
after another, their kings were taken captive and the walls of their
cities were razed, without any serious resistance. The battalions of the
enemy were dispersed at the first shock, and Pharaoh “pursued them for the
space of a mile, without one of them daring to look behind him, for they
thought only of escape, and fled before him like a flock of goats.”
Thutmosis pushed forward as far certainly as the Balikh, and perhaps on to
the Khabur or even to the Hermus; and as he approached the frontier, the
king of Singar, a vassal of Assyria, sent him presents of lapis-lazuli.
When this prince had retired, another chief, the lord of the Great Kkati,
whose territory had not even been threatened by the invaders, deemed it
prudent to follow the example of the petty princes of the plain of the
Euphrates, and despatched envoys to the Pharaoh bearing presents of no
great value, but testifying to his desire to live on good terms with
Egypt. Still further on, the inhabitants of Nîi begged the king’s
acceptance of a troop of slaves and two hundred and sixty mares; he
remained among them long enough to erect a stele commemorating his
triumph, and to indulge in one of those extensive hunts which were the
delight of Oriental monarchs. The country abounded in elephants. The
soldiers were employed as beaters, and the king and his court succeeded in
killing one hundred and twenty head of big game, whose tusks were added to
the spoils. These numbers indicate how the extinction of such animals in
these parts was brought about. Beyond these regions, again, the sheikhs of
the Lamnaniû came to meet the Pharaoh. They were a poor people, and had
but little to offer, but among their gifts were some birds of a species
unknown to the Egyptians, and two geese, with which, however, His Majesty
deigned to be satisfied.*
END OF VOL. IV.