The Treasury of
Ancient Egypt

Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient
Egyptian History and Archæology

BY

ARTHUR E. P. B. WEIGALL

INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF UPPER EGYPT, DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES

AUTHOR OF ‘TRAVELS IN THE UPPER EGYPTIAN DESERTS,’ ‘THE LIFE AND
TIMES OF AKHNATON, PHARAOH OF EGYPT,’ ‘A GUIDE TO THE
ANTIQUITIES OF UPPER EGYPT,’ ETC., ETC.

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
1912

TO

ALAN H. GARDINER, ESQ.,

M.A., D.LITT.

LAYCOCK STUDENT OF EGYPTOLOGY AT WORCESTER
COLLEGE, OXFORD,

THIS BOOK,

WHICH WILL RECALL SOME SUMMER NIGHTS UPON
THE THEBAN HILLS,

IS DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

No person who has travelled in Egypt will require
to be told that it is a country in which a considerable
amount of waiting and waste of time has to
be endured. One makes an excursion by train to
see some ruins, and, upon returning to the station,
the train is found to be late, and an hour or more
has to be dawdled away. Crossing the Nile in a
rowing-boat the sailors contrive in one way or
another to prolong the journey to a length of half
an hour or more. The excursion steamer will run
upon a sandbank, and will there remain fast for a
part of the day.

The resident official, travelling from place to
place, spends a great deal of time seated in railway
stations or on the banks of the Nile, waiting for
his train or his boat to arrive; and he has, therefore,
a great deal of time for thinking. I often try
to fill in these dreary periods by jotting down a
few notes on some matter which has recently been
discussed, or registering and elaborating arguments
which have chanced lately to come into the
thoughts. These notes are shaped and “written
up” when next there is a spare hour, and a few
books to refer to; and ultimately they take the
form of articles or papers, some of which find
their way into print.

This volume contains twelve chapters, written
at various times and in various places, each
dealing with some subject drawn from the great
treasury of Ancient Egypt. Some of the chapters
have appeared as articles in magazines.
Chapters iv., v., and viii. were published in
‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; chapter vii. in ‘Putnam’s
Magazine’ and the ‘Pall Mall Magazine’;
and chapter ix. in the ‘Century Magazine.’ I
have to thank the editors for allowing me to reprint
them here. The remaining seven chapters
have been written specially for this volume.

Luxor, Upper Egypt,
         November 1910.

PART I

THE VALUE OF THE TREASURY.

CHAPTER I.

THE VALUE OF ARCHÆOLOGY.

The archæologist whose business it is to bring to
light by pick and spade the relics of bygone ages,
is often accused of devoting his energies to work
which is of no material profit to mankind at the
present day. Archæology is an unapplied science,
and, apart from its connection with what is called
culture, the critic is inclined to judge it as a
pleasant and worthless amusement. There is
nothing, the critic tells us, of pertinent value
to be learned from the Past which will be of use
to the ordinary person of the present time; and,
though the archæologist can offer acceptable information
to the painter, to the theologian, to the
philologist, and indeed to most of the followers
of the arts and sciences, he has nothing to give to
the ordinary layman.

In some directions the imputation is unanswerable;
and when the interests of modern times
clash with those of the past, as, for example, in
Egypt where a beneficial reservoir has destroyed
the remains of early days, there can be no question
that the recording of the threatened information
[4]and the minimising of the destruction, is all that
the value of the archæologist’s work entitles him
to ask for. The critic, however, usually overlooks
some of the chief reasons that archæology can give
for even this much consideration, reasons which
constitute its modern usefulness; and I therefore
propose to point out to him three or four of the
many claims which it may make upon the attention
of the layman.

In the first place it is necessary to define the
meaning of the term “Archæology.” Archæology
is the study of the facts of ancient history and
ancient lore. The word is applied to the study
of all ancient documents and objects which may be
classed as antiquities; and the archæologist is
understood to be the man who deals with a period
for which the evidence has to be excavated or
otherwise discovered. The age at which an object
becomes an antiquity, however, is quite undefined,
though practically it may be reckoned at a hundred
years; and ancient history is, after all, the tale of
any period which is not modern. Thus an archæologist
does not necessarily deal solely with the
remote ages.

Every chronicler of the events of the less recent
times who goes to the original documents for his
facts, as true historians must do during at least a
part of their studies, is an archæologist; and, conversely,
every archæologist who in the course of
his work states a series of historical facts, becomes
an historian. Archæology and history are inseparable;
[5]and nothing is more detrimental to a noble
science than the attitude of certain so-called
archæologists who devote their entire time to the
study of a sequence of objects without proper
consideration for the history which those objects
reveal. Antiquities are the relics of human mental
energy; and they can no more be classified without
reference to the minds which produced them than
geological specimens can be discussed without
regard to the earth. There is only one thing
worse than the attitude of the archæologist who
does not study the story of the periods with which
he is dealing, or construct, if only in his thoughts,
living history out of the objects discovered by
him; and that is the attitude of the historian who
has not familiarised himself with the actual relics
left by the people of whom he writes, or has not,
when possible, visited their lands. There are
many “archæologists” who do not care a snap of
the fingers for history, surprising as this may
appear; and there are many historians who take
no interest in manners and customs. The influence
of either is pernicious.

It is to be understood, therefore, that in using
the word Archæology I include History: I refer to
history supplemented and aggrandised by the
study of the arts, crafts, manners, and customs
of the period under consideration.

As a first argument the value of archæology in
providing a precedent for important occurrences
may be considered. Archæology is the structure
[6]of ancient history, and it is the voice of history
which tells us that a Cretan is always a Cretan,
and a Jew always a Jew. History, then, may
well take her place as a definite asset of statecraft,
and the law of Precedent may be regarded
as a fundamental factor in international politics.
What has happened before may happen again;
and it is the hand of the archæologist that directs
our attention to the affairs and circumstances of
olden times, and warns us of the possibilities of
their recurrence. It may be said that the statesman
who has ranged in the front of his mind the
proven characteristics of the people with whom
he is dealing has a perquisite of the utmost
importance.

Any archæologist who, previous to the rise of
Japan during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, had made a close study of the history
of that country and the character of its people,
might well have predicted unerringly its future
advance to the position of a first-class power.
The amazing faculty of imitation displayed by
the Japanese in old times was patent to him.
He had seen them borrow part of their arts,
their sciences, their crafts, their literature, their
religion, and many of their customs from the
Chinese; and he might have been aware that
they would likewise borrow from the West, as
soon as they had intercourse with it, those essentials
of civilisation which would raise them to their
present position in the world. To him their fearlessness,
[7]their tenacity, and their patriotism, were
known; and he was so well aware of their powers
of organisation, that he might have foreseen the
rapid development which was to take place.

What historian who has read the ancient books
of the Irish—the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book
of Ballymote, the Book of Lismore, and the like—can
show either surprise or dismay at the events
which have occurred in Ireland in modern times?
Of the hundreds of kings of Ireland whose histories
are epitomised in such works as that of the old
archæologist Keating, it would be possible to
count upon the fingers those who have died in
peace; and the archæologist, thus, knows better
than to expect the descendants of these kings to
live in harmony one with the other. National
characteristics do not change unless, as in the
case of the Greeks, the stock also changes.

In the Jews we have another example of the
persistence of those national characteristics which
history has made known to us. The Jews first
appear in the dimness of the remote past as a
group of nomad tribes, wandering over southern
Palestine, Egypt, and the intervening deserts;
and at the present day we see them still homeless,
scattered over the face of the globe, the
“tribe of the wandering foot and weary breast.”

In no country has the archæologist been more
active than in Egypt during the last half century,
and the contributions which his spade and pick
have offered to history are of first-rate importance
[8]to that study as a whole. The eye may now travel
down the history of the Nile Valley from prehistoric
days to the present time almost without
interruption; and now that the anthropologist has
shown that the modern Egyptians, Mussulman and
Copt, peasant and townsman, belong to one and
the same race of ancient Egyptians, one may
surely judge to-day’s inhabitants of the country in
the light of yesterday’s records. In his report for
the year 1906, Lord Cromer, questioning whether
the modern inhabitants of the country were capable
of governing their own land, tells us that we
must go back to the precedent of Pharaonic days
to discover if the Egyptians ever ruled themselves
successfully.

In this pregnant remark Lord Cromer was using
information which the archæologist and historian
had made accessible to him. Looking back over
the history of the country, he was enabled, by the
study of this information, to range before him the
succession of foreign occupations of the Nile Valley
and to assess their significance. It may be worth
while to repeat the process, in order to give an
example of the bearing of history upon modern
polemics, though I propose to discuss this matter
more fully in another chapter.

Previous to the British occupation the country
was ruled, as it is now, by a noble dynasty of
Albanian princes, whose founder was set upon
the throne by the aid of Turkish and Albanian
troops. From the beginning of the sixteenth
[9]century until that time Egypt had been ruled
by the Ottoman Government, the Turk having
replaced the Circassian and other foreign “Mamlukes”
who had held the country by the aid of
foreign troops since the middle of the thirteenth
century. For a hundred years previous to the
Mamluke rule Egypt had been in the hands of
the Syrian and Arabian dynasty founded by
Saladdin. The Fatimides, a North African dynasty,
governed the country before the advent of Saladdin,
this family having entered Egypt under their
general, Jauhar, who was of Greek origin. In
the ninth century Ahmed ibn Tulun, a Turk,
governed the land with the aid of a foreign garrison,
his rule being succeeded by the Ikhshidi
dynasty of foreigners. Ahmed had captured
Egypt from the Byzantines who had held it
since the days of the Roman occupation. Previous
to the Romans the Ptolemies, a Greek
family, had governed the Nile Valley with the
help of foreign troops. The Ptolemies had followed
close upon the Greek occupation, the
Greeks having replaced the Persians as rulers
of Egypt. The Persian occupation had been
preceded by an Egyptian dynasty which had
been kept on the throne by Greek and other
foreign garrisons. Previous to this there had
been a Persian occupation, which had followed
a short period of native rule under foreign
influence. We then come back to the Assyrian
conquest which had followed the Ethiopian rule.
[10]Libyan kings had held the country before the
Ethiopian conquest. The XXIst and XXth
Dynasties preceded the Libyans, and here, in a
disgraceful period of corrupt government, a series
of so-called native kings are met with. Foreigners,
however, swarmed in the country at the time,
foreign troops were constantly used, and the
Pharaohs themselves were of semi-foreign origin.
One now comes back to the early XIXth and
XVIIIth Dynasties which, although largely tinged
with foreign blood, may be said to have been
Egyptian families. Before the rise of the XVIIIth
Dynasty the country was in foreign hands for
the long period which had followed the fall of
the XIIth Dynasty, the classical period of
Egyptian history (about the twentieth century
B.C.), when there were no rivals to be feared.
Thus the Egyptians may be said to have been
subject to foreign occupation for nearly four
thousand years, with the exception of the strong
native rule of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the semi-native
rule of the three succeeding dynasties,
and a few brief periods of chaotic government
in later times; and this is the information which
the archæologist has to give to the statesman and
politician. It is a story of continual conquest,
of foreign occupations following one upon
another, of revolts and massacres, of rapid retributions
and punishments. It is the story of a
nation which, however ably it may govern itself
[11]in the future, has only once in four thousand
years successfully done so in the past.

Such information is of far-reaching value to
the politician, and to those interested, as every
Englishman should be, in Imperial politics. A
nation cannot alter by one jot or tittle its fundamental
characteristics; and only those who have
studied those characteristics in the pages of history
are competent to foresee the future. A
certain Englishman once asked the Khedive
Ismail whether there was any news that day
about Egyptian affairs. “That is so like all
you English,” replied his Highness. “You are
always expecting something new to happen in
Egypt day by day. To-day is here the same as
yesterday, and to-morrow will be the same as
to-day; and so it has been, and so it will be,
for thousands of years.”[1] Neither Egypt nor
any other nation will ever change; and to this
it is the archæologist who will bear witness with
his stern law of Precedent.

I will reserve the enlarging of this subject for
the next chapter: for the present we may consider,
as a second argument, the efficacy of the
past as a tonic to the present, and its ability
to restore the vitality of any age that is
weakened.

In ancient Egypt at the beginning of the
XXVIth Dynasty (B.C. 663) the country was at
[12]a very low ebb. Devastated by conquests, its
people humiliated, its government impoverished,
a general collapse of the nation was imminent.
At this critical period the Egyptians turned their
minds to the glorious days of old. They remodelled
their arts and crafts upon those of the
classical periods, introduced again the obsolete
offices and titles of those early times, and organised
the government upon the old lines. This
movement saved the country, and averted its
collapse for a few more centuries. It renewed
the pride of workmanship in a decadent people;
and on all sides we see a revival which was the
direct result of an archæological experiment.

The importance of archæology as a reviver of
artistic and industrial culture will be realised at
once if the essential part it played in the great
Italian Renaissance is called to mind. Previous
to the age of Cimabue and Giotto in Florence,
Italian refinement had passed steadily down the
path of deterioration. Græco-Roman art, which
still at a high level in the early centuries
of the Christian era, entirely lost its originality
during Byzantine times, and the dark ages settled
down upon Italy in almost every walk of life.
The Venetians, for example, were satisfied with
comparatively the poorest works of art imported
from Constantinople or Mount Athos: and in
Florence so great was the poverty of genius
that when Cimabue in the thirteenth century
painted that famous Madonna which to our eyes
[13]appears to be of the crudest workmanship, the
little advance made by it in the direction of
naturalness was received by the city with
acclamations, the very street down which it was
carried being called the “Happy Street” in
honour of the event. Giotto carried on his
master’s teachings, and a few years later the
Florentines had advanced to the standard of
Fra Angelico, who was immediately followed by
the two Lippis and Botticelli. Leonardo da Vinci,
artist, architect, and engineer, was almost contemporaneous
with Botticelli, being born not much
more than a hundred years after the death of
Giotto. With him art reached a level which it
has never surpassed, old traditions and old canons
were revived, and in every direction culture proceeded
again to those heights from which it had
fallen.

The reader will not need to be reminded that
this great renaissance was the direct result of
the study of the remains of the ancient arts of
Greece and Rome. Botticelli and his contemporaries
were, in a sense, archæologists, for their
work was inspired by the relics of ancient days.

Now, though at first sight it seems incredible
that such an age of barbarism as that of the
later Byzantine period should return, it is indeed
quite possible that a relatively uncultured age
should come upon us in the future; and there
is every likelihood of certain communities passing
over to the ranks of the absolute Philistines.
[14]Socialism run mad would have no more time to
give to the intellect than it had during the French
Revolution. Any form of violent social upheaval
means catalepsy of the arts and crafts, and a
trampling under foot of old traditions. The
invasions and revolts which are met with at
the close of ancient Egyptian history brought
the culture of that country to the lowest ebb
of vitality. The fall of Greece put an absolute
stop to the artistic life of that nation. The
invasions of Italy by the inhabitants of less
refined countries caused a set-back in civilisation
for which almost the whole of Europe suffered.
Certain of the French arts and crafts have never
recovered from the effects of the Revolution.

A national convulsion of one kind or another
is to be expected by every country; and history
tells us that such a convulsion is generally followed
by an age of industrial and artistic coma,
which is brought to an end not so much by the
introduction of foreign ideas as by a renascence
of the early traditions of the nation. It thus
behoves every man to interest himself in the
continuity of these traditions, and to see that
they are so impressed upon the mind that they
shall survive all upheavals, or with ease be
re-established.

There is no better tonic for a people who have
weakened, and whose arts, crafts, and industries
have deteriorated than a return to the conditions
which obtained at a past age of national prosperity;
[15]and there are few more repaying tasks
in the long-run than that of reviving an interest
in the best periods of artistic or industrial activity.
This can only be effected by the study of the past,
that is to say by archæology.

It is to be remembered, of course, that the
sentimental interest in antique objects which, in
recent years, has given a huge value to all ancient
things, regardless of their intrinsic worth, is a
dangerous attitude, unless it is backed by the most
expert knowledge; for instead of directing the
attention only to the best work of the best
periods, it results in the diminishing of the output
of modern original work and the setting of little
of worth in its place. A person of a certain
fashionable set will now boast that there is no
object in his room less than two hundred years
old: his only boast, however, should be that the
room contains nothing which is not of intrinsic
beauty, interest, or good workmanship. The old
chairs from the kitchen are dragged into the
drawing-room—because they are old; miniatures
unmeritoriously painted by unknown artists for
obscure clients are nailed in conspicuous places—because
they are old; hideous plates and dishes,
originally made by ignorant workmen for impoverished
peasants, are enclosed in glass cases—because
they are old; iron-bound chests, which had
been cheaply made to suit the purses of farmers,
are rescued from the cottages of their descendants
and sold for fabulous sums—because they are old.

[16]A person who fills a drawing-room with chairs,
tables, and ornaments, dating from the reign of
Queen Anne, cannot say that he does so because
he wishes it to look like a room of that date; for if
this were his desire, he would have to furnish it
with objects which appeared to be newly made,
since in the days of Queen Anne the first quality
noticeable in them would have been their newness.
In fact, to produce the desired effect everything in
the room, with very few exceptions, would have to
be a replica. To sit in this room full of antiques
in a frock-coat would be as bad a breach of good
taste as the placing of a Victorian chandelier in an
Elizabethan banqueting-hall. To furnish the room
with genuine antiquities because they are old and
therefore interesting would be to carry the museum
spirit into daily life with its attending responsibilities,
and would involve all manner of incongruities
and inconsistencies; while to furnish in
this manner because antiques were valuable would
be merely vulgar. There are, thus, only three
justifications that I can see for the action of the
man who surrounds himself with antiquities: he
must do so because they are examples of
workmanship, because they are beautiful, or because
they are endeared to him by family usage.
These, of course, are full and complete justifications;
and the value of his attitude should be felt
in the impetus which it gives to conscientious
modern work. There are periods in history at
which certain arts, crafts, or industries reached
[17]an extremely high level of excellence; and nothing
can be more valuable to modern workmen than
familiarity with these periods. Well-made replicas
have a value that is overlooked only by the inartistic.
Nor must it be forgotten that modern
objects of modern design will one day become
antiquities; and it should be our desire to assist
in the making of the period of our lifetime an age
to which future generations will look back for
guidance and teaching. Every man can, in this
manner, be of use to a nation, if only by learning
to reject poor work wherever he comes upon it—work
which he feels would not stand against the
criticism of Time; and thus it may be said that
archæology, which directs him to the best works of
the ancients, and sets him a standard and criterion,
should be an essential part of his education.

The third argument which I wish to employ
here to demonstrate the value of the study of
archæology and history to the layman is based
upon the assumption that patriotism is a desirable
ingredient in a man’s character. This is a premise
which assuredly will be admitted. True patriotism
is essential to the maintenance of a nation. It has
taken the place, among certain people, of loyalty to
the sovereign; for the armies which used to go to
war out of a blind loyalty to their king, now do so
from a sense of patriotism which is shared by the
monarch (if they happen to have the good fortune
to possess one).

Patriotism is often believed to consist of a love
[18]of one’s country, in an affection for the familiar
villages or cities, fields or streets, of one’s own
dwelling-place. This is a grievous error. Patriotism
should be an unqualified desire for the
welfare of the race as a whole. It is not really
patriotic for the Englishman to say, “I love England”:
it is only natural. It is not patriotic for
him to say, “I don’t think much of foreigners”: it
is only a form of narrowness of mind which, in
the case of England and certain other countries,
happens sometimes to be rather a useful attitude,
but in the case of several nations, of which a good
example is Egypt, would be detrimental to their
own interests. It was not unqualified patriotism
that induced the Greeks to throw off the Ottoman
yoke: it was largely dislike of the Turks. It is
not patriotism, that is to say undiluted concern for
the nation as a whole, which leads some of the
modern Egyptians to prefer an entirely native
government to the Anglo-Egyptian administration
now obtaining in that country: it is restlessness;
and I am fortunately able to define it thus without
the necessity of entering the arena of polemics by
an opinion as to whether that restlessness
is justified or not justified.

If patriotism were but the love of one’s tribe and
one’s dwelling-place, then such undeveloped or
fallen races as, for example, the American Indians,
could lay their downfall at the door of that sentiment;
since the exclusive love of the tribe prevented
the small bodies from amalgamating into
[19]one great nation for the opposing of the invader.
If patriotism were but the desire for government
without interference, then the breaking up of the
world’s empires would be urged, and such federations
as the United States of America would be
intolerable.

Patriotism is, and must be, the desire for the
progress and welfare of the whole nation, without
any regard whatsoever to the conditions under
which that progress takes place, and without any
prejudice in favour either of self-government or of
outside control. I have no hesitation in saying
that the patriotic Pole is he who is in favour of
Russian or German control of his country’s affairs;
for history has told him quite plainly that he
cannot manage them himself. The Nationalist in
any country runs the risk of being the poorest
patriot in the land, for his continuous cry is for
self-government, without any regard to the question
as to whether such government will be beneficial
to his nation in the long-run.

The value of history to patriotism, then, is to be
assessed under two headings. In the first place,
history defines the attitude which the patriot should
assume. It tells him, in the clear light of experience,
what is, and what is not, good for his nation,
and indicates to him how much he may claim for
his country. And in the second place, it gives to
the patriots of those nations which have shown
capacity and ability in the past a confidence in the
present; it permits in them the indulgence of that
[20]enthusiasm which will carry them, sure-footed,
along the path of glory.

Archæology, as the discovery and classification
of the facts of history, is the means by which we
may obtain a true knowledge of what has happened
in the past. It is the instrument with which we
may dissect legend, and extract from myth its
ingredients of fact. Cold history tells the Greek
patriot, eager to enter the fray, that he must set
little store by the precedent of the deeds of the
Trojan war. It tells the English patriot that the
“one jolly Englishman” of the old rhyme is not
the easy vanquisher of the “two froggy Frenchmen
and one Portugee” which tradition would have
him believe. He is thus enabled to steer a middle
course between arrant conceit and childish fright.
History tells him the actual facts: history is to
the patriot what “form” is to the racing man.

In the case of the English (Heaven be praised!)
history opens up a boundless vista for the patriotic.
The Englishman seldom realises how much he has
to be proud of in his history, or how loudly the
past cries upon him to be of good cheer. One
hears much nowadays of England’s peril, and it
is good that the red signals of danger should sometimes
be displayed. But let every Englishman
remember that history can tell him of greater
perils faced successfully; of mighty armies commanded
by the greatest generals the world has
ever known, held in check year after year, and
finally crushed by England; of vast fleets scattered
[21]or destroyed by English sailors; of almost impregnable
cities captured by British troops.
“There is something very characteristic,” writes
Professor Seeley,[1] “in the indifference which we
show towards the mighty phenomenon of the
diffusion of our race and the expansion of our
state. We seem, as it were, to have conquered
and peopled half the world in a fit of absence
of mind.”

The history of England, and later of the British
Empire, constitutes a tale so amazing that he who
has the welfare of the nation as a whole at heart—that
is to say, the true patriot—is justified in entertaining
the most optimistic thoughts for the
future. He should not be indifferent to the past:
he should bear it in mind all the time. Patriotism
may not often be otherwise than misguided if no
study of history has been made. The patriot of
one nation will wish to procure for his country a
freedom which history would show him to have
been its very curse; and the patriot of another
nation will encourage a nervousness and restraint
in his people which history would tell him was
unnecessary. The English patriot has a history
to read which, at the present time, it is especially
needful for him to consider; and, since Egyptology
is my particular province, I cannot better close
this argument than by reminding the modern
Egyptians that their own history of four thousand
years and its teaching must be considered by them
[22]when they speak of patriotism. A nation so
talented as the descendants of the Pharaohs, so
industrious, so smart and clever, should give a
far larger part of its attention to the arts, crafts,
and industries, of which Egyptian archæology has
to tell so splendid a story.

As a final argument for the value of the study
of history and archæology an aspect of the question
may be placed before the reader which will perhaps
be regarded as fanciful, but which, in all sincerity,
I believe to be sober sense.

In this life of ours which, under modern conditions,
is lived at so great a speed, there is a
growing need for a periodical pause wherein the
mind may adjust the relationship of the things
that have been to those that are. So rapidly are
our impressions received and assimilated, so individually
are they shaped or classified, that, in
whatever direction our brains lead us, we are
speedily carried beyond that province of thought
which is common to us all. A man who lives
alone finds himself, in a few months, out of touch
with the thought of his contemporaries; and,
similarly, a man who lives in what is called an
up-to-date manner soon finds himself grown
unsympathetic to the sober movement of the
world’s slow round-about.

Now, the man who lives alone presently developes
some of the recognised eccentricities of
the recluse, which, on his return to society, cause
him to be regarded as a maniac; and the man
[23]who lives entirely in the present cannot argue
that the characteristics which he has developed
are less maniacal because they are shared by his
associates. Rapidly he, too, has become eccentric;
and just as the solitary man must needs come into
the company of his fellows if he would retain a
healthy mind, so the man who lives in the present
must allow himself occasional intercourse with the
past if he would keep his balance.

Heraclitus, in a quotation preserved by Sextus
Empiricus,[1] writes: “It behoves us to follow the
common reason of the world; yet, though there
is a common reason in the world, the majority
live as though they possessed a wisdom peculiar
each unto himself alone.” Every one of us who
considers his mentality an important part of his
constitution should endeavour to give himself
ample opportunities of adjusting his mind to this
“common reason” which is the silver thread that
runs unbroken throughout history. We should
remember the yesterdays, that we may know what
the pother of to-day is about; and we should
foretell to-morrow not by to-day but by every
day that has been.

Forgetfulness is so common a human failing.
In our rapid transit through life we are so inclined
to forget the past stages of the journey. All
things pass by and are swallowed up in a moment
of time. Experiences crowd upon us; the events
of our life occur, are recorded by our busy brains,
[24]are digested, and are forgotten before the substance
of which they were made has resolved
into its elements. We race through the years,
and our progress is headlong through the days.

Everything, as it is done with, is swept up
into the basket of the past, and the busy handmaids,
unless we check them, toss the contents,
good and bad, on to the great rubbish heap of the
world’s waste. Loves, hates, gains, losses, all
things upon which we do not lay fierce and strong
hands, are gathered into nothingness, and, with a
few exceptions, are utterly forgotten.

And we, too, will soon have passed, and our
little brains which have forgotten so much will
be forgotten. We shall be throttled out of the
world and pressed by the clumsy hands of Death
into the mould of that same rubbish-hill of oblivion,
unless there be a stronger hand to save us. We
shall be cast aside, and left behind by the hurrying
crowd, unless there be those who will see to it
that our soul, like that of John Brown, goes
marching along. There is only one human force
stronger than death, and that force is History,
By it the dead are made to live again: history
is the salvation of the mortal man as religion is
the salvation of his immortal life.

Sometimes, then, in our race from day to day it
is necessary to stop the headlong progress of experience,
and, for an hour, to look back upon the
past. Often, before we remember to direct our
mind to it, that past is already blurred, and dim.
[25]The picture is out of focus, and turning from it
in sorrow instantly the flight of our time begins
again. This should not be. “There is,” says
Emerson, “a relationship between the hours of
our life and the centuries of time.” Let us give
history and archæology its due attention; for thus
not only shall we be rendering a service to all the
dead, not only shall we be giving a reason and a
usefulness to their lives, but we shall also lend to
our own thought a balance which in no otherwise
can be obtained, we shall adjust ourselves to the
true movement of the world, and, above all, we
shall learn how best to serve that nation to which
it is our inestimable privilege to belong.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER II.

THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE.

“History,” says Sir J. Seeley, “lies before science
as a mass of materials out of which a political
doctrine can be deduced…. Politics are vulgar
when they are not liberalised by history, and
history fades into mere literature when it loses
sight of its relation to practical politics….
Politics and history are only different aspects of
the same study.”[1]

These words, spoken by a great historian, form
the keynote of a book which has run into nearly
twenty editions; and they may therefore be
regarded as having some weight. Yet what
historian of old Egyptian affairs concerns himself
with the present welfare and future prospects of
the country, or how many statesmen in Egypt give
close attention to a study of the past? To the
former the Egypt of modern times offers no scope
for his erudition, and gives him no opportunity
of making “discoveries,” which is all he cares
about. To the latter, Egyptology appears to be
[27]but a pleasant amusement, the main value of
which is the finding of pretty scarabs suitable
for the necklaces of one’s lady friends. Neither
the one nor the other would for a moment admit
that Egyptology and Egyptian politics “are only
different aspects of the same study.” And yet
there can be no doubt that they are.

It will be argued that the historian of ancient
Egypt deals with a period so extremely remote
that it can have no bearing upon the conditions
of modern times, when the inhabitants of Egypt
have altered their language, religion, and customs,
and the Mediterranean has ceased to be the active
centre of the civilised world. But it is to be remembered
that the study of Egyptology carries
one down to the Muhammedan invasion without
much straining of the term, and merges then into
the study of the Arabic period at so many points
that no real termination can be given to the science;
while the fact of the remoteness of its beginnings
but serves to give it a greater value, since the
vista before the eyes is wider.

It is my object in this chapter to show that
the ancient history of Egypt has a real bearing
on certain aspects of the polemics of the country.
I need not again touch upon the matters which
were referred to on page 8 in order to demonstrate
this fact. I will take but one subject—namely,
that of Egypt’s foreign relations and her
wars in other lands. It will be best, for this purpose,
to show first of all that the ancient and
[28]modern Egyptians are one and the same people;
and, secondly, that the political conditions, broadly
speaking, are much the same now as they have
been throughout history.

Professor Elliot Smith, F.R.S., has shown clearly
enough, from the study of bones of all ages, that
the ancient and modern inhabitants of the Nile
Valley are precisely the same people anthropologically;
and this fact at once sets the matter
upon an unique footing: for, with the possible
exception of China, there is no nation in the
world which can be proved thus to have retained
its type for so long a period. This one fact makes
any parallel with Greece or Rome impossible. The
modern Greeks have not much in common, anthropologically,
with the ancient Greeks, for the
blood has become very mixed; the Italians are
not the same as the old Romans; the English
are the result of a comparatively recent conglomeration
of types. But in Egypt the subjects
of archaic Pharaohs, it seems certain, were exactly
similar to those of the modern Khedives, and new
blood has never been introduced into the nation
to an appreciable extent, not even by the Arabs.
Thus, if there is any importance in the bearing
of history upon politics, we have in Egypt a
better chance of appreciating it than we have in
the case of any other country.

It is true that the language has altered, but
this is not a matter of first-rate importance. A
Jew is not less typical because he speaks German,
[29]French, or English; and the cracking of skulls
in Ireland is introduced as easily in English as
it was in Erse. The old language of the Egyptian
hieroglyphs actually is not yet quite dead; for,
in its Coptic form, it is still spoken by many
Christian Egyptians, who will salute their friends
in that tongue, or bid them good-morning or good-night.
Ancient Egyptian in this form is read in
the Coptic churches; and God is called upon by
that same name which was given to Amon and
his colleagues. Many old Egyptian words have
crept into the Arabic language, and are now in
common use in the country; while often the old
words are confused with Arabic words of similar
sound. Thus, at Abydos, the archaic fortress is
now called the Shunet es Zebib, which in Arabic
would have the inexplicable meaning “the store-house
of raisins”; but in the old Egyptian language
its name, of similar sound, meant “the
fortress of the Ibis-jars,” several of these sacred
birds having been buried there in jars, after the
place had been disused as a military stronghold.
A large number of Egyptian towns still bear their
hieroglyphical names: Aswan, (Kom) Ombo, Edfu,
Esneh, Keft, Kus, Keneh, Dendereh, for example.
The real origin of these being now forgotten, some
of them have been given false Arabic derivations,
and stories have been invented to account for the
peculiar significance of the words thus introduced.
The word Silsileh in Arabic means “a chain,” and
a place in Upper Egypt which bears that name
[30]is now said to be so called because a certain king
here stretched a chain across the river to interrupt
the shipping; but in reality the name is
derived from a mispronounced hieroglyphical word
meaning “a boundary.” Similarly the town of
Damanhur in Lower Egypt is said to be the
place at which a great massacre took place, for
in Arabic the name may be interpreted as meaning
“rivers of blood,” whereas actually the name
in Ancient Egyptian means simply “the Town of
Horus.” The archæological traveller in Egypt
meets with instances of the continued use of the
language of the Pharaohs at every turn; and
there are few things that make the science of
Egyptology more alive, or remove it further from
the dusty atmosphere of the museum, than this
hearing of the old words actually spoken by the
modern inhabitants of the land.

The religion of Ancient Egypt, like those of
Greece and Rome, was killed by Christianity,
which largely gave place, at a later date, to
Muhammedanism; and yet, in the hearts of the
people there are still an extraordinary number
of the old pagan beliefs. I will mention a few
instances, taking them at random from my
memory.

In, ancient days the ithiphallic god Min was the
patron of the crops, who watched over the growth
of the grain. In modern times a degenerate figure
of this god Min, made of whitewashed wood and
mud, may be seen standing, like a scarecrow, in
[31]the fields throughout Egypt. When the sailors
cross the Nile they may often be heard singing
Ya Amuni, Ya Amuni, “O Amon, O Amon,” as
though calling upon that forgotten god for assistance.
At Aswan those who are about to travel
far still go up to pray at the site of the travellers’
shrine, which was dedicated to the gods of the
cataracts. At Thebes the women climb a certain
hill to make their supplications at the now lost
sanctuary of Meretsegert, the serpent-goddess of
olden times. A snake, the relic of the household
goddess, is often kept as a kind of pet in the
houses of the peasants. Barren women still go
to the ruined temples of the forsaken gods in the
hope that there is virtue in the stones; and I
myself have given permission to disappointed husbands
to take their childless wives to these places,
where they have kissed the stones and embraced
the figures of the gods. The hair of the jackal
is burnt in the presence of dying people, even of
the upper classes, unknowingly to avert the jackal-god
Anubis, the Lord of Death. A scarab representing
the god of creation is sometimes placed
in the bath of a young married woman to give
virtue to the water. A decoration in white paint
over the doorways of certain houses in the south
is a relic of the religious custom of placing a
bucranium there to avert evil. Certain temple-watchmen
still call upon the spirits resident in
the sanctuaries to depart before they will enter
the building. At Karnak a statue of the goddess
[32]Sekhmet is regarded with holy awe; and the goddess
who once was said to have massacred mankind
is even now thought to delight in slaughter. The
golden barque of Amon-Ra, which once floated
upon the sacred lake of Karnak, is said to be
seen sometimes by the natives at the present
time, who have not yet forgotten its former
existence. In the processional festival of Abu’l
Haggag, the patron saint of Luxor, whose mosque
and tomb stand upon the ruins of the Temple of
Amon, a boat is dragged over the ground in
unwitting remembrance of the dragging of the
boat of Amon in the processions of that god.
Similarly in the Mouled el Nebi procession at
Luxor, boats placed upon carts are drawn through
the streets, just as one may see them in the
ancient paintings and reliefs. The patron gods
of Kom Ombo, Horur and Sebek, yet remain in
the memories of the peasants of the neighbourhood
as the two brothers who lived in the temple
in the days of old. A robber entering a tomb
will smash the eyes of the figures of the gods
and deceased persons represented therein, that
they may not observe his actions, just as did
his ancestors four thousand years ago. At Gurneh
a farmer recently broke the arms of an ancient
statue, which lay half-buried near his fields, because
he believed that they had damaged his
crops. In the south of Egypt a pot of water
is placed upon the graves of the dead, that their
ghost, or ka, as it would have been called in old
[33]times, may not suffer from thirst; and the living
will sometimes call upon the name of the dead,
standing at night in the cemeteries.

The ancient magic of Egypt is still widely
practised, and many of the formulæ used in
modern times are familiar to the Egyptologist.
The Egyptian, indeed, lives in a world much
influenced by magic and thickly populated by
spirits, demons, and djins. Educated men holding
Government appointments, and dressing in the
smartest European manner, will describe their
miraculous adventures and their meetings with
djins. An Egyptian gentleman holding an important
administrative post, told me the other
day how his cousin was wont to change himself
into a cat at night time, and to prowl about
the town. When a boy, his father noticed this
peculiarity, and on one occasion chased and beat
the cat, with the result that the boy’s body next
morning was found to be covered with stripes and
bruises. The uncle of my informant once read
such strong language (magically) in a certain
book that it began to tremble violently, and
finally made a dash for it out of the window.
This same personage was once sitting beneath
a palm-tree with a certain magician (who, I fear,
was also a conjurer), when, happening to remark
on the clusters of dates twenty feet or so above
his head, his friend stretched his arms upwards
and his hands were immediately filled with the
fruit. At another time this magician left his
[34]overcoat by mistake in a railway carriage, and
only remembered it when the train was a mere
speck upon the horizon; but, on the utterance
of certain words, the coat immediately flew
through the air back to him.

I mention these particular instances because
they were told to me by educated persons; but
amongst the peasants even more incredible stories
are gravely accepted. The Omdeh, or headman,
of the village of Chaghb, not far from Luxor, submitted
an official complaint to the police a short
time ago against an afrit or devil which was doing
much mischief to him and his neighbours, snatching
up oil-lamps and pouring the oil over the
terrified villagers, throwing stones at passers-by,
and so forth. Spirits of the dead in like manner
haunt the living, and often do them mischief. At
Luxor, lately, the ghost of a well-known robber
persecuted his widow to such an extent that she
finally went mad. A remarkable parallel to this
case, dating from Pharaonic days, may be mentioned.
It is the letter of a haunted widower to
his dead wife, in which he asks her why she persecutes
him, since he was always kind to her
during her life, nursed her through illnesses, and
never grieved her heart.[1]

These instances might be multiplied, but those
which I have quoted will serve to show that the
old gods are still alive, and that the famous
magic of the Egyptians is not yet a thing of the
[35]past. Let us now turn to the affairs of everyday
life.

An archæological traveller in Egypt cannot fail
to observe the similarity between old and modern
customs as he rides through the villages and across
the fields. The houses, when not built upon the
European plan, are surprisingly like those of
ancient days. The old cornice still survives, and
the rows of dried palm stems, from which its form
was originally derived, are still to be seen on the
walls of gardens and courtyards. The huts or
shelters of dried corn-stalks, so often erected in
the fields, are precisely the same as those used in
prehistoric days; and the archaic bunches of corn-stalks
smeared with mud, which gave their form to
later stone columns, are set up to this day, though
their stone posterity are now in ruins. Looking
through the doorway of one of these ancient
houses, the traveller, perhaps, sees a woman
grinding corn or kneading bread in exactly the
same manner as her ancestress did in the days
of the Pharaohs. Only the other day a native
asked to be allowed to purchase from us some of
the ancient millstones lying in one of the Theban
temples, in order to re-use them on his farm. The
traveller will notice, in some shady corner, the
village barber shaving the heads and faces of his
patrons, just as he is seen in the Theban tomb-paintings
of thousands of years ago; and the small
boys who scamper across the road will have just
the same tufts of hair left for decoration on their
[36]shaven heads as had the boys of ancient Thebes
and Memphis. In another house, where a death
has occurred, the mourning women, waving the
same blue cloth which was the token of mourning
in ancient days, will toss their arms about in
gestures familiar to every student of ancient
scenes. Presently the funeral will issue forth,
and the men will sing that solemn yet cheery tune
which never fails to call to mind the far-famed
Maneros—that song which Herodotus describes
as a plaintive funeral dirge, and which Plutarch
asserts was suited at the same time to festive
occasions. In some other house a marriage will
be taking place, and the singers and pipers will,
in like manner, recall the scenes upon the monuments.
The former have a favourite gesture—the
placing of the hand behind the ear as they sing—which
is frequently shown in ancient representations
of such festive scenes. The dancing girls,
too, are here to be seen, their eyes and cheeks
heavily painted, as were those of their ancestresses;
and in their hands are the same tambourines as are
carried by their class in Pharaonic paintings and
reliefs. The same date-wine which intoxicated
the worshippers of the Egyptian Bacchus goes the
round of this village company, and the same food
stuff, the same small, flat loaves of bread, are
eaten.

Passing out into the fields the traveller observes
the ground raked into the small squares for irrigation
which the prehistoric farmer made; and the
[37]plough is shaped as it always was. The shadoof,
or water-hoist, is patiently worked as it has been
for thousands of years; while the cylindrical hoist
employed in Lower Egypt was invented and introduced
in Ptolemaic times. Threshing and winnowing
proceed in the manner represented on the
monuments, and the methods of sowing and
reaping have not changed. Along the embanked
roads, men, cattle, and donkeys file past against
the sky-line, recalling the straight rows of such
figures depicted so often upon the monuments.
Overhead there flies the vulture goddess Nekheb,
and the hawk Horus hovers near by. Across the
road ahead slinks the jackal, Anubis; under one’s
feet crawls Khepera, the scarab; and there, under
the sacred tree, sleeps the horned ram of Amon.
In all directions the hieroglyphs of the ancient
Egyptians pass to and fro, as though some old
temple-inscription had come to life. The letter m,
the owl, goes hooting past. The letter a, the
eagle, circles overhead; the sign ur, the wagtail,
flits at the roadside, chirping at the sign rekh,
the peewit. Along the road comes the sign ab,
the frolicking calf; and near it is ka, the bull;
while behind them walks the sign fa, a man
carrying a basket on his head. In all directions
are the figures from which the ancients made their
hieroglyphical script; and thus that wonderful old
writing at once ceases to be mysterious, a thing of
long ago, and one realises how natural a product of
the country it was.

[38]In a word, ancient and modern Egyptians are
fundamentally similar. Nor is there any great
difference to be observed between the country’s
relations with foreign powers in ancient days and
those of the last hundred years. As has been
seen in the last chapter, Egypt was usually
occupied by a foreign power, or ruled by a foreign
dynasty, just as at the present day; and a foreign
army was retained in the country during most of
the later periods of ancient history. There were
always numerous foreigners settled in Egypt, and
in Ptolemaic and Roman times Alexandria and
Memphis swarmed with them. The great powers
of the civilised world were always watching Egypt
as they do now, not always in a friendly attitude
to that one of themselves which occupied the
country; and the chief power with which Egypt
was concerned in the time of the Ramesside
Pharaohs inhabited Asia Minor and perhaps
Turkey, just as in the middle ages and the last
century. Then, as in modern times, Egypt had
much of her attention held by the Sudan, and
constant expeditions had to be made into the
regions above the cataracts. Thus it cannot be
argued that ancient history offers no precedent
for modern affairs because all things have now
changed. Things have changed extremely little,
broadly speaking; and general lines of conduct
have the same significance at the present time
as they had in the past.

I wish now to give an outline of Egypt’s relationship
[39]to her most important neighbour, Syria,
in order that the bearing of history upon modern
political matters may be demonstrated; for it
would seem that the records of the past make
clear a tendency which is now somewhat overlooked.
I employ this subject simply as an
example.

From the earliest historical times the Egyptians
have endeavoured to hold Syria and Palestine as a
vassal state. One of the first Pharaohs with whom
we meet in Egyptian history, King Zeser of Dynasty
III., is known to have sent a fleet to the Lebanon
in order to procure cedar wood, and there is some
evidence to show that he held sway over this
country. For how many centuries previous to
his reign the Pharaohs had overrun Syria we
cannot now say, but there is no reason to suppose
that Zeser initiated the aggressive policy of Egypt
in Asia. Sahura, a Pharaoh of Dynasty V., attacked
the Phoenician coast with his fleet, and returned
to the Nile Valley with a number of Syrian captives.
Pepi I. of the succeeding dynasty also
attacked the coast-cities, and Pepi II. had considerable
intercourse with Asia. Amenemhat I.,
of Dynasty XII., fought in Syria, and appears to
have brought it once more under Egyptian sway.
Senusert I. seems to have controlled the country
to some extent, for Egyptians lived there in some
numbers. Senusert III. won a great victory over
the Asiatics in Syria; and a stela and statue belonging
to Egyptian officials have been found at
[40]Gezer, between Jerusalem and the sea. After
each of the above-mentioned wars it is to be presumed
that the Egyptians held Syria for some
years, though little is now known of the events
of these far-off times.

During the Hyksos dynasties in Egypt there
lived a Pharaoh named Khyan who was of Semitic
extraction; and there is some reason to suppose
that he ruled from Baghdad to the Sudan, he and
his fathers having created a great Egyptian Empire
by the aid of foreign troops. Egypt’s connection
with Asia during the Hyksos rule is not
clearly defined, but the very fact that these
foreign kings were anxious to call themselves
“Pharaohs” shows that Egypt dominated in the
east end of the Mediterranean. The Hyksos kings
of Egypt very probably held Syria in fee, being
possessed of both countries, but preferring to hold
their court in Egypt.

We now come to the great Dynasty XVIII.,
and we learn more fully of the Egyptian invasions
of Syria. Ahmosis I. drove the Hyksos out of the
Delta and pursued them through Judah. His
successor, Amenhotep I., appears to have seized
all the country as far as the Euphrates; and
Thutmosis I., his son, was able to boast that he
ruled even unto that river. Thutmosis III.,
Egypt’s greatest Pharaoh, led invasion after invasion
into Syria, so that his name for generations
was a terror to the inhabitants. From the Euphrates
to the fourth cataract of the Nile the countries
[41]acknowledged him king, and the mighty Egyptian
fleet patrolled the seas. This Pharaoh fought no
less than seventeen campaigns in Asia, and he left
to his son the most powerful throne in the world.
Amenhotep II. maintained this empire and quelled
the revolts of the Asiatics with a strong hand.
Thutmosis IV., his son, conducted two expeditions
into Syria; and the next king, Amenhotep III.,
was acknowledged throughout that country.

That extraordinary dreamer, Akhnaton, the
succeeding Pharaoh, allowed the empire to pass
from him owing to his religious objections to war;
but, after his death, Tutankhamen once more led
the Egyptian armies into Asia. Horemheb also
made a bid for Syria; and Seti I. recovered Palestine.
Rameses II., his son, penetrated to North
Syria; but, having come into contact with the
new power of the Hittites, he was unable to hold
the country. The new Pharaoh, Merenptah, seized
Canaan and laid waste the land of Israel. A few
years later, Rameses III. led his fleet and his army
to the Syrian coast and defeated the Asiatics in
a great sea-battle. He failed to hold the country,
however, and after his death Egypt remained impotent
for two centuries. Then, under Sheshonk I.,
of Dynasty XXII., a new attempt was made, and
Jerusalem was captured. Takeloth II., of the
same dynasty, sent thither an Egyptian army
to help in the overthrow of Shalmaneser II.

From this time onwards the power of Egypt
had so much declined that the invasions into Syria
[42]of necessity became more rare. Shabaka of Dynasty
XXV. concerned himself deeply with Asiatic
politics, and attempted to bring about a state
of affairs which would have given him the opportunity
of seizing the country. Pharaoh Necho,
of the succeeding dynasty, invaded Palestine and
advanced towards the Euphrates. He recovered
for Egypt her Syrian province, but it was speedily
lost again. Apries, a few years later, captured the
Phoenician coast and invaded Palestine; but the
country did not remain for long under Egyptian
rule. It is not necessary to record all the Syrian
wars of the Dynasty of the Ptolemies. Egypt and
Asia were now closely connected, and at several
periods during this phase of Egyptian history the
Asiatic province came under the control of the
Pharaohs. The wars of Ptolemy I. in Syria were
conducted on a large scale. In the reign of
Ptolemy III. there were three campaigns, and I
cannot refrain from quoting a contemporary record
of the King’s powers if only for the splendour of its
wording:—

“The great King Ptolemy … having inherited
from his father the royalty of Egypt and
Libya and Syria and Phoenicia and Cyprus and
Lycia and Caria and the Cyclades, set out on
a campaign into Asia with infantry and cavalry
forces, a naval armament and elephants, both
Troglodyte and Ethiopic…. But having become
master of all the country within the Euphrates,
and of Cilicia and Pamphylia and Ionia and the
[43]Hellespont and Thrace, and of all the military
forces and elephants in these countries, and having
made the monarchs in all these places his
subjects, he crossed the Euphrates, and having
brought under him Mesopotamia and Babylonia
and Susiana and Persis and Media, and all the
rest as far as Bactriana … he sent forces through
the canals——” (Here the text breaks off.)

Later in this dynasty Ptolemy VII. was crowned
King of Syria, but the kingdom did not remain
long in his power. Then came the Romans, and
for many years Syria and Egypt were sister provinces
of one empire.

There is no necessity to record the close connection
between the two countries in Arabic times.
For a large part of that era Egypt and Syria
formed part of the same empire; and we constantly
find Egyptians fighting in Asia. Now,
under Edh Dhahir Bebars of the Baharide Mameluke
Dynasty, we see them helping to subject
Syria and Armenia; now, under El-Mansur
Kalaun, Damascus is captured; and now En
Nasir Muhammed is found reigning from Tunis
to Baghdad. In the Circassian Mameluke Dynasty
we see El Muayyad crushing a revolt in
Syria, and El Ashraf Bursbey capturing King
John of Cyprus and keeping his hand on Syria.
And so the tale continues, until, as a final picture,
we see Ibrahim Pasha leading the Egyptians into
Asia and crushing the Turks at Iconium.

Such is the long list of the wars waged by Egypt
[44]in Syria. Are we to suppose that these continuous
incursions into Asia have suddenly come to an
end? Are we to imagine that because there
has been a respite for a hundred years the precedent
of six thousand years has now to be disregarded?
By the recent reconquest of the Sudan
it has been shown that the old political necessities
still exist for Egypt in the south, impelling her
to be mistress of the upper reaches of the Nile. Is
there now no longer any chance of her expanding
in other directions should her hands become free?

The reader may answer with the argument that
in early days England made invasion after invasion
into France, yet ceased after a while to do so. But
this is no parallel. England was impelled to war
with France because the English monarchs believed
themselves to be, by inheritance, kings of a large
part of France; and when they ceased to believe
this they ceased to make war. The Pharaohs of
Egypt never considered themselves to be kings of
Syria, and never used any title suggesting an inherited
sovereignty. They merely held Syria as a
buffer state, and claimed no more than an overlordship
there. Now Syria is still a buffer state, and the
root of the trouble, therefore, still exists. Though
I must disclaim all knowledge of modern politics,
I am quite sure that it is no meaningless phrase
to say that England will most carefully hold this
tendency in check prevent an incursion into
Syria; but, with a strong controlling hand relaxed,
it would require more than human strength
[45]to eradicate an Egyptian tendency—nay, a habit,
of six thousand years’ standing. Try as she might,
Egypt, as far as an historian can see, would not
be able to prevent herself passing ultimately into
Syria again. How or when this would take place
an Egyptologist cannot see, for he is accustomed
to deal in long periods of time, and to consider
the centuries as others might the decades. It
might not come for a hundred years or more: it
might come suddenly quite by accident.

In 1907 there was a brief moment when Egypt
appeared to be, quite unknowingly, on the verge
of an attempted reconquest of her lost province.
There was a misunderstanding with Turkey regarding
the delineation of the Syrio-Sinaitic frontier;
and, immediately, the Egyptian Government took
strong action and insisted that the question should
be settled. Had there been bloodshed the seat
of hostilities would have been Syria; and supposing
that Egypt had been victorious, she would have
pushed the opposing forces over the North Syrian
frontier into Asia Minor, and when peace was
declared she would have found herself dictating
terms from a point of vantage three hundred miles
north of Jerusalem. Can it be supposed that she
would then have desired to abandon the reconquered
territory?

However, matters were settled satisfactorily with
the Porte, and the Egyptian Government, which
had never realised this trend of events, and had
absolutely no designs upon Syria, gave no further
[46]consideration to Asiatic affairs. In the eyes of the
modern onlookers the whole matter had developed
from a series of chances; but in the view of the
historian the moment of its occurrence was the
only chance about it, the fact of its occurrence
being inevitable according to the time-proven rules
of history. The phrase “England in Egypt” has
been given such prominence of late that a far more
important phrase, “Egypt in Asia,” has been
overlooked. Yet, whereas the former is a catch-word
of barely thirty years’ standing, the latter
has been familiar at the east end of the Mediterranean
for forty momentous centuries at the lowest
computation, and rings in the ears of the Egyptologist
all through the ages. I need thus no justification
for recalling it in these pages.

Now let us glance at Egypt’s north-western
frontier. Behind the deserts which spread to
the west of the Delta lies the oasis of Siwa; and
from here there is a continuous line of communication
with Tripoli and Tunis. Thus, during the
present winter (1910-11), the outbreak of cholera
at Tripoli has necessitated the despatch of quarantine
officials to the oasis in order to prevent the
spread of the disease into Egypt. Now, of late
years we have heard much talk regarding the
Senussi fraternity, a Muhammedan sect which is
said to be prepared to declare a holy war and
to descend upon Egypt. In 1909 the Egyptian
Mamur of Siwa was murdered, and it was freely
stated that this act of violence was the beginning
[47]of the trouble. I have no idea as to the real
extent of the danger, nor do I know whether
this bogie of the west, which is beginning to cause
such anxiety in Egypt in certain classes, is but
a creation of the imagination; but it will be
interesting to notice the frequent occurrence of
hostilities in this direction, since the history
of Egypt’s gateways is surely a study meet for
her guardians.

When the curtain first rises upon archaic times,
we find those far-off Pharaohs struggling with
the Libyans who had penetrated into the Delta
from Tripoli and elsewhere. In early dynastic
history they are the chief enemies of the Egyptians,
and great armies have to be levied to drive
them back through Siwa to their homes. Again
in Dynasty XII., Amenemhat I. had to despatch
his son to drive these people out of Egypt; and at
the beginning of Dynasty XVIII., Amenhotep I.
was obliged once more to give them battle. Seti
I. of Dynasty XIX. made war upon them, and
repulsed their invasion into Egypt. Rameses II.
had to face an alliance of Libyans, Lycians, and
others, in the western Delta. His son Merenptah
waged a most desperate war with them in order
to defend Egypt against their incursions, a war
which has been described as the most perilous in
Egyptian history; and it was only after a battle
in which nine thousand of the enemy were slain
that the war came to an end. Rameses III., however,
was again confronted with these persistent
[48]invaders, and only succeeded in checking them
temporarily. Presently the tables were turned,
and Dynasty XXII., which reigned so gloriously
in Egypt, was Libyan in origin. No attempt was
made thenceforth for many years to check the
peaceful entrance of Libyans into Egypt, and soon
that nation held a large part of the Delta. Occasional
mention is made of troubles upon the north-west
frontier, but little more is heard of any
serious invasions. In Arabic times disturbances
are not infrequent, and certain sovereigns, as for
example, El Mansur Kalaun, were obliged to invade
the enemy’s country, thus extending Egypt’s
power as far as Tunis.

There is one lesson which may be learnt from
the above facts—namely, that this frontier is somewhat
exposed, and that incursions from North
Africa by way of Siwa are historic possibilities.
If the Senussi invasion of Egypt is ever attempted
it will not, at any rate, be without
precedent.

When England entered Egypt in 1882 she
found a nation without external interests, a
country too impoverished and weak to think of
aught else but its own sad condition. The reviving
of this much-bled, anæmic people, and the
reorganisation of the Government, occupied the
whole attention of the Anglo-Egyptian officials,
and placed Egypt before their eyes in only this
one aspect. Egypt appeared to be but the Nile
Valley and the Delta; and, in truth, that was,
[49]and still is, quite as much as the hard-worked
officials could well administer. The one task of
the regeneration of Egypt was all absorbing, and
the country came to be regarded as a little land
wherein a concise, clearly-defined, and compact
problem could be worked out.

Now, while this was most certainly the correct
manner in which to face the question, and while
Egypt has benefited enormously by this singleness
of purpose in her officials, it was, historically,
a false attitude. Egypt is not a little country:
Egypt is a crippled Empire. Throughout her history
she has been the powerful rival of the people
of Asia Minor. At one time she was mistress of
the Sudan, Somaliland, Palestine, Syria, Libya,
and Cyprus; and the Sicilians, Sardinians, Cretans,
and even Greeks, stood in fear of the Pharaoh.
In Arabic times she held Tunis and Tripoli, and
even in the last century she was the foremost
Power at the east end of the Mediterranean.
Napoleon when he came to Egypt realised this
very thoroughly, and openly aimed to make her
once more a mighty empire. But in 1882 such
fine dreams were not to be considered: there was
too much work to be done in the Nile Valley itself.
The Egyptian Empire was forgotten, and Egypt
was regarded as permanently a little country.
The conditions which we found here we took to
be permanent conditions. They were not. We
arrived when the country was in a most unnatural
state as regards its foreign relations; and we were
[50]obliged to regard that state as chronic. This,
though wise, was absolutely incorrect. Egypt in
the past never has been for more than a short
period a single country; and all history goes to
show that she will not always be single in the
future.

With the temporary loss of the Syrian province
Egypt’s need for a navy ceased to exist; and the
fact that she is really a naval power has now
passed from men’s memory. Yet it was not much
more than a century ago that Muhammed Ali
fought a great naval battle with the Turks, and
utterly defeated them. In ancient history the
Egyptian navy was the terror of the Mediterranean,
and her ships policed the east coast of
Africa. In prehistoric times the Nile boats were
built, it would seem, upon a seafaring plan: a fact
that has led some scholars to suppose that the
land was entered and colonised from across the
waters. We talk of Englishmen as being born to
the sea, as having a natural and inherited tendency
towards “business upon great waters”; and
yet the English navy dates from the days of
Queen Elizabeth. It is true that the Plantagenet
wars with France checked what was perhaps already
a nautical bias, and that had it not been for
the Norman conquest, England, perchance would
have become a sea power at an earlier date. But
at best the tendency is only a thousand years old.
In Egypt it is seven or eight thousand years old
at the lowest computation. It makes one smile to
[51]think of Egypt as a naval power. It is the business
of the historian to refrain from smiling, and
to remark only that, absurd as it may sound,
Egypt’s future is largely upon the water as her
past has been. It must be remembered that she
was fighting great battles in huge warships three
or four hundred feet in length at a time when
Britons were paddling about in canoes.

One of the ships built by the Pharaoh Ptolemy
Philopator was four hundred and twenty feet long,
and had several banks of oars. It was rowed by
four thousand sailors, while four hundred others
managed the sails. Three thousand soldiers were
also carried upon its decks. The royal dahabiyeh
which this Pharaoh used upon the Nile was three
hundred and thirty feet long, and was fitted with
state rooms and private rooms of considerable size.
Another vessel contained, besides the ordinary
cabins, large bath-rooms, a library, and an astronomical
observatory. It had eight towers, in
which there were machines capable of hurling
stones weighing three hundred pounds or more,
and arrows eighteen feet in length. These huge
vessels were built some two centuries before Cæsar
landed in Britain.[1]

In conclusion, then, it must be repeated that
the present Nile-centred policy in Egypt, though
infinitely best for the country at this juncture, is
an artificial one, unnatural to the nation except
as a passing phase; and what may be called the
[52]Imperial policy is absolutely certain to take its
place in time, although the Anglo-Egyptian Government,
so long as it exists, will do all in its power
to check it. History tells us over and over again
that Syria is the natural dependant of Egypt,
fought for or bargained for with the neighbouring
countries to the north; that the Sudan is likewise
a natural vassal which from time to time revolts
and has to be reconquered; and that Egypt’s most
exposed frontier lies on the north-west. In conquering
the Sudan at the end of the nineteenth
century the Egyptians were but fulfilling their
destiny: it was a mere accident that their arms
were directed against a Mahdi. In discussing
seriously the situation in the western oases, they
are working upon the precise rules laid down by
history. And if their attention is not turned in
the far future to Syria, they will be defying rules
even more precise, and, in the opinion of those
who have the whole course of Egyptian history
spread before them, will but be kicking against
the pricks. Here surely we have an example of
the value of the study of a nation’s history, which
is not more nor less than a study of its political
tendencies.

Speaking of the relationship of history to politics,
Sir J. Seeley wrote: “I tell you that when
you study English history, you study not the past
of England only but her future. It is the welfare
of your country, it is your whole interest as citizens,
that is in question when you study history.”
[53]These words hold good when we deal with Egyptian
history, and it is our business to learn the
political lessons which the Egyptologist can teach
us, rather than to listen to his dissertations upon
scarabs and blue glaze. Like the astronomers of
old, the Egyptologist studies, as it were, the stars,
and reads the future in them; but it is not the
fashion for kings to wait upon his pronouncements
any more! Indeed he reckons in such very long
periods of time, and makes startling statements
about events which probably will not occur for
very many years to come, that the statesman,
intent upon his task, has some reason to declare
that the study of past ages does not assist him
to deal with urgent affairs. Nevertheless, in all
seriousness, the Egyptologist’s study is to be considered
as but another aspect of statecraft, and he
fails in his labours if he does not make this his
point of view.

In his arrogant manner the Egyptologist will
remark that modern politics are of too fleeting a
nature to interest him. In answer, I would tell
him that if he sits studying his papyri and his
mummies without regard for the fact that he is
dealing with a nation still alive, still contributing
its strength to spin the wheel of the world around,
then are his labours worthless and his brains misused.
I would tell him that if his work is paid
for, then is he a robber if he gives no return in
information which will be of practical service to
Egypt in some way or another. The Egyptian
[54]Government spends enormous sums each year
upon the preservation of the magnificent relics
of bygone ages—relics for which, I regret to say,
the Egyptians themselves care extremely little.
Is this money spent, then, to amuse the tourist in
the land, or simply to fulfil obligations to ethical
susceptibilities? No; there is but one justification
for this very necessary expenditure of public
money—namely, that these relics are regarded, so
to speak, as the school-books of the nation, which
range over a series of subjects from pottery-making
to politics, from stone-cutting to statecraft.
The future of Egypt may be read upon the walls
of her ancient temples and tombs. Let the
Egyptologist never forget, in the interest and
excitement of his discoveries, what is the real
object of his work.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER III.

THE NECESSITY OF ARCHÆOLOGY TO THE
GAIETY OF THE WORLD.

When a great man puts a period to his existence
upon earth by dying, he is carefully buried in a
tomb, and a monument is set up to his glory in
the neighbouring church. He may then be said
to begin his second life, his life in the memory of
the chronicler and historian. After the lapse of
an æon or two the works of the historian, and perchance
the tomb itself, are rediscovered; and the
great man begins his third life, now as a subject
of discussion and controversy amongst archæologists
in the pages of a scientific journal. It may
be supposed that the spirit of the great man, not
a little pleased with its second life, has an extreme
distaste for his third. There is a dead atmosphere
about it which sets him yawning as only his grave
yawned before. The charm has been taken from
his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them.
He must feel towards the archæologist much as a
young man feels towards his cold-blooded parent
by whom his love affair has just been found out.
[56]The public, too, if by chance it comes upon this
archæological journal, finds the discussion nothing
more than a mental gymnastic, which, as the
reader drops off to sleep, gives him the impression
that the writer is a man of profound brain capacity,
but, like the remains of the great man of olden
times, as dry as dust.

There is one thing, however, which has been
overlooked. This scientific journal does not contain
the ultimate results of the archæologist’s
researches. It contains the researches themselves.
The public, so to speak, has been listening to the
pianist playing his morning scales, has been
watching the artist mixing his colours, has been
examining the unshaped block of marble and the
chisels in the sculptor’s studio. It must be confessed,
of course, that the archæologist has so
enjoyed his researches that often the ultimate
result has been overlooked by him. In the case of
Egyptian archæology, for example, there are only
two Egyptologists who have ever set themselves to
write a readable history,[1] whereas the number of
books which record the facts of the science is legion.

The archæologist not infrequently lives, for a
large part of his time, in a museum, a somewhat
dismal place. He is surrounded by rotting tapestries,
decaying bones, crumbling stones, and rusted
or corroded objects. His indoor work has
paled his cheek, and his muscles are not like iron
bands. He stands, often, in the contiguity to an
[57]ancient broadsword most fitted to demonstrate the
fact that he could never use it. He would probably
be dismissed his curatorship were he to tell of
any dreams which might run in his head—dreams
of the time when those tapestries hung upon the
walls of barons’ banquet-halls, or when those stones
rose high above the streets of Camelot.

Moreover, those who make researches independently
must needs contribute their results to scientific
journals, written in the jargon of the learned.
I came across a now forgotten journal, a short time
ago, in which an English gentleman, believing
that he had made a discovery in the province of
Egyptian hieroglyphs, announced it in ancient
Greek. There would be no supply of such pedantic
swagger were there not a demand for it.

Small wonder, then, that the archæologist is
often represented as partaking somewhat of the
quality of the dust amidst which he works. It is
not necessary here to discuss whether this estimate
is just or not: I wish only to point out its paradoxical
nature.

More than any other science, archæology might
be expected to supply its exponents with stuff
that, like old wine, would fire the blood and
stimulate the senses. The stirring events of the
Past must often be reconstructed by the archæologist
with such precision that his prejudices are
aroused, and his sympathies are so enlisted as to
set him fighting with a will under this banner or
under that. The noise of the hardy strife of young
[58]nations is not yet silenced for him, nor have the
flags and the pennants faded from sight. He has
knowledge of the state secrets of kings, and, all
along the line, is an intimate spectator of the
crowded pageant of history. The caravan-masters
of the elder days, the admirals of the “great green
sea” the captains of archers, have related their
adventures to him; and he might repeat to you
their stories. Indeed, he has such a tale to tell
that, looking at it in this light, one might expect
his listeners all to be good fighting men and noble
women. It might be supposed that the archæologist
would gather around him only men who have
pleasure in the road that leads over the hills, and
women who have known the delight of the open.
One has heard so often of the “brave days of old”
that the archæologist might well be expected to
have his head stuffed with brave tales and little
else.

His range, however, may be wider than this. To
him, perhaps, it has been given to listen to the voice
of the ancient poet, heard as a far-off whisper; to
breathe in forgotten gardens the perfume of long
dead flowers; to contemplate the love of women
whose beauty is all perished in the dust; to hearken
to the sound of the harp and the sistra, to be the
possessor of the riches of historical romance. Dim
armies have battled around him for the love of
Helen; shadowy captains of sea-going ships have
sung to him through the storm the song of the
sweethearts left behind them; he has feasted with
[59]sultans, and kings’ goblets have been held to his
lips; he has watched Uriah the Hittite sent to the
forefront of the battle.

Thus, were he to offer a story, one might now
suppose that there would gather around him, not
the men of muscle, but a throng of sallow listeners,
as improperly expectant as were those who hearkened
under the moon to the narrations of Boccaccio,
or, in old Baghdad, gave ear to the tales of the
thousand and one nights. One might suppose
that his audience would be drawn from those
classes most fondly addicted to pleasure, or most
nearly representative, in their land and in their
time, of the light-hearted and not unwanton races
of whom he had to tell. For his story might be
expected to be one wherein wine and women and
song found countenance. Even were he to tell of
ancient tragedies and old sorrows, he would still
make his appeal, one might suppose, to gallants
and their mistresses, to sporting men and women
of fashion, just as, in the mournful song of Rosabelle,
Sir Walter Scott is able to address himself
to the “ladies gay,” or Coleridge in his sad “Ballad
of the Dark Ladie” to “fair maids.”

Who could better arrest the attention of the
coxcomb than the archæologist who has knowledge
of silks and scents now lost to the living world?
To the gourmet who could more appeal than the
archæologist who has made abundant acquaintance
with the forgotten dishes of the East? Who could
so surely thrill the senses of the courtesan than the
[60]archæologist who can relate that which was whispered
by Anthony in the ear of Cleopatra? To
the gambler who could be more enticing than the
archæologist who has seen kings play at dice for
their kingdoms? The imaginative, truly, might
well collect the most highly disreputable audience
to listen to the tales of the archæologist.

But no, these are not the people who are anxious
to catch the pearls which drop from his mouth.
Do statesmen and diplomatists, then, listen to him
who can unravel for them the policies of the Past?
Do business men hasten from Threadneedle Street
and Wall Street to sit at his feet, that they may
have instilled into them a little of the romance of
ancient money? I fear not.

Come with me to some provincial town, where
this day Professor Blank is to deliver one of his
archæological lectures at the Town Hall. We
are met at the door by the secretary of the
local archæological society: a melancholy lady in
green plush, who suffers from St Vitus’s dance.
Gloomily we enter the hall and silently accept the
seats which are indicated to us by an unfortunate
gentleman with a club-foot. In front of us an
elderly female with short hair is chatting to a very
plain young woman draped like a lay figure. On
the right an emaciated man with a very bad cough
shuffles on his chair; on the left two old grey-beards
grumble to one another about the weather,
a subject which leads up to the familiar “Mine
catches me in the small of the back”; while
[61]behind us the inevitable curate, of whose appearance
it would be trite to speak, describes to an
astonished old lady the recent discovery of the
pelvis of a mastodon.

The professor and the aged chairman step on to
the platform; and, amidst the profoundest gloom,
the latter rises to pronounce the prefatory rigmarole.
“Archæology,” he says, in a voice of brass,
“is a science which bars its doors to all but the
most erudite; for, to the layman who has not been
vouchsafed the opportunity of studying the dusty
volumes of the learned, the bones of the dead will
not reveal their secrets, nor will the crumbling
pediments of naos and cenotaph, the obliterated
tombstones, or the worm-eaten parchments, tell
us their story. To-night, however, we are privileged;
for Professor Blank will open the doors for
us that we may gaze for a moment upon that
solemn charnel-house of the Past in which he
has sat for so many long hours of inductive
meditation.”

And the professor by his side, whose head, perhaps,
was filled with the martial music of the long-lost
hosts of the Lord, or before whose eyes there
swayed the entrancing forms of the dancing-girls
of Babylon, stares horrified from chairman to
audience. He sees crabbed old men and barren
old women before him, afflicted youths and fatuous
maidens; and he realises at once that the golden
keys which he possesses to the gates of the treasury
of the jewelled Past will not open the doors of
[62]that charnel-house which they desire to be shown.
The scent of the king’s roses fades from his nostrils,
the Egyptian music which throbbed in his ears is
hushed, the glorious illumination of the Palace of
a Thousand Columns is extinguished; and in the
gathering gloom we leave him fumbling with a
rusty key at the mildewed door of the Place of
Bones.

Why is it, one asks, that archæology is a thing
so misunderstood? Can it be that both lecturer
and audience have crushed down that which was
in reality uppermost in their minds: that a shy
search for romance has led these people to the
Town Hall? Or perchance archæology has become
to them something not unlike a vice, and to listen
to an archæological lecture is their remaining
chance of being naughty. It may be that, having
one foot in the grave, they take pleasure in kicking
the moss from the surrounding tombstones
with the other; or that, being denied, for one
reason or another, the jovial society of the living,
like Robert Southey’s “Scholar” their hopes are
with the dead.

Be the explanation what it may, the fact is
indisputable that archæology is patronised by
those who know not its real meaning. A man
has no more right to think of the people of old
as dust and dead bones than he has to think of
his contemporaries as lumps of meat. The true
archæologist does not take pleasure in skeletons
as skeletons, for his whole effort is to cover them
[63]decently with flesh and skin once more, and to
put some thoughts back into the empty skulls.
He sets himself to hide again the things which
he would not intentionally lay bare. Nor does he
delight in ruined buildings: rather he deplores
that they are ruined. Coleridge wrote like the
true archæologist when he composed that most
magical poem “Khubla Khan”—

And those who would have the pleasure-domes
of the gorgeous Past reconstructed for them must
turn to the archæologist; those who would see
the damsel with the dulcimer in the gardens of
Xanadu must ask of him the secret, and of none
other. It is true that, before he can refashion
the dome or the damsel, he will have to grub his
way through old refuse heaps till he shall lay bare
the ruins of the walls and expose the bones of
the lady. But this is the “dirty work”; and the
mistake which is made lies here: that this preliminary
dirty work is confused with the final
clean result. An artist will sometimes build up
his picture of Venus from a skeleton bought from
an old Jew round the corner; and the smooth
white paper which he uses will have been made
from putrid rags and bones. Amongst painters
themselves these facts are not hidden, but by
[64]the public they are most carefully obscured. In
the case of archæology, however, the tedious
details of construction are so placed in the foreground
that the final picture is hardly noticed
at all. As well might one go to Rheims to see
men fly, and be shown nothing else but screws
and nuts, steel rods and cog-wheels. Originally
the fault, perhaps, lay with the archæologist; now
it lies both with him and with the public. The
public has learnt to ask to be shown the works,
and the archæologist is often so proud of them
that he forgets to mention the purpose of the
machine.

A Roman statue of bronze, let us suppose, is
discovered in the Thames valley. It is so corroded
and eaten away that only an expert could
recognise that it represents a reclining goddess.
In this condition it is placed in the museum, and
a photograph of it is published in ‘The Graphic.’
Those who come to look at it in its glass case
think it is a bunch of grapes, or possibly a
monkey: those who see its photograph say that
it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone or
a fish in convulsions.

The archæologist alone holds its secret, and
only he can see it as it was. He alone can
know the mind of the artist who made it, or
interpret the full meaning of the conception. It
might have been expected, then, that the public
would demand, and the archæologist delightedly
furnish, a model of the figure as near to the
[65]original as possible; or, failing that, a restoration
in drawing, or even a worded description of its
original beauty. But no: the public, if it wants
anything, wants to see the shapeless object in
all its corrosion; and the archæologist forgets
that it is blind to aught else but that corrosion.
One of the main duties of the archæologist is
thus lost sight of: his duty as Interpreter and
Remembrancer of the Past.

All the riches of olden times, all the majesty,
all the power, are the inheritance of the present
day; and the archæologist is the recorder of this
fortune. He must deal in dead bones only so far
as the keeper of a financial fortune must deal in
dry documents. Behind those documents glitters
the gold, and behind those bones shines the
wonder of the things that were. And when an
object once beautiful has by age become unsightly,
one might suppose that he would wish to show
it to none save his colleagues or the reasonably
curious layman. When a man makes the statement
that his grandmother, now in her ninety-ninth
year, was once a beautiful woman, he does
not go and find her to prove his words and
bring her tottering into the room: he shows a
picture of her as she was; or, if he cannot
find one, he describes what good evidence tells
him was her probable appearance. In allowing
his controlled and sober imagination thus
to perform its natural functions, though it would
never do to tell his grandmother so, he becomes
[66]an archæologist, a remembrancer of the
Past.

In the case of archæology, however, the public
does not permit itself so to be convinced. In the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford excellent facsimile
electrotypes of early Greek weapons are exhibited;
and these have far more value in bringing the
Past before us than the actual weapons of that
period, corroded and broken, would have. But
the visitor says, “These are shams,” and passes on.

It will be seen, then, that the business of
archæology is often misunderstood both by archæologists
and by the public; and that there is
really no reason to believe, with Thomas Earle,
that the real antiquarian loves a thing the
better for that it is rotten and stinketh. That
the impression has gone about is his own fault,
for he has exposed too much to view the mechanism
of his work; but it is also the fault of the
public for not asking of him a picture of things
as they were.

Man is by nature a creature of the present.
It is only by an effort that he can consider the
future, it is often quite impossible for him
to give any heed at all to the Past. The days
of old are so blurred and remote that it seems
right to him that any relic from them should,
by the maltreatment of Time, be unrecognisable.
The finding of an old sword, half-eaten by rust,
will only please him in so far as it shows him
once more by its sad condition the great gap
[67]between those days and these, and convinces him
again of the sole importance of the present. The
archæologist, he will tell you, is a fool if he
expects him to be interested in a wretched old
bit of scrap-iron. He is right. It would be as
rash to suppose that he would find interest in
an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it
would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to
find fascination in the nuts and screws. The
true archæologist would hide that corroded weapon
in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone
could see it. For he recognises that it is only
the sword which is as good as new that impresses
the public; it is only the Present that
counts. That is the real reason why he is an
archæologist. He has turned to the Past because
he is in love with the Present. He, more than
any man, worships at the altar of the goddess
of To-day; and he is so desirous of extending
her dominion that he has adventured, like a
crusader, into the lands of the Past in order to
subject them to her. Adoring the Now, he would
resent the publicity of anything which so obviously
suggested the Then as a rust-eaten old blade.
His whole business is to hide the gap between
Yesterday and To-day; and, unless a man is
initiate, he would have him either see the perfect
sword as it was when it sought the foeman’s
bowels, or see nothing. The Present is too small
for him; and it is therefore that he calls so
insistently to the Past to come forth from the
[68]darkness to augment it. The ordinary man lives
in the Present, and he will tell one that the
archæologist lives in the Past. This is not so.
The layman, in the manner of the Little Englander,
lives in a small and confined Present;
but the archæologist, like a true Imperialist,
ranges through all time, and calls it not the
Past but the Greater Present.

The archæologist is not, or ought not to be,
lacking in vivacity. One might say that he is
so sensible to the charms of society that, finding
his companions too few in number, he has drawn
the olden times to him to search them for jovial
men and agreeable women. It might be added
that he has so laughed at jest and joke that,
fearing lest the funds of humour run dry, he has
gathered the laughter of all the years to his
enrichment. Certainly he has so delighted in
noble adventure and stirring action that he finds
his newspaper insufficient to his needs, and fetches
to his aid the tales of old heroes. In fact, the
archæologist is so enamoured of life that he would
raise all the dead from their graves. He will not
have it that the men of old are dust: he would
bring them to him to share with him the sunlight
which he finds so precious. He is so much
an enemy of Death and Decay that he would
rob them of their harvest; and, for every life
the foe has claimed, he would raise up, if
he could, a memory that would continue to live.

The meaning of the heading which has been
[69]given to this chapter is now becoming clear, and
the direction of the argument is already apparent.
So far it has been my purpose to show that the
archæologist is not a rag-and-bone man, though
the public generally thinks he is, and he often
thinks he is himself. The attempt has been made
to suggest that archæology ought not to consist
in sitting in a charnel-house amongst the dead,
but rather in ignoring that place and taking the
bones into the light of day, decently clad in flesh
and finery. It has now to be shown in what
manner this parading of the Past is needful to
the gaiety of the Present.

Amongst cultured people whose social position
makes it difficult for them to dance in circles on
the grass in order to express or to stimulate their
gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not
permit them to sing a merry song of sixpence
as they trip down the streets, there is some
danger of the fire of merriment dying for want
of fuel. Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has
been encouraged, so that the mind at least, if
not the body, may skip about and clap its hands.
A portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading
his ‘Punch’ in the club, is, after all, giving play
to precisely those same humours which in ancient
days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to
kiss the girls or to perform any other merry joke.
It is necessary, therefore, ever to enlarge the
stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing,
if thoughts are to be kept young and eyes
[70]bright in this age of restraint. What would
Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster
it? What would the Christmas numbers do
without the pictures of our great-grandparents’
coaches snow-bound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth
century, of jesters at the courts of the barons?
What should we do without the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’
the ‘Compleat Angler,’ ‘Pepys’ Diary,’ and
all the rest of the ancient books? And, going
back a few centuries, what an amount we should
miss had we not ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ the ‘Odyssey,’
the tales of the Trojan War, and so on. It is
from the archæologist that one must expect the
augmentation of this supply; and just in that
degree in which the existing supply is really a
necessary part of our equipment, so archæology,
which looks for more, is necessary to our gaiety.

In order to keep his intellect undulled by the
routine of his dreary work, Matthew Arnold was
wont to write a few lines of poetry each day.
Poetry, like music and song, is an effective dispeller
of care; and those who find Omar Khayyam
or “In Memoriam” incapable of removing the
of burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate
the “Owl and the Pussy-cat,” or the Bab Ballads.
In some form or other verse and song are closely
linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age
has its interests and its charm.

[71]That is probably from the Greek of Plato, a
writer who is not much read by the public at
large, and whose works are the legitimate property
of the antiquarian. It suffices to show that it is
not only to the moderns that we have to look
for dainty verse that is conducive to a light
heart. The following lines are from the ancient
Egyptian:—

Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely;
and the reader will admit that there is as much
of a lilt about those which are here quoted as there
is about the majority of the ditties which he has
hummed to himself in his hour of contentment.
Here is Philodemus’ description of his mistress’s
charms:—

And here is an ancient Egyptian’s description of
not very dissimilar phenomena:—

Does not the archæologist perform a service
[72]to his contemporaries by searching out such
rhymes and delving for more? They bring with
them, moreover, so subtle a suggestion of bygone
romance, they are backed by so fair a scene of
Athenian luxury or Theban splendour, that they
possess a charm not often felt in modern verse.
If it is argued that there is no need to increase
the present supply of such ditties, since they are
really quite unessential to our gaiety, the answer
may be given that no nation and no period has
ever found them unessential; and a light heart
has been expressed in this manner since man came
down from the trees.

Let us turn now to another consideration. For
a man to be light of heart he must have confidence
in humanity. He cannot greet the morn
with a smiling countenance if he believes that
he and his fellows are slipping down the broad
path which leads to destruction. The archæologist
never despairs of mankind; for he has seen nations
rise and fall till he is almost giddy, but he knows
that there has never been a general deterioration.
He realises that though a great nation may suffer
defeat and annihilation, it is possible for it to go
down in such a thunder that the talk of it
stimulates other nations for all time. He sees,
if any man can, that all things work together for
happiness. He has observed the cycle of events,
the good years and the bad; and in an evil time
he is comforted by the knowledge that the good
will presently roll round again. Thus the lesson
[73]which he can teach is a very real necessity to
that contentment of mind which lies at the root
of all gaiety.

Again, a man cannot be permanently happy
unless he has a just sense of proportion. He
who is too big for his boots must needs limp;
and he who has a swollen head is in perpetual
discomfort. The history of the lives of men, the
history of the nations, gives one a fairer sense
of proportion than does almost any other study.
In the great company of the men of old he cannot
fail to assess his true value: if he has any conceit
there is a greater than he to snub him; if he has
a poor opinion of his powers there is many a fool
with whom to contrast himself favourably. If
he would risk his fortune on the spinning of a
coin, being aware of the prevalence of his good-luck,
archæology will tell him that the best luck
will change; or if, when in sore straits, he asks
whether ever a man was so unlucky, archæology
will answer him that many millions of men have
been more unfavoured than he. Archæology
provides a precedent for almost every event or
occurrence where modern inventions are not involved;
and, in this manner, one may reckon
their value and determine their trend. Thus
many of the small worries which cause so leaden
a weight to lie upon the heart and mind are by
the archæologist ignored; and many of the larger
calamities by him are met with serenity.

But not only does the archæologist learn to
[74]estimate himself and his actions: he learns also
to see the relationship in which his life stands
to the course of Time. Without archæology a
man may be disturbed lest the world be about
to come to an end: after a study of history he
knows that it has only just begun; and that
gaiety which is said to have obtained “when the
world was young” is to him, therefore, a present
condition. By studying the ages the archæologist
learns to reckon in units of a thousand years; and
it is only then that that little unit of threescore-and-ten
falls into its proper proportion. “A
thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening
gone,” says the hymn, but it is only the archæologist
who knows the meaning of the words; and
it is only he who can explain that great discrepancy
in the Christian faith between the statement
“Behold, I come quickly” and the actual fact.
A man who knows where he is in regard to his
fellows, and realises where he stands in regard
to Time, has learnt a lesson of archæology which
is as necessary to his peace of mind as his peace
of mind is necessary to his gaiety.

It is not needful, however, to continue to point
out the many ways in which archæology may be
shown to be necessary to happiness. The reader
will have comprehended the trend of the argument,
and, if he be in sympathy with it, he will
not be unwilling to develop the theme for himself.
Only one point, therefore, need here be taken
up. It has been reserved to the end of this
[75]chapter, for, by its nature, it closes all arguments.
I refer to Death.

Death, as we watch it around us, is the black
menace of the heavens which darkens every man’s
day; Death, coming to our neighbour, puts a
period to our merry-making; Death, seen close
beside us, calls a halt in our march of pleasure.
But let those who would wrest her victory from
the grave turn to a study of the Past, where
all is dead yet still lives, and they will find that
the horror of life’s cessation is materially lessened.
To those who are familiar with the course of history,
Death seems, to some extent, but the happy
solution of the dilemma of life. So many men
have welcomed its coming that one begins to feel
that it cannot be so very terrible. Of the death
of a certain Pharaoh an ancient Egyptian wrote:
“He goes to heaven like the hawks, and his
feathers are like those of the geese; he rushes
at heaven like a crane, he kisses heaven like the
falcon, he leaps to heaven like the locust”; and
we who read these words can feel that to rush
eagerly at heaven like the crane would be a
mighty fine ending of the pother. Archæology,
and especially Egyptology, in this respect is a
bulwark to those who find the faith of their
fathers wavering; for, after much study, the
triumphant assertion which is so often found in
Egyptian tombs—”Thou dost not come dead to
thy sepulchre, thou comest living”—begins to
take hold of the imagination. Death has been
[76]the parent of so much goodness, dying men have
cut such a dash, that one looks at it with an
awakening interest. Even if the sense of the
misfortune of death is uppermost in an archæologist’s
mind, he may find not a little comfort in
having before him the example of so many good,
men, who, in their hour, have faced that great
calamity with squared shoulders.

“When Death comes,” says a certain sage of
ancient Egypt, “it seizes the babe that is on the
breast of its mother as well as he that has become
an old man. When thy messenger comes to carry
thee away, be thou found by him ready.” Why,
here is our chance; here is the opportunity for
that flourish which modesty, throughout our life,
has forbidden to us! John Tiptoft, Earl of
Worcester, when the time came for him to lay
his head upon the block, bade the executioner
smite it off with three strokes as a courtesy to
the Holy Trinity. King Charles the Second, as
he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those
who stood around him for “being an unconscionable
time adying.” The story is familiar
of Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, who, when he had
been asked whether he were wounded, replied,
“Not wounded: killed,” and thereupon expired.
The Past is full of such incidents; and so inspiring
are they that Death comes to be regarded as a
most stirring adventure. The archæologist, too,
better than any other, knows the vastness of the
dead men’s majority; and if, like the ancients,
[77]he believes in the Elysian fields, where no death
is and decay is unknown, he alone will realise
the excellent nature of the company into which
he will there be introduced.

There is, however, far more living going on in
the world than dying; and there is more happiness
(thanks be!) than sorrow. Thus the archæologist
has a great deal more of pleasure than of pain
to give to us for our enrichment. The reader
will here enter an objection. He will say: “This
may be true of archæology in general, but in the
case of Egyptology, with which we are here mostly
concerned, he surely has to deal with a sad and
solemn people.” The answer will be found in the
next chapter. No nation in the world’s history
has been so gay, so light-hearted as the ancient
Egyptians; and Egyptology furnishes, perhaps,
the most convincing proof that archæology is, or
should be, a merry science, very necessary to the
gaiety of the world. I defy a man suffering from
his liver to understand the old Egyptians; I defy
a man who does not appreciate the pleasure of
life to make anything of them. Egyptian archæology
presents a pageant of such brilliancy that
the archæologist is often carried along by it as
in a dream, down the valley and over the hills,
till, Past blending with Present, and Present with
Future, he finds himself led to a kind of Island
of the Blest, where death is forgotten and only
the joy of life, and life’s good deeds, still remain;
where pleasure-domes, and all the ancient
[78]“miracles of rare device,” rise into the air from
above the flowers; and where the damsel with
the dulcimer beside the running stream sings to
him of Mount Abora and of the old heroes of the
elder days. If the Egyptologist or the archæologist
could revive within him one-hundredth part
of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the
subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable
goodness, of much that is to be found
in his province, one would have to cry, like
Coleridge—

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

PART II.

STUDIES IN THE TREASURY.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

A certain school geography book, now out of
date, condenses its remarks upon the character of
our Gallic cousins into the following pregnant
sentence: “The French are a gay and frivolous
nation, fond of dancing and red wine.” The
description would so nearly apply to the ancient
inhabitants of Egypt, that its adoption here as a
text to this chapter cannot be said to be extravagant.
The unbiassed inquirer into the affairs of
ancient Egypt must discover ultimately, and perhaps
to his regret, that the dwellers on the Nile
were a “gay and frivolous people,” festive, light-hearted,
and mirthful, “fond of dancing and red
wine,” and pledged to all that is brilliant in life.
There are very many people, naturally, who hold
to those views which their forefathers held before
them, and picture the Egyptians as a sombre,
gloomy people; replete with thoughts of Death
and of the more melancholy aspect of religion;
burdened with the menacing presence of a multitude
of horrible gods and demons, whose priests
demanded the erection of vast temples for their
[82]appeasement; having little joy of this life, and
much uneasy conjecture about the next; making
entertainment in solemn gatherings and ponderous
feasts; and holding merriment in holy contempt.
Of the five startling classes into which the dictionary
divides the human temperament, namely,
the bilious or choleric, the phlegmatic, the sanguine,
the melancholic, and the nervous, it is
probable that the first, the second, and the fourth
would be those assigned to the ancient Egyptians
by these people. This view is so entirely false that
one will be forgiven if, in the attempt to dissolve
it, the gaiety of the race is thrust before the
reader with too little extenuation. The sanguine,
and perhaps the nervous, are the classes of temperament
under which the Egyptians must be
docketed. It cannot be denied that they were an
industrious and even a strenuous people, that they
indulged in the most serious thoughts, and attempted
to study the most complex problems of
life, and that the ceremonial side of their religion
occupied a large part of their time. But there is
abundant evidence to show that, like their descendents
of the present day, they were one of the
least gloomy people of the world, and that they
took their duties in the most buoyant manner,
allowing as much sunshine to radiate through
their minds as shone from the cloudless Egyptian
skies upon their dazzling country.

It is curiously interesting to notice how general
is the present belief in the solemnity of this ancient
[83]race’s attitude towards existence, and how little
their real character is appreciated. Already the
reader will be protesting, perhaps, that the application
of the geographer’s summary of French
characteristics to the ancient Egyptians lessens in
no wise its ridiculousness, but rather increases it.
Let the protest, however, be held back for a while.
Even if the Egyptians were not always frivolous,
they were always uncommonly gay, and any slight
exaggeration will be pardoned in view of the fact
that old prejudices have to be violently overturned,
and the stigma of melancholy and ponderous
sobriety torn from the national name. It would
be a matter of little surprise to some good persons
if the products of excavation in the Nile Valley
consisted largely of antique black kid gloves.

Like many other nations the ancient Egyptians
rendered mortuary service to their ancestors, and
solid tomb-chapels had to be constructed in honour
of the more important dead. Both for the purpose
of preserving the mummy intact, and also in order
to keep the ceremonies going for as long a period
of time as possible, these chapels were constructed
in a most substantial manner, and many of them
have withstood successfully the siege of the years.
The dwelling-houses, on the other hand, were
seldom delivered from father to son; but, as in
modern Egypt, each grandee built a palace for
himself, designed to last for a lifetime only, and
hardly one of these mansions still exists even as
a ruin.

[84]Moreover the tombs were constructed in the dry
desert or in the solid hillside, whereas the dwelling-houses
were situated on the damp earth, where
they had little chance of remaining undemolished.
And so it is that the main part of our knowledge
of the Egyptians is derived from a study of their
tombs and mortuary temples. How false would be
our estimate of the character of a modern nation
were we to glean our information solely from its
churchyard inscriptions! We should know absolutely
nothing of the frivolous side of the life of
those whose bare bones lie beneath the gloomy
declaration of their Christian virtues. It will be
realised how sincere was the light-heartedness
of the Egyptians when it is remembered that
almost everything in the following record of their
gaieties is derived from a study of the tombs, and
of objects found therein.

Light-heartedness is the key-note of the ancient
philosophy of the country, and in this assertion
the reader will, in most cases, find cause for surprise.
The Greek travellers in Egypt, who returned
to their native land impressed with the
wonderful mysticism of the Egyptians, committed
their amazement to paper, and so led off that
feeling of awed reverence which is felt for the
philosophy of Pharaoh’s subjects. But in their
case there was the presence of the priests and
wise men eloquently to baffle them into the state
of respect, and there were a thousand unwritten
arguments, comments, articles of faith, and controverted
[85]points of doctrine heard from the mouths
of the believers, to surprise them into a reverential
attitude. But we of the present day have left to
us only the more outward and visible remains of
the Egyptians. There are only the fundamental
doctrines to work on, the more penetrating notes
of the harmony to listen to. Thus the outline of
the philosophy is able to be studied without any
complication, and we have no whirligig of priestly
talk to confuse it. Examined in this way, working
only from cold stones and dry papyri, we are confronted
with the old “Eat, drink, and be merry,”
which is at once the happiest and most dangerous
philosophy conceived by man. It is to be
noticed that this way of looking at life is to be
found in Egypt from the earliest times down to
the period of the Greek occupation of the country,
and, in fact, until the present day. That is to say,
it was a philosophy inborn in the Egyptian,—a
part of his nature.

Imhotep, the famous philosopher of Dynasty III.,
about B.C. 3000, said to his disciples: “Behold the
dwellings of the dead. Their walls fall down, their
place is no more; they are as though they had
never existed”; and he drew from this the lesson
that man is soon done with and forgotten, and that
therefore his life should be as happy as possible.
To Imhotep must be attributed the earliest known
exhortation to man to resign himself to his candle-end
of a life, and to the inevitable snuffing-out to
come, and to be merry while yet he may. There
[86]is a poem, dating from about B.C. 2000, from which
the following is taken:—

Again, we have the same sentiments expressed
in a tomb of about B.C. 1350, belonging to a certain
Neferhotep, a priest of Amen. It is quoted on
page 235, and here we need only note the ending:

A Ptolemaic inscription quoted more fully towards
the end of this chapter reads: “Follow thy desire
by night and by day. Put not care within thy
heart.”

The ancient Egyptian peasants, like their modern
descendants, were fatalists, and a happy carelessness
seems to have softened the strenuousness
of their daily tasks. The peasants of the present
day in Egypt so lack the initiative to develop
the scope of their industries that their life cannot
be said to be strenuous. In whatever work they
[87]undertake, however, they show a wonderful degree
of cheerfulness, and a fine disregard for misfortune.
Their forefathers, similarly, went through their
labours with a song upon their lips. In the tombs
at Sakkâra, dating from the Old Empire, there are
scenes representing flocks of goats treading in the
seed on the newly-sown ground, and the inscriptions
give the song which the goat-herds sing:—

“The goat-herd is in the water with the fishes,—
 He speaks with the nar-fish, he talks with the pike;
 From the west is your goat-herd; your goat-herd is from the west.”

The meaning of the words is not known, of course,
but the song seems to have been a popular one.
A more comprehensible ditty is that sung to the
oxen by their driver, which dates from the New
Empire:—

“Thresh out for yourselves, ye oxen, thresh out for yourselves.
 Thresh out the straw for your food, and the grain for your masters.
 Do not rest yourselves, for it is cool to-day.”

Some of the love-songs have been preserved
from destruction, and these throw much light upon
the subject of the Egyptian temperament. A
number of songs, supposed to have been sung by
a girl to her lover, form themselves into a collection
entitled “The beautiful and gladsome songs
of thy sister, whom thy heart loves, as she walks
in the fields.” The girl is supposed to belong
to the peasant class, and most of the verses are
sung whilst she is at her daily occupation of snaring
[88]wild duck in the marshes. One must imagine
the songs warbled without any particular refrain,
just as in the case of the modern Egyptians,
who pour out their ancient tales of love and
adventure in a series of bird-like cadences, full-throated,
and often wonderfully melodious. A
peculiar sweetness and tenderness will be noticed
in the following examples, and though they suffer
in translation, their airy lightness and refinement
is to be distinguished. One characteristic song,
addressed by the girl to her lover, runs—

Again, in a somewhat similar strain, she sings—

Another song must be given here in prose form.
The girl who sings it is supposed to be making
a wreath of flowers, and as she works she
cries—

One more song must be quoted, for it is so
artless and so full of human tenderness that I may
risk the accusation of straying from the main
argument in repeating it. It runs:—

It is really painful to think of these words as
having fallen from the lips of what is now a resin-smelling
lump of bones and hardened flesh, perhaps
still unearthed, perhaps lying in some museum
show-case, or perhaps kicked about in fragments
over the hot sand of some tourist-crowded necropolis.
Mummies are the most lifeless objects one
could well imagine. It is impossible even for those
whose imaginations are most powerful, to infuse
life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed
body; and this fact is partly responsible
for that atmosphere of stark, melancholy, sobriety
and aloofness which surrounds the affairs of ancient
Egypt. In reading these verses, it is imperative
for their right understanding that the mummies
[90]and their resting-places should be banished from
the thoughts. It is not always a simple matter
for the student to rid himself of the atmosphere
of the museum, where the beads which should
be jangling on a brown neck are lying numbered
and labelled on red velvet; where the bird-trap,
once the centre of such feathered commotion, is
propped up in a glass case as “D, 18,432”;
and where even the document in which the verses
are written is the lawful booty of the grammarian
and philologist in the library. But it is the first
duty of an archæologist to do away with that
atmosphere.

Let those who are untrammelled then, pass
out into the sunshine of the Egyptian fields and
marshes, where the wild duck cry to each other
as they scuttle through the tall reeds. Here in
the early morning comes our songstress, and one
may see her as clearly as one can that Shulamite
of King Solomon’s day, who has had the good
fortune to belong to a land where stones and
bones, being few in number, do not endanger
the atmosphere of the literature. One may see
her, her hair moving in the breeze “as a flock
of goats that appear from Mount Gilead”; her
teeth white “as a flock of shorn sheep which came
up from the washing,” and her lips “like a thread
of scarlet.” Through such imaginings alone can
one appreciate the songs, or realise the lightness
of the manner in which they were sung.

With such a happy view of life amongst the
[91]upper classes as is indicated by their philosophy,
and with that merry disposition amongst the
peasants which shows itself in their love of song,
it is not surprising to find that asceticism is
practically unknown in ancient Egypt before the
time of Christ. At first sight, in reflecting on
the mysteries and religious ceremonies of the
nation, we are apt to endow the priests and
other participators with a degree of austerity
wholly unjustified by facts. We picture the
priest chanting his formulæ in the dim light of
the temple, the atmosphere about him heavy with
incense; and we imagine him as an anchorite who
has put away the things of this world. But in
reality there seems to have been not even such
a thing as a celibate amongst the priests. Each
man had his wife and his family, his house, and
his comforts of food and fine linen. He indulged
in the usual pastimes and was present at the
merriest of feasts. The famous wise men and
magicians, such as Uba-ana of the Westcar
Papyrus, had their wives, their parks, their pleasure-pavilions,
and their hosts of servants. Great
dignitaries of the Amon Church, such as Amenhotepsase,
the Second Prophet of Amen in the
time of Thutmosis IV., are represented as feasting
with their friends, or driving through Thebes in
richly-decorated chariots drawn by prancing horses,
and attended by an array of servants. A monastic
life, or the life of an anchorite, was held by the
Egyptians in scorn; and indeed the state of mind
[92]which produces the monk and the hermit was
almost entirely unknown to the nation in dynastic
times. It was only in the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods that asceticism came to be practised; and
some have thought that its introduction into Egypt
is to be attributed to the preaching of the Hindoo
missionaries sent from India to the court of the
Ptolemies. It is not really an Egyptian characteristic;
and its practice did not last for more
than a few centuries.

The religious teachings of the Egyptians before
the Ptolemaic era do not suggest that the mortification
of the flesh was a possible means of purifying
the spirit. An appeal to the senses and to
the emotions, however, was considered as a legitimate
method of reaching the soul. The Egyptians
were passionately fond of ceremonial display. Their
huge temples, painted as they were with the most
brilliant colours, formed the setting of processions
and ceremonies in which music, rhythmic motion,
and colour were brought to a point of excellence.
In honour of some of the gods dances were conducted;
while celebrations, such as the fantastic
Feast of Lamps, were held on the anniversaries
of religious events. In these gorgeously spectacular
ceremonies there was no place for anything
sombre or austere, nor could they have been conceived
by any but the most life-loving temperaments.

As in his religious functions, so in his home,
the Egyptian regarded brilliancy and festivity
[93]as an edification. When in trouble or distress,
he was wont to relieve his mind as readily by
an appeal to the vanities of this world as by an
invocation of the powers of Heaven. Thus, when
King Sneferu, of Dynasty IV., was oppressed
with the cares of state, his councillor Zazamankh
constructed for him a pleasure boat which was
rowed around a lake by the most beautiful
damsels obtainable. And again, when Wenamon,
the envoy of Herhor of Dynasty XXI., had fallen
into trouble with the pirates of the Mediterranean,
his depression was banished by a gift of a dancing-girl,
two vessels of wine, a young goat of tender
flesh, and a message which read—”Eat and drink,
and let not thy heart feel apprehension.”

An intense craving for brightness and cheerfulness
is to be observed on all sides, and the attempt
to cover every action of life with a kind of lustre
is perhaps the most apparent characteristic of the
race. At all times the Egyptians decked themselves
with flowers, and rich and poor alike
breathed what they called “the sweet north
wind” through a screen of blossoms. At their
feasts and festivals each guest was presented
with necklaces and crowns of lotus-flowers, and
a specially selected bouquet was carried in the
hands. Constantly, as the hours passed, fresh
flowers were brought to them, and the guests
are shown in the tomb paintings in the act of
burying their noses in the delicate petals with
an air of luxury which even the conventionalities
[94]of the draughtsman cannot hide. In the women’s
hair a flower was pinned which hung down before
the forehead; and a cake of ointment, concocted
of some sweet-smelling unguent, was so arranged
upon the head that, as it slowly melted, it re-perfumed
the flower. Complete wreaths of flowers
were sometimes worn, and this was the custom as
much in the dress of the home as in that of the
feast. The common people also arrayed themselves
with wreaths of lotuses at all galas and
carnivals. The room in which a feast was held
was decorated lavishly with flowers. Blossoms
crept up the delicate pillars to the roof; garlands
twined themselves around the tables and
about the jars of wine; and single buds lay in
every dish of food. Even the dead were decked
in their tombs with a mass of flowers, as though
the mourners would hide with the living delights
of the earth the misery of the grave.

The Egyptian loved his garden, and filled it
with all manner of beautiful flowers. Great
parks were laid out by the Pharaohs, and it is
recorded of Thutmosis III. that he brought back
from his Asiatic campaigns vast quantities of rare
plants with which to beautify Thebes. Festivals
were held at the season when the flowers were
in full bloom, and the light-hearted Egyptian
did not fail to make the flowers talk to him, in
the imagination, of the delights of life. In one
case a fig-tree is made to call to a passing
maiden to come into its shade.

Than this one could hardly find a more convincing
indication of the gaiety of the Egyptian temperament.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
A.D. the people were so oppressed that any display
of luxury was discouraged, and a happy smile
brought the tax-gatherer to the door to ascertain
whether it was due to financial prosperity. But
the carrying of flowers, and other indications of
a kind of unworried contentment, are now again
becoming apparent on all sides.

The affection displayed by the Egyptians for
bright colours would alone indicate that their
temperament was not melancholic. The houses
of the rich were painted with colours which would
be regarded as crude had they appeared in the
Occident, but which are admissible in Egypt
where the natural brilliancy of the sunshine and
the scenery demands a more extreme colour-scheme
in decoration. The pavilions in which
the nobles “made a happy day,” as they phrased
it, were painted with the most brilliant wall-decorations,
and the delicately-shaped lotus
columns supporting the roof were striped with
half a dozen colours, and were hung with
streamers of linen. The ceilings and pavements
[96]seem to have afforded the artists a happy field
for a display of their originality and skill, and
it is on these stretches of smooth-plastered surface
that gems of Egyptian art are often found.
A pavement from the palace of Akhnaton at
Tell el Amârna shows a scene in which a cow
is depicted frisking through the reeds, and birds
are represented flying over the marshes. In the
palace of Amenhotep III. at Gurneh there was
a ceiling decoration representing a flight of doves,
which, in its delicacy of execution and colouring,
is not to be classed with the crude forms of
Egyptian decoration, but indicates an equally
light-hearted temperament in its creator. It is
not probable that either bright colours or daintiness
of design would emanate from the brains
of a sombre-minded people.

Some of the feminine garments worn in ancient
Egypt were exceedingly gaudy, and they made
up in colour all that they lacked in variety of
design. In the Middle and New Empires the
robes of the men were as many-hued as their
wall decorations, and as rich in composition. One
may take as a typical example the costume of
a certain priest who lived at the end of Dynasty
XVIII. An elaborate wig covers his head; a
richly ornamented necklace surrounds his neck;
the upper part of his body is clothed in a tunic
of gauze-like linen; as a skirt there is swathed
around him the most delicately coloured fine linen,
one end of which is brought up and thrown gracefully
[97]over his arm; decorated sandals cover his
feet and curl up over his toes; and in his hand
he carries a jewelled wand surmounted by feathers.
It would be an absurdity to state that these folds
of fine linen hid a heart set on things higher than
this world and its vanities. Nor do the objects
of daily use found in the tombs suggest any
austerity in the Egyptian character. There is
no reflection of the Underworld to be looked for
in the ornamental bronze mirrors, nor smell of
death in the frail perfume pots. Religious abstraction
is not to be sought in lotus-formed drinking-cups,
and mortification of the body is certainly
not practised on golden chairs and soft cushions.
These were the objects buried in the tombs of
the priests and religious teachers.

The puritanical tendency of a race can generally
be discovered by a study of the personal names of
the people. The names by which the Egyptians
called their children are as gay as they are pretty,
and lack entirely the Puritan character. “Eyes-of-love,”
“My-lady-is-as-gold,” “Cool-breeze,”
“Gold-and-lapis-lazuli,” “Beautiful-morning,” are
Egyptian names very far removed from “Through-trials-and-tribulations-we-enter-into-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven
Jones,” which is the actual name of a
now living scion of a Roundhead family. And the
well-known “Praise-God Barebones” has little to
do with the Egyptian “Beautiful-Kitten,” “Little-Wild-Lion,”
“I-have-wanted-you,” “Sweetheart,”
and so on.

[98]The nature of the folk-tales is equally indicative
of the temperament of a nation. The stories which
have come down to us from ancient Egypt are
often as frivolous as they are quaint. Nothing
delighted the Egyptians more than the listening
to a tale told by an expert story-teller; and it
is to be supposed that such persons were in as
much demand in the old days as they are now.
One may still read of the adventures of the Prince
who was fated to die by a dog, a snake, or a
crocodile; of the magician who made the waters
of the lake heap themselves up that he might
descend to the bottom dry-shod to recover a lady’s
jewel; of the fat old wizard who could cut a man’s
head off and join it again to his body; of the fairy
godmothers who made presents to a new-born
babe; of the shipwrecked sailor who was thrown
up on an island inhabited by serpents with human
natures; of the princess in the tower whose lovers
spent their days in attempting to climb to her
window,—and so on. The stories have no moral,
they are not pompous: they are purely amusing,
interesting, and romantic. As an example one
may quote the story which is told of Prince
Setna, the son of Rameses II. This Prince was
one day sitting in the court of the temple of
Ptah, when he saw a woman pass “beautiful
exceedingly, there being no woman of her beauty.”
There were wonderful golden ornaments upon her,
and she was attended by fifty-two persons, themselves
of some rank and much beauty. “The hour
[99]that Setna saw her, he knew not the place on
earth where he was”; and he called to his servants
and told them to “go quickly to the place where
she is, and learn what comes under her command.”
The beautiful lady proved finally to be named
Tabubna, the daughter of a priest of Bast, the
Cat. Setna’s acquaintance with her was later of
a most disgraceful character; and, from motives
which are not clear, she made him murder his own
children to please her. At the critical moment,
however, when the climax is reached, the old, old
joke is played upon the listener, who is told that
Setna then woke up, and discovered that the whole
affair had been an afternoon dream in the shade of
the temple court.

The Egyptians often amused themselves by
drawing comic pictures and caricatures, and there
is an interesting series still preserved in which
animals take the place of human beings, and are
shown performing all manner of antics. One sees
a cat walking on its hind legs driving a flock of
geese, while a wolf carrying a staff and knapsack
leads a herd of goats. There is a battle of the mice
and cats, and the king of the mice, in his chariot
drawn by two dogs, is seen attacking the fortress
of the cats. A picture which is worthy of Edward
Lear shows a ridiculous hippopotamus seated
amidst the foliage of a tree, eating from a table,
whilst a crow mounts a ladder to wait upon him.
There are caricatures showing women of fashion
rouging their faces, unshaven and really amusing
[100]old tramps, and so forth. Even upon the walls of
the tombs there are often comic pictures, in which
one may see little girls fighting and tearing at
each others’ hair, men tumbling one over another
as they play, and the like; and one must suppose
that these were the scenes which the owner of the
tomb wished to perpetuate throughout the eternity
of Death.

The Egyptians took keen delight in music. In
the sound of the trumpet and on the well-tuned
cymbals they praised God in Egypt as merrily as
the Psalmist could wish. The strings and the
pipe, the lute and the harp, made music at every
festival—religious, national, or private. Plato
tells us that “nothing but beautiful forms and fine
music was permitted to enter into the assemblies
of young people” in Egypt; and he states that
music was considered as being of the greatest consequence
for its beneficial effects upon youthful
minds. Strabo records the fact that music was
largely taught in Egypt, and the numbers of
musical instruments buried in the tombs or represented
in the decorations confirm his statement.
The music was scientifically taught, and a knowledge
of harmony is apparent in the complicated
forms of the instruments. The harps sometimes
had as many as twenty-two strings: the long-handled
guitars, fitted with three strings, were
capable of wide gradations; and the flutes were
sufficiently complicated to be described by early
writers as “many-toned.” The Egyptian did not
[101]merely bang a drum with his fist because it made
a noise, nor blow blasts upon a trumpet as a means
of expressing the inexpressible. He was an educated
musician, and he employed the medium of
music to encourage his lightness of heart and to
render his gaiety more gay.

One sees representations of the women in a rich
man’s harem amusing themselves by dancing and
singing. In the tomb of Ay there is a scene showing
the interior of the women’s quarters, and here
the ladies are shown dancing, playing guitars,
feasting, or adorning themselves with their jewellery;
while the store-rooms are seen to be filled
with all manner of musical instruments, as well
as mirrors, boxes of clothes, and articles of feminine
use. At feasts and banquets a string band
played during the meal, and songs were sung to
the accompaniment of the harp. At religious
festivals choruses of male and female voices were
introduced. Soldiers marched through the streets
to the sound of trumpets and drums, and marriage
processions and the like were led by a band. At
the feasts it was customary for the dancing-girls,
who were employed for the amusement of the
guests, to perform their dances and to play a
guitar or a flute at the same time. One sees
representations of girls, their heads thrown back
and their long hair flying, merrily twanging a
guitar as they skip round the room. In the civil
and religious processions many of the participators
danced along as though from sheer lightness of
[102]heart; and on some occasions even the band footed
it down the high-road, circling, jumping, and skipping
as they played.

The words for “rejoice” and “dance” were
synonymous in the literature of the Egyptians.
In early days dancing naturally implied rejoicing,
and rejoicing was most easily expressed by dancing.
But the Egyptians of the refined periods
more often danced to amuse themselves, regarding
it, just as we do at the present day, as an exhilaration.
Persons of the upper classes, however,
did not indulge very freely in it, but preferred to
watch the performances of professional dancers.
At all banquets dancing was as indispensable as
wine, women, and song, and it rather depended
on the nature of the wine and women as to
whether the guests joined personally in the sport
or sat still while the dancers swayed around the
room. The professionals were generally women,
but sometimes men were employed, and one sees
representations of a man performing some difficult
solo while a chorus of women sings and marks
time by clapping the hands. Men and women
danced together on occasions, but as a general
rule the Egyptian preferred to watch the movements
of the more graceful sex by themselves.
The women sometimes danced naked, to show off
the grace of their poses and the suppleness of their
muscles; sometimes they were decked with ribbons
only; and sometimes they wore transparent dresses
made of linen of the finest texture. It was not
[103]unusual for them to carry tambourines and castanets
with which to beat time to their dances. On
the other hand, there were delicate and sober performances,
unaccompanied by music. The paintings
show some of the poses to have been exceedingly
graceful, and there were character dances
enacted in which the figures must have been
highly dramatic and artistic. For example, the
tableau which occurs in one dance, and is called
“The Wind,” shows two of the dancing-girls bent
back like reeds when the wind blows upon them,
while a third figure stands over them in protection,
as though symbolising the immovable rocks.

But more usually the merry mood of the Egyptians
asserted itself, as it so often does at the present
day, in a demand for something approaching nearer
to buffoonery. The dancers whirled one another
about in the wildest manner, often tumbling head
over heels on the floor. A trick, attended generally
with success, consisted in the attempt by the
dancers to balance the body upon the head without
the support of the arms. This buffoonery was
highly appreciated by the audience which witnessed
it; and the banqueting-room must have
been full of the noise of riotous mirth. One cannot,
indeed, regard a feast as pompous or solemn
at which the banging of the tambourines and the
click of castanets vied with the clatter of the
dishes and the laughter of the guests in creating a
general hullabaloo. Let those state who will that
the Egyptian was a gloomy individual, but first
[104]let them not fail to observe that same Egyptian
standing upon his head amidst the roars of laughter
of his friends.

Dancing as a religious ceremony is to be found
in many primitive countries, and in Egypt it exists
at the present day in more than one form. In the
days of the Pharaohs it was customary to institute
dances in honour of some of the gods, more especially
those deities whose concerns were earthy—that
is to say, those connected with love, joy,
birth, death, fertility, reproduction, and so on. It
will be remembered how David danced before the
Ark of the Lord, and how his ancestors danced in
honour of the golden calf. In Egypt the king was
wont to dance before the great god Min of the
crops, and at harvest-time the peasants performed
their thanksgiving before the figures of Min in
this manner. Hathor and Bast, the two great
goddesses of pleasure, were worshipped in the
dance. Hathor was mistress of sports and dancing,
and patron of amusements and mirth, joy and
pleasure, beauty and love; and in regard to the
happy temperament of the Egyptians, it is significant
that this goddess was held in the highest
esteem throughout the history of the nation.

Bast was honoured by a festival which for merriment
and frivolity could not well be equalled. The
festival took place at Bubastis, and is described by
Herodotus in the following words:—

At this festival of Bast half the persons taking
part in the celebrations must have become intoxicated.
The Egyptians were always given to wine-drinking,
and Athenæus goes so far as to say that
they were a nation addicted to systematic intemperance.
The same writer, on the authority of
Hellanicus, states that the vine was cultivated in
the Nile valley at a date earlier than that at
which it was first grown by any other people; and
it is to this circumstance that Dion attributes the
Egyptian’s love of wine. Strabo and other writers
speak of the wines of Egypt as being particularly
good, and various kinds emanating from different
localities are mentioned. The wines made from
grapes were of the red and white varieties; but
there were also fruit wines, made from pomegranates
and other fruits. In the lists of offerings
inscribed on the walls of temples and tombs one
sees a large number of varieties recorded—wines
[106]from the north, wines from the south, wines provincial,
and wines foreign. Beer, made of barley,
was also drunk very largely, and this beverage
is heartily commended by the early writers. Indeed,
the wine and beer-bibber was so common
an offender against the dignity of the nation, that
every moralist who arose had a word to say against
him. Thus, for example, in the Maxims of Ani
one finds the moralist writing—

The less thoughtful members of society, however,
considered drunkenness as a very good joke, and
even went so far as to portray it in their tomb
decorations. One sees men carried home from a
feast across the shoulders of three of their companions,
or ignominiously hauled out of the house
by their ankles and the scruff of their neck. In
the tomb of Paheri at El Kab women are represented
at a feast, and scraps of their conversation
are recorded, such, for instance, as “Give me
eighteen cups of wine, for I should love to drink to
drunkenness: my inside is as dry as straw.” There
are actually representations of women overcome
with nausea through immoderate drinking, and
being attended by servants who have hastened
with basins to their assistance. In another tomb-painting
[107]a drunken man is seen to have fallen
against one of the delicate pillars of the pavilion
with such force that it has toppled over, to the
dismay of the guests around.

In the light of such scenes as these one may
picture the life of an Egyptian in the elder days
as being not a little depraved. One sees the men
in their gaudy raiment, and the women luxuriously
clothed, staining their garments with the wine
spilt from the drinking-bowls as their hands shake
with their drunken laughter; and the vision of
Egyptian solemnity is still further banished at
the sight. It is only too obvious that a land of
laughter and jest, feasting and carouse, must be
situated too near a Pompeian volcano to be capable
of endurance, and the inhabitants too purposeless
in their movements to avoid at some time or other
running into the paths of burning lava. The
people of Egypt went merrily through the radiant
valley in which they lived, employing all that the
gods had given them,—not only the green palms,
the thousand birds, the blue sky, the hearty wind,
the river and its reflections, but also the luxuries
of their civilisation,—to make for themselves a
frail feast of happiness. And when the last
flowers, the latest empty drinking-cup, fell to
the ground, nothing remained to them but that
sodden, drunken night of disgrace which shocks
one so at the end of the dynastic history, and
which inevitably led to the fall of the nation.
Christian asceticism came as the natural reaction
[108]and Muhammedan strictness followed in due
course; and it required the force of both these
movements to put strength and health into the
people once more.

One need not dwell, however, on this aspect of
the Egyptian temperament. It is more pleasing,
and as pertinent to the argument, to follow the
old lords of the Nile into the sunshine once more,
and to glance for a moment at their sports. Hunting
was a pleasure to them, in which they indulged
at every opportunity. One sees representations
of this with great frequency upon the walls of the
tombs. A man will be shown standing in a reed
boat which has been pushed in amongst the waving
papyrus. A boomerang is in his hand, and his
wife by his side helps him to locate the wild duck,
so that he may penetrate within throwing-distance
of the birds before they rise. Presently up they
go with a whir, and the boomerang claims its
victims; while all manner of smaller birds dart
from amidst the reeds, and gaudy butterflies pass
startled overhead. Again one sees the hunter
galloping in his chariot over the hard sand of
the desert, shooting his arrows at the gazelle as
he goes. Or yet again with his dogs he is shown
in pursuit of the long-eared Egyptian hare, or of
some other creature of the desert. When not thus
engaged he may be seen excitedly watching a bullfight,
or eagerly judging the merits of rival wrestlers,
boxers, and fencers. One may follow him
later into the seclusion of his garden, where, surrounded
[109]by a wealth of trees and flowers, he plays
draughts with his friends, romps with his children,
or fishes in his artificial ponds. There is much
evidence of this nature to show that the Egyptian
was as much given to these healthy amusements as
he was to the mirth of the feast. Josephus states
that the Egyptians were a people addicted to
pleasure, and the evidence brought together in
the foregoing pages shows that his statement is
to be confirmed. In sincere joy of living they
surpassed any other nation of the ancient world.
Life was a thing of such delight to the Egyptian,
that he shrank equally from losing it himself and
from taking it from another. His prayer was that
he might live to be a centenarian. In spite of the
many wars of the Egyptians, there was less unnecessary
bloodshed in the Nile valley than in any
other country which called itself civilised. Death
was as terrible to them as it was inevitable, and
the constant advice of the thinker was that the
living should make the most of their life. When
a king died, it was said that “he went forth to
heaven having spent life in happiness,” or that
“he rested after life, having completed his years
in happiness.” It is true that the Egyptians
wished to picture the after-life as one of continuous
joy. One sees representations of a man’s
soul seated in the shade of the fruit-trees of the
Underworld, while birds sing in the branches
above him, and a lake of cool water lies before
him; but they seemed to know that this was too
[110]pleasant a picture to be the real one. A woman,
the wife of a high priest, left upon her tombstone
the following inscription, addressed to her
husband:—

She knows that she will be too deeply steeped in
the stupor of the Underworld to remember her
husband, and unselfishly she urges him to continue
to be happy after the manner of his nation. Then,
in a passage which rings down the years in its
terrible beauty, she tells of her utter despair, lying
in the gloomy Underworld, suffocated with the
mummy bandages, and craving for the light, the
laughter, and the coolness of the day.

It is, however, the glory of life, rather than the
[111]horror of death, which is the dominant note in the
inscriptions and reliefs. The scenes in the tomb
decorations seem to cry out for very joy. The
artist has imprisoned in his representations as
much sheer happiness as was ever infused into
cold stone. One sees there the gazelle leaping
over the hills as the sun rises, the birds flapping
their wings and singing, the wild duck rising from
the marshes, and the butterflies flashing overhead.
The fundamental joy of living—that gaiety of life
which the human being may feel in common with
the animals—is shown in these scenes as clearly as
is the merriment in the representations of feasts
and dancing. In these paintings and reliefs one
finds an exact illustration to the joyful exhortation
of the Psalmist as he cries, “Let the heavens
rejoice, and let the earth be glad; … let the
fields be joyful, and all that is therein.” In a land
where, to quote one of their own poems, “the tanks
are full of water and the earth overflows with
love,” where “the cool north wind” blows merrily
over the fields, and the sun never ceases to shine,
it would be a remarkable phenomenon if the ancient
Egyptians had not developed the sanguine temperament.
The foregoing pages have shown them at
their feasts, in their daily occupations, and in their
sports, and the reader will find that it is not difficult
to describe them, in the borrowed words of
the old geographer, as a people always gay and
often frivolous, and never-ceasingly “fond of
dancing and red wine.”

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER V.

THE MISFORTUNES OF WENAMON.

In the third chapter of this book it has been shown
that the archæologist is, to some extent, enamoured
of the Past because it can add to the stock of
things which are likely to tickle the fancy. So
humorous a man is he, so fond of the good things
of life, so stirred by its adventures, so touched by
its sorrows, that he must needs go to the Past to
replenish his supplies, as another might go to Paris
or Timbuctoo.

Here, then, is the place to give an example of
the entertainment which he is likely to find in
this province of his; and if the reader can detect
any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones
in the story which follows, it will be a matter of
surprise to me.

In the year 1891, at a small village in Upper
Egypt named El Hibeh, some natives unearthed a
much damaged roll of papyrus which appeared to
them to be very ancient. Since they had heard
that antiquities have a market value they did not
burn it along with whatever other scraps of inflammable
[113]material they had collected for their evening
fire, but preserved it, and finally took it to a dealer,
who gave them in exchange for it a small sum of
money. From the dealer’s hands it passed into the
possession of Monsieur Golenischeff, a Russian
Egyptologist, who happened at the time to be
travelling in Egypt; and by him it was carried
to St Petersburg, where it now rests. This
savant presently published a translation of the
document, which at once caused a sensation in
the Egyptological world; and during the next
few years four amended translations were made
by different scholars. The interest shown in this
tattered roll was due to the fact that it had been
found to contain the actual report written by an
official named Wenamon to his chief, the High
Priest of Amon-Ra, relating his adventures in the
Mediterranean while procuring cedar-wood from
the forests of Lebanon. The story which Wenamon
tells is of the greatest value to Egyptology,
giving as it does a vivid account of the political
conditions obtaining in Syria and Egypt during
the reign of the Pharaoh Rameses XII.; but it also
has a very human interest, and the misfortunes of
the writer may excite one’s sympathy and amusement,
after this lapse of three thousand years, as
though they had occurred at the present time.

In the time at which Wenamon wrote his report
Egypt had fallen on evil days. A long line of
incapable descendants of the great Rameses II.
and Rameses III. had ruled the Nile valley; and
[114]now a wretched ghost of a Pharaoh, Rameses XII.,
sat upon the throne, bereft of all power, a ruler in
name only. The government of the country lay in
the hands of two great nobles: in Upper Egypt,
Herhor, High Priest of Amon-Ra, was undisputed
master; and in Lower Egypt, Nesubanebded, a
prince of the city of Tanis (the Zoan of the Bible),
virtually ruled as king of the Delta. Both these
persons ultimately ascended the throne of the
Pharaohs; but at the time of Wenamon’s adventures
the High Priest was the more powerful of
the two, and could command the obedience of
the northern ruler, at any rate in all sacerdotal
matters. The priesthood of Amon-Ra was the
greatest political factor in Egyptian life. That
god’s name was respected even in the courts of
Syria, and though his power was now on the
wane, fifty years previously the great religious
body which bowed the knee to him was feared
throughout all the countries neighbouring to
Egypt. The main cause of Wenamon’s troubles
was the lack of appreciation of this fact that the
god’s influence in Syria was not as great as it had
been in the past; and this report would certainly
not have been worth recording here if he had
realised that prestige is, of all factors in international
relations, the least reliable.

In the year 1113 B.C. the High Priest undertook
the construction of a ceremonial barge in which
the image of the god might be floated upon the
sacred waters of the Nile during the great religious
[115]festivals at Thebes; and for this purpose he found
himself in need of a large amount of cedar-wood
of the best quality. He therefore sent for Wenamon,
who held the sacerdotal title of “Eldest of
the Hall of the Temple of Amon,” and instructed
him to proceed to the Lebanon to procure the
timber. It is evident that Wenamon was no
traveller, and we may perhaps be permitted to
picture him as a rather portly gentleman of middle
age, not wanting either in energy or pluck, but
given, like some of his countrymen, to a fluctuation
of the emotions which would jump him from
smiles to tears, from hope to despair, in a manner
amazing to any but an Egyptian. To us he often
appears as an overgrown baby, and his misfortunes
have a farcical nature which makes its appeal as
much through the medium of one’s love of the
ludicrous as through that of one’s interest in the
romance of adventure. Those who are acquainted
with Egypt will see in him one of the types of naif,
delightful children of the Nile, whose decorous introduction
into the parlour of the nations of to-day
is requiring such careful rehearsal.

For his journey the High Priest gave Wenamon
a sum of money, and as credentials he handed him
a number of letters addressed to Egyptian and
Syrian princes, and intrusted to his care a particularly
sacred little image of Amon-Ra, known
as Amon-of-the-Road, which had probably accompanied
other envoys to the Kingdoms of the Sea
in times past, and would be recognised as a
[116]token of the official nature of any embassy which
carried it.

Thus armed Wenamon set out from El Hibeh—probably
the ancient Hetbennu, the capital of the
Eighteenth Province of Upper Egypt—on the
sixteenth day of the eleventh month of the fifth
year of the reign of Rameses XII. (1113 B.C.),
and travelled down the Nile by boat to Tanis,
a distance of some 200 miles. On his arrival
at this fair city of the Delta, whose temples
and palaces rose on the borders of the swamps
at the edge of the sea, Wenamon made his way
to the palace of Nesubanebded, and handed to him
the letters which he had received from the High
Priest. These were caused to be read aloud; and
Nesubanebded, hearing that Wenamon was desirous
of reaching the Lebanon as soon as possible, made
the necessary arrangements for his immediate despatch
upon a vessel which happened then to be
lying at the quay under the command of a Syrian
skipper named Mengebet, who was about to set
out for the Asiatic coast. On the first day of the
twelfth month, that is to say fourteen days after
his departure from his native town, Wenamon set
sail from Tanis, crossing the swamps and heading
out into “the Great Syrian Sea.”

The voyage over the blue rippling Mediterranean
was calm and prosperous as the good ship sailed
along the barren shores of the land of the Shasu,
along the more mountainous coast of Edom, and
thence northwards past the cities of Askalon
[117]and Ashdod. To Wenamon, however, the journey
was fraught with anxiety. He was full of fears as
to his reception in Syria, for the first of his misfortunes
had befallen him. Although he had with
him both money and the image of Amon-of-the-Road,
in the excitement and hurry of his departure
he had entirely forgotten to obtain again the
bundle of letters of introduction which he had
given Nesubanebded to read; and thus there were
grave reasons for supposing that his mission might
prove a complete failure. Mengebet was evidently
a stern old salt who cared not a snap of the fingers
for Amon or his envoy, and whose one desire was
to reach his destination as rapidly as wind and oars
would permit; and it is probable that he refused
bluntly to return to Tanis when Wenamon informed
him of the oversight. This and the inherent
distrust of an Egyptian for a foreigner led
Wenamon to regard the captain and his men with
suspicion; and one must imagine him seated in
the rough deck-cabin gloomily guarding the divine
image and his store of money. He had with him
a secretary and probably two or three servants;
and one may picture these unfortunates anxiously
watching the Syrian crew as they slouched about
the deck. It is further to be remembered that,
as a general rule, the Egyptians are most extremely
bad sailors.

After some days the ship arrived at the little
city of Dor, which nestled at the foot of the Ridge
of Carmel; and here they put in to replenish
[118]their supplies. Wenamon states in his report that
Dor was at this time a city of the Thekel or
Sicilians, some wandering band of sea-rovers having
left their native Sicily to settle here, at first
under the protection of the Egyptians, but now
independent of them. The King of Dor, by name
Bedel, hearing that an envoy of the High Priest of
Amon-Ra had arrived in his harbour, very politely
sent down to him a joint of beef, some loaves of
bread, and a jar of wine, upon which Wenamon
must have set to with an appetite, after subsisting
upon the scanty rations of the sea for so long a
time.

It may be that the wine was more potent than
that to which the Egyptian was accustomed; or
perhaps the white buildings of the city, glistening
in the sunlight, and the busy quays, engrossed his
attention too completely: anyhow, the second of
his misfortunes now befel him. One of the Syrian
sailors seized the opportunity to slip into his cabin
and to steal the money which was hidden there.
Before Wenamon had detected the robbery the
sailor had disappeared for ever amidst the houses
of Dor. That evening the distracted envoy,
seated upon the floor of his cabin, was obliged
to chronicle the list of stolen money, which list
was afterwards incorporated in his report in the
following manner:—

[119]A deben weighed about 100 grammes, and thus
the robber was richer by 500 grammes of gold,
which in those days would have the purchasing
value of about £600 in our money, and 3100
grammes of silver, equal to about £2200.[1]

Wenamon must have slept little that night, and
early on the following morning he hastened to the
palace of King Bedel to lay his case before him.
Fortunately Bedel did not ask him for his credentials,
but with the utmost politeness he gave
his consideration to the affair. Wenamon’s words,
however, were by no means polite, and one finds
in them a blustering assurance which suggests that
he considered himself a personage of extreme consequence,
and regarded a King of Dor as nothing
in comparison with an envoy of Amon-Ra.

“I have been robbed in your harbour,” he cried,
so he tells us in the report, “and, since you are
the king of this land, you must be regarded as
a party to the crime. You must search for my
money. The money belongs to Nesubanebded,
and it belongs to Herhor, my lord” (no mention,
observe, of the wretched Rameses XII.), “and
to the other nobles of Egypt. It belongs also
to Weret, and to Mekmel, and to Zakar-Baal
the Prince of Byblos.”[2] These latter were the
persons to whom it was to be paid.

The King of Dor listened to this outburst
with Sicilian politeness, and replied in the following
[120]very correct terms: “With all due respect
to your honour and excellency,” he said,
“I know nothing of this complaint which you
have lodged with me. If the thief belonged to
my land and went on board your ship in order
to steal your money, I would advance you the
sum from my treasury while they were finding
the culprit. But the thief who robbed you belonged
to your ship. Tarry, however, a few days
here with me and I will seek him.”

Wenamon, therefore, strode back to the vessel,
and there remained, fuming and fretting, for nine
long days. The skipper Mengebet, however, had
no reason to remain at Dor, and seems to have
told Wenamon that he could wait no longer.
On the tenth day, therefore, Wenamon retraced
his steps to the palace, and addressed himself once
more to Bedel. “Look,” he said to the king,
when he was ushered into the royal presence,
“you have not found my money, and therefore
you had better let me go with my ship’s captain
and with those….” The rest of the interview
is lost in a lacuna, and practically the only words
which the damaged condition of the papyrus permits
one now to read are, “He said, ‘Be silent!'”
which indicates that even the patience of a King
of Dor could be exhausted.

When the narrative is able to be resumed one
finds that Wenamon has set sail from the city,
and has travelled along the coast to the proud
city of Tyre, where he arrived one afternoon
[121]penniless and letterless, having now nothing left
but the little Amon-of-the-Road and his own
audacity. The charms of Tyre, then one of the
great ports of the civilised world, were of no consequence
to the destitute Egyptian, nor do they
seem to have attracted the skipper of his ship,
who, after his long delay at Dor, was in no
mood to linger. At dawn the next morning,
therefore, the journey was continued, and once
more an unfortunate lacuna interrupts the passage
of the report. From the tattered fragments
of the writing, however, it seems that at the next
port of call—perhaps the city of Sidon—a party
of inoffensive Sicilian merchants was encountered,
and immediately the desperate Wenamon hatched
a daring plot. By this time he had come to place
some trust in Mengebet, the skipper, who, for the
sake of his own good standing in Egypt, had shown
himself willing to help the envoy of Amon-Ra in
his troubles, although he would not go so far as to
delay his journey for him; and Wenamon therefore
admitted him to his councils. On some pretext or
other a party led by the Egyptian paid a visit
to these merchants and entered into conversation
with them. Then, suddenly overpowering them,
a rush was made for their cash-box, which Wenamon
at once burst open. To his disappointment
he found it to contain only thirty-one debens
of silver, which happened to be precisely the
amount of silver, though not of gold, which he
had lost. This sum he pocketed, saying to the
[122]struggling merchants as he did so, “I will take
this money of yours, and will keep it until you
find my money. Was it not a Sicilian who stole
it, and no thief of ours? I will take it.”

With these words the party raced back to the
ship, scrambled on board, and in a few moments
had hoisted sail and were scudding northwards
towards Byblos, where Wenamon proposed to
throw himself on the mercy of Zakar-Baal, the
prince of that city. Wenamon, it will be remembered,
had always considered that he had been
robbed by a Sicilian of Dor, notwithstanding the
fact that only a sailor of his own ship could have
known of the existence of the money, as King
Bedel seems to have pointed out to him. The
Egyptian, therefore, did not regard this forcible
seizure of silver from these other Sicilians as a
crime. It was a perfectly just appropriation of
a portion of the funds which belonged to him by
rights. Let us imagine ourselves robbed at our
hotel by Hans the German waiter: it would surely
give us the most profound satisfaction to take
Herr Schnupfendorff, the piano-tuner, by the
throat when next he visited us, and go through
his pockets. He and Hans, being of the same
nationality, must suffer for one another’s sins, and
if the magistrate thinks otherwise he must be
regarded as prejudiced by too much study of
the law.

Byblos stood at the foot of the hills of Lebanon,
in the very shadow of the great cedars, and it was
[123]therefore Wenamon’s destination. Now, however,
as the ship dropped anchor in the harbour, the
Egyptian realised that his mission would probably
be fruitless, and that he himself would perhaps
be flung into prison for illegally having in his
possession the famous image of the god to which
he could show no written right. Moreover, the
news of the robbery of the merchants might well
have reached Byblos overland. His first action,
therefore, was to conceal the idol and the money;
and this having been accomplished he sat himself
down in his cabin to await events.

The Prince of Byblos certainly had been advised
of the robbery; and as soon as the news of the
ship’s arrival was reported to him he sent a curt
message to the captain saying simply, “Get out
of my harbour.” At this Wenamon gave up all
hope, and, hearing that there was then in port
a vessel which was about to sail for Egypt, he
sent a pathetic message to the prince asking
whether he might be allowed to travel by it
back to his own country.

No satisfactory answer was received, and for
the best part of a month Wenamon’s ship rode
at anchor, while the distracted envoy paced the
deck, vainly pondering upon a fitting course of
action. Each morning the same brief order, “Get
out of my harbour,” was delivered to him by the
harbour-master; but the indecision of the authorities
as to how to treat this Egyptian official prevented
the order being backed by force. Meanwhile
[124]Wenamon and Mengebet judiciously spread
through the city the report of the power of Amon-of-the-Road,
and hinted darkly at the wrath which
would ultimately fall upon the heads of those who
suffered the image and its keeper to be turned
away from the quays of Byblos. No doubt, also,
a portion of the stolen debens of silver was expended
in bribes to the priests of the city, for, as
we shall presently see, one of them took up Wenamon’s
cause with the most unnatural vigour.

All, however, seemed to be of no avail, and
Wenamon decided to get away as best he could.
His worldly goods were quietly transferred to the
ship which was bound for the Nile; and, when
night had fallen, with Amon-of-the-Road tucked
under his arm, he hurried along the deserted quay.
Suddenly out of the darkness there appeared a
group of figures, and Wenamon found himself confronted
by the stalwart harbour-master and his
police. Now, indeed, he gave himself up for lost.
The image would be taken from him, and no
longer would he have the alternative of leaving
the harbour. He must have groaned aloud as he
stood there in the black night, with the cold sea
wind threatening to tear the covers from the
treasure under his arm. His surprise, therefore,
was unbounded when the harbour-master addressed
him in the following words: “Remain
until morning here near the prince.”

The Egyptian turned upon him fiercely. “Are
you not the man who came to me every day
[125]saying, “Get out of my harbour?” he cried.
“And now are you not saying, ‘Remain in
Byblos?’ your object being to let this ship which
I have found depart for Egypt without me, so
that you may come to me again and say,
‘Go away.'”

The harbour-master in reality had been ordered
to detain Wenamon for quite another reason. On
the previous day, while the prince was sacrificing
to his gods, one of the noble youths in his train,
who had probably seen the colour of Wenamon’s
debens, suddenly broke into a religious frenzy,
and so continued all that day, and far into the
night, calling incessantly upon those around him
to go and fetch the envoy of Amon-Ra and the
sacred image. Prince Zakar-Baal had considered
it prudent to obey this apparently divine command,
and had sent the harbour-master to prevent
Wenamon’s departure. Finding, however, that
the Egyptian was determined to board the ship,
the official sent a messenger to the prince, who
replied with an order to the skipper of the vessel
to remain that night in harbour.

Upon the following morning a deputation, evidently
friendly, waited on Wenamon, and urged
him to come to the palace, which he finally did,
incidentally attending on his way the morning
service which was being celebrated upon the sea-shore.
“I found the prince,” writes Wenamon in
his report, “sitting in his upper chamber, leaning
his back against a window, while the waves of the
[126]Great Syrian Sea beat against the wall below. I
said to him, ‘The mercy of Amon be with you!’
He said to me, ‘How long is it from now since
you left the abode of Amon?’ I replied, ‘Five
months and one day from now.'”

The prince then said, “Look now, if what you
say is true, where is the writing of Amon which
should be in your hand? Where is the letter of
the High Priest of Amon which should be in
your hand?”

“I gave them to Nesubanebded,” replied
Wenamon.

“Then,” says Wenamon, “he was very wroth,
and he said to me, ‘Look here, the writings and
the letters are not in your hand. And where is
the fine ship which Nesubanebded would have
given you, and where is its picked Syrian crew?
He would not put you and your affairs in the
charge of this skipper of yours, who might have
had you killed and thrown into the sea. Whom
would they have sought the god from then?—and
you, whom would they have sought you from
then?’ So said he to me, and I replied to him,
‘There are indeed Egyptian ships and Egyptian
crews that sail under Nesubanebded, but he had at
the time no ship and no Syrian crew to give me.'”

The prince did not accept this as a satisfactory
answer, but pointed out that there were ten
thousand ships sailing between Egypt and
Syria, of which number there must have been
one at Nesubanebded’s disposal.

[127]“Then,” writes Wenamon, “I was silent in
this great hour. At length he said to me, ‘On
what business have you come here?’ I replied, ‘I
have come to get wood for the great and august
barge of Amon-Ra, king of the gods. Your
father supplied it, your grandfather did so, and
you too shall do it.’ So spoke I to him.”

The prince admitted that his fathers had sent
wood to Egypt, but he pointed out that they had
received proper remuneration for it. He then
told his servants to go and find the old ledger
in which the transactions were recorded, and this
being done, it was found that a thousand debens
of silver had been paid for the wood. The prince
now argued that he was in no way the servant
of Amon, for if he had been he would have been
obliged to supply the wood without remuneration.
“I am,” he proudly declared, “neither your
servant nor the servant of him who sent you
here. If I cry out to the Lebanon the heavens
open and the logs lie here on the shore of the
sea.” He went on to say that if, of his condescension,
he now procured the timber Wenamon would
have to provide the ships and all the tackle. “If
I make the sails of the ships for you,” said the
prince, “they may be top-heavy and may break,
and you will perish in the sea when Amon
thunders in heaven; for skilled workmanship
comes only from Egypt to reach my place of
abode.” This seems to have upset the composure
of Wenamon to some extent, and the prince took
[128]advantage of his uneasiness to say, “Anyway,
what is this miserable expedition that they have
had you make (without money or equipment)?”

At this Wenamon appears to have lost his
temper. “O guilty one!” he said to the prince,
“this is no miserable expedition on which I am
engaged. There is no ship upon the Nile which
Amon does not own, and his is the sea, and his
this Lebanon of which you say, ‘It is mine.’ Its
forests grow for the barge of Amon, the lord of
every ship. Why Amon-Ra himself, the king
of the gods, said to Herhor, my lord, ‘Send me’;
and Herhor made me go bearing the statue of
this great god. Yet see, you have allowed this
great god to wait twenty-nine days after he had
arrived in your harbour, although you certainly
knew he was there. He is indeed still what he
once was: yes, now while you stand bargaining
for the Lebanon with Amon its lord. As for
Amon-Ra, the king of the gods, he is the lord
of life and health, and he was the lord of your
fathers, who spent their lifetime offering to him.
You also, you are the servant of Amon. If you
will say to Amon, ‘I will do this,’ and you execute
his command, you shall live and be prosperous
and be healthy, and you shall be popular with
your whole country and people. Wish not for
yourself a thing belonging to Amon-Ra, king of
the gods. Truly the lion loves his own! Let
my secretary be brought to me that I may send
him to Nesubanebded, and he will send you all
[129]that I shall ask him to send, after which, when I
return to the south, I will send you all, all your
trifles again.”

“So spake I to him,” says Wenamon in his
report, as with a flourish of his pen he brings this
fine speech to an end. No doubt it would have
been more truthful in him to say, “So would I
have spoken to him had I not been so flustered”;
but of all types of lie this is probably the most
excusable. At all events, he said sufficient to
induce the prince to send his secretary to Egypt;
and as a token of good faith Zakar-Baal sent with
him seven logs of cedar-wood. In forty-eight
days’ time the messenger returned, bringing with
him five golden and five silver vases, twenty
garments of fine linen, 500 rolls of papyrus, 500
ox-hides, 500 coils of rope, twenty measures of
lentils, and five measures of dried fish. At this
present the prince expressed himself most satisfied,
and immediately sent 300 men and 300 oxen with
proper overseers to start the work of felling the
trees. Some eight months after leaving Tanis,
Wenamon’s delighted eyes gazed upon the complete
number of logs lying at the edge of the
sea, ready for shipment to Egypt.

The task being finished, the prince walked
down to the beach to inspect the timber, and he
called to Wenamon to come with him. When the
Egyptian had approached, the prince pointed to
the logs, remarking that the work had been carried
through although the remuneration had not been
[130]nearly so great as that which his fathers had
received. Wenamon was about to reply when
inadvertently the shadow of the prince’s umbrella
fell upon his head. What memories or anticipations
this trivial incident aroused one cannot
now tell with certainty. One of the gentlemen-in-waiting,
however, found cause in it to whisper
to Wenamon, “The shadow of Pharaoh, your
lord, falls upon you”—the remark, no doubt,
being accompanied by a sly dig in the ribs. The
prince angrily snapped, “Let him alone”; and,
with the picture of Wenamon gloomily staring
out to sea, we are left to worry out the meaning
of the occurrence. It may be that the prince
intended to keep Wenamon at Byblos until the
uttermost farthing had been extracted from Egypt
in further payment for the wood, and that therefore
he was to be regarded henceforth as Wenamon’s
king and master. This is perhaps indicated
by the following remarks of the prince.

“Do not thus contemplate the terrors of the
sea,” he said to Wenamon. “For if you do that
you should also contemplate my own. Come, I
have not done to you what they did to certain
former envoys. They spent seventeen years in
this land, and they died where they were.” Then,
turning to an attendant, “Take him,” he said,
“and let him see the tomb in which they lie.”

“Oh, don’t let me see it,” Wenamon tells us that
he cried in anguish; but, recovering his composure,
he continued in a more valiant strain. “Mere
[131]human beings,” he said, “were the envoys who
were then sent. There was no god among them
(as there now is).”

The prince had recently ordered an engraver to
write a commemorative inscription upon a stone
tablet recording the fact that the king of the
gods had sent Amon-of-the-Road to Byblos as
his divine messenger and Wenamon as his human
messenger, that timber had been asked for and
supplied, and that in return Amon had promised
him ten thousand years of celestial life over and
above that of ordinary persons. Wenamon now
reminded him of this, asking him why he should
talk so slightingly of the Egyptian envoys when
the making of this tablet showed that in reality
he considered their presence an honour. Moreover,
he pointed out that when in future years
an envoy from Egypt should read this tablet, he
would of course pronounce at once the magical
prayers which would procure for the prince, who
would probably then be in hell after all, a draught
of water. This remark seems to have tickled the
prince’s fancy, for he gravely acknowledged its
value, and spoke no more in his former strain.
Wenamon closed the interview by promising that
the High Priest of Amon-Ra would fully reward
him for his various kindnesses.

Shortly after this the Egyptian paid another
visit to the sea-shore to feast his eyes upon the
logs. He must have been almost unable to contain
himself in the delight and excitement of the ending
[132]of his task and his approaching return, in
triumph to Egypt; and we may see him jauntily
walking over the sand, perhaps humming a tune
to himself. Suddenly he observed a fleet of
eleven ships sailing towards the town, and the
song must have died upon his lips. As they
drew nearer he saw to his horror that they belonged
to the Sicilians of Dor, and we must picture
him biting his nails in his anxiety as he stood
amongst the logs. Presently they were within
hailing distance, and some one called to them
asking their business. The reply rang across the
water, brief and terrible; “Arrest Wenamon!
Let not a ship of his pass to Egypt.” Hearing
these words the envoy of Amon-Ra, king of the
gods, just now so proudly boasting, threw himself
upon the sand and burst into tears.

The sobs of the wretched man penetrated to
a chamber in which the prince’s secretary sat
writing at the open window, and he hurried
over to the prostrate figure. “Whatever is the
matter with you?” he said, tapping the man on
the shoulder.

Wenamon raised his head, “Surely you see
these birds which descend on Egypt,” he groaned.
“Look at them! They have come into the harbour,
and how long shall I be left forsaken here?
Truly you see those who have come to arrest me.”

With these words one must suppose that Wenamon
returned to his weeping, for he says in his
report that the sympathetic secretary went off to
[133]find the prince in order that some plan of action
might be formulated. When the news was reported
to Zakar-Baal, he too began to lament; for the
whole affair was menacing and ugly. Looking out
of the window he saw the Sicilian ships anchored
as a barrier across the mouth of the harbour, he
saw the logs of cedar-wood strewn over the beach,
he saw the writhing figure of Wenamon pouring
sand and dust upon his head and drumming feebly
with his toes; and his royal heart was moved with
pity for the misfortunes of the Egyptian.

Hastily speaking to his secretary, he told him
to procure two large jars of wine and a ram, and
to give them to Wenamon on the chance that they
might stop the noise of his lamentations. The
secretary and his servants procured these things
from the kitchen, and, tottering down with them
to the envoy, placed them by his side. Wenamon,
however, merely glanced at them in a sickly
manner, and then buried his head once more. The
failure must have been observed from the window
of the palace, for the prince sent another servant
flying off for a popular Egyptian lady of no reputation,
who happened to be living just then at Byblos
in the capacity of a dancing-girl. Presently she
minced into the room, very much elated, no doubt,
at this indication of the royal favour. The prince
at once ordered her to hasten down on to the
beach to comfort her countryman. “Sing to him,”
he said. “Don’t let his heart feel apprehension.”

Wenamon seemed to have waved the girl aside,
[134]and we may picture the prince making urgent
signs to the lady from his window to renew her
efforts. The moans of the miserable man, however,
did not cease, and the prince had recourse to a
third device. This time he sent a servant to
Wenamon with a message of calm assurance.
“Eat and drink,” he said, “and let not your
heart feel apprehension. You shall hear all that
I have to say in the morning.” At this Wenamon
roused himself, and, wiping his eyes, consented to
be led back to his rooms, ever turning, no doubt,
to cast nervous glances in the direction of the
silent ships of Dor.

On the following morning the prince sent for
the leaders of the Sicilians and asked them for
what reason they had come to Byblos. They
replied that they had come in search of Wenamon,
who had robbed some of their countrymen of
thirty-one debens of silver. The prince was
placed in a difficult position, for he was desirous
to avoid giving offence either to Dor or to Egypt
from whence he now expected further payment;
but he managed to pass out on to clearer ground
by means of a simple stratagem.

“I cannot arrest the envoy of Amon in my
territory,” he said to the men of Dor. “But I
will send him away, and you shall pursue him
and arrest him.”

The plan seems to have appealed to the sporting
instincts of the Sicilians, for it appears that they
drew off from the harbour to await their quarry.
Wenamon was then informed of the scheme, and
[135]one may suppose that he showed no relish for it.
To be chased across a bilious sea by sporting men
of hardened stomach was surely a torture for the
damned; but it is to be presumed that Zakar-Baal
left the Egyptian some chance of escape. Hastily
he was conveyed on board a ship, and his misery
must have been complete when he observed that
outside the harbour it was blowing a gale. Hardly
had he set out into the “Great Syrian Sea” before
a terrific storm burst, and in the confusion which
ensued we lose sight of the waiting fleet. No
doubt the Sicilians put in to Byblos once more
for shelter, and deemed Wenamon at the bottom
of the ocean as the wind whistled through their
own bare rigging.

The Egyptian had planned to avoid his enemies
by beating northwards when he left the harbour,
instead of southwards towards Egypt; but the
tempest took the ship’s course into its own hands
and drove the frail craft north-westwards towards
Cyprus, the wooded shores of which were, in course
of time, sighted. Wenamon was now indeed ‘twixt
the devil and the deep sea, for behind him the
waves raged furiously, and before him he perceived
a threatening group of Cypriots awaiting
him upon the wind-swept shore. Presently the
vessel grounded upon the beach, and immediately
the ill-starred Egyptian and the entire crew were
prisoners in the hands of a hostile mob. Roughly
they were dragged to the capital of the island,
which happened to be but a few miles distant,
and with ignominy they were hustled, wet and
[136]bedraggled, through the streets towards the palace
of Hetebe, the Queen of Cyprus.

As they neared the building the queen herself
passed by, surrounded by a brave company of
nobles and soldiers. Wenamon burst away from
his captors, and bowed himself before the royal
lady, crying as he did so, “Surely there is somebody
amongst this company who understands
Egyptian.” One of the nobles, to Wenamon’s
joy, replied, “Yes, I understand it.”

“Say to my mistress,” cried the tattered envoy,
“that I have heard even in far-off Thebes, the
abode of Amon, that in every city injustice is
done, but that justice obtains in the land of
Cyprus. Yet see, injustice is done here also this
day.”

This was repeated to the queen, who replied,
“Indeed!—what is this that you say?”

Through the interpreter Wenamon then addressed
himself to Hetebe. “If the sea raged,”
he said, “and the wind drove me to the land
where I now am, will you let these people take
advantage of it to murder me, I who am an
envoy of Amon? I am one for whom they will
seek unceasingly. And as for these sailors of the
prince of Byblos, whom they also wish to kill,
their lord will undoubtedly capture ten crews
of yours, and will slay every man of them in
revenge.”

This seems to have impressed the queen, for
she ordered the mob to stand on one side, and
to Wenamon she said, “Pass the night …”

[137]Here the torn writing comes to an abrupt end,
and the remainder of Wenamon’s adventures are
for ever lost amidst the dust of El Hibeh. One
may suppose that Hetebe took the Egyptian under
her protection, and that ultimately he arrived once
more in Egypt, whither Zakar-Baal had perhaps
already sent the timber. Returning to his native
town, it seems that Wenamon wrote his report,
which for some reason or other was never despatched
to the High Priest. Perhaps the envoy
was himself sent for, and thus his report was
rendered useless; or perhaps our text is one of
several copies.

There can be no question that he was a writer
of great power, and this tale of his adventures
must be regarded as one of the jewels of the
ancient Egyptian language. The brief description
of the Prince of Byblos, seated with his back
to the window, while the waves beat against the
wall below, brings vividly before one that far-off
scene, and reveals a lightness of touch most unusual
in writers of that time. There is surely,
too, an appreciation of a delicate form of humour
observable in his account of some of his dealings
with the prince. It is appalling to think that
the peasants who found this roll of papyrus might
have used it as fuel for their evening fire; and
that, had not a drifting rumour of the value of
such articles reached their village, this little tale
of old Egypt and the long-lost Kingdoms of the
Sea would have gone up to empty heaven in a
puff of smoke.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER VI.

THE STORY OF THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR.

When the early Spanish explorers led their expeditions
to Florida, it was their intention to find
the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, tales of its
potent waters having reached Peter Martyr as
early as 1511. This desire to discover the things
pertaining to Fairyland has been, throughout
history, one of the most fertile sources of adventure.
From the days when the archaic Egyptians
penetrated into the regions south of the Cataracts,
where they believed that the inhabitants were
other than human, and into Pount, the “Land of
the Ghosts,” the hope of Fairyland has led men to
search the face of the earth and to penetrate into
its unknown places. It has been the theme of
countless stories: it has supplied material for
innumerable songs.

And in spite of the circumambulations of science
about us, in spite of the hardening of all the
tissues of our imagination, in spite of the phenomenal
development of the commonplace, this desire
for a glimpse of the miraculous is still set deeply
[139]in our hearts. The old quest of Fairyland is as
active now as ever it was. We still presume, in
our unworthiness, to pass the barriers, and to walk
upon those paths which lead to the enchanted
forests and through them to the city of the Moon.
At any moment we are ready to set forth, like
Arthur’s knights, in search of the Holy Grail.

The explorer who penetrates into Central Africa
in quest of King Solomon’s mines is impelled by a
hope closely akin to that of the Spaniards. The
excavator who digs for the buried treasures of the
Incas or of the Egyptians is often led by a desire
for the fabulous. Search is now being made in the
western desert of Egypt for a lost city of burnished
copper; and the Anglo-Egyptian official is constantly
urged by credulous natives to take camels
across the wilderness in quest of a town whose
houses and temples are of pure gold. What archæologist
has not at some time given ear to the
whispers that tell of long-lost treasures, of forgotten
cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea?
It is not only children who love the tales of Fairyland.
How happily we have read Kipling’s ‘Puck
of Pook’s Hill,’ De la Motte Fouqué’s ‘Undine,’
Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows,’ or
F.W. Bain’s Indian stories. The recent fairy
plays—Barry’s “Peter Pan,” Maeterlinck’s “Blue
Bird,” and the like—have been enormously successful.
Say what we will, fairy tales still hold
their old power over us, and still we turn to them
as a relief from the commonplace.

[140]Some of us, failing to find Fairyland upon earth,
have transferred it to the kingdom of Death; and
it has become the hope for the future. Each
Sunday in church the congregation of business
men and hard-worked women set aside the things
of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the
endless search. To the rolling notes of the organ
they tell the tale of the Elysian Fields: they take
their unfilled desire for Fairyland and adjust it to
their deathless hope of Heaven. They sing of
crystal fountains, of streets paved with gold, of
meadows dressed with living green where they
shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn.
There everlasting spring abides and never-withering
flowers; there ten thousand times ten thousand
clad in sparkling raiment throng up the steeps of
light. Here in the church the most unimaginative
people cry aloud upon their God for Fairyland.

They know no way of picturing the incomprehensible
state of the future, and they interpret it,
therefore, in terms of the fairy tale.

I am inclined to think that this sovereignty of
the fairies is beneficial. Fairy tales fill the minds
of the young with knowledge of the kindly people
who will reward with many gifts those that are
[141]charitable to the old; they teach a code of chivalry
that brings as its reward the love of the beautiful
princess in the tower; they tell of dangers overcome
by courage and perseverance; they suggest
a contact with nature which otherwise might never
be developed. Where angels and archangels overawe
by their omnipotence, the microscopic fairies
who can sit singing upon a mushroom and dangle
from the swaying stem of a bluebell, carry the
thoughts down the scale of life to the little and
really important things. A sleepy child will rather
believe that the Queen of the Fairies is acting
sentry upon the knob of the bedpost than that an
angel stands at the head of the cot with great
wings spread in protection—wings which suggest
the probability of claws and a beak to match.

The dragons which can only be slain by the
noble knight, the enchantments which can only
be broken by the outwitting of the evil witch, the
lady who can only be won by perils bravely endured,
form the material of moral lessons which no
other method of teaching could so impress upon
the youthful mind.

And when mature years are attained the atmosphere
of Fairyland remains with us. The lost
songs of the little people drift through the brain,
recalling the infinite possibilities of beauty and
goodness which are so slightly out of reach; the
forgotten wonder of elfs and brownies suggests
itself to us from the heart of flowers and amidst
the leaves of trees. The clear depths of the sea
[142]take half their charm from the memory of the
mermaid’s palace; the silence of forests is rich
with the expectancy of the Knight of the Golden
Plume; the large spaces of kitchens and corridors
are hushed for the concealment of Robin
Goodfellow.

It is the elusiveness, the enchantment, of Fairyland
which, for the mature mind, constitutes its
greatest value and charm; it is a man’s desire for
the realms of Midsummer-night that makes the
building of those realms in our childhood so valuable.
We are constantly endeavouring to recapture
the grace of that intangible kingdom, and the hope
of ultimate success retains the elasticity of the
mind. Held fast by the stiffened joints of reason
and closeted with the gout of science, we are fettered
prisoners in the world unless there be the
knowledge that something eludes us to lead us on.
We know quite well that the fairies do not exist,
but at the same time we cannot deny that the
elusive atmosphere of Fairyland is one with that
of our fondest dreams.

Who has not, upon a grey morning, awakened
from sleep with the knowledge that he has passed
out from a kingdom of dream more dear than all
the realms of real life? Vainly we endeavour to
recall the lost details, but only the impression
remains. That impression, however, warms the
tone of our whole day, and frames our thoughts as
it were with precious stones. Thus also it is with
the memory of our childhood’s idea of Fairyland:
[143]the impression is recalled, the brain peers forward,
the thoughts go on tiptoe, and we feel that we
have caught a glimpse of Beauty. Indeed, the
recollection of the atmosphere created in our
youthful minds by means of fairy tales is perhaps
the most abundant of the sources of our knowledge
of Beauty in mature years.

I do not suppose that I am alone in declaring
that some of the most tender feelings of childhood
are inspired by the misfortunes of the Beast in the
story of “Beauty and the Beast”; and the Sleeping
Beauty is the first love of many a small boy.
Man, from his youth up, craves enchantment; and
though the business of life gives him no opportunity
for the indulging in day-dreams, there are
few of us indeed who have not at some time sought
the phantom isles, and sought in vain. There is
no stormy night, when the wind moans through
the trees, and the moon-rack flies overhead, but
takes something of its mystery from the recollection
of the enchantments of the dark ages. The
sun does not sink into the sea amidst the low-lying
clouds but some vague thought is brought to mind
of the uncharted island whereon that maiden lies
sleeping whose hair is dark as heaven’s wrath, and
whose breast is white like alabaster in the pathway
of the moon. There she lies in the charmed circle
under the trees, where none may enter until that
hour when some pale, lost mariner shall surprise
the secret of the pathway, and, coming suddenly
upon her, shall kiss her shadowed lips. Vague,
[144]elusive, undefined, as such fancies must be, they
yet tinge the thoughts of almost every man at
certain moments of his life, and set him searching
for the enchantment of bygone days. Eagerly he
looks for those

and it is the fact of their unreality that gives them
their haunting value.

The following story, preserved in a papyrus now
at St Petersburg, describes a mysterious island
whereon there dwelt a monster most lovable and
most forlorn: a creature so tenderly drawn, indeed,
that the reader will not fail to enthrone him in the
little company of the nobility of the kingdom of
the fairy tale. Translations of the story by two
or three savants have appeared; but the present
version, which I give in its literal form, has been
prepared especially for this volume by Mr Alan
Gardiner; and, coming from him, it may be said
to be the last word of the science upon the subject
of this difficult text.

The scene with which the story opens is clearly
indicated by the introductory sentences, though
actually it is not described. A large war-galley
had come swinging down the Nile from the land
of Wawat in the south, the oars flashing in the
Nubian sunlight. On the left the granite rocks
of the island of Bigeh towered above the vessel;
on the right the island of Philæ, as yet devoid of
[145]buildings, rested placidly on the blue waters.
Ahead were the docks of Shallal, where the clustered
boats lay darkly against the yellow of the
desert, and busy groups of figures, loading and
unloading cargoes, moved to and fro over the sand.
Away to the left, behind Bigeh, the distant roar
of the First Cataract could be heard as the waters
went rushing down from Nubia across the frontier
into Egypt.

The great vessel had just returned from the
little-known country of Ethiopia, which bordered
the Land of the Ghosts, having its frontiers upon
the shores of the sea that encircled the world; and
the sailors were all straining their eyes towards
these docks which formed the southernmost outpost
of Egypt, their home. The greatest excitement
prevailed on deck; but in the cabin, erected
of vari-coloured cloth in the stern of the vessel, the
noble leader of the expedition which was now at
its conclusion lay in a troubled sleep, tossing nervously
upon his bed. His dreams were all of the
terrible ordeal which was before him. He could
take no pleasure in his home-coming, for he was
driven nigh crazy by the thought of entering the
presence of the great Pharaoh himself in order to
make his report.

It is almost impossible to realise nowadays the
agonies of mind that a man had to suffer who was
obliged to approach the incarnation of the sun
upon earth, and to crave the indulgence of this
god in regard to any shortcomings in the conduct
[146]of the affairs intrusted to him. Of all the kings
of the earth the Pharaoh was the most terrible,
the most thoroughly frightening. Not only did
he hold the lives of his subjects in his hand to do
with them as he chose, but he also controlled the
welfare of their immortal souls; for, being a god,
he had dominion over the realms of the dead. To
be censured by the Pharaoh was to be excommunicated
from the pleasures of this earth and outlawed
from the fair estate of heaven. A well-known
Egyptian noble named Sinuhe, the hero of
a fine tale of adventure, describes himself as petrified
with terror when he entered the audience-chamber.
“I stretched myself on my stomach,”
he writes, “and became unconscious before him
(the Pharaoh). This god addressed me kindly,
but I was as a man overtaken by the twilight: my
soul departed, my flesh trembled; my heart was
no more in my body that I should know life from
death.”[1] Similarly another personage writes:
“Remember the day of bringing the tribute,
when thou passest into the Presence under the
window, the nobles on each side before his
Majesty, the nobles and ambassadors (?) of all
countries. They stand and gaze at the tribute,
while thou fearest and shrinkest back, and thy
hand is weak, and thou knowest not whether it
is death or life that is before thee; and thou art
brave (only) in praying to thy gods: ‘Save me,
prosper me this one time.'”[2]

[147]Of the Pharaoh it is written—

Or again—

To meet face to face this all-knowing, all-seeing,
celestial creature, from whom there could be no
secrets hid nor any guilt concealed, was an ordeal
to which a man might well look forward with
utter horror. It was this terrible dread that,
in the tale with which we are now concerned,
held the captain of this Nubian vessel in agony
upon his couch.

As he lay there, biting his finger-nails, one of
the ship’s officers, himself a former leader of expeditions,
entered the cabin to announce their
arrival at the Shallal docks.

“Good news, prince,” said he cheerfully to his
writhing master. “Look, we have reached home.
They have taken the mallet and driven in the
mooring-post; the ship’s cable has been put on
land. There is merrymaking and thanksgiving,
and every man is embracing his fellow. Our
crew has returned unscathed, without loss to
our soldiers. We have reached the end of
[148]Wawat, we have passed Bigeh. Yes, indeed,
we have returned safely; we have reached our
own land.”

At this the prince seems to have groaned anew,
much to the distress of his friend, who could but
urge him to pull himself together and to play the
man.

“Listen to me, prince,” he begged, “for I am
one void of exaggeration. Wash yourself, pour
water on your fingers.”

The wretched, man replied, it would seem, with
a repetition of his fears; whereupon the old sailor
seems to have sat down by his side and to have
given him a word of advice as to how he should
behave in the king’s presence. “Make answer
when you are addressed,” he said; “speak to the
king with a heart in you; answer without restraint.
For it is a man’s mouth that saves
him…. But do as you will: to talk to you
is wearisome (to you).”

Presently the old sailor was seized with an idea.
He would tell a story, no matter whether it were
strictly true or not, in which his own adventures
should be set forth. He would describe how he
was wrecked upon an unknown island, how he was
saved from death, and how, on his return, he
conducted into the Pharaoh’s presence. A narration
of his own experiences before his sovereign
might give heart to his captain, and might effectually
lift the intolerable burden of dread from the
princely shoulders.

[149]“I will relate to you,” he began, “a similar
thing which befell me my very self. I was
making a journey to the mines of the sovereign …”

The prince may here be supposed to have sat up
and given gloomy attention to his friend’s words,
for Egyptians of all ages have loved a good story,
and tales of adventures in the south were, in early
times, most acceptable. The royal gold mines referred
to were probably situated at the southern-most
end of the eastern Egyptian desert. To
reach them one would take ship from Kossair or
some other Red Sea port, sail down the coast to
the frontiers of Pount, the modern Somaliland,
and then travel inland by caravan. It was a
perilous undertaking, and, at the time when
this story was written, the journey must have
furnished material for amazing yarns.

“I went down on the Great Green Sea,” continued
the speaker, “in a ship one hundred and
fifty cubits[1] in length and forty cubits in breadth,
and in it were a hundred and fifty sailors, picked
men of Egypt. They scanned the heavens and
they scanned the earth, and their hearts were
stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or
ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it
was not.”

A storm arose while they were out of sight of
land, and rapidly increased in violence, until the
waves, according to the very restrained estimate
[150]of the narrator, were eight cubits high—that is to
say, about thirteen or fourteen feet. To one who
was accustomed to the waves of the Nile this
would be a great height; and the passage thus
suggests that the scribe was an untravelled man.
A vessel of 150 cubits, or about 250 feet, in length
might have been expected to ride out a storm of
this magnitude; but, according to the story, she
went to pieces, and the whole ship’s company, with
the single exception of the teller of the tale, were
drowned. The survivor managed to cling to a
plank of wood, which was driven by the wind
towards the shores of an uncharted island, and
here at length he was cast up by the waves.

Not far from the beach there was a small
thicket, and to this the castaway hastened,
sheltering therein from the fury of the storm.
For three days in deep despair he lay hidden,
“without a companion,” as he said, “save my
heart;” but at last the tempest subsided, the
sun shone in the heavens once again, and the
famished mariner was able to go in search of
food, which, to his delight, he found in abundance.

The scene upon which he gazed as he plucked
the fruit of the laden trees was most mysterious,
and all that he saw around him must have had an
appearance not altogether consistent with reality,
for, indeed, the island was not real. It had been
called into existence, perhaps, at the bidding of
some god to relieve the tedium of an eternal afternoon,
[151]and suddenly it had appeared, floating upon
the blue waters of the ocean. How long it had
remained there, how long it would still remain,
none could tell, for at any moment the mind of
the god might be diverted, and instantly it would
dissolve and vanish as would a dream. Beneath
the isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness
the fishes of the deep, with luminous, round eyes,
passed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the trees
above them. Overhead the heavens stretched,
and around about spread the expanse of the sea
upon which no living thing might be seen, save
only the dolphins as they leapt into the sunshine
and sank again amidst the gleaming spray.

There was abundant vegetation upon the island,
but it does not appear to have looked quite real.
The fig-trees were heavy with fruit, the vines were
festooned from bough to bough, hung with clusters
of grapes, and pomegranates were ripe for the
plucking. But there seems to have been an
unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment
were upon them. In the tangled
undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor
walked there lay great melons and pumpkins.
The breeze wafted to his nostrils the smell of the
incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after
the storm, must have made every breath he
breathed a pleasure of Paradise to him. Moving
over the luxuriant ground, he put up flights of
wonderful birds which sped towards the interior,
red, green, and golden, against the sky. Monkeys
[152]chattered at him from the trees, and sprang from
branch to branch amidst the dancing flowers. In
shadowed pools of clear water fishes were to be
seen, gliding amidst the reeds; and amongst the
rocks beside the sea the castaway could look down
upon the creatures of the deep imprisoned between
the tides.

Food in all forms was to hand, and he had but
to fill his arms with the good things which Fate
had provided. “I found there,” he said, “figs,
grapes, and all manner of goodly onions; melons
and pomegranates were there, and pumpkins of
every kind. Fishes were there and fowls: there
was nought that was lacking in it. I satisfied
myself, and set upon the ground the abundance
of that with which my arms were filled. I took
the fire-borer and kindled a fire, and made a burnt-offering
to the gods.”

Seated in the warm sunshine amidst the trees,
eating a roast fowl seasoned with onions or some
equally palatable concoction, he seems to have
found the life of a shipwrecked mariner by no
means as distressing as he had anticipated; and
the wording of the narrative appears to be so
arranged that an impression of comfortable ease
and security may surround his sunlit figure.
Suddenly, however, all was changed. “I heard,”
said he, “a sound as of thunder, and I thought it
was the waves of the sea.” Then “the trees
creaked and the earth trembled”; and, like the
Egyptian that he was, he went down on his shaking
[153]hands and knees, and buried his face in the
ground.

At length “I uncovered my face,” he declared,
“and I found it was a serpent that came, of the
length of thirty cubits”—about fifty feet—”and
his tail was more than two cubits” in diameter.
“His skin was overlaid with gold, and his eyebrows
were of real lapis lazuli, and he was
exceeding perfect.”

“He opened his mouth to me,” he continued,
“as I lay on my stomach before him, and said to
me: ‘Who brought thee, who brought thee, little
one?—who brought thee? If thou delayest to
tell me who brought thee to this island I will
cause thee to know thyself (again only) when thou
art ashes, and art become that which is not seen'”—that
is to say, a ghost.

“Thus you spoke to me,” whispered the old
sailor, as though again addressing the serpent,
who, in the narration of these adventures, had
become once more a very present reality to him,
“but I heard it not. I lay before thee, and was
unconscious.”

Continuing his story, he told how the great
serpent lifted him tenderly in his golden mouth,
and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him
down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees
and the flowers. The Egyptian at once flung
himself upon his stomach before him, and lay
there in a stupor of terror. The serpent, however,
meant him no harm, and indeed looked down
[154]on him with tender pity as he questioned him
once more.

“Who brought thee, who brought thee, little
one?” he asked again, “Who brought thee to
this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the
(under) half is waves?”

On his hands and knees before the kindly
monster the shipwrecked Egyptian managed to
regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to
give an account of himself.

“I was going down to the mines,” he faltered,
“on a mission of the sovereign, in a ship one
hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in
breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty
sailors, picked men of Egypt. They scanned the
heavens and they scanned the earth, and their
hearts were stouter than lions. They foretold the
storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as
yet it was not. Every one of them, his heart was
stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow.
There was none unproven amongst them. The
storm arose while that we were on the Great
Green Sea, before we touched land; and as we
sailed it redoubled (its strength), and the waves
thereof were eight cubits. There was a plank of
wood to which I clung. The ship perished, and
of them that were in her not one was left saving
me alone, who now am at your side. And I was
brought to this island by the waves of the Great
Green Sea.”

At this point the man seems to have been overcome
[155]once more with terror, and the serpent,
therefore, hastened to reassure him.

“Fear not, little one,” he said in his gentle
voice; “fear not. Let not thy face be dismayed.
If thou hast come to me it is God who has let
thee live, who has brought thee to this phantom
isle in which there is naught that is lacking, but
it is full of all good things. Behold, thou shalt
pass month for month until thou accomplish four
months upon this island. And a ship shall come
from home, and sailors in it whom thou knowest,
and thou shalt go home with them, and shalt die
in thine own city.”

“How glad is he,” exclaimed the old mariner
as he related his adventures to the prince, “how
glad is he that recounts what he has experienced
when the calamity is passed!” The prince, no
doubt, replied with a melancholy grunt, and the
thread of the story was once more taken up.

There was a particular reason why the serpent
should be touched and interested to hear how
Providence had saved the Egyptian from death,
for he himself had survived a great calamity, and
had been saved from an equally terrible fate, as
he now proceeded to relate.

“I will tell to thee the like thereof,” he said,
“which happened in this island. I dwelt herein
with my brothers, and my children were among
them. Seventy-two serpents we were, all told,
with my offspring and my brothers; nor have I
yet mentioned to thee a little girl brought to me
[156]by fortune. A star came down, and all these
went up in the flames. And it happened so that
I was not together with them when they were
consumed; I was not in their midst. I could
have died (of grief) for them when I found them
as a single pile of corpses.”

It is clear from the story that this great
serpent was intended to be pictured as a sad
and lonely, but most lovable, character. All
alone upon this ghostly isle, the last of his race,
one is to imagine him dreaming of the little girl
who was taken from him, together with all his
family. Although fabulous himself, and half
divine, he was yet the victim of the gods, and
was made to suffer real sorrows in his unreal
existence. Day by day he wandered over his
limited domain, twisting his golden body amidst
the pumpkins, and rearing himself above the fig-trees;
thundering down to the beach to salute
the passing dolphins, or sunning himself, a golden
blaze, upon the rocks. There remained naught
for him to do but to await the cessation of the
phantasy of his life; and yet, though his lot was
hard, he was ready at once to subordinate his
sorrows to those of the shipwrecked sailor before
him. No more is said of his distress, but with
his next words he seems to have dismissed his
own misfortunes, and to have attempted to comfort
the Egyptian.

“If thou art brave,” he said, “and restrainest
thy longing, thou shalt press thy children to thy
[157]bosom and kiss thy wife, and behold thy house—that
is the best of all things. Thou shalt
reach home, and shalt dwell there amongst thy
brothers.”

“Thereat,” said the mariner, “I cast me upon
my stomach and touched the ground before him,
and I said to him: ‘I will tell of thy might to
the Sovereign, I will cause him to be acquainted
with thy greatness. I will let bring to thee perfume
and spices, myrrh and sweet-scented woods,
and incense of the sanctuaries wherewithal every
god is propitiated. I will recount all that has
befallen me, and that which I have seen by his
might; and they shall praise thee in that city
before the magistrates of the entire land. I will
slaughter to thee oxen as a burnt-offering, geese
will I pluck for thee, and I will let bring to thee
vessels laden with all the goodly things of Egypt,
as may be (fitly) done to a god who loves men
in a distant land, a land unknown to men.'”

At these words the serpent opened his golden
mouth and fell to laughing. The thought that
this little mortal, grovelling before him, could
believe himself able to repay the kindnesses
received tickled him immensely.

“Hast thou not much incense (here, then)?”
he laughed. “Art not become a lord of frankincense?
And I, behold I am prince of Pount,”
the land of perfumes, “and the incense, that is my
very own. As for the spices which thou sayest
shall be brought, they are the wealth of this
[158]island. But it shall happen when thou hast
left this place, never shalt thou see this island
more, for it shall be changed to waves.”

The teller of the story does not relate in what
manner he received this well-merited reproof.
The gentle monster, no doubt, was tolerant of
his presumptuousness, and soon put him at his
ease again. During the whole period of the
Egyptian’s residence on the island, in fact, the
golden serpent seems to have been invariably
kind to him. The days passed by like a happy
dream, and the spell of the island’s enchantment
possessed him so that, in after times, the details
of the events of every day were lost in the
single illusion of the whole adventure.

At last the ship arrived, as it had been foretold,
and the sailor watched her passing over
the hazy sea towards the mysterious shore. “I
went and got me up into a tall tree,” he said,
“and I recognised those that were in it. And
I went to report the matter (to the serpent),
and I found that he knew it.”

Very tenderly the great monster addressed him.
“Fare thee well, little one,” he said “Fare thee
well to thy house. Mayest thou see thy children
and raise up a good name in thy city. Behold,
such are my wishes for thee.”

“Then,” continued the sailor, “I laid me on
my stomach, my arms were bended before him.
And he gave me a freight of frankincense, perfume
and myrrh, sweet-scented woods and antimony,
[159]giraffes’ tails, great heaps of incense,
elephant tusks, dogs, apes and baboons, and all
manner of valuable things. And I loaded them
in that ship, and I laid myself on my stomach
to make thanksgiving to him. Then he said to
me: ‘Behold, thou shalt come home in two
months, and shalt press thy children to thy
bosom, and shalt flourish in their midst; and
there thou shalt be buried.'”

To appreciate the significance of these last
words it is necessary to remember what an
important matter it was to an Egyptian that
he should be buried in his native city. In our
own case the position upon the map of the place
where we lay down our discarded bones is generally
not of first-rate importance, and the thought
of being buried in foreign lands does not frighten
us. Whether our body is to be packed away in
the necropolis of our city, or shovelled into a
hole on the outskirts of Timbuctoo, is not a
matter of vital interest. There is a certain sentiment
that leads us to desire interment amidst
familiar scenes, but it is subordinated with ease
to other considerations. To the Egyptian, however,
it was a matter of paramount importance.
“What is a greater thing,” says Sinuhe in the
tale of his adventures in Asia, “than that I
should be buried in the land in which I was
born?” “Thou shalt not die in a foreign land;
Asiatics shall not conduct thee to the tomb,”
says the Pharaoh to him; and again, “It is no
[160]little thing that thou shalt be buried without
Asiatics conducting thee.”[1] There is a stela
now preserved in Stuttgart, in which the deceased
man asks those who pass his tomb to
say a prayer for his soul; and he adjures them
in these words: “So truly as ye wish that your
native gods should praise you, and that ye should
be established in your seats, and that ye should
hand down your offices to your children: that ye
should reach your homes in safety, and recount
your travels to your wives;—then say a
prayer,” &c.[2]

The serpent was thus giving the castaway a
promise which meant more to him than all the
other blessings, and it was with a light heart
indeed that he ran down to the beach to greet
his countrymen. “I went down to the shore
where the ship was,” he continued, “and I
called to the soldiers which were in that ship,
and I gave praises upon the shore to the lord
of this island, and likewise did they which were
in the ship.”

Then he stepped on board, the gangway was
drawn up, and, with a great sweep of the oars,
the ship passed out on to the open sea. Standing
on deck amongst the new cargo, the officers and
their rescued friend bowed low to the great serpent
who towered above the trees at the water’s
edge, gleaming in the sunshine. “Fare thee well,
[161]little one,” his deep voice rolled across the water;
and again they bowed in obeisance to him. The
main-sail was unfurled to the wind, and the vessel
scudded bravely across the Great Green Sea; but
for some time yet they must have kept their eyes
upon the fair shape of the phantom island, as the
trees blended into the hills and the hills at last
into the haze; and their vision must have been
focussed upon that one gleaming point where the
golden serpent, alone once more with his memories,
watched the ship moving over the fairy seas.

“So sailed we northwards,” said the sailor, “to
the place of the Sovereign, and we reached home
in two months, in accordance with all that he had
said. And I entered in before the Sovereign, and
I brought to him this tribute which I had taken
away from within this island. Then gave he
thanksgivings for me before the magistrates of
the entire land. And I was made a ‘Follower,’
and was rewarded with the serfs of such an
one.”

The old sailor turned to the gloomy prince
as he brought his story to an end. “Look at
me,” he exclaimed, “now that I have reached
land, now that I have seen (again in memory)
what I have experienced. Hearken thou to me,
for behold, to hearken is good for men.”

But the prince only sighed the more deeply,
and, with a despairing gesture, replied: “Be not
(so) superior, my friend! Doth one give water to
a bird on the eve, when it is to be slain on the
[162]morrow?” With these words the manuscript
abruptly ends, and we are supposed to leave the
prince still disconsolate in his cabin, while his
friend, unable to cheer him, returns to his duties
on deck.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

PART III.

RESEARCHES IN THE TREASURY.

CHAPTER VII.

RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT.

There came to the camp of a certain professor,
who was engaged in excavating the ruins of an
ancient Egyptian city, a young and faultlessly-attired
Englishman, whose thirst for dramatic
adventure had led him to offer his services as
an unpaid assistant digger. This immaculate
personage had read in novels and tales many an
account of the wonders which the spade of the
excavator could reveal, and he firmly believed
that it was only necessary to set a “nigger” to
dig a little hole in the ground to open the way
to the treasuries of the Pharaohs. Gold, silver,
and precious stones gleamed before him, in his
imagination, as he hurried along subterranean
passages to the vaults of long-dead kings. He
expected to slide upon the seat of his very well-made
breeches down the staircase of the ruined
palace which he had entered by way of the skylight,
and to find himself, at the bottom, in the
presence of the bejewelled dead. In the intervals
between such experiences he was of opinion that
a little quiet gazelle shooting would agreeably fill
[166]in the swiftly passing hours; and at the end of
the season’s work he pictured himself returning
to the bosom of his family with such a tale to
tell that every ear would be opened to him.

On his arrival at the camp he was conducted
to the site of his future labours; and his horrified
gaze was directed over a large area of mud-pie,
knee-deep in which a few bedraggled natives
slushed their way downwards. After three weeks’
work on this distressing site, the professor announced
that he had managed to trace through
the mud the outline of the palace walls, once the
feature of the city, and that the work here might
now be regarded as finished. He was then conducted
to a desolate spot in the desert, and until
the day on which he fled back to England he was
kept to the monotonous task of superintending a
gang of natives whose sole business it was to dig
a very large hole in the sand, day after day and
week after week.

It is, however, sometimes the fortune of the
excavator to make a discovery which almost rivals
in dramatic interest the tales of his youth. Such
as experience fell to the lot of Emil Brugsch
Pasha when he was lowered into an ancient tomb
and found himself face to face with a score of the
Pharaohs of Egypt, each lying in his coffin; or
again, when Monsieur de Morgan discovered the
great mass of royal jewels in one of the pyramids
at Dachour. But such “finds” can be counted
on the fingers, and more often an excavation is
[167]a fruitless drudgery. Moreover, the life of the
digger is not often a pleasant one.

It will perhaps be of interest to the reader of
romances to illustrate the above remarks by the
narration of some of my own experiences; but
there are only a few interesting and unusual
episodes in which I have had the peculiarly
good fortune to be an actor. There will probably
be some drama to be felt in the account of the
more important discoveries (for there certainly is
to the antiquarian himself); but it should be
pointed out that the interest of these rare finds
pales before the description, which many of us
have heard, of how the archæologists of a past
century discovered the body of Charlemagne clad
in his royal robes and seated upon his throne,—which,
by the way, is quite untrue. In spite
of all that is said to the contrary, truth is seldom
stranger than fiction; and the reader who desires
to be told of the discovery of buried cities whose
streets are paved with gold should take warning
in time and return at once to his novels.

If the dawning interest of the reader has now
been thoroughly cooled by these words, it may
be presumed that it will be utterly annihilated
by the following narration of my first fruitless
excavation; and thus one will be able to continue
the story with the relieved consciousness
that nobody is attending.

In the capacity of assistant to Professor Flinders
Petrie, I was set, many years ago, to the task of
[168]excavating a supposed royal cemetery in the desert
behind the ancient city of Abydos, in Upper Egypt.
Two mounds were first attacked; and after many
weeks of work in digging through the sand, the
superstructure of two great tombs was bared. In
the case of the first of these several fine passages
of good masonry were cleared, and at last the
burial-chamber was reached. In the huge sarcophagus
which was there found great hopes were
entertained that the body and funeral-offerings of
the dead prince would be discovered; but when
at last the interior was laid bare the solitary
article found was a copy of a French newspaper
left behind by the last, and equally disgusted,
excavator. The second tomb defied the most
ardent exploration, and failed to show any traces
of a burial. The mystery was at last solved by
Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception,
soon came to the conclusion that the
whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide
an enormous mass of rock chippings the presence
of which had been a puzzle for some time. These
masons’ chippings were evidently the output from
some large cutting in the rock, and it became
apparent that there must be a great rock tomb
in the neighbourhood. Trial trenches in the
vicinity presently revealed the existence of a
long wall, which, being followed in either direction,
proved to be the boundary of a vast court
or enclosure built upon the desert at the foot
of a conspicuous cliff. A ramp led up to the
[169]entrance; but as it was slightly askew and
pointed to the southern end of the enclosure, it
was supposed that the rock tomb, which presumably
ran into the cliff from somewhere inside
this area, was situated at that end. The next
few weeks were occupied in the tedious task of
probing the sand hereabouts, and at length in
clearing it away altogether down to the surface
of the underlying rock. Nothing was found, however;
and sadly we turned to the exact middle
of the court, and began to work slowly to the
foot of the cliff. Here, in the very middle of
the back wall, a pillared chamber was found,
and it seemed certain that the entrance to the
tomb would now be discovered.

The best men were placed to dig out this chamber,
and the excavator—it was many years ago—went
about his work with the weight of fame upon
his shoulders and an expression of intense mystery
upon his sorely sun-scorched face. How clearly
memory recalls the letter home that week, “We
are on the eve of a great discovery”; and how
vividly rises the picture of the baking desert sand
into which the sweating workmen were slowly
digging their way! But our hopes were short-lived,
for it very soon became apparent that
there was no tomb entrance in this part of the
enclosure. There remained the north end of
the area, and on to this all the available men
were turned. Deeper and deeper they dug their
way, until the mounds of sand thrown out formed,
[170]as it were, the lip of a great crater. At last, some
forty or fifty feet down, the underlying rock was
struck, and presently the mouth of a great shaft
was exposed leading down into the bowels of the
earth. The royal tomb had at last been discovered,
and it only remained to effect an
entrance. The days were now filled with excitement,
and, the thoughts being concentrated on
the question of the identity of the royal occupant
of the tomb, it was soon fixed in our minds that
we were about to enter the burial-place of no
less a personage than the great Pharaoh Senusert
III. (Sesostris), the same king whose jewels were
found at Dachour.

One evening, just after I had left the work,
the men came down to the distant camp to say
that the last barrier was now reached and that an
entrance could be effected at once. In the pale
light of the moon, therefore, I hastened back to
the desert with a few trusted men. As we walked
along, one of these natives very cheerfully remarked
that we should all probably get our
throats cut, as the brigands of the neighbourhood
got wind of the discovery, and were sure to
attempt to enter the tomb that night. With this
pleasing prospect before us we walked with
caution over the silent desert. Reaching the
mound of sand which surrounded our excavation,
we crept to the top and peeped over into the
crater. At once we observed a dim light below
us, and almost immediately an agitated but polite
[171]voice from the opposite mound called out in Arabic,
“Go away, mister. We have all got guns.” This
remark was followed by a shot which whistled
past me; and therewith I slid down the hill once
more, and heartily wished myself safe in my bed.
Our party then spread round the crater, and at a
given word we proposed to rush the place. But
the enemy was too quick for us, and after the
briefest scrimmage, and the exchanging of a harmless
shot or two, we found ourselves in possession
of the tomb, and were able to pretend that we
were not a bit frightened.

Then into the dark depths of the shaft we
descended, and ascertained that the robbers had
not effected an entrance. A long night watch
followed, and the next day we had the satisfaction
of arresting some of the criminals. The tomb was
found to penetrate several hundred feet into the
cliff, and at the end of the long and beautifully
worked passage the great royal sarcophagus was
found—empty! So ended a very strenuous
season’s work.

If the experiences of a digger in Professor
Petrie’s camp are to be regarded as typical, they
will probably serve to damp the ardour of eager
young gentlemen in search of ancient Egyptian
treasure. One lives in a bare little hut constructed
of mud, and roofed with cornstalks or
corrugated iron; and if by chance there happened
to be a rain storm, as there was when I was a
member of the community, one may watch the
[172]frail building gently subside in a liquid stream
on to one’s bed and books. For seven days in
the week one’s work continues, and it is only to
the real enthusiast that that work is not monotonous
and tiresome.

A few years later it fell to my lot to excavate
for the Government the funeral temple of
Thutmosis III. at Thebes, and a fairly large sum
was spent upon the undertaking. Although the
site was most promising in appearances, a couple
of months’ work brought to light hardly a single
object of importance, whereas exactly similar sites
in the same neighbourhood had produced inscriptions
of the greatest value. Two years ago I
assisted at an excavation upon a site of my
own selection, the net result of which, after six
weeks’ work, was one mummified cat! To sit
over the work day after day, as did the unfortunate
promoter of this particular enterprise,
with the flies buzzing around his face and the
sun blazing down upon him from a relentless
sky, was hardly a pleasurable task; and to watch
the clouds of dust go up from the tip-heap,
where tons of unprofitable rubbish rolled down
the hillside all day long, was an occupation for
the damned. Yet that is excavating as it is
usually found to be.

Now let us consider the other side of the
story. In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings
at Thebes excavations have been conducted for
some years by Mr Theodore M. Davis, of Newport,
[173]Rhode Island, by special arrangement with
the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian
Government; and as an official of that Department
I have had the privilege of being present
at all the recent discoveries. The finding of the
tomb of Yuaa and Tuau a few years ago was one
of the most interesting archæological events of
recent times, and one which came somewhere
near to the standard of romance set by the
novelists. Yuaa and Tuau were the parents of
Queen Tiy, the discovery of whose tomb is recorded
in the next chapter. When the entrance
of their tomb was cleared, a flight of steps was
exposed, leading down to a passage blocked by a
wall of loose stones. In the top right-hand corner
a small hole, large enough to admit a man, had
been made in ancient times, and through this we
could look down into a dark passage. As it was
too late in the day to enter at once, we postponed
that exciting experience until the morrow, and
some police were sent for to guard the entrance
during the night. I had slept the previous night
over the mouth, and there was now no possibility
of leaving the place for several more nights, so a
rough camp was formed on the spot.

Here I settled myself down for the long watch,
and speculated on the events of the next morning,
when Mr Davis and one or two well-known Egyptologists
were to come to the valley to open the
sepulchre. Presently, in the silent darkness, a
slight noise was heard on the hillside, and immediately
[174]the challenge of the sentry rang out.
This was answered by a distant call, and after
some moments of alertness on our part we observed
two figures approaching us. These, to my
surprise, proved to be a well-known American
artist and his wife,[1] who had obviously come on
the expectation that trouble was ahead; but
though in this they were certainly destined to
suffer disappointment, still, out of respect for the
absolute unconcern of both visitors, it may be mentioned
that the mouth of a lonely tomb already
said by native rumour to contain incalculable
wealth is not perhaps the safest place in the
world. Here, then, on a level patch of rock we
three lay down and slept fitfully until the dawn.
Soon after breakfast the wall at the mouth of the
tomb was pulled down, and the party passed into
the low passage which sloped down to the burial
chamber. At the bottom of this passage there
was a second wall blocking the way; but when
a few layers had been taken off the top we were
able to climb, one by one, into the chamber.

Imagine entering a town house which had been
closed for the summer: imagine the stuffy room,
the stiff, silent appearance of the furniture, the
feeling that some ghostly occupants of the vacant
chairs have just been disturbed, the desire to
throw open the windows to let life into
room once more. That was perhaps the first
sensation as we stood, really dumfounded, and
[175]stared around at the relics of the life of over
three thousand years ago, all of which were as
new almost as when they graced the palace of
Prince Yuaa. Three arm-chairs were perhaps the
first objects to attract the attention: beautiful
carved wooden chairs, decorated with gold. Belonging
to one of these was a pillow made of
down and covered with linen. It was so perfectly
preserved that one might have sat upon it or
tossed it from this chair to that without doing
it injury. Here were fine alabaster vases, and in
one of these we were startled to find a liquid,
like honey or syrup, still unsolidified by time.
Boxes of exquisite workmanship stood in various
parts of the room, some resting on delicately
wrought legs. Now the eye was directed to a
wicker trunk fitted with trays and partitions, and
ventilated with little apertures, since the scents
were doubtless strong. Two most comfortable
beds were to be observed, fitted with springy
string mattresses and decorated with charming
designs in gold. There in the far corner, placed
upon the top of a number of large white jars,
stood the light chariot which Yuaa had owned
in his lifetime. In all directions stood objects
gleaming with gold undulled by a speck of dust,
and one looked from one article to another with
the feeling that the entire human conception of
Time was wrong. These were the things of
yesterday, of a year or so ago. Why, here were
meats prepared for the feasts in the Underworld;
[176]here were Yuaa’s favourite joints, each neatly
placed in a wooden box as though for a journey.
Here was his staff, and here were his sandals,—a
new pair and an old. In another corner there
stood the magical figures by the power of which
the prince was to make his way through Hades.
The words of the mystical “Chapter of the
Flame” and of the “Chapter of the Magical
Figure of the North Wall” were inscribed upon
them; and upon a great roll of papyrus twenty-two
yards in length other efficacious prayers were
written.

But though the eyes passed from object to object,
they ever returned to the two lidless gilded coffins
in which the owners of this room of the dead lay as
though peacefully sleeping. First above Yuaa and
then above his wife the electric lamps were held,
and as one looked down into their quiet faces there
was almost the feeling that they would presently
open their eyes and blink at the light. The stern
features of the old man commanded one’s attention,
again and again our gaze was turned from this
mass of wealth to this sleeping figure in whose
honour it had been placed here.

At last we returned to the surface to allow the
thoughts opportunity to collect themselves and
the pulses time to quiet down, for, even to the
most unemotional, a discovery of this kind, bringing
one into the very presence of the past, has
really an unsteadying effect. Then once more we
descended, and made the preliminary arrangements
[177]for the cataloguing of the antiquities. It was now
that the real work began, and, once the excitement
was past, there was a monotony of labour to be
faced which put a very considerable strain on the
powers of all concerned. The hot days when one
sweated over the heavy packing-cases, and the
bitterly cold nights when one lay at the mouth of
the tomb under the stars, dragged on for many a
week; and when at last the long train of boxes
was carried down to the Nile en route for the
Cairo Museum, it was with a sigh of relief that
the official returned to his regular work.

This, of course, was a very exceptional discovery.
Mr Davis has made other great finds, but to me
they have not equalled in dramatic interest the
discovery just recorded. Even in this royal valley,
however, there is much drudgery to be faced, and
for a large part of the season’s work it is the excavator’s
business to turn over endless masses of
rock chippings, and to dig huge holes which have
no interest for the patient digger. Sometimes the
mouth of a tomb is bared, and is entered with the
profoundest hopes, which are at once dashed by
the sudden abrupt ending of the cutting a few
yards from the surface. At other times a tomb-chamber
is reached and is found to be absolutely
empty.

At another part of Thebes the well-known
Egyptologist, Professor Schiaparelli, had excavated
for a number of years without finding anything
of much importance, when suddenly one fine
[178]day he struck the mouth of a large tomb which
was evidently intact. I was at once informed of
the discovery, and proceeded to the spot as quickly
as possible. The mouth of the tomb was approached
down a flight of steep, rough steps, still half-choked
with débris. At the bottom of this the entrance
of a passage running into the hillside was blocked
by a wall of rough stones. After photographing
and removing this, we found ourselves in a long,
low tunnel, blocked by a second wall a few yards
ahead. Both these walls were intact, and we
realised that we were about to see what probably
no living man had ever seen before: the absolutely
intact remains of a rich Theban of the Imperial
Age—i.e., about 1200 or 1300 B.C. When this
second wall was taken down we passed into a carefully-cut
passage high enough to permit of one
standing upright.

At the end of this passage a plain wooden door
barred our progress. The wood retained the light
colour of fresh deal, and looked for all the world
as though it had been set up but yesterday. A
heavy wooden lock, such as is used at the present
day, held the door fast. A neat bronze
handle on the side of the door was connected by
a spring to a wooden knob set in the masonry
door-post; and this spring was carefully sealed
with a small dab of stamped clay. The whole contrivance
seemed so modern that Professor Schiaparelli
called to his servant for the key, who quite
seriously replied, “I don’t know where it is, sir.”
[179]He then thumped the door with his hand to see
whether it would be likely to give; and, as the
echoes reverberated through the tomb, one felt
that the mummy, in the darkness beyond, might
well think that his resurrection call had come.
One almost expected him to rise, like the dead
knights of Kildare in the Irish legend, and to ask,
“Is it time?” for the three thousand years which
his religion had told him was the duration of his
life in the tomb was already long past.

Meanwhile we turned our attention to the objects
which stood in the passage, having been placed
there at the time of the funeral, owing to the lack
of room in the burial-chamber. Here a vase, rising
upon a delicately shaped stand, attracted the eye
by its beauty of form; and here a bedstead caused
us to exclaim at its modern appearance. A palm-leaf
fan, used by the ancient Egyptians to keep
the flies off their wines and unguents, stood near a
now empty jar; and near by a basket of dried-up
fruit was to be seen. This dried fruit gave the
impression that the tomb was perhaps a few months
old, but there was nothing else to be seen which
suggested that the objects were even as much as a
year old. It was almost impossible to believe, and
quite impossible to realise, that we were standing
where no man had stood for well over three thousand
years; and that we were actually breathing
the air which had remained sealed in the passage
since the ancient priests had closed the entrance
thirteen hundred years before Christ.

[180]Before we could proceed farther, many flashlight
photographs had to be taken, and drawings made
of the doorway; and after this a panel of the
woodwork had to be removed with a fret-saw in
order that the lock and seal might not be damaged.
At last, however, this was accomplished, and the
way into the tomb-chamber was open. Stepping
through the frame of the door, we found ourselves
in an unencumbered portion of the floor, while
around us in all directions stood the funeral furniture,
and on our left the coffins of the deceased
noble and his wife loomed large. Everything
looked new and undecayed, and even the order in
which the objects were arranged suggested a tidying-up
done that very morning. The gravel on
the floor was neatly smoothed, and not a speck of
dust was anywhere to be observed. Over the
large outer coffin a pall of fine linen was laid, not
rotting and falling to pieces like the cloth of
mediæval times we see in our museums, but soft
and strong like the sheets of our beds. In the
clear space before the coffin stood a wooden pedestal
in the form of a miniature lotus column. On
the top of this, resting on three wooden prongs,
was a small copper dish, in which were the ashes
of incense, and the little stick used for stirring
them. One asked oneself in bewilderment whether
the ashes here, seemingly not cold, had truly
ceased to glow at a time when Rome and Greece
were undreamt of, when Assyria did not exist,
[181]and when the Exodus of the Children of Israel
was yet unaccomplished.

On low tables round cakes of bread were laid
out, not cracked and shrivelled, but smooth and
brown, with a kind of white-of-egg glaze upon
them. Onions and fruit were also spread out; and
the fruit of the dôm palm was to be seen in plenty.
In various parts of the chamber there were numerous
bronze vessels of different shapes, intended for
the holding of milk and other drinkables.

Well supplied with food and drink, the senses
of the dead man were soothed by a profusion of
flowers, which lay withered but not decayed beside
the coffin, and which at the time of the funeral
must have filled the chamber with their sweetness.
Near the doorway stood an upright wooden chest
closed with a lid. Opening this, we found it to
contain the great ceremonial wig of the deceased
man, which was suspended from a rail passing
across the top of the chest, and hung free of the
sides and bottom. The black hair was plaited
into hundreds of little tails, but in size the wig
was not unlike those of the early eighteenth century
in Europe. Chairs, beds, and other pieces of
furniture were arranged around the room, and at
one side there were a number of small chests and
boxes piled up against the wall. We opened one
or two of these, and found them to contain delicate
little vases of glass, stone, and metal, wrapped
round with rags to prevent them breaking. These,
[182]like everything else in the tomb, were new and
fresh, and showed no trace of the passing of the
years.

The coffins, of course, were hidden by the great
casing in which each rested, and which itself was
partly hidden by the linen pall. Nothing could
be touched for many days, until photographs had
been taken and records made; and we therefore
returned through the long passage to the light of
the day.

There must have been a large number of intact
tombs to be found when first the modern interest
in Egyptian antiquities developed; but the market
thus created had to be supplied, and gangs of
illicit diggers made short work of the most accessible
tombs. This illegal excavation, of course,
continues to some extent at the present day, in
spite of all precautions, but the results are becoming
less and less proportionate to the labour
expended and risk taken. A native likes best to
do a little quiet digging in his own back yard and
to admit nobody else into the business. To illustrate
this, I may mention a tragedy which was
brought to my notice a few years ago. A certain
native discovered the entrance of a tomb in the
floor of his stable, and at once proceeded to worm
his way down the tunnel. That was the end of
the native. His wife, finding that he had not
returned two hours or so later, went down the
newly found tunnel after him. That was the end
of her also. In turn, three other members of the
[183]family went down into the darkness; and that was
the end of them. A native official was then
called, and, lighting his way with a candle, penetrated
down the winding passage. The air was so
foul that he was soon obliged to retreat, but he
stated that he was just able to see in the distance
ahead the bodies of the unfortunate peasants, all
of whom had been overcome by what he quaintly
described as “the evil lighting and bad climate.”
Various attempts at the rescue of the bodies
having failed, we gave orders that this tomb
should be regarded as their sepulchre, and that
its mouth should be sealed up. According to the
natives, there was evidently a vast hoard of
wealth stored at the bottom of this tomb, and
the would-be robbers had met their death at the
hands of the demon in charge of it, who had
seized each man by the throat as he came down
the tunnel and had strangled him.

The Egyptian peasants have a very strong belief
in the power of such creatures of the spirit world.
A native who was attempting recently to discover
hidden treasure in a certain part of the desert,
sacrificed a lamb each night above the spot where
he believed the treasure to lie, in order to propitiate
the djin who guarded it. On the other
hand, however, they have no superstition as regards
the sanctity of the ancient dead, and they
do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the tombs.
Thousands of graves have been desecrated by
these seekers after treasure, and it is very largely
[184]the result of this that scientific excavation is often
so fruitless nowadays. When an excavator states
that he has discovered a tomb, one takes it for
granted that he means a plundered tomb, unless
he definitely says that it was intact, in which case
one calls him a lucky fellow and regards him with
green envy.

And thus we come back to my remarks at the
beginning of this chapter, that there is a painful
disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to
dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden
cities of the Pharaohs or the bejewelled bodies of
their dead. Of the latter there are but a few left
to be found. The discovery of one of them forms
the subject of the next chapter.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON.[1]

In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of
the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, which are
being conducted each year by Mr Davis, brought
to light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style,
appeared to be that of a royal personage of the
XVIIIth Dynasty. The Valley lies behind the
cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes,
and is approached by a long winding road running
between the rocks and rugged hills of the Lybian
desert. Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the
XXth Dynasties were buried in large sepulchres
cut into the sides of the hills; and the present
excavations have for their object the removal of
the débris which has collected at the foot of these
hills, in order that the tombs hidden beneath may
be revealed. About sixty tombs are now open,
some of which were already known to Greek and
[186]Roman travellers; and there are probably not
more than two or three still to be discovered.

When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered
I was at once notified, and proceeded with all
despatch to the Valley. It was not long before
we were able to enter the tomb. A rough stairway
led down into the hillside, bringing us to the
mouth of a passage which was entirely blocked by
a wall of built stones. On removing this wall we
found ourselves in a small passage, descending at
a sharp incline to a chamber which could be seen a
few yards farther on. Instead of this passage being
free from débris, however, as we had expected on
finding the entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled
with fallen stones which seemed to be the ruins of
an earlier entrance-wall. On top of this heap of
stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine,
almost entirely blocking the passage. This shrine,
as we later saw, was in the form of a great box-like
sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with
gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering
for the coffin of the deceased person. It was,
however, not put together: three sides of it were
leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber,
and the fourth was here in the passage. Either it
was never built up, or else it was in process of
being taken out of the tomb again when the work
was abandoned.

To pass this portion of the shrine which lay in
the passage without doing it damage was no easy
matter. We could not venture to move it, as the
[187]wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it
remained in its original position. We therefore
made a bridge of planks within a few inches of the
low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across
into the unencumbered passage beyond. In the
funeral-chamber, besides the other portions of the
shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin, in
the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a
dazzling manner with rare stones and coloured glass.
The coffin had originally lain upon a wooden bier,
in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had
collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground,
the lid of the coffin being partly thrown off by
the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the
body, from which the bandages had decayed and
fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light
which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden
vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from
the remains of the linen bandages and from the
sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards
found, the whole body was wrapped. The
inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were
made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton,
“the beautiful child of the Sun”; but turning to
the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that
King Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen
Tiy, and thus no immediate reply could be given
to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to
us to know which of the Pharaoh’s of Egypt had
been found.

In a recess in the wall above the body there
[188]stood four alabaster “canopy” jars, each with a
lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a human
head. In another corner there was a box containing
many little toilet vases and utensils of
porcelain. A few alabaster vases and other
objects were lying in various parts of the chamber,
arranged in some sort of rough order.

Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and
for several days, during the lengthy process of
photographing and recording the contents of the
tomb in situ, no further information could be
obtained as to the identity of the owner of the
tomb. The shrine was certainly made for Queen
Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging
by an inscription upon one of them which gave the
names of Tiy and her husband, King Amenhotep
III., the parents of Akhnaton. It was, therefore,
not a surprise when a passing doctor declared the
much broken bones to be those of a woman—that
is to say, those of Queen Tiy. For reasons which
will presently become apparent, it had been difficult
to believe that Akhnaton could have been
buried in this Valley, and one was very ready
to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had
but been given by him to his mother.

The important discovery was now announced,
and considerable interest and excitement.
At the end of the winter the various archæologists
departed to their several countries, and it fell
to me to despatch the antiquities to the Cairo
Museum, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to
[189]prevent their breakage, to Dr Elliot Smith, to be
examined by that eminent authority. It may be
imagined that my surprise was considerable when
I received a letter from him reading—”Are you
sure that the bones you sent me are those which
were found in the tomb? Instead of the bones of
an old woman, you have sent me those of a young
man. Surely there is some mistake.”

There was, however, no mistake. Dr Elliot
Smith later informed me that the bones were those
of a young man of about twenty-eight years of
age, and at first this description did not seem to
tally with that of Akhnaton, who was always
thought to have been a man of middle age. But
there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin
and mummy were those of this extraordinary
Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral furniture
belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr Elliot Smith’s decision
was, of course, somewhat disconcerting to those
who had written of the mortal remains of the
great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy
without also referring to her famous son Akhnaton,
and in these articles he had received full
mention.

About the year B.C. 1500 the throne of Egypt
fell to the young brother of Queen Hatshepsut,
Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the
country rose to a height of power never again
equalled. Amenhotep II. succeeded to an empire
which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates
and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he
[190]left these great possessions almost intact to his
son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton.
It is important to notice the chronology of this
period. The mummy of Thutmosis IV. has been
shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man
of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we
know that his son Amenhotep III. was old enough
to hunt lions at about the time of his father’s
death, and that he was already married to Queen
Tiy a year later. Thus one must suppose that
Thutmosis IV. was a father at the age of thirteen
or fourteen, and that Amenhotep III. was married
to Tiy at about the same age. The wife of
Thutmosis IV. was probably a Syrian princess,
and it must have been during her regency that
Amenhotep III. married Tiy, who was not of
royal blood. Amenhotep and Tiy introduced into
Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant
reign the Nile Valley was more open to
Syrian influence than it had ever been before.
The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court
tongue, and the correspondence was written in
cuneiform instead of in the hieratic script of Egypt.
Amenhotep III., as has been said, was probably
partly Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason
to suppose that Yuaa, the father of Queen Tiy,
was also a Syrian. One has, therefore, to picture
the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated
with foreign ideas, which clashed with those of the
orthodox Egyptians.

Queen Tiy bore several children to the King;
[191]but it was not until they had reigned over twenty
years that a son and heir was born, whom they
named Amenhotep, that being changed later to
Akhnaton. It is probable that he first saw the
light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was
situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of
the western hills. It was an extensive and roomy
structure, lightly built and gaily decorated. The
ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically
painted with scenes of animal life: wild
cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath one’s
feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water;
while overhead flights of pigeons, white against a
blue sky, passed across the hall, and the wild duck
hastened towards the open casements. Through
curtained doorways one might obtain glimpses of
a garden planted with flowers foreign to Egypt;
and on the east of the palace the King had made
a great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by
the trees of Asia. Here, floating in her golden
barge, which was named Aton-gleams, the Queen
might look westwards over the tree-tops to the
splendid Theban hills towering above the palace,
and eastwards to the green valley of the Nile and
the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenhotep
III. has been rightly called the “Magnificent,”
and one may well believe that his son
Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and
to the clink of golden wine-cups. Fragments of
countless thousands of wine-jars and blue fayence
drinking-vessels have been found in the ruins of
[192]the palace; and contemporary objects and paintings
show us some of the exquisitely wrought
bowls of gold and silver which must have graced
the royal tables, and the charming toilet utensils
which were to be found in the sleeping apartments.

While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth
of this Egypto-Asiatic prince, one feels that the
ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood
aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby
who was destined one day to be their master.
This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and
most conservative community which conservative
Egypt ever produced. It demanded implicit
obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions,
and it refused to recognise the growing tendency
towards religious speculation. One of the great
gods of Syria was Aton, the god of the sun; and
his recognition at the Theban Court was a source
of constant irritation to the ministers of Amon-Ra.

Probably they would have taken stronger measures
to resist this foreign god had it not been for
the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient god
of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra,
the associated deity with Amon, and on the other
hand to Aton of Syria. Thus Aton might be regarded
merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra;
but the danger to the old régime lay in the
fact that with the worship of Aton there went
a certain amount of freethought. The sun and
its warm rays were the heritage of all mankind;
[193]and the speculative mind of the Asiatic, always in
advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not
failed to collect to the Aton-worship a number of
semi-philosophical teachings far broader than the
strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.

There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy
was the prime factor in the new movement. It
may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father
was a priest of the Egyptian god Min, who corresponded
to the North Syrian Aton in his capacity
as a god of vegetation; and she may have imbibed
something of the broader doctrines from him. It
is the barge upon her pleasure-lake which is called
Aton-gleams, and it is her private artist who is
responsible for one of the first examples of the
new style of art which begins to appear at this
period. Egyptian art was bound down by conventions
jealously guarded by the priesthood, and
the slight tendency to break away from these,
which now becomes apparent, is another sign of
the broadening of thought under the reign of
Amenhotep III. and Tiy.

King Amenhotep III. does not seem to have
been a man of strong character, and in the changes
which took place at this time he does not appear
to have taken so very large a part. He always
showed the most profound respect for, and devotion
to, his Queen; and one is inclined to regard him as
a tool in her hands. According to some accounts
he reigned only thirty years, but there are contemporary
monuments dated in his thirty-sixth
[194]year, and it seems probable that for the last few
years he was reigning only in name, and that
in reality his ministers, under the regency of
Queen Tiy, governed the land. Amenhotep III.
was perhaps during his last years insane or stricken
with some paralytic disease, for we read of an
Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image
to Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting
to cure him. It must have been during these six
years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a
boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms
and encouraged the breaking down of the old
traditions, especially those relating to the worship
of Amon-Ra.

Amenhotep III. died in about the forty-ninth
year of his age, after a total reign of thirty-six
years; and Akhnaton, who still bore the name
of Amenhotep, ascended the throne. One must
picture him now as an enthusiastic boy, filled with
the new thought of the age, and burning to assert
the broad doctrines which he had learned from his
mother and her friends, in defiance of the priests
of Amon-Ra. He was already married to a Syrian
named Nefertiti, and certainly before he
was fifteen years of age he was the father of two
daughters.

The new Pharaoh’s first move, under the guidance
of Tiy, was to proclaim Aton the only true
god, and to name himself high priest of that deity.
He then began to build a temple dedicated to
Aton at Karnak; but it must have been distasteful
[195]to observe how overshadowed and dwarfed was
this new temple by the mighty buildings in honour
of the older gods which stood there. Moreover,
there must have been very serious opposition to
the new religion in Thebes, where Amon had ruled
for so many centuries unchallenged. In whatever
direction he looked he was confronted with some
evidence of the worship of Amon-Ra: he might
proclaim Aton to be the only god, but Amon and
a hundred other deities stared down at him from
every temple wall. He and his advisers, therefore,
decided to abandon Thebes altogether and to found
a new capital elsewhere.

Akhnaton selected a site for the new city on
the west bank of the river, at a point now named
El Amarna, about 160 miles above Cairo. Here
the hills recede from the river, forming a bay
about three miles deep and five long; and in this
bay the young Pharaoh decided to build his
capital, which was named “Horizon of Aton.”
With feverish speed the new buildings were
erected. A palace even more beautiful than that
of his parents at Thebes was prepared for him;
a splendid temple dedicated to Aton was set up
amidst a garden of rare trees and brilliant flowers;
villas for his nobles were erected, and streets were
laid out. Queen Tiy, who seems to have continued
to live at Thebes, often came down to
El Amarna to visit her son; but it seems to
have been at his own wish rather than at her
advice that he now took the important step
[196]which set the seal of his religion upon his
life.

Around the bay of El Amarna, on the cliffs
which shut it off so securely, the King caused
landmarks to be made at intervals, and on these
he inscribed an oath which some have interpreted
to mean that he would never again leave his new
city. He would remain, like the Pope in the
Vatican, for the rest of his days within the limits
of this bay; and, rather than be distracted by the
cares of state and the worries of empire, he would
shut himself up with his god and would devote his
life to his religion. He was but a youth still,
and, to his inexperienced mind, this oath seemed
nothing; nor in his brief life does it seem that he
broke it, though at times he must have longed
to visit his domains.

The religion which this boy, who now called
himself Akhnaton, “The Glory of Aton,” taught
was by no means the simple worship of the sun.
It was, without question, the most enlightened
religion which the world at that time had ever
known. The young priest-king called upon mankind
to worship the unknown power which is behind
the sun, that power of which the brilliant
sun was the visible symbol, and which might
be discerned in the fertilising warmth of the sun’s
rays. Aton was originally the actual sun’s disk;
but Akhnaton called his god “Heat which is in
Aton,” and thus drew the eyes of his followers
towards a Force far more intangible and distant
[197]than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down.
Akhnaton’s god was the force which created the
sun, the something which penetrated to this earth
in the sun’s heat and caused the vegetation to
grow.

Amon-Ra and the gods of Egypt were for the
most part but deified mortals, endued with monstrous,
though limited, power, and still having
around them traditions of exaggerated human
deeds. Others had their origin in natural phenomena—the
wind, the Nile, the sky, and so on.
All were terrific, revengeful, and able to be
moved by human emotions. But Akhnaton’s god
was the intangible and yet ever-present Father
of mankind, made manifest in sunshine. The
youthful High Priest called upon his followers
to search for their god not in the confusion of
battle or behind the smoke of human sacrifices,
but amidst the flowers and trees, amidst the
wild duck and the fishes. He preached an enlightened
nature-study; he was perhaps the
first apostle of the Simple Life. He strove to
break down conventional religion, and ceaselessly
urged his people to worship in Truth, simply,
without an excess of ceremonial. While the
elder gods had been manifest in natural convulsions
and in the more awful incidents of life,
Akhnaton’s kindly god could be seen in the chick
which broke out of its egg, in the wind which
filled the sails of the ships, in the fish which
leapt from the water. Aton was the joy which
[198]caused the young sheep “to dance upon their
feet,” and the birds to “flutter in their marshes.”
He was the god of the simple pleasures of life,
and Truth was the watchword of his followers.

It may be understood how the boy longed for
truth in all things when one remembers the
thousand exaggerated conventions of Egyptian
life at this time. Court etiquette had developed
to a degree which rendered life to the Pharaoh
an endless round of unnatural poses of mind and
body. In the preaching of his doctrine of truth
and simplicity, Akhnaton did not fail to call
upon his subjects to regard their Pharaoh not
as a god but as a man. It was usual for the
Pharaoh to keep aloof from his people: Akhnaton
was to be found in their midst. The
Court demanded that their lord should drive in
solitary state through the city: Akhnaton sat
in his chariot with his wife and children, and
allowed the artist to represent him joking with
his little daughter, who has mischievously poked
the horses with a stick. In representing the
Pharaoh, the artist was expected to draw him
in some conventional attitude of dignity: Akhnaton
insisted upon being shown in all manner
of natural attitudes—now leaning languidly upon
a staff, now nursing his children, now caressing
his wife.

As has been said, one of the first artists to break
away from the ancient conventions was in the
service of Queen Tiy, and was probably under her
influence. But in the radical change in the art
[199]which took place, Akhnaton is definitely stated
to have been the leader, and the new school
acknowledge that they were taught by the King.
The new art is extraordinary, and it must be
owned that its merit lies rather in its originality
than in its beauty. An attempt is made to do
away with the prescribed attitudes and the strict
proportions, and to portray any one individual
with his natural defects. Some of the sculptured
heads, however, which have come down to us, and
notably the four “canopic” heads found in this
tomb, are of wonderful beauty, and have no trace
of traditional mannerisms, though they are highly
idealised. The King’s desire for light-heartedness
led him to encourage the use of bright colours and
gay decorations in the palace. Some of the ceiling
and pavement paintings are of great beauty, while
the walls and pillars inlaid with coloured stones
must have given a brilliancy to the halls unequalled
in Egypt at any previous time.

The group of nobles who formed the King’s
Court had all sacrificed much in coming to the
new capital. Their estates around Thebes had
been left, their houses abandoned, and the tombs
which were in process of being made for them
in the Theban hills had been rendered useless.
The King, therefore, showered favours upon
them, and at his expense built their houses and
constructed sepulchres for them. It is on the
walls of these tombs that one obtains the main
portion of one’s information regarding the teachings
of this wonderful youth, who was now
[200]growing into manhood. Here are inscribed those
beautiful hymns to Aton which rank so high in
ancient literature. It is unfortunate that space
does not allow more than a few extracts from
the hymns to be quoted here; but something of
their beauty may be realised from these. (Professor
Breasted’s translation.)

“Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,
 O living Aton, Beginning of life!
 When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven
 Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.”

“Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth;
 Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.”

“When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven
 The world is in darkness like the dead.
 Men sleep in their chambers, their heads are wrapt up.
 Every lion cometh forth from his den.
 The serpents, they sting.
 Darkness reigns, the world is in silence:
 He that made them has gone to rest in his horizon.”

“Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon …
 When thou sendest forth thy rays
 The two lands of Egypt are in daily festivity,
 Awake and standing upon their feet,
 For thou hast raised them up.
 Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,
 Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.
 Then in all the world they do their work.”

“All cattle rest upon their herbage, all trees and plants flourish.
 The birds flutter in their marshes, their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
 All the sheep dance upon their feet,
 All winged things fly; they live when thou hast shone upon them.”
[201]

“The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike,…
 The fish in the river leap up before thee,
 And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.”

“Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman …
 Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother;
 Who soothest him that he may not weep,
 A nurse even in the womb.”

“When the chick crieth in the egg-shell,
 Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive …
 He cometh forth from the egg, to chirp with all his might.
 He runneth about upon his two feet.”

“How manifold are all thy works!
 They are hidden from before us.”

There are several verses of this hymn which are
almost identical with Psalm civ., and those who
study it closely will be forced to one of two conclusions:
either that Psalm civ. is derived from
this hymn of the young Pharaoh, or that both are
derived from some early Syrian hymn to the sun.
Akhnaton may have only adapted this early psalm
to local conditions; though, on the other hand, a
man capable of bringing to pass so great a religious
revolution in Egypt may well be credited
with the authorship of this splendid song. There
is no evidence to show that it was written before
the King had reached manhood.

Queen Tiy probably did not now take any further
part in a movement which had got so far out
of her hands. She was now nearly sixty years
old, and this, to one who had been a mother so
early in life, was a considerable age. It seems
that she sometimes paid visits to her son at El
[202]Amarna, but her interest lay in Thebes, where she
had once held so brilliant a Court. When at last
she died, therefore, it is not surprising to find
that she was buried in the Valley of the Tombs
of the Kings. The tomb which has been described
above is most probably her original
sepulchre, and here her body was placed in the
golden shrine made for her by Akhnaton, surrounded
by the usual funeral furniture. She thus
lay no more than a stone’s throw from her parents,
whose tomb was discovered two years ago, and
which was of very similar size and shape.

After her death, although preaching this gentle
creed of love and simple truth, Akhnaton waged
a bitter and stern war against the priesthoods of
the old gods. It may be that the priesthoods of
Amon had again attempted to overthrow the new
doctrines, or had in some manner called down the
particular wrath of the Pharaoh. He issued an
order that the name of Amon was to be erased
and obliterated wherever it was found, and his
agents proceeded to hack it out on all the temple
walls. The names also of other gods were erased;
and it is noticeable in this tomb that the word
mut, meaning “mother,” was carefully spelt in
hieroglyphs which would have no similarity to
those used in the word Mut, the goddess-consort
of Amon. The name of Amenhotep III., his own
father, did not escape the King’s wrath, and the
first syllables were everywhere erased.

As the years went by Akhnaton seems to have
[203]given himself more and more completely to his
new religion. He had now so trained one of his
nobles, named Merira, in the teachings of Aton
that he was able to hand over to him the high
priesthood of that god, and to turn his attention
to the many other duties which he had imposed
upon himself. In rewarding Merira, the King is
related to have said, “Hang gold at his neck
before and behind, and gold on his legs, because
of his hearing the teaching of Pharaoh concerning
every saying in these beautiful places.” Another
official whom Akhnaton greatly advanced says:
“My lord advanced me because I have carried out
his teaching, and I hear his word without ceasing.”
The King’s doctrines were thus beginning
to take hold; but one feels, nevertheless, that the
nobles followed their King rather for the sake of
their material gains than for the spiritual comforts
of the Aton-worship. There is reason to suppose
that at least one of these nobles was degraded and
banished from the city.

But while Akhnaton was preaching peace and
goodwill amidst the flowers of the temple of Aton,
his generals in Asia Minor were vainly struggling
to hold together the great empire created by
Thutmosis III. Akhnaton had caused a temple
of Aton to be erected at one point in Syria at
least, but in other respects he took little or no
interest in the welfare of his foreign dominions.
War was not tolerated in his doctrine: it was a
sin to take away life which the good Father had
[204]given. One pictures the hardened soldiers of the
empire striving desperately to hold the nations of
Asia faithful to the Pharaoh whom they never
saw. The small garrisons were scattered far and
wide over Syria, and constantly they sent messengers
to the Pharaoh asking at least for some sign
that he held them in mind.

There is no more pathetic page of ancient history
than that which tells of the fall of the Egyptian
Empire. The Amorites, advancing along the
sea-coast, took city after city from the Egyptians
almost without a struggle. The chiefs of Tunip
wrote an appeal for help to the King: “To the
King of Egypt, my lord,—The inhabitants of
Tunip, thy servant.” The plight of the city is
described and reinforcements are asked for,
“And now,” it continues, “Tunip thy city
weeps, and her tears are flowing, and there is
no help for us. For twenty years we have been
sending to our lord the King, the King of Egypt,
but there has not come a word to us, no, not one.”
The messengers of the beleaguered city must have
found the King absorbed in his religion, and must
have seen only priests of the sun where they had
hoped to find the soldiers of former days. The
Egyptian governor of Jerusalem, attacked by
Aramæans, writes to the Pharaoh, saying: “Let
the King take care of his land, and … let
send troops…. For if no troops come in this
year, the whole territory of my lord the King will
perish.” To this letter is added a note to the
[205]King’s secretary, which reads, “Bring these words
plainly before my lord the King: the whole land
of my lord the King is going to ruin.”

So city after city fell, and the empire, won at
such cost, was gradually lost to the Egyptians.
It is probable that Akhnaton had not realised how
serious was the situation in Asia Minor. A few
of the chieftains who were not actually in arms
against him had written to him every now and
then assuring him that all was well in his dominions;
and, strange to relate, the tribute of
many of the cities had been regularly paid. The
Asiatic princes, in fact, had completely fooled the
Pharaoh, and had led him to believe that the
nations were loyal while they themselves prepared
for rebellion. Akhnaton, hating violence, had
been only too ready to believe that the despatches
from Tunip and elsewhere were unjustifiably
pessimistic. He had hoped to bind
together the many countries under his rule, by
giving them a single religion. He had hoped that
when Aton should be worshipped in all parts of
his empire, and when his simple doctrines of love,
truth, and peace should be preached from every
temple throughout the length and breadth of his
dominions, then war would cease and a unity of
faith would hold the lands in harmony one with
the other.

When, therefore, the tribute suddenly ceased,
and the few refugees came staggering home to
tell of the perfidy of the Asiatic princes and the
[206]fall of the empire, Akhnaton seems to have
received his deathblow. He was now not more
than twenty-eight years of age; and though his
portraits show that his face was already lined
with care, and that his body was thinner than
it should have been, he seems to have had plenty
of reserve strength. He was the father of several
daughters, but his queen had borne him no son
to succeed him; and thus he must have felt that
his religion could not outlive him. With his
empire lost, with Thebes his enemy, and with
his treasury wellnigh empty, one feels that
Akhnaton must have sunk to the very depths
of despondency. His religious revolution had
ruined Egypt, and had failed: did he, one
wonders, find consolation in the sunshine and
amidst the flowers?

His death followed speedily; and, resting in
the splendid coffin in which we found him, he
was laid in the tomb prepared for him in the
hills behind his new capital. The throne fell to
the husband of one of his daughters, Smenkhkara,
who, after an ephemeral reign, gave place to
another of the sons-in-law of Akhnaton,
Tutankhaton. This king was speedily persuaded
to change his name to Tutankhamon, to abandon
the worship of Aton, and to return to Thebes.
Akhnaton’s city fell into ruins, and soon the
temples and palaces became the haunt of
jackals and the home of owls. The nobles
returned with their new king to Thebes, and
[207]not one remained faithful to those “teachings”
to which they had once pretended to be such
earnest listeners.

The fact that the body in the new tomb was
that of Akhnaton, and not of Queen Tiy, gives
a new reading to the history of the burial. When
Tutankhamon returned to Thebes, Akhnaton’s
memory was still, it appears, regarded with
reverence, and it seems that there was no question
of leaving his body in the neighbourhood
of his deserted palace, where, until the discovery
of this tomb, Egyptologists had expected to find
it. It was carried to Thebes, together with some
of the funeral furniture, and was placed in the
tomb of Queen Tiy, which had been reopened
for the purpose. But after some years had
passed and the priesthood of Amon-Ra had
again asserted itself, Akhnaton began to be
regarded as a heretic and as the cause of the
loss of Egypt’s Asiatic dominions. These sentiments
were vigorously encouraged by the priesthood,
and soon Akhnaton came to be spoken of
as “that criminal,” and his name was obliterated
from his monuments. It was now felt that his
body could no longer lie in state together with
that of Queen Tiy in the Valley of the Tombs
of the Kings. The sepulchre was therefore opened
once more, and the name Akhnaton was everywhere
erased from the inscriptions. The tomb,
polluted by the presence of the heretic, was no
longer fit for Tiy, and the body of the Queen
[208]was therefore carried elsewhere, perhaps to the
tomb of her husband Amenhotep III. The shrine
in which her mummy had lain was pulled to
pieces and an attempt was made to carry it out
of the tomb; but this arduous task was presently
abandoned, and one portion of the shrine was left
in the passage, where we found it. The body of
Akhnaton, his name erased, was now the sole
occupant of the tomb. The entrance was blocked
with stones, and sealed with the seal of Tutankhamon,
a fragment of which was found; and
it was in this condition that it was discovered
in 1907.

The bones of this extraordinary Pharaoh are
in the Cairo Museum; but, in deference to the
sentiments of many worthy persons, they are
not exhibited. The visitor to that museum,
however, may now see the “canopic” jars, the
alabaster vases, the gold vulture, the gold necklace,
the sheets of gold in which the body was
wrapped, the toilet utensils, and parts of the shrine,
all of which we found in the burial-chamber.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER IX.

THE TOMB OF HOREMHEB.

In the last chapter a discovery was recorded
which, as experience has shown, is of considerable
interest to the general reader. The romance
and the tragedy of the life of Akhnaton form a
really valuable addition to the store of good things
which is our possession, and which the archæologist
so diligently labours to increase. Curiously enough,
another discovery, that of the tomb of Horemheb,
was made by the same explorer (Mr Davis) in
1908; and as it forms the natural sequel to the
previous chapter, I may be permitted to record
it here.

Akhnaton was succeeded by Smenkhkara, his
son-in-law, who, after a brief reign, gave place
to Tutankhamon, during whose short life the court
returned to Thebes. A certain noble named Ay
came next to the throne, but held it for only
three years. The country was now in a chaotic
condition, and was utterly upset and disorganised
by the revolution of Akhnaton, and by the vacillating
policy of the three weak kings who succeeded
[210]him, each reigning for so short a time.
One cannot say to what depths of degradation
Egypt might have sunk had it not been for the
timely appearance of Horemheb, a wise and good
ruler, who, though but a soldier of not particularly
exalted birth, managed to raise himself to the
vacant throne, and succeeded in so organising the
country once more that his successors, Rameses I.,
Sety I., and Rameses II., were able to regain most
of the lost dominions, and to place Egypt at the
head of the nations of the world.

Horemheb, “The Hawk in Festival,” was born
at Alabastronpolis, a city of the 18th Province of
Upper Egypt, during the reign of Amenhotep III.,
who has rightly been named “The Magnificent,”
and in whose reign Egypt was at once the most
powerful, the most wealthy, and the most luxurious
country in the world. There is reason to suppose
that Horemheb’s family were of noble birth, and
it is thought by some that an inscription which
calls King Thutmosis III. “the father of his
fathers” is to be taken literally to mean that
that old warrior was his great-or great-great-grandfather.
The young noble was probably
educated at the splendid court of Amenhotep
III., where the wit and intellect of the world
was congregated, and where, under the presidency
of the beautiful Queen Tiy, life slipped
by in a round of revels.

As an impressionable young man, Horemheb
must have watched the gradual development of
[211]freethought in the palace, and the ever-increasing
irritation and chafing against the bonds of
religious convention which bound all Thebans to
the worship of the god Amon. Judging by his
future actions, Horemheb did not himself feel
any real repulsion to Amon, though the religious
rut into which the country had fallen was sufficiently
objectionable to a man of his intellect to
cause him to cast in his lot with the movement
towards emancipation. In later life he would
certainly have been against the movement, for
his mature judgment led him always to be on
the side of ordered habit and custom as being
less dangerous to the national welfare than a
social upheaval or change.

Horemheb seems now to have held the appointment
of captain or commander in the army, and
at the same time, as a “Royal Scribe,” he cultivated
the art of letters, and perhaps made
himself acquainted with those legal matters
which in later years he was destined to reform.

When Amenhotep III. died, the new king,
Akhnaton, carried out the revolution which had
been pending for many years, and absolutely
banned the worship of Amon, with all that it
involved. He built himself a new capital at El
Amârna, and there he instituted the worship of
the sun, or rather of the heat or power of the
sun, under the name of Aton. In so far as the
revolution constituted a breaking away from tiresome
convention, the young Horemheb seems to
[212]have been with the King. No one of intelligence
could deny that the new religion and new
philosophy which was preached at El Amârna was
more worthy of consideration on general lines
than was the narrow doctrine of the Amon
priesthood; and all thinkers must have rejoiced
at the freedom from bonds which had become
intolerable. But the world was not ready, and
indeed is still not ready, for the schemes which
Akhnaton propounded; and the unpractical
model-kingdom which was uncertainly developing under
the hills of El Amârna must have already been
seen to contain the elements of grave danger to
the State.

Nevertheless the revolution offered many
attractions. The frivolous members of the court,
always ready for change and excitement, welcomed
with enthusiasm the doctrine of the moral and
simple life which the King and his advisers
preached, just as in the decadent days before the
French Revolution the court, bored with licentiousness,
gaily welcomed the morality-painting of
the young Greuze. And to the more serious-minded,
such as Horemheb seems to have been,
the movement must have appealed in its imperial
aspect. The new god Aton was largely worshipped
in Syria, and it seems evident that Akhnaton
had hoped to bind together the heterogeneous
nations of the empire by a bond of common worship.
The Asiatics were not disposed to worship
Amon, but Aton appealed to them as much as
[213]any god, and Horemheb must have seen great
possibilities in a common religion.

It is thought that Horemheb may be identified
amongst the nobles who followed Akhnaton to
El Amârna, and though this is not certain, there
is little doubt that he was in high favour with
the King at the time. To one whose tendency
is neither towards frivolity nor towards fanaticism,
there can be nothing more broadening than the
influence of religious changes. More than one
point of view is appreciated: a man learns that
there are other ruts than that in which he runs, and
so he seeks the smooth midway. Thus Horemheb,
while acting loyally towards his King, and while
appreciating the value of the new movement, did
not exclude from his thoughts those teachings
which he deemed good in the old order of things.
He seems to have seen life broadly; and when
the new religion of Akhnaton became narrowed
and fanatical, as it did towards the close of the
tragic chapter of that king’s short life, Horemheb
was one of the few men who kept an open mind.

Like many other nobles of the period, he had
constructed for himself a tomb at Sakkâra, in the
shadow of the pyramids of the old kings of Egypt;
and fragments of this tomb, which of course was
abandoned when he became Pharaoh, are now to
be seen in various museums. In one of the scenes
there sculptured Horemheb is shown in the
presence of a king who is almost certainly
Akhnaton; and yet in a speech to him inscribed
[214]above the reliefs, Horemheb makes reference to
the god Amon whose very name was anathema to
the King. The royal figure is drawn according to
the canons of art prescribed by Akhnaton, and
upon which, as a protest against the conventional
art of the old order, he laid the greatest stress
in his revolution; and thus, at all events,
Horemheb was in sympathy with this aspect of
the movement. But the inscriptions which refer to
Amon, and yet are impregnated with the Aton
style of expression, show that Horemheb was
not to be held down to any one mode of thought.
Akhnaton was, perhaps, already dead when these
inscriptions were added, and thus Horemheb may
have had no further reason to hide his views; or
it may be that they constituted a protest against
that narrowness which marred the last years of a
pious king.

Those who read the history of the period in the
last chapter will remember how Akhnaton came
to persecute the worshippers of Amon, and how
he erased that god’s name wherever it was written
throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.
Evidently with this action Horemheb did not
agree; nor was this his only cause for complaint.
As an officer, and now a highly placed general
of the army, he must have seen with feelings of
the utmost bitterness the neglected condition of
the Syrian provinces. Revolt after revolt occurred
in these states; but Akhnaton, dreaming and
praying in the sunshine of El Amârna, would
[215]send no expedition to punish the rebels. Good-fellowship
with all men was the King’s watchword,
and a policy more or less democratic did
not permit him to make war on his fellow-creatures.
Horemheb could smell battle in the distance, but
could not taste of it. The battalions which he
had trained were kept useless in Egypt; and even
when, during the last years of Akhnaton’s reign,
or under his successor Smenkhkara, he was made
commander-in-chief of all the forces, there was
no means of using his power to check the loss
of the cities of Asia. Horemheb must have
watched these cities fall one by one into the
hands of those who preached the doctrine of the
sword, and there can be little wonder that he
turned in disgust from the doings at El Amârna.