Eglon

An ancient town in the She- phelah, close to Lachish. Its king, Debir, joined in the alliance formed by the kin" of Jerus. against the Isr. underJoshua, and after the battle of Aijalon it was captured and destroyed (Jos IQi*' 12'-). It is not again named in Scripture, so that it was prob. utterly destroyed. In LXX, cf. Jos 10, Adullam takes its place by some (prob.)

early mistake, they • This is held to be an exaggeration of D by those who dis- tinguish various hands in this book ; see, however, Ps 838- 7, which seems to refer to the period of the Judges. t The fortifications, at anv rate, of Jericho must have beei in niins (cf. Jos fi* n-ith 1 K 18"), but we are never told that the ruins left from the burning of Jericho were pulled down. I The notion that they were iKjundary stones or iniagei scan-ely deserved mention.

} For the meaning of the last clause of verw '^ see Mocrft pp. 97, 98. EGYPT EGYPT 653 are in consequence identified in the Onomasticon. The name remains in 'Ajldn, some 15 miles N.E. from Gaza and 2 miles N. of Tell Hesy, now con- clusively identified with the ancient Lachish. But Flinders Petrie (PEFSt, 1S90, pp. 161-103) points out Tell Nejileh as probahly the true site. KhUrbet 'AjlAn his practised eye pronounced un- likely to be the site of an ancient town.

On the other hand, ' it is certain,' he savs, ' that Tell Hesy and subordinately Tell Nejilch must have been positions of lirst-rate importance from the time of the earliest settlements ; they would then a^ree to the character of Lachish and Eglon. The history of Tell Hesy begins about B.C. 1500, and ends about B.C. 500 ; while Tell Nejileh, as far as can be seen on the surface, is of the same age, or mined even earlier.'

'There are no sites in the country around bo suited to the importance of Lachisli and Eglon as these two Tells.' To this may be added, that the course of Joshua (ch. 10) brought him first to Lacliish — Eglon lying between Lacliish and Hebron ; and the position of Tell Nejileh suits this account better than that of 'AjUn. See Lachish. LmmiTCiti.— Robinson, BRP U. 49 ; Porter, Giant Citiei of Bathan, 808 ; PBF St (1895), 166 ; BUm, A Hound qf ilany CUitt (IBM), Ui. A. HkNDEBSOM. EGYPT.- L Name.

li. Physical ohirTtw, UL Fauna. It. Flora. ▼. Ethnology, t1 Lan^a^. TiL Chronology, tUL History. Ix. Relations with Asia. s. Religion. L Name. — The name by which the Egyptians at all times designated their country was Ktinc< (Copt. KHMC. xutfi ), a word of which the prob.ible etymology — root km 'black' — would confirm the statements of Herodotus and Plutarcli, who con- nect it with the dark colour of tlie soil.

The contrasting redness of the neighbouring desert sand gave to that the name of ' tlie Red Land.' It is phonetically impossible to connect Ktme< with tne name Ham (ori). To the Semites the country was known as Alizraira (onp, seldom iW?, MfOTpaf/i, fiUaapaifi), the termination here being no doubt locative and not a dual. The older cunei- form texts vocalize Mujr, the later Mi?r ; tlio Amama letters have generally Mijrl, pi.'

For this word a favourite though undeiiionstrable derivation is that from ^'ls? ' fort.' The (ireek name Afyi'irTof (Arab. fCibt, Eth. Gchf, and European Copt) is of equally obscure origin. It cannot be satisfactorily derived from any Egyptian or Semitic word or combination of words. In the earliest Greek writers (Odyssey generally) it is the name of the river, for which NeiXot (cf. 7nj, -irij ?) is first found in Hesiod.

In the later epoclis and in poetical texts we meet with many other names for Egypt. Of such V mri is among the most frequent, ann seems connected specially with Lower r'gj'pt and the inundation. ' The Land of the Sycamore,' 'of the Olive,' 'of the Sacred Eye,' are names whicli require for their explanation a greater knowledge of the geogra[)hical myths than we possess. ii. Physical Character. — The geological con- • Aooordinft to W. Max Muller (Z. Au. v\\l. 200), Mn?ru, whence Shalmaiioscr ii.

received prcRonts. was Ej^ypt. nol a N. Syrian or Annrnian diatrii t (Winckler, Iloiiinicl, etc.) Winckler has suj^j^estcd {Alt. For. 24 (T.) that another Klufri, which he locates in J-^Iom or Sinai, may have been the real ori^n of the Kxodtis tradition, renilniscences of wandcringv in that district havitits' ffot confused with the name of ICL'-j'^it. In 8. Arabian Inscriptions this Miisri and K^>-pt are di<ttit)gutshed ■a pxD and "ViD (dommel In FutKhriftf. Eben, 27).

__'pt U are three — the bed of rock (limestone for the most part, with sandstone and granite in the S.), which stretches across the N.E. corner of Africa j then the sand which lies upon this, and extends from the Arabian desert bills on the E. to the Libyan range on the W. ; lastly, the black Nile mud, resting upon the sand in the centre of the valley, and foriiung the highroad for the great stream on which the prosperity of the country de{ieiid8.

The number and dimensions of the buildings erected at aU periods gave a high import- ance to the geological elements of the countrj-. The limestone obtained near Memphis (Turrali) furnished the material for the principal works of the early periods. The great temples hi"her up the valley, especially those of Thebes, are built of sandstone, conveniently obtainable at Silsileh. Red granite for statues, sarcophagi, etc.

, was worked at the first Cataract (Aswftn) ; black granite and diorite for similar purposes came from the eastern desert (Ilamni.'iniat). Alabaster, a favourite material, usually for smaller objects, was quarried opposite Dahshflr, or (a better quality) at Htnb, near Beni-Uasan, whence it was extracted under the earliest Dynasties.

In metals the Nile valley itself is poor; those most valued come from abroad, — gold in plenty from Nubia or the eastern desert ; silver, which was rarer, probably from Cilicia ; copper from Sinai, later also from Cyprus ; malachite and lapis lazuli from Sin.ai and Mesopotamia. Bronze, familiar during all later epochs, was made with tin, the provenance of which is uncertain, but which was already used under the Gth Dynasty. Nor can we tell whence iron, well known at any rate from about 800 B.C.

, was obtained, though a limited amount could be got from the western desert. The course of the Nile through Nubia is hindered by a succession of rocky barriers, the last or northernmost of which— the first Cataract — has often been the political as it is the natural frontier of Egypt. Between the Cataracts and the Delta the country is of a very uniform character. The valley is extensive or narrow as the two hill-ranges recede from or approach the stream.

Its breadth varies from about nine to four miles. As the river progresses northward, the hills gradually fall back and the valley expands into the plain of the Delta, across which the river makes its way by various channels to the Mediterranean.

Although the surface-denudation recognizable at certain points of the river's course and the petrified forests still extant testify to very diU'erent climatic condi- tions at a remote geological period, it is unlikely that during the five or six thousand )'ear8 of historic Egypt there has been much change in the aspect of the country.

By the opening of that period the valley had been dried, the river-bed raised, and the stream's course fixed practically to its actual extent, though the number of its inoutlis was greater than it is to-d;vy. History is concerned during the earlier periods almost exclusively with the upper valley ; the Delta was evidently still but partially reclaimed, though certain towns there are already met with in the myths and in the earliest liiatory. Phj-sical contrasts are coincident with that divi.

sion into Upper and Lower Egy|)t which we find an estab- lislied fact of the remutest historic times ; already the two kingdoms— for such undoubtedly tliey once had been — are united, each, however, retain- ing its own tutelary deity, and its independent capital, Nlih (El-Kab) and liuto.

Beyond this twofold partition, Egypt appears from the earliest times subdivided into a number (about 22 in south and north resiiectively) of Hiiialler districts (nomoH, from i-o^As), which become later the basis of au administrative system, bnt 654 EGYPT EGYPT which originated probably in the vaguely defined Bettlements of dilterent tribes.

The lists of the nomes are our chief source of topographical know- ledge ; but no full lists are preserved from early periods, although several most ancient documents (tomb of M(n, Pyramid texts) mention a few of the nomes. In the later lists each nonie is per- sonified by its guardian deity, fetish, or emblem, which serves as a kind of coat-of-arms.

A nome was held to be composed of four elements : (1) the metropolis, the seat of the tribal religion and residence of the chief ; (2) the cultivated land ; (3) the canals by which the fields were fed witii river-water ; (4) the marshes which, rarely cul- tivable, served as a hunting-ground for the local nobles. The hieroglyphic -l-i-l-r.

which expressed one of the words for 'nome,' is a testimony to some primitive irrigation system, representing as it does a canal-divided field, and the founder of the 1st Dynasty is credited with the construction of the great dyke which stUl protects the province of Gizeh from a too extensive inundation, while his successors had all to occupy themselves with the regulation of the water, the cutting of canals, and the satisfaction of local claims upon the benefits of proximity to the river itself.

Varia- tions in the annual height of the inundation were no doubt carefully observed in the remotest ages ; we know that they were recorded in the Cataract district by the kings of the 12th Dynasty, and at Kamak in later times. The Nile is not only the great fertilizer ; it is also, now as formerly, the main highway. We hear relatively little of journej^s by road ; locomotion was normally by water, either upon the river or upon the subsidiary canals.

The commonest words for journeying implied the idea of sailing up or down stream. The dead were drawn to tlieir rock-cut tombs on boat-formed cars ; the solar gods were thought to traverse the sky in a divine bark. Such roads as we do hear of are chiefly those leading from the Nile across the desert — eastwards (from Coptos) to the Red Sea, west- wards to the Natron Lakes, or southwards into the Soudan. iii. Fauna.

— The bones of sacrificial animals from various periods, and countless animal mum- mies from the base epochs, might, if carefully preserved and located, teach much as to the ultimate homes of several species, while an exten- sive knowledge of both the domesticated and wild animals might be had from the frescoes of the tombs — especially those of the Middle Kingdom. Each animal is there accompanied by its name, though it is often difficult to find for these their modem equivalents.

For the earliest times the hieroglyphic signs themselves would supply a considerable list, giving evidence that the species then known have since changed little. The lion is freouently depicted, though probably seldom met with until the desert had been reached. The lion hunts recorded in the New Kingdom refer mainly to Syria or Nubia, though Thutraosis rv. hunted lions in the neighbourhood of Memphis. Leopards (or panthers ?)

seem to have been seen in the south ; elephants and giraffes were not unknown to those who traded on the Upper Nile ; jackals, then as now, were very familiar ; desert wolves and hyienas somewhat less so ; many kinds of antelopes were well known. The hippopotamus, once commonly met in the river and hunted in the swamps, has by now been driven far up the Nile. Of oxen various breeds were kept ; the familiar long-homed species existed until the plague in the middle of the present century.

Oxen are often represented ploughing or threshing. Certain varieties, or rather individual members of certain varieties, distinguished by peculiar, carefully sought mark- ings, were held sacred from the earliest times- Apis at Memphis, Mnevis at Heliopolis, Bacis at Hermonthis. Sheep were no doubt kept, but occur rarely on the monuments. Varieties of the long- and the spiral-horned ram were sacred. The ass was the usual beast of burden, and was not rivalled by the camel till a very late date.

It will be remembered that in Gn 12'" (Abraham and Pharaoh) and Ex y (Moses) camels are neverthe- less mentioned — both by J — as if known in Egypt. The horse is likewise unknown in the older epochs ; as it appears first after the Hyksos period, it is assumed to have been introduced by those in- vaders. The reference to Egyptian horse-breeding in 1 K 10^ should more probably be applied to some Asiatic country (Winckler, Altt. Unt. 173 A).

The Egj'ptian name for the horse meant properly ' a pair, and was due i)robably to its first employ- ment in the war-chariot. Foreign names, among them Semit. did, once borrowed, became even more usual. The horse appears to have been seldom ridden. Several breeds of dogs were known ; some were valued for the chase. The names of some breeds are preserved, and show that certain Libyan (or Nubian ?) varieties were popular.

The cat, sacred to the goddess B'stt, was larger in ancient than in modem Egypt. It figures in a very ancient solar myth {Book of the Dead, ch. 17). The pig, except for its mention in the sacred books, is not met with until late times. Of birds a great number are depicted — geese, ducks, herons of many sorts; migratory birds, e.g. swallows, plovers, quails.

Eagle, vulture, hawk, and owl are among the most constantly recurring hieroglyphics, while the vulture, Iiawk, and ibis were sacred to pro- minent divinities, and were embalmed in numbers (in the base epochs) in the localities of which those divinities were the patrons. It is remarkable that, though hen-breeding is universal in Egypt to-day, that bird was apparently unkno\vn to the ancients.

Of the larger reptiles the most important was the crocodile, now no longer to be met with below the Cataracts. There is a variety of snakes, the best known being the urceus, emblem of the patron- goddess of Lower Egypt and hence of the king, and the homed viper. From the importance and frequency in the earliest religious literature of charms against large snakes, it may be inferred that their numbers and dimensions were once greater than they are at present.

The texts show us several insects, notably the scarabmus -h^etXe, regarded, especially in later times, as a symbol of eternity and of the sun-god, and the bee, associated in writing from the remot- est times with royalty in Lower Egypt. Fish are often represented. The most peculiar is the oxyrrhynchus, the badge of the 19th nome of Upper Egypt.

Fish were much eaten ; some of the oldest frescoes depict them speared in the marshes, landed in drag-nets, and then split for drying ; while texts equally ancient tell of the construction of fish-ponds. iv. Flora. — Egypt is remarkably poor in variety of vegetation. Many of the cultii ated plants most common now — cotton, sugar, rice— are modem im- portations.

In prehistoric ages the valley was no doubt con- siderably wooded ; but to-day, with the exception of the various palm species, trees occur only singly or in small groups. The representations of the flora — of trees especially — in the frescoes, carv- ings, or hieroglyphics are generally too far conven- tionalized to be instructive. More can be learned from extant remains of edible grains or funerary floral wreaths (from the New Kingdom onwards), or of woodwork (from all periods).

From these it is clear that the native vegetation has altered very little during the course of history. The Egyptians EGYPT EGYl'T 065 were at all times ill oir for workable woods, and were compelled — where the stalks of river plants would not serve — to make the best of their own BTcomore or acacia (the latter especially in the older epochs), or to imiiort yew from C'ilicia (?) and ebony from Nubia.

More than one Pharaoh of the New Kingdom brought specimens of trees and vegetables from Syria or the Ked Sea coasts, either as curiosities or with a view to their propagation. From the nature of the soil, agriculture must always have been the main occujiation of the population, and we learn from the monuments the names of several cereals, of which wheat and bar- ley were the commonest, dhurah being well known since the New Kingdom.

Gardens were laid out, and much interest was shown in them since the 4th Dynasty. Many vegetables are represented in the frescoes and as hieroglyphic signs, e.specially the bulbous sorts — onions, leeks, etc. (of. Nu xi. 5). The vine was always largely cultivated, and from the Delta came several famous wines of Greek and Koman times. The fig, too, is early represented.

Many plants were valued medicinally, as can be shown from the numbers occurring in the medical works, notably in the Papyrus Ebers : others were nsed for dyeing. The most important of all plants to the Egyptians was the papyrus, which, unknown now in the Delta, grew there once in vast thickets where the nobles hunted, and whence was obtained the material, not only for writing, but also for numerous other purposes, decorative and useful.

A« the papyrus became one of the pictorial emblems of Lower Egypt, so the lotus was often that of the southern country, although a sort of water-reed seems also to have been so employed. y. Ethnology.— The problem of the origin and relationships of the Egj'ptian race is still unsolved. Its solution is to be sought in the evidence of (I) philology ; (2) mytholoCTT ; (3) physical anthro- pology ; and (4) material culture.

Investigations in these various fields have hitherto given results partially discordant. (1) The most ancient lin- guistic documents point to an undeniable though already very remote relationship with the Semitic languages (see below). (2) The divinities and myths familiar to the earliest texts were, until recently, accepted as ^owths of the Egyptian soil, the inclination bemg to recognize in extraneous ele- ments, if any, the influence of neighbouring Afri- can races.

Hommel indeed invites us to take other considerations into account by pointing out certain coincidences between the ancient religions of Egj'pt and Babylonia. (3) Racial types, SM depicted on the monuments, and the measurements, etc., of mummies, have led to no uniform results.

Formerly, anthropologists saw in the sculptures and paintings one race, identical with the Copts of to-day ; now they generally discern various types among the most ancient portraits, and seek on such evidence to distinguish at least two races.

Few mummies remain from the oldest epochs — one of the most ancient is that from MedQm, at present in the Koyal College of Surgeons, London, — and tliose from later times point apiiarently to a short-skulled, while the modem Egyi>tian is of a long -skulled typo.

Prob- ably the oldest group of remains (from Abydos, 1895-96) seems to point to a long-skulled, orthogna- thous, smooth-haired race ; but the type there is not homogeneous, neither is that of ttie MedQm mummies, and their relationship to the race of historic Egypt is not yet clear. (4) There is cer- tainly evidence of African elements, whether due to primitive kinship or to mere proximity, in some branches of the material civilization, sucn as dress, weapons, possibly circumcision.

On the other hand, Hommel seeks to show that a very earlj' form of religious or sepulchral architecture (pyra- mid) is derived from Babylonia. It must be owned that the oldest remains of Me.sopotainian civiliza- tion appear to exceed in antiquity aui' hitherto brought to light in Egypt. Most are agreed that, whatever be the case with their forerunners, the Egyptians from the 3rd or 4th Dynasty onwards were not a negroid race ; that they came, on the contrary, from Asia.

But the questions of their previous home there and the route by which they reached the Nile, — whetlier b3' Bab el-Mandeb and Abyssinia or the Wady Ham- mamat and Coptos, or by the Syrian desert and the Isthmus, — are as yet unanswered. The route b.

Arabia-HainiiiAmat-Coptos has for it the eviilence (a) of prehistoric remains at Coptos, pointing to a people coming direct from the Ked Sea ; (6) of certain facts — physical resemblance, peaceful rela- tions, and the ajiparently reverential attitude of the Egyptians — which have been held to point to Ptont, I.e. the country about the southern end of the Red Sea, as a former home of the race.

To this maj' be added the tradition that the founders of the monarchy came from Tliinis, a town not far distant from Coptos — a tradition which has been confirmed by the recent discovery of the First Dj-nasty tombs in the same neigh- bourhood (Abydos). No reminiscence has been discerned in the literature of a prehistoric immigration. The people apparently considered themselves aborigenes, and called themselves merely R6me(t), ' men ' par excellence.

Traces of a stone age, undeniable though compli- cated by the long historic survival of flint-work- ing, show that the country has been inhabited since the Pliocene period. Palaeolithic remains are rare, but some half-dozen stations are said to have been recognized. Considerable evidence has been adduced (though contested) to demon- strate a New Stone age. That a Hebrew writer of the 6th or 7th cent, speaks (Gn 10«) of Mizraira as related to Cush (Ethiopia), Put (S.

Arabia, Pumt), and Canaan, is not a fact of much ethnological importance. By the earlier annalist (i6.'") eight names — mostly unidentifiable — are given which may preserve a then current Hebrew view of Egypt's ethnological relationships. vi. Lanquaoe. — The relative position of the Egyptian language among its neighbours is a question closely associated with that as to the racial connexions of the people. Our means of comparison with the surrounding idioms are not of eqiial value.

For the Semitic languages— for the Mesopotamian dialects at least — we have documents perhaps as ancient as any from Egypt. For the Berber and Cushite languages of Africa we can but infer from quite modern evidence the linguistic conditions of earlier ages; and im this important field, therefore, little has as yet been attempted.

The lOgyptian language, together with certain languages of Barbary, Nubia, and Abyssinia, used to be regarded as forming one of the aistinct main divisions of human speech ; now it is clear that this isolating cla.ssilication cannot be justified. The group is not independent.

Since Benfoy's attempt to demonstrate the affinity of the Egyp- tian and Semitic languages, his main contention has received increasing confirmation, until it is no longer possible to deny an originally very close relationship— collateral rather than filial— betweev the proto-IIamitic and proto-Semitic groups. The atlinity is specially prominent in grammatical features common to both. Of the.se the i>riiicipal are — ( I ) the same {;ender-endings, masc.

w, fern, t ; (2) an all but identical series of pronominal suffixes ; (3) the use in both of a peculiar adjectival termina- tion, 'nisbeli'; (4) identity in four or five ( f the numerals ; (5) analogous treatment of the weali 656 EGYPT EGYPT verb and derivatives ; (6) the identity of an old form of Ejryp- verbal flection and the Sem.

perfect ; (7) verbalnouns with prefixed m ; (8) the import- ance of a single accent-vowel in each word or syntactical group, and the resultant 'construct Btate of the remaining vowels. There is, more- over, to be noted the correspondence between the Sem. and Egyp. consonants, extending to some fifteen undoubted equations (which embrace the important series K, i, \ V) ; «lso two or three more which are almost certain.

* h urther, the same lack of any written representatives of the vowels, in the vocabulary the case for Sem. affinity is less strong. The number of Egyp. roots for which correspondents can reasonably be claimed in any Sem. dialect is smaU ; the large Sem. element in the language of the New Kingdom owes its pre- sence, not to any primitive relationship, but mere v to the political circumstances of the time. 1 he bulK of Egyp. roots is of a decidedly non-Sem. type.

One of the most distinctive features of the bera. languages-the preponderance of trihteral roots- is, at 4y rate, not paralleled, even in the oldest Et^ptian documents, though it has been sug- gested that the divergence here is due to early phonetic degeneration. Horamel offers anotlier explanation of the facts. By the aid of certain very potent phonetic laws he institutes com- parisons between a number of Egyp.

and Sumenan words, the latter being, in his view, an import dating from the prehistoric (Semitic) immigration from Mesopotamia. It is a question of at least equal difficulty how large a proportion of the roots should be regarded as of African, i.e. negroid, orioin, and so as vestiges of a stiU remoter, pre- Semitic period, during which the valley was peopled by an African race, part of whose lin- guistic stock was subsequently amalgamated witn that of the invading Asiatics. _, ■ .

u If it were possible to trace with certainty trie genealogy of the hieroglyphic script, we might ixpect to find ourselves nearer the birthplace of the language. Hommel's theories do not ignore this problem ; the hieroglyphics came, he holds, like the rest of the intellectual equipment of the Egyptians, from Mesopotamia.

If this were true of the script as a whole, it would nevertheless be ob^-ious that many of the signs had their origin in Africa; they represent natural objects, to be met with only there. Be this as it may, it is evident that the Babylonian and Egyptian systems had, for ages before we first meet with them, followed wdely divergent lines of development.

The former, influenced by the nature of its writing materials had lost almost entirely the pictorial character which the latter, on the contrary, retained from the beginning to the end of hUtoric times. A conventionalizing, abbreviating tendency was, of course, inevitable il a script so ponderous was to be put to any but occasional decorative uses.

But the abbre^aated forms -first the 'hieratic,' later the 'demotic script— grew and found employment side by side with their prototypes, the hieroglyphics, wtiich to the end were alone held suitable for sacred literature or ornamental inscriptions. The signs in general employment during the classical period — the Middle and earlier ^ew Kingdoms — are estimated at about 500; some • The following are the conventional tranficriptiont used jn thl» article (see ^g. Zeiltchr. xxxiv. 61 and ZDMtJ xm.

). L AwerUlned equation : « ', a ft, n A, 1 w, n >, ^ J, • t. 3 . SJ.1»'.D«M».P'. e P. P. »«•.«• <>o"»'"^= ' C ff.'f.od. 0 ». f. X ii • ^ »("" "Inea of the sibilanto, of course, particu- Url'y nncertaln). The Egj-p- / and a form of ft are without Bemitio equivalent*. T and « represent secondary forms of • i. from the older epochs had then fallen into dxsam, many employed later had not yet appeared.

The signs are pictures of material obiect*- natural and artificial,-^r of parts of such o^je«t8. PrimarUy, each sign must have had for i.t« P'^o^^t J value merely the name of the object depicted.

But since no provision was thus made for expr^sing abstract Weas or the grammatical needs of the language, a secondary use of the signs had been developed, and abstractions were expressed by the same signs as those material objecU of wluclithe names contained the identical consonants, tor example, ^ is the picture of a rib .^vritten by the consonants sp r j the verb ' reach is also spelt s p r ; it.

too, is therefore written with the s'g" 'T;^: Besides such signs as these, capable unassisted of expressing complete words, there are many with only the value of single syllables (i.e. consonant + vowel + consonant). These are, no doubt primitive word-signs which have lost their origmal function, and so become available as pure phonetics for the writing of longer words.

A still remoter stage of the language is recalled by the 24 signs called by us the 'alphabet,' and reduced from the representation of 24 monosyllabic words (? consonant + vowel) to that of 24 consonants, the initials of those forgotten words. To these three phonetic elements is to be added one purely ideographic and complementary.

To avoid Ambiguities certain signs, 'determina- tives,' are added, as in Babylonian and Chinese, to phonetically written words in order to indi- cate the class of ideas to which such words refer. Thus, dignity or age would be followed by the figure of an old man, strength or power by that of an armed hand, literature or learn- ing by that of a papyrus roll.

The absence of written vowels leaves us ignorant of the correct pronunciation of Egyptian words ; our "nly Guides are the transcriptions in vocalized f ore^m lan<mages-cuneiform or Greek,-or in Coptic, whfch is but the youngest stage of Egyptian expressed in the Greek alphabet Yet by these aiJs we merely approximate to the ,7-^^.^^^^°" of tlie later epochs ; for that of the Old Kmgdom we have no guide.

The Egyptians themselves did indeed, during the period of their intimacy with Asia (18th and following Dynasties) feel the need of some system of vowel-transcnption, and they naturally took aa their model. the cuneiform syllabary, already in common use in Syria. Ihe vowels which under this influence they aimed at representing were a, i, and «, and for their hiero- glyphic representation the signs for three approxi- nite weak consonants were selected.

SimiJ" necessities were met at later periods (the Persian Ptolemaic, and Roman supremacies) by similar means, though during these the elements of the ancient hieroglyphic system were speedily osing their originaf Values, and complete irregularity already feigned in the transcription of foreign consonants as well as vowels. vii. CHROSOLOGY.-Many of the problems in- volved in this subject still await satisfactory lolution.

Astronomical calculations combined with the monumental evidence have doubtless done much already to fix the dates of later epochs but beyond the age of the New Kmsdora 't seems impossible to fini ""animousaccept.ance for more thin approximate dates. Mucli obscurity stiU prevails as to the eras and methods employed by the Etrs'ptians in their calculations. A The available Egj-ptian documents are-(l) The li.sts of kings inscribed in temples or private tombs.

The three most important (at Aby^os Kar- nak Sakkara) date from Dynasties 18 and 19, and gh e the nam.; of 76, 61, and 47 kings respectively^ Tombs and MSS of the same penodliave preserv^ shorter li«ts. In such lists the sequence of namei EGYPT EGYPT 657 is not always correct, nor is more than a gelection (political or ritualistic?) from the full series of past kings given. They aupjjly no data as to lengtii of reign.

(2) The lists in a dilapidated papyrus of the Ramesside period at Turin, which probably enumerated when complete all kings from the 1st to the Uyksos Dynasty. (3) Dates are found in, or can be reckoned from, the annals inscribed in the temples by certain kings, or incidentally in the tombs of private persons. This is the most reliable class of document, and the records in private tombs are the sole contemporary source for a chronology of the early Dynasties. B.

Of Greek writers, by far the most important ia Manetho, a native priest, e. B.C. 250, whose works are known only by the excerpts preserved by Josephus, Africanus, and Ensebius, or by the medium of still later chronologista. We are ignorant of the sources upon which his AlyvimaKi was based ; presumably, he had at his disposal documents far fuller and more reliable than any now available, though his chronology of the remoter periods can be proved much at fault.

Nor can we judge how far ne manipulated his authorities to suit his own views ; and it is, moreover, probable that his Jewish and Christian abbreviators had their own systems to harmonize with his state- ments. The misfortunes inevitable in the long transmission of such writings must also be con- sidered in estimating their present value. The lists appended to Alanetho's history divided the Egyptian kings into 31 DjTiasties.

The grounds for such divisions are often ditlicult to appreciate ; they do not always coincide with the divisions in the Turin papyrus. The lists compiled by Eratos- thenes, B.C. 275-194, in which pretended Greek Interpretations of the royal names are jjiven, con- tain in reality many words which are but inaccurate transcriptions of titles, formulae, etc., which accom- panied the names. Many scholars have occupied tliemselves with these Greek chronologists.

Hbckh sought to demonstrate an astronomical era as the basis of Manetlio's calculations. Lepsius appealed to the ' Sothis ' book, — a Christian forgery, — which ascribed 35.55 years as total duration to the Egyptian monarchy ; while, according to Unger, Manetho'e system gave 5613 as the date of its foundation. Brugsch has attempted reckoning from the basis of average length of generations and reigns, and thus arrives at 4400 for the same event. Ed.

Meyer lays stress cliielly on data as to length of reigns actually recorded on the monu- ments, and has thus constructed a series of ' mini- mum dates,' i.e. dates bcluw whicli, at any rate, the various periods could not be brought down ; but C. Torr has since re-examined the monuments with the result of a possible further reduction of Mever's figures. I'he most important a.

ssistance towards the estab- lishment of indisimtable dates is derived from astronomical calculations, based on the following a.scertained facts as to the Egyptian calendar. The Egyptians did not use a leap year. Consequently in every four years a day was lost, and in 1400 years these los.se» had resulted in aoomplcte shift of all the nominal months througlumt the seiisonal year. An absolute method of reckoninj,' couhl, however, be obtained by observing the variation in the sun's position.

Tins variation was gauged by the first visible (heliacal) rising of Sothis (.Sirins), an event which coincided with the beginning of the Inunda- tion. When the ' natural ' years, reckoned from this point, amount to 14(10, that tottil is therefore called a Sothis period. The natural or Sothic year was probably of importance to the Egyptians only for agricultural ann ritualistic calculations ; but to ns it is of great value. For the known fact that a VOL. I. — 43 Sothis period began in A.D.

139 enables us to fix its preWous occurrences in B.C. 1322, 27H4, 4242, etc. With tliese points for a basis, and taking into con- sideration the recorded Sothis ri.sings under kings Mrnpth (Merenptah) and Amenophia I., Ed. Mahler fixes the reign of Thutmosis III. at 1.503-144U. He has, indeed, also calculated exact dates for the remainder of the 18th and 19th Dynasties ; l>ut results drawn from documents still often disputable cannot be relied on.

To such astronomical dates Flinders Petrie has contributed 34 10 as the probable commencement of the 6th Dynasty. The following are selected dates, from those provisionally adopted by Petrie,* Ed. Meyer, Mahler, and Steindorti (in 'Baedeker,' 1897):— Petrie. Meyer. Dynasty. B.C. B.C. I. 4777 3180 IT. 3998 2830 n. 3410 2530 XI. 2985 xn. 2778 2130 Xin. 2565 1930 Mahler, xvm. 1587 1530 1575 XIX. 1327 1320 XX. 1240 XXI. 1089 1060 XXII. 930 XXV. 728 XXVI. 663 xxvn. 625 Stelndorff. XXX.

382 Macedonians. 332 Romans. 30 viii. History. — Modem historians conveniently partition Manetho's series of 31 l)yna.sties into the following groups : (a) the Old kinrjdom, Dyns. i.-vi. ; (A) t/ie Middle Kingdom, Dyns. xi.-xiii. ; (r) the New Kingdom, Dyns. xviii.-xx. ; (d) the Foreign Dominion, Dyns. xxii.-xxv. ; (c) the Ecs- toratlon, Dyn. xxvi. ; (/) the Persian Supremacy, Dyn. xxxi. Between these lie obscure, disturbed periods, not assignable to any of the more distinctly defined groups.

(a) Tlic Old Kingdom. — Although nothing is known of the history of the earliest I'haraohs, the tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasties have lately been discovered at Abydos (Om cl-Gu'.ib), the legendary cradle, it will be remembered, of the monarchy.

Unfamiliar royal names of the same remote age have come to light somewhat farther south (Negadeh);t while the so-calleil ' New Race ' cemetery — the remains of a very rude stage of culture — in the latter locality, is regarded as dating from at least as distant a period.

In Greek times legends could still be collected, attri- buting to some of these early kings notable achievements, such as the first damminfj of the river, the establishment of a certain divine cult, or the regulation of succession to the throne ; to others, some memorable experience — a devastating plague, or an earthquake.

It is to be reiiiembered that, while the first historic Dynasty and that of demigods which pre- ceded it are said to be native to Upper Egypt, the legends of the still remoter Dynasty of gods are localized in the North ; the great gods were at home first in Heliopolis and the Delta. This iniiv point, it is said, to a racial contrast which. Mow- ever strong at first, was early obliterated. One ol * So far aa yi-t published ; see Hutory, voU.

L iL ; Meyer's u« the miniinuin dntea referred to above. I See jUg. ZeiUchr. xxxv. 1 0.

558 EGYPT EGYPT the prehistoric races had occupied districts about the river's mouth ; another — that, perhaps, to which the rude monuments at Coptos are due — had arrived in the upper valley, and one of its chiefs, attaining, we may suppose, at Abydos, or more properly Thinis, to a position of supremacy, had been able to extend tnence his power down the river, settling near the later Memphis, subduing or absorbing the Delta tribes, and finally identi- fying himself with the religion of the district which became thenceforth the state religion of tne nation.

Relics of a possibly pre, dynastic nwnarchy can be traced in archaic survivals in the titles, functions, dress, etc., of the later kings ; but of the people ruled by these primitive Pharaohs, or of the limits of their domains, little can as yet be said. Interments, flints, pottery, regarded by some as prehistoric, are by others assigned to far later ages. History properly so called opens with Dyn. 3. Yet here still we have knowledge of only one or two out of half a dozen kings.

Some fragments on which the name of Nbk' (Nebka) occurs are held to belong to his time ; Dsr (Zezer), his suc- cessor, in all probability built (possibly usurped) the step-pyramid of Sakkara. He was a monarch of some power, for he extended his activity to tlie mines of Sinai, where his name is found, and Ills cult was reWved at quite a late epoch.

The Dynasty closes (or the next begins) with a better known King, Sn/noSoris, whose name survives on numerous monuments, the most important bein^ his pyramid-torab at MedHm. He, too, exploited the Sinaitic copper, not, however, as his inscrip- tions there show, until he had crushed the hostile nomads of the neighbourhood. The tombs of several of his nobles are extant In the cemeteries of Abusir, Dahshur, and Medflm.

The 4th Dynasty has left a memorial more indelible than that of any that followed it ; for the successors of Soris built as their tombs the three great pyramids of Gizeh. Their relationships to Soris and to one another are uncertain. Some close blood connexion can be argued from genealo^es in contemjjorary tombs and from later tradition. Hwfw-Cheo^s, /r/V'-Chephren, and iWnA:'M>r'-Mykerinus appear fo have spent their energies chiefly on the con- struction of their pyramids.

With this object they brought granite from Aswfln and alabaster from quarries near Tel el-Amarna. Cheops, how- ever, continued the work in Sinai, and built in the Delta (Tideh and Bubastis). Indeed we learn from the inscriptions of Mtn (Methen), a magnate of the time, that the Delta was already, at any rate in part, reclaimed and worked for the crown by great functionaries. Of the remaining three or four kings of the Dyna.sty, one at least is known to have built a pyramid.

The great Sphinx is usually attributed to this period, though it possibly belongs to a considerably later age. The relative scarcity of remains of the 4th Dynasty probably points to the small development of the custom of building monumental tombs. Tradition regarded the 5th Dynasty as a new family, possibly as one of usurpers.

One legend — probably not without interested motives — ascribes to it an origin half-priestly, half-divine, and places its home in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis ; else- whereitiscalled native to Elephantine. The Dynasty jonsisted of some nine kings, mostly little more now than names ; for we know of no achievements more remarkable than work in the mines of Sinai or Hammftmat and a trading expedition down the coasts of the Red Sea.

The pyramids of all but one of the kings are identified — mostly at Abusir. That of IKni'-s-Onnos, the last of the Dynasty, is at Sakkara, and, though smaller than most tombs of Us class, is to us of much greater importance than the gigantic but barren erections of earlier reigns i for in it are inscribed the most aricient texts of all Egyptian literature (see below). The 6th Dynasty, in its widespread activity abroad and at home, is a strong contrast to its forerunner.

Inscriptions of its kings meet us in all parts of Upper and Lower Egypt, as well a.'' in Sinai and the desert quarries. And now, more- over, we may read in the earliest of narrative in- scriptions— those of IKni (Una) and J^r^icf (Herk- huf), the generals and ambassadors of kmgs Ppy (Pepy) I. and Mrnr (Merenera) — of expeditions against both the Syrian and Nubian barbarians. These resulted, indeed, in little but booty and conciliatory presents from the tribes over whon.

a temporary victory could probably be achieved with little trouble, by the (at least partially) dis- ciplined troops of Egypt. One of the latter kings of this Dynasty, Ppy II., sat longer on the throne than any monarch in the world's history ; native and Greek documents assign him a reign of over 90 years. We know not under what circumstances the 6th Dynasty had reached the throne, — whether through some blood claim or by vi'olence, — nor do we know amidst what events its rule closed.

Evidently, however, it had no peaceful end. The last of its kings are but empty names, and indeed in the latter years of Ppy II. complete obscurity sur- rounds the political and social existence of Egypt. When, some two or three centuries later, that obscurity is dissipated, the country has assumed a new face, the capital is no longer at Memphis, the centre of gravity is several hundred miles farther south.

The outward characteristics of the Egyptian polity show little change under the 3rd, 4tli, and 5th Dynasties. The southern and northern king- doms, bound together, it has been said, in a sort of personal union, each retains to some extent its separate organization, although important offices, once proper to one or other of them, are often found united in the hands of a single functionary, just as the official nomenclature of the P!iaraoh combined the royal titles of both South and North.

The king is omnipotent ; his ministers — a mere bureaucracy — are members of the royal house or of the great territorial families. The ancient division of the country into nomes forms the basis of an elaborate financial and judicial administration, yet controlled by the court through officials dependent on the central government, by whom the royal dues are collected and legal questions settled independently of the local authorities.

But as time goes on, and (as we may infer) weak rulers succeed the strong, the old provincial independence reasserts itself, and the nomarchs begin to mov« beneath the weight of central despotism. One of the first signs of this decentralizing tendency is the growth of the custom of burial, now no longer at Memphis, beside the king, but at home, in the cemeteries of the provincial capitals, at Akhmim, Abydos, Thebes, Elephantine, and elsewhere.

The court of the nomarch was modelled \\\mn that of the king ; its officials grew in number, its militia in strength. The kings of the 6th Dynasty are left surrounded only by courtiers and placemen ; the magnates seem to have withdrawn, and to be ready, when opportunity offers, to reassert the primitive independence of their position.

The period between the6th and the 1 1th Dynasties is one of the most obscure in Egypt's history ; yet tlie complete dearth of monuments can scarcely be fnrtuitous. Manetho localizes the 7th and 8th Dynasties still at Memphis, and we may indeed suppose tliat there was no sudden break with the past. The provincial nobles could only gradually assert their strength, and the Pharaohs alill I EGYPT EGYPT 659 reigiied, at least nominallj-.in their ancient capital.

But of these kinjrs we know nothing, scarcely their names. Possihly they were, in later times, regarded as usurpers. Genealojries in certain tombs (ElBersheh) appear to reach back to their times, and show how the nomarchs already flourished. The succeeding DjTiasties, the 9th and 10th, would be equally unknown were it not for the inscriptions of Siut, whose princes record their participation in the struggle of the petty Dynasty of Ueracleopolis (Ahnas) against 'the South.'

The 9th ana 10th Dynasties are indeed currently ascribed to Heracleopolis, while subsequent events make it evident that by ' the South ' is here meant the principality of Thebes. Tliat town had been the seat of a noble family under the 6th Dynasty ; and while the royal power had grown weak, tiie Theban nomarchs had nursed their strength, till at lengtli, having overcome the Heradeopolites, they by degrees re-established unity and order. (0) the Mittdle Kingdom.

— The claims of these first Theban Pharaohs — the Utli Dynasty — to be the legitimate successors of the Memphite kings were recognized in their own and future genera- tions. Their number and sequence isnotclear. They bear alternately the names Mntw/itp (Mentuhotep) and /«(/■( Intef), though it is pretty certain this does not imply the imdisturbed succession of one family.

The ro^'al honours were not attained by the first member of the series, who bears merely the title of nomarch ; the kingly titles are assumed by his successors. One at least of them — Mntwhtp III. — had a long reign, and left evidence of his power from the Cataracts to the Delta. Another records a trading expedition on the Ked Sea as well as quarrying work in the eastern desert. Whether the 12th Dynasty succeeded the 11th without disturbance is not certain.

It gave to Egypt seven of the most active, powerful, and long-lived of her kings, and seems in every sense to have been worthy of the admiration bestowed on it in after ages. To /mnm/t'<-Amcnemes I. fell the task of completing the work of union and pacification initiated by his predecessors.

The magnates of Middle Egypt (lieni-Hasan) have recorded his intervention to settle local disputes as to territory on tlie basis of former arrangements, and to confirm his faitliful vassals in their pos- sessions. Elsewhere we read of revolts suppressed and of conquests abroad. Indeed, Egypt had now for the first time a royal house whose aspiration it was to extend the frontiers of their dominions.

It is true that booty or tribute were still the chief inducements to war ; but the campaigns were now upon a larger scale, the enemies attacked more distant, and the results of victory more lasting. The energies of the kings were turned chiefly southward, towards the gold mines of Nubia. That country, once subdued, — mainly by the exertions of Wsr(fn (Usertesen) III., — was to be held by means of fortresses, of which two can still be traced beyond the second Cataract.

All E^'ypt contains scattered remains of the building activity of the 12tli Dyna.sty, whoso kings resirled in various cajiitals — the earlier in Tliebes, where the nucleus of the Amon temiile dates from their time, and jiossibly at Memphis ; the la*«r, in tlie Kayyflm, where Amencmes III. built the most colossal of Egyptian funerary temples, known in later ages as the Labyrinth, and where he utilized an extensive natural lake (L. Moeris) to fertilize the whole district.

The custom of burial in pyramids, maintained on a modest scale by the 11th Dyniusty at Thebes, was carried on by their successors, who built largo tombs of this cla.ss near Memphis (Lislit, Turrali, Dahshur) or in the Fayyrtm (Illahun, llawarah). There are grounds for sujiposing the later kings of the Dynasty to have hml foreign blood in their veins : their portraits show features singularly dillerent from the accustomed type of the age.

The internal history of the middle kingdom is the history of the development of the decentralizing tendencies which had their rise in the conditions of the 6th Dynasty. The development can ba traced in the inscribed tombs of the noble families buried at Beni- Hasan, El, Bersheh, Siut, and Aswftn. The nomes of Middle and Upper Egypt are the centres of interest, each of them in the hands of a family of which the genealogy can, in some cases, be traced back to the Old Kingdom.

The nomarchs were still, however, under certain obligations to the central power. Hut the crown was no longer in the position of irresponsible despotism which it had enjoyed in furmer times. Its powers were restricted on all sides by the growth of the provincial resources. The nomarchs, some of whom by judicious marriages had become lords of several provinces at once, had their own courts, ofticials, and levies, though the latter were apparently at the king's disposal for external wars.

So far, however, as we can judge, the country sufTered little as yet from these conditions. The age of the Middle Kin<jdom, though differing rather in degree than in kind from that of the Memphite Dynasties, was one of probably greater material, artistic, and literary wealth, and appeared, not undeservedly, to succeeding generations as a golden age.

The obscurity which gradually follows the ex- tinction of the 12tli Dynasty is no less impenetrable than that which follows on the Dynasties of the Old Kingdom. On some sides, indeed, the decline is scarcely perceptible ; the outward aspect of the kingdom is little changed ; the southern conquests are maintaineii, commerce on the Red Sea con- tinues, and the art of the period does not fall far short of the high standard lately set. But of the individual Pharaohs of the 13th Dyna.

sty we know scarcely anything ; of those of the 14th, absolutely nothing. The former series, with the n.ames (.iniong others) of Sblchtp (Sebekhotep) and Shkms'f (Sebekemsef), is localized in Thebes ; the latter in Chois, an obscure Delta town, though it is quite possible that the Theban tradition was beiuL' uplield by a contemporary Dynasty in the soutli.

The whole interval, inaeed, between the 12th and 17th Dynasties may have been occupied by the struggles of rival houses, each claiming legitiiutate rights to the throne, yet none strong enough to vindicate its claims permanently. We QO not know at what point in this dark period of some 150 years the internal troubles were first complicated by foreign invasion.

The name of one of the kings lussigned to this time is regarded as evidence for an Ethiopic supremacy ; on the other hand, there is perhaps ground for placing here one of the frequent Libyan inviision.s. Of trustworthy contemjiorary documents there is a complete dearth ; the Turin papyrus and the Mancthonian fragments are our sole authorities.

In Manetho's arrangement these two obscure Dynasties are followed by two more of which still less is known ; yet they are of greater interest, for they are drawn from those foreign invaders who by this tiiue had subdued at least a part of northern Kgj'pt, and whom Manetho names Ilyk.sos ('Tuffuir, ?pl. 'tKovaauii). The racial position of this people is still unknown.

Their Greek ( = Egyptian) name means merely 'Sheikhs of the (south Syrian) Be- dawin,' ' and it has been supposed that they con- sisted of mixed hordes, partly Semite, partly of some other race. Another hypothesis, Wseil on the fact that the worship of Swtli (Set) was common to Ilyksos and Hittites, and on the occurrence in ThL> kIo^ Hlu-plRTcl' for i'nB \t demonstnMe only at a far later period of thu lariKuuge.

660 EGYPT EGYPT cnneifonn documents of ^y'n (Khyan) as a Hittite kinp's name, while his namesake in Egypt is re- garded as a Hyksos king, would make of Ilyksos and Hittites one race. From the language we ean draw no arguments, for we know notlimg of it save a few Greek transcriptions of the royal names. Nor can we appeal to the portraits of the kings ; for the Sphinxes, etc., formerly regarded as sucli, are now held by many to belong rather to the latter kings of the 12th Dynasty.

Asiatics had undoubtedly been crossing the frontier for ages past ; but only in small numbers. Now they appear to have made a much more formidable onslaught upon the eastern Delta, and, after slaying, plundering, and burning, to have established themselves there in a dominant posi- tion. The events which had produced this south- ward migration from Asia are quite unknown ; possibly, the contemporary attack of Elam on Mesopotamia gave the immediate impetus.

Egypt was weak, and the earlier at least of the Hyksos princes were strong rulers ; and though resistance was persistent farther south, northern Egypt remained in their hands for two or three centuries, possibly longer. They resided in the eastern Delta, in the fortress of fftw'rt-Kvtma or at P'nt ■ Tanis (Zoan), where they soon so far assimilated Egyptian civilization that the remains of their work is indistinguishable from that of the native kings. (c) The New Kingdom.

— Just as the disorders of a former period had been ended by the energy or fortunate position of the Theban nomarchs, so now resistance to the Hyksos oppression centred at Thebes, which may even itself have suffered at their hands, since traces of them have come to light still farther south. Their expulsion neces- sitated a Ion" struggle, and they probably only finally quitted the Delta many years after being driven from Upper E^ypt.

The 17th Dynasty, which began the war or liberation, seems for some time to have been contemporarjr with the Hyksos kings. It is, however, only of its later members that we have any knowledge. There is preserved from this period the autobiography of an Egyptian officer, /'A»/is-Amosis, who took part in the war, and from it we learn that, Avaris having been captured, the foreigners were not merely expelled from Egypt, but pursued into S.

Palestine and their stronghold (or, perhaps, place of temporary retreat) Sharuhen (Jos ig") taken. The military expeditions here described are the first-fruits ol a new tendency in the history of the nation. The art, language, and social organization of the early period of the New Kingdom bear a close resemblance to those of the age that had sunk in the obscurity of the Hyksos invasion.

Indeed, that the change had been so slight may be an argument for the relatively short duration of the foreign occupation. But the political his- tory of Egypt, with the rise of the new Theban Dynasty, begins to follow a new course. Instead of a nation content with victories over the wild tribes of Nubia and the Soudan, both kings and people a[)pear now to be eager for conquest among races of quite other attainments, in the arts both of jieace and war.

The nations of Syria had not, so far as we know, seen an Egj'ptian invasion since that conducted by IVni (Gth Dynasty). The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom, however, mitiated into Asiatic warfare by tiie circumstances of the Hyksos expulsion, soon came to regard such cam- paigns—aggressive now — as their most important occupation.

But first they set about the recon- quest of Nubia, and before long carried their bouthem frontier as far as Dongola- Tlie decisive strokes in the war of liberation irere fought under the first king of the 18th Dynasty, F hms- Amoais, who seems to have been the lineal descendant of his predecessors. The relationships and sequence of the kings and queens — the latter, heiresses in their own right — who followed him are much disputed. His son and successor, /mnA/ln-Amenophis I.

, was a king of no great political importance, though popularly re- vered, as we see from his special deification in later times. His chief occupation was the re- organization of the Nubian dependencies. He was foUowed by his son, Dhwtims-Thutmosis I., though this prince's succession was only legitimized by marriage with a half-sister, the direct heiress. Whether he was the father of his three successors Th. II., Th. III., and queen JTtipstot (Hatasu) or only of Th. II. and tlie queen, Th. lU.

being a generation farther off, it is difficult to decide. The queen, though certainly daughter and heiress to Th. I. and wife of her brother Th. II., may have been either half-sister or aunt (and step- mother) to Th. ni. She was, at any rate, a princess of strong character, and a very important factor in the politics of the time, acting at least once as co, regent and, during the minority of Th. III., rulin" on his behalf.

We have evidence, however, in the successive erasure of these royal names upon the monuments, that, whatever was the sequence of the changes of rule amon<; them, such changes were not made in any spirit of niendly acquiescence. Queen Iftipswt never really reigned alone, though for years, whether owing to the insignificance or youth of the king, the fortunes of the country were in her hands.

Beyond the proofs of her activity recorded at Deir el-Bahri (Thebes), we know little of the direction her energies took. The Hyksos were no doubt not yet completely expelled, and there is again mention of a Nubian campaign. The event of which we know most, however, is her expedition to Pwnt, i.e. the Somali coast. Her fleet had, like its predecessors from the Gth Dynasty onwards, solely a commercial object. Pwnt (Punt), the ' Land of the Gods,' the home of the 'bearded' people,* w.

as rich in frankincense, and a market for ebony, ivory, and panther skins. Beyond the vast temple, on whose walls tlie ex- peclition is depicted, tlie queen found opjiortunity to build also in other quarters of Thebes, and erected at Kamak the loftiest (with one exception) of extant Egyptian obelisks. Left free liy the death or final retirement of H'tSpsivt, Thutmosis III.

, who had already reached the age of thirty, at once set about a campaign in Syria wliicli culminated in a great defeat at Megiddo of the confederated Syrian princes, who fortliwith recognized the Pharaoh as overlord, and professed themselves, Avith more or less sincerity, the vassals of Egypt. Not, however, that one campaign sufficed to ensure this condition of things. During twenty years Thutmosis III.

himself led some fifteen expeditions into Syria, where the witlidrawal of his armies was repeatedly the signal for a rising among the subjugated states. His most distant vassals at the time of his death were in the neighbourhood of Mt. Amanus and the upper Euphrates; lie was suzerain of the Canaanite plain antl coasts and of the Amorite hill-country, while Egypt's 'sphere of influence' en) braced, more- over, ' the isles of the Great Sea,' i.e.

the yEgean islands, as well as Cyprus, the nearer parts of Asia Minor, and the Hittite territory around Kadesli (on the Orontes). 'Tribute' is recorded from Assyria, though here, as often elsewhere, the annalist probably refers but to propitiatory gifts, which indicated a desire to stand well wnth the powerful invader. The Nubian dependencies were * So W. Max Uiiller, Z. Au. zL 82, and not c«»Ju>. Abys siniana.

EGYPT EGYPT 661 ftlao extended in this reign as far sonth as Gebel Baikal and probably far across the Soudan, wbile we hear, too, of campaigns against the Libyan nomads. Thutmosis III. wa.s not less active as a boilder than as a warrior ; his architecture meets nfl on all hands. In every considerable town he built or enlarged a temple, as at Thebes, wliere he surrounded the central shrine of Amon with extensive halls and corridors. His name, engraved on scarabs, etc.

, is more frequent than that of any other king, and seems, in later ages, to have been regarded as a talisman. He was succeeded peacefully by his son, Amen- ophis n., whose long reign is not remarkable. His father's enerjn- had secured, for the time, the Syrian conquests. Nubia seems to have occupied him somewhat more, and from his reign date the most southerly of Egyptian monuments (Ben-Naga). The reign of the next king, Thutmosis IV., was ■hort and still less remarkable.

There were occa- sional demonstrations of supremacy to be made in Syria and Nubia, and tributes of respect to be paid to the gods by some additions to their temples. That the contact with Asia was already of influ- ence is shown by this king's marriage with a princess of J/fn-Klitanni, the then leading power oeyond the Euphrates. Amenophis III. sat for thirty-five years on liis father's throne.

He seems to nave been still able without much exertion to maintain abroad the position he inherited, for we hear nothing of Asiatic and but once of Nubian campaigns. Extensive building and much observance of religious cere- mr<nies are — for us, at least — the characteristics ol the reign. At tliis period of the 18th Dynasty the royal marriages are among the most significant and infiuentiol in Egj-ptian history. Amenophis III.

, himself possibly the son of his father's foreign wife, took into his harem Kirgip' (cuneif. GUu- hipa), another daughter of the house of Mitanni, while we know that among his wives was al.so a Babylonian princess. He had, moreover, already married a lady named Tiji, who may or may not have been of foreign parentage, but who, at an^ rat«, took a prominent share in the public life both of her husband and son. It is thought, in- deed, that Amenophis IV.

was influenced by his mother towards those reforms in the state religion, initiated a few years after his accession, which have left to his name a peculiar interest. (See below.) The marriages, domestic relations, and foreign history of this period can be followed in excep- tional detail owing to the records dei>osited at el-Amama, where a portion of the correspondence between the Egyptian court and its allies, envoys, and vassals in Syria lay stored until its discovery in 1887.

The correspondence was almost wholly in the Babylonian language, — clearly the diplomatic medium of the age, — though the writers were not, with one or two exceptions, Babylonians. Some of the letters are from the kings of Mitanni, but most are from the Syrians entrusted with the government of the subjugated provinces. Those letters which belong to the reign of Amenophis HI. show a condition still of peaceful allegiance to Egypt and respect for its king.

Those, however, dating from his son's reign bear witness to the defection of the vassals and speedy loss of the Asiatic empire, which resulted from the neglect and incapacity of the suzerain power. Amenopliis rv. was t'Kj fully engrossed at home to spend time or money upon external afTairs. Although this king reigned for some seventeen years, there is nothing recorded of him beyond his religious activity.

1 he religious revolution was accompanied by an ephemeral, though for the time complete, revolution in art, traceable through- out the remains of the great palace and temple which Amenophis, no longer content to reside at Thebes, had built at el-Amama in Middle Egypt.

Place and personal names were changed, in ac- cordance with the reformed cult; the new residence was called ' Horizon of the Sun,' the king took the name //in i7n (Khuenaten), 'Spirit of the Sun,' the names of his wife — another princess of Mitanni and his own cousin — and daughters being likewise altered. There has been much speculation as to the king's personality, owing to the wide diverg- ence between his youthful and mature portraits.

The peculiar, almost deformed, type of the latter has been thought in some way connected with the religious change. It is scarcely likely that the very similar portraits of his courtiers are due to more than imitative Hattery. On the death of the reformer-king, he was pro- suinably interred in the great tomb hewn for him at el-Amama. His courtiers had planned to lie around him there ; but only some of them were destined to complete their tombs.

For in a short time it was clear that the schism had depended on the energies of its originator ; with him dead, the ancient religion quickly rea-sserted itself. His two sons-in-law, who succeeded him, were not the men to resist the reaction which, within twenty years of Amenophis' death, was complete, and left the 18th Dynasty to end its course where it had begun it, at Thebes.

The most conspicuous results of the intercourse with Asia of which the 18tli Dynasty had wit- nessed the growth, are naturally seen in the military character of the age, the new basis on which the army was levied,— dependent no longer on the feudal nomarchs, but immediately on the king, — and the new methods of warfare taught by the introduction of the hitherto unknown horse and chariot into Egypt.

The gradual extinction of the nomarchs — an effect perhaps of civil war- implied a corresponding exaltation of the crown ; their lands seem mostly to have passed into the king's hands. Conquest gave to the new mon- archy a prestige and resources (treasure and slave- labour) which placed it in a position of hitherto unattained magnihcenco.

The country became, as under the early Dynasties, filled with royal officials and favourites, who soon rose to form a new no- bility ; a royal tax was levied upon all land, and royal justice administered by mixed courts of otncials and priests. The Asiatic vassal-provinces were governed chiefly by native viceroys, whom the Egyptian court controlled by means of envoys. Nubia and part of S. Egypt were entrusted to an official known as the ' Prince of Kush.'

The evils of the irresponsible security attained by the capacity and fortune of the earlior Pharaons of the New Kingdom and those resulting from their close alliance with the all-jjowerful priesthood, become visible first under the following Dynasty. Whether //rm/i6-Armais be reckoned the hist king of the 18th or the first of the 19th Dynasty, it is he who really initiates the new epoch. The disturbance for which Amenophis iv.

had been responsible could not be quieted without vigorous reorganization, and this was the main work of Armais, a strong ruler, and probably already acting regent when called by his patrons, the priests of Thebes, to the throne. Beyond reconstructive work at home, we hear of one Asiatic war in which the principal enemy is the Hittite power, now advanced southward (probably from the Armenian highlands) and making havoc among Egypt's allies and vassals in N. Syria.

It is uncertain whether this reign saw a treaty between tliem and Egypt. Armais was followed by the first of the famous Ramesside Pharaohs who ruled Egypt during the following 200 years. But 663 EGYPT EGYPT Ramses I. died after a short and uneventhil reign, and his son Sti/Sethds was the first whose liands were free enough at home to allow of any real attempt to regain abroad the ground of late lost.

Yet now even SethOs was unable to do more than assure his hold upon such districts as the Hittites had not already annexed. A march through Palestine to the Orontes and back by the Phoeni- cian coast overawed Bedawins and Canaanites ; but he made no fresh conquests, and finally came to terms \vith the Hittite king, who was to be suzerain from the Lebanon northwards, while Palestine remained in allegiance to E^pt.

Nubia, Libya, and, with the last, the ^Iediter^anean pirate hordes who now begin to appear on the N. and W. for the first time, were like\vise chastised or repelled ; but most of the reign must have been spent peacefully, as the king's colossal monuments at Thebes and Abydos testify. His son, Ramses il. — the best known of Egyptian Pharaohs, because the most industrious in record- ing his own glory,— succeeded young, and reigned for 67 years.

Of these the first score were occupied in the war with the Hittites, till it became eviaent that a peace, similar to that of the last rei^, could alone end a struggle in which neither side was strong enough to retain the mastery. An alliance, oU'ensive and defensive, was at the same time concluded and cemented, some years later, by a marriage. The war had been signalized by at least one great battle — that at Kadesh, — in Avliich prodigies of valour are ascribed to the king.

But the position of Egypt in Asia, as defined by the peace of the king s 21st year, wai far inferior to that attained two centuries earlier by Thutmosis III. Instead of the frontier at the Euphrates and Mt. Amanus, Ramses II. had to be content with one which crossed the Lebanon about Beirflt. As a means of controlling Phoenicia and Palestine, he erected a series of forts across the desert, while strengthening various Delta towns (cf.

the Hebrew tradition of ' Pithom and Raamses,' Ex 1"), and choosing for his favourite residence Tanis (Zoan), a much more apt centre than Thebes for the direction of operations in Syria. After the Hittite peace, Ramses ll. appears to have devoted himself principally to architecture.

Not only did he build endless temples to the gods (and some even to himself) throughout the country, but he did not scruple,- while restoring, to appro- priate the work of his predecessors, w'hose names he frequently replaced on their buildings and statues by his own. He had more than 150 children. His successor was his fourteenth son, Mrnpth (Merenptah), whose reign is as yet the only one in which reference has been found to the Israelites (see below).

As well as his famous Libyan war, Mrnpth boasts of a campaign in Syria, where he still claimed the allegiance of tlie southern Iialf of the country, The great Libyan host, defeated in his 5th year, had come allied again with those pirate hordes which had appeared in the Delta under Setlios, and whose homes it is impossible to localize, owing to the difficulty in exactly identify- ing their names.

They came, at any rate, from the Mediterranean coasts; but whether Asia Minor, the ^gean islands, and the Italic countries all sent contingents, cannot be decided. The name of Mrnpth is found on numerous monuments, but we know little of his doings. The long reign of Ramses II., and perhaps apathy and self-indulgence in his latter years, had enfeebled the royal power, and by the time of Mmpth's death the country was ready for revolu- tion.

Power fell into the "hands of tne magnates and great officials, and only after half a century of disturbance did Stnht succeed in re-establishing order. This prince, who presumably had claimed legitimate Ramesside descent, left the throne to hia son, Ramses III., whose reign lasted over 30 years.

During its first decade, three formidable attacki from without had to be repelled — two by Libyan coalitions, and one by a host of the northern mari- time invaders, whom the wealth of Egypt had more than once attracted under former kings. This time, however, they approached the eastern Delta by land through SjTia as well as by sea, and it was only after a destructive battle at the frontier fortress of Magdolos that they were repulsed.

The hold of each successive Pliaraoh upon the Asiatic provinces was growing weaker, and it is doubtful how far the authority of Ramses III. was effective there, even though the Hittite empire had long been dissipated. At home the king's t ran- quUlity was broken by a widespread and mysterious conspiracy, originating in the palace, and sup- pressed with great severity. Otherwise, the reign appears to have been peaceful.

The king's chief ambition was the imitation in all points of his ancestor, Ramses II. The wealth of^ the country was enormous. The king lived the life of a self- indulgent despot, while the real power was with the Tlieban priests and^ the foreign mercenaries — mainly Libyans and S'rdin', i.e. Sardinians, of whom the latter had already served the Pharaohs of the preceding Dynasty. Ramses III. was followed by a series of his sons and grandsons, who each bore the name of Ramses.

Under their weak rule Egypt finally lost her Syrian dependencies, and lett them open to the conquests of Assyria. Each king seems to have been principally occupied with the preparation of a vast rock-tomb (BIban el-Muldk), and meanwhile the ascendency of the priests of Amon grew always greater, until ^rhr (Herhor), who had already added to the office of chief priest the principal political and military titles, felt strong enough to mount the throne and thus put an end to the Ramesside rule.

The Ramesside Pharaohs had, with even greater resources at their command, rarely displayed the capacity or vigour of the 18tli Dyn- asty, and the nation "had readily relapsed into the unwarlike apathy and distaste for foreign inter- course which had marked its earlier history. Mer- cenary troops became therefore the only means of retaining a nold on the foreign provinces, and the king grew more and more completely the tool of the military leaders.

On the other hand, the recent triumph of orthodoxy had further strengthened the position of the priesthood, on whom royal piety heaped untold quantities of treasure, the product of the foreign trioutaries. The great offices of state in the hands of a mere bureaucracy were effective only in tilling the royal treasury, while the popu- lation at large was starving and discontented. (d) The Foreign Dominion.

— But the 21st Dynasty does not, according to Manetho, consist of the priestly successors of Ifrhr. The legitimate Pharaohs he held to be the Tanite princes (S'mntw- Smendes, P'«6Vnn<-Psousennes, etc.) who rebelled against this usurpation, and were acknowledged first in the North, then also in the Thebaid. Be- fore long the rival families intermarried and so restored unity ; but their relationships and sequence are not clearly ascertained.

On the monuments little more than their names occur, though mum- mies (of the priestly family) and much genea- logical evidence were found in the famous caehelte at Deir el-Bahri. The next Dynasty, the 22nd, owed its rise to the political conditions of the period. The captains of the Libyan mercenaries had by this time attained a position, territorial as well as military, which made usurpation easy, and, when the opportunity offered, their cliief ,?'

^'nA-Sousakim-Shishak was able without serious opposition to assume the royal EGYPT EGYPT 66S titles. He was ambitious, and had pretensions to a reconquest of Syria. His inscription records a raid against both the Hebrew kingdoms — not against Judah only (1 K U^"). The Dynasty resided at Bubastis, and built extensively upon the ancient temple of the goddess B'stt (Bast) ; but we know little of its kings beyond their names, S'i'n/c, UVr/.n-Osorkon, T^^T^Takelothis.

Tlie D3-nasty by which thej' were (presumably) overthrown sliows likewise Libyan names, but ruled from Tanis. The times may well have been too disturbed by dynastic rivalries to leave leisure for building; at any rate, the history of the 23rd Dynasty is as yet totally obscure.

During the period of weakness and dissension through which Egypt had been passin", the Nubian princes of Napata (Gebel liarkal) had been growing in Gtrenrjth, and were able now to shake oil' tlie Pharaoh s sovereignty, and even to contemplate the invasion of Egj'pt.

This adventure was not diiti- cult to carry out in the southern country, where there was no leader to withstand them ; but as they advanced northward, the Ethiopians found an obstinate opponent in 7/»/i^Tnephachthos, the powerful prince of Sais (W. Delta), whose suprem- acy was recognized as far south as Uermopolis (Eshmunein). To this town the Ethiopian king, P'nhy (Piankhi) (775) laid siege. The Saites capitu- lated, and Tnephachthos fled, while the victors advanced to Memphis.

A treaty was, however. Boon arranged, neither party being strong enough to suppress the other. The Ethiopians retired up the river, nominally in possession of the wliole valley ; but the Delta remained in the hands of Tnephachthos and his son /i^rernZ-Bocehoris, who seems to have finally extinguished tlie old legitim- ist families, extended his authority up to Thebes, and reigned for some time in comparative tran- quillity.

The Ethiopians, however, liad not aban- aoned their ambitions, and, strengtliened by a marriage with a Tanite princess, and favoured by the Btill powerful Tlieban priesthood, they again marched northward and put an end to the rule of Bocchoris. This time their conquest was more complete. Their family, whose relationships and history are as yet far from clear, constitutes Manetho's 25th Dj'nasty, and its most conspicuous member is its first king, .S'6■^•'-Sabakon (707-695).

His successors were not, however, strong enougli, at such a distance from home, to maintain a dominant position in llie North, though the petty princes of the Delta towns accepted for the moment the Ethiopian suzerainty. One of the latter — and probably not Sabakon liimself, as was formerly assumed — was the So (Kio = Sewe*) of 2 K 17', who ventured, in alliance with Gaza and Israel, to withstand the threatening growth of the Assyrian power in Palestine.

Sargon, however, defeated the coalition at Kaphia, though he seems afterwards to have made a treaty with Egypt. Throughout this period the hopes of the small Syrian states were placed on Egypt, whence, how- ever, in the confusion of party strife, no etl'ectiial help could come. Yet it was toward Syria that the ambitions of Sabakon's son, 7"Ar/.-Tharaka-Tir- hakah (690-664), wore directed.

He was there brought, however, into speedy collision with Sar- ton's successor, Sennacherib, who, at Eltekeh, efeated the combined troops of several Egyptian princes. Attempts at interference in Asia were thus for a time cnecked, and Tirhakah hud leisure for considerable building, both at Napata and at Thebes.

But the Syrians still counted on an Egyptian alliance, and it was clear that, if the Assyrian rule was ever to be peacefully accepted by them, Egypt must once and for all be rendered * Greek Zft^^/), "Smo.. The Luci&nic t«xt llAfl tho inexplicable powerless.

An Assyrian army proceeded therefore southwards, and, while Tirhakah fled to Ethiopia and the minor princes submitted, Esarhadoon advanced as far as Thebes and subsequently organ- ized a government under twenty local regents, of whom tlie most notable was Nk'w-'^echo of Sais. Yet still Tirhakah had hopes, and his advances from the south, abetted by some of the local princes on whom Assyria relied, resulted at length in the expulsion of the invaders from Memphis.

Assurbanipal, the son of Esarhaddon, thereupon liastened to Egypt, and, with small trouble, re- establislied the Assyrian supremacy, while Necho, who had joined Tirhakah, became a temporary captive in Nineveh. At length Tirhakah died, and his successor, Tnwtimn (cuncif. Tandamanie), having failed to recover the lost position, the Ethi- opians finally retired homeward, while iVssurbanipal requited the sympathy his opponent had received in Upper Egypt by devastating Thebes.

For two or three years Assurbanipal was undisputed master of Egypt. Then came an Elamite war and simultaneous revolts in Babylon, Arabia, and Lydia. (e) Tlie Restoration. — Incited by Gyges, king of the last country, P«niA;-Psammiticlius of Sais (663-610), son of Necho, whom the Assyrians had reinstated, seized this opportunity to raise a fresh insurrection. He was himself of either Libyan or Nubian descent, and the success of his policy depended wholly on the foreign troops he em- ployed.

With the help of Lydia and of Ionian ana Carian mercenaries (the xa-^ffoi duSpes of the prophecy, Herod, ii. 152), Fsaiiimitichus overthrew the Dodecarchy, i.e. tlio Assyrian regents, and, by marriage with a niece of Sabakon's, gained the approval of the Theban priests and so of Ui>])ei Egypt. He pursued the Assyrians into Palestine, and captured after a long siege the town of Ashdod.

The misfortunes of Assyria favoured the attempts of the Saite Pharaohs to re-establish their domin- ance in Asia, and during this and the following reign (Necho II.) Syria was again brought under Egypt's sovereignty. But the rise of Babylon under Nebucliadrezzar put a check on this revival, and Necho II. (610-594), after defeating Josiali of Judah at Megiddo,* was himself routed by Nebucliadrezzar at Carchemish, and expelled from Syria.

The energies of the 26th Dynasty were directed before all things to taking advantage of Egypt's geographical situation and bringing her, by the help of hired Phoenician ships, witiiin the sphere of Mediterranean commerce. Kelations were opened with Periander of Oorinth and with other Greek states.

Greek traders were assigned special quarters in Memphis, where a Tyrian colony had already been settled ; indeed, rUms-Amash, a later king of the Dynasty, allowed them to found a separate town on the (!ruek model — Naucratis in the W. Delta — to which their ojierations were to be restricted, and which only waned in importance before the rise of Alexandria. Aiiiasis had been the general of ir'/u^/Apries-Hophra (588-569), whom tho troops had driven from the throne in his favour.

About this time Nebuchadrezzar appears to have invaded Egypt, though the history ol the campaign is not known. His object was })resumably vengeance for the iiart whicli Apries lad recently played in Syria, where Judah, again trusting to Egyptian support, had begun the hostilities which ended in the fall of Jerusalem (586) and the flight of many of the inhabitants — among them Jeremiah— to Egypt, where they were settled in Tahi>anhe8 ('fell Defeneh), a frontier fort in the E. Delta.

* Presumably 8. of Carmel, though this IdentiflcatioD i« diapuU-sI. 664 EGYPT EGYPT The characteristics of the Saite period are, in all bat commercial aspects, those or an archaizing renaissance. To jud^'e by art, literature, names, titles, etc., we might imagine ourselves again in the age of the Pyramid builders, though on closer inspection the resemblance is seen to be but superficial. (/) The Persian Supremacy.

— This prosperous and uneventful period was suddenly terminated by an invasion by the great power which was now overturning the political balance of W. Asia. Cyrus had seen the formation of a hostile league between Lydia, Babylon, and Egypt ; but his death had delayed chastisement, and tlie expedi- tion against Egypt was left for his son, Cambyses (525), who appears not to have acted with the customary clemency of Persian conquerors ; for his memory was execrated throughout Egypt.

The Saites had gro>vn weak, and the country lay an easy prey to the invaders. The conquest was turned to full advantage by his successor Darius (521-486), who set about the reorganization of the country on its former lines, and won the acqui- escence of priests and people by assuming the ancient titles and functions of the native kings.

The check gufl'ered by the Persians at Marathon, however, gave courage to the patriotic party in Egypt, ana under the leadership of a Libyan, HbbS (Cliabash), the Persians were for a time expelled. But a fresh expedition was undertaken by Xerxes (486-46S), and the insurrection suppressed with severity, Egypt being constituted a satrapy under the king's brother Achsemenes. Some years of ?uiet followed, and then, in the W.

Delta, came a resh revolt led by Inaros — possibly a Saite prince — and aided by the Athenians (463). This in turn was suppressed by Megabyzus, the general of Artaxerxes, while the leadership of the party fell to Amyrtseus, for whose support Cimon, on his Cyprian expedition, sent a fleet (449). The history of this period is fragmentary and obscure ; of native records we have none. The chronology of events cannot be accurately settled.

We gather that, throughout the time of Persia's decline, various revolts of the national party took place in northern Egypt — the upper valley plays by this time no historical part.

Manetho intro- duces, in the midst of the Persian supremacy, two more native Dynasties, the 28tli and 29th, of which we know very little, and then another, the 30th, to which belong two kings, iV^/)<ArAA<-Nektanebes (382-364) and A^4<n6/-Nektaneb'o (361-343), the former of whom succeeded in su|)pressing his rivals, while the latter, during a long reign, was active as a builder throughout the country (PhUiE, Edfu, Thebes, Heliopolis, the Delta).

Persia, however, by a 6nal eliort, was able to reinstate herself (343), and Nektanebo, the last of the Pharaohs, abandoned his Greek allies and fled to Elliiopia. But the Persian domination, too, was at an end. In a few years Alexander of Macedon had dis- membered the empire of the Acha'menides, and in 332 he led his armies into Egypt, which submitted without resistance. 2 lie Macedonians.

— The rule of Alexander's suc- cessors, the Ptolemies, brought Egypt again into the advantageous position attained for her in some degree by the 26th Dynasty. Now, however, the Greek element became the dominant factor in her prosperity ; tlie ancient native culture gradually faded and retreated from the North, where Alex- andria, the new capital, had become tlie centre of the Hellenic world.

But the wide dominions of the Ptolemies were not to be retained by a series of rulers so degenerate as those of the house of Lagus soon became. After a century of good government and unequalled prosperity (323-222), the political fortunes of Egypt began again to decline and anarchy to spread throughout the country. Insurrections followed each other in constant succession, whUe treachery and murder shortened tlie reigns of many of the kings.

At length the Romans, under whose toleration the Lagides liiul for a century and a half existed, were able, by the victory of Octavius over Anthony and Cleopatra (30), to assume the actual govern- ment of the country, which remained thenceforth a part of the empire, either of Rome or of Byzan- tium, until conquered by the Saracens A.D. 642. ix. Egypt's Relations with Asia.

— Our sources of knowledge are (1) for the primitive periods, chiefly inferences from the foreign words already in use in the ancient (religious) texts, especially tlie names of cereals, woods, oils, etc., known to have been not native ; (2) under the Dynasties of tlie Old Kingdom we have early evidence from the mines of Sinai,* where the troublesome nomad tribes were known as Ss (cf. nf»'), from a 5th (?)

Dynasty fresco depicting the capture of a Syrian fortress, and from at least one biographical narra- tive— that of Wni, Dyn. 6 — recounting several mili- tary and commercial expeditions to Syria, the land of the "miv (root probably "to, 'boomerang,' not Dj;). We here read of the fruitfulness of the land through which the Egyptian army marched, and it is evident the description is that of S. Palestine.

The same text teUs, too, of a journey by sea to the Phoenician coast ; (3) under the Middle Kingdom Dynasties we can see that a considerable intercourse is arising. Embassies come with presents from Semitic chiefs and are received by the king or the nobles (Beni-Hasan), and no doubt many groups of nomads had by this time crossed the frontier and got leave, as they did later (^Eg. Zeitschr. xxvii. 125), to settle in the Delta.

Journeys into Pales- tine became so frequent that they formed the sub- ject for a story — founded, no doubt, upon fact, and popular for many centuries — whence many details of Syrian desert life at the time may be learned (S'nht). The tribes among which the hero of this story passes many years are called by the general term sti, 'archers (cf. Babyl. sutl). Egyptian traders visited them, and the conditions of life appear very similar to those of the modern Beda- win.

(4) But the relations of Egypt with her northern neighbours were revolutionized by the Hyksos invasion and the long series of military expeditions which followed. The language receives a very strong admixture of foreign (not exclusively Semitic) loan-words, and is forced even to evolve a new system of orthography for their reproduc- tion. Syrian slaves — females, at least, ' 'ml— met with in the households of the Middle Kingdom, are now employed in great numbers.

Asiatic textile work, weapons, vases (pottery and metal), musical instruments, besides various wines, beers, oils, breads, etc., are imported from Syria, Asia Minor, and possibly even lands farther west, and preferred to the native products. The native names even of many objects are discarded and replaced by corresponding foreign terms.

Syrian deities — Baal, Astarte, Anat, Resheph — are gradu- ally admitted to places beside the Egyptian gods, and the Pharaohs appear now and then under their special protection. The countries whence these new influences emanate, bear in the Egyptian texts of different epochs difl'erent names, many of which are confus- ing and elude exact definition.

All Syria, as fat as the Euphrates, is divided into the countries ol Upper (Southern) and Lower (Northern) Blnic (cf the more ancient Tnw and the cuneif. Ticlnu). Palestine proper bears also the name U'rw, origin ally only the designation of the southern (later • See .iEg. ZeUschr. xxiv. 78. EGYPT EGYPT 665 Philistine) coast.

PhcEnicia, on the other hand, was known by the name D'hi, and, together with the still more northerly coast, by the vaguer term ^Ldi, 'the Circular (land),' perhaps from the form of the Gulf of Issus. Kft was the name, perhaps, of Cilicia, perhaps of the N. Syrian coasts. Certain peoples whom we find, under the 19th Dj'nasty, among the allies of the Hittites, have been local- ized in \V. Asia Minor ; the Ewk' Lycians, D'rdny Dardanians, Yicnn' lonians, J/c't/iv's' Achsans,* and others.

The ditticult designation Jf'icnbw, found in the oldest literature, appears to embrace the peoples of the North in the vaguest way ; only in late epochs was it used for the Hellenic race. C3'pru8, whence much copjjcr was imported, is 'sy, a i)art of it /r«'-Alasia.

Mesopotamia was, until the New Kingdom, practically unknown to Ejryiit ; then we begin to read of presents passing; between the court of Egypt and those of iiftr-Babyfon, called in the Ainarna letters Shankhar {6"ng'r ^i•:c') or Karduniash, and /wwr- Assyria. Asia east of these was always unknown to Egypt. The votive inscriptions, in which the 18th and 19tli Dyntisties recorded their conquests, have pre- served the names of many towns, etc.

, in SjTia, of which, however, the majority are still unidentilied. The campaigns of Thutmosis III. furnish the best of such material ; the lists of his successors are often mere copies of his, and of relatively small value. The Amarna tablets show several of these same names in a cuneiform transcription.

Of the localities identilied the following are among the best known : Aleppo, Carchemish, Kadesli (on Orontes), Damascus, Hamath, liyblos, Simyra, Beirflt, Sidon, Tyre, Megiddo, Akko, Joppa, Gaza, Ashkelon, Janoah, Tatmak. In one group of the Amarna letters Jerusalem is often mentioned, but in hieroglyphic texts it has not been found. Certain Dames, though not yet identified, are compounded of interesting elements : for example, Jl'rir Vni.i, jB'<y' .

Tn'3, in which the divine names appear — the second already (Dyn. 18) abbreviated ; or Y'^bi'r, Yi'pir, in which have been recognized the names 3)3;^; and 'js'' combined with ^{((asin Israel, Ishmael). These much-discussed names are more likely to have then had local than ethnic significance.t A connexion between tliem and the names of the patriarchs, Jacob and Joseph, cannot of course be proved ; indeed the equation YS'p = '\'iy has consider- able phonetic difficulties.

It may here be noted that certain scarabs, probably of the Hyksos period, appear to bear royal (?) names compounded of y'kb and kr (? Sk), which might pomt, at any rate, to the Semitic name Jacob at an unex- pectedly early period.

The whole tradition of Israel's early connexion with Egypt — the sojourn there of the patriarchs and the exodus of their descendants — is still obscure, and the recent discovery for the first time of ' Israel ' in a hiero- glyphic text seems but further to complicate the prolilem. The facts as to this document are the following : In 1896 an immense stele was discovered, one text of which commemorates the victory of MrnjUh, son and successor of Ramses II., over the Libyans in his 5th year.

; In the latter part of the text where other triumphs are enumerated, the locali- ties subjugated occur in the following order : the Hittite land, Canaan (? land or town), Ashkelon, Gezer, Janoah (?), y>ir«'r-Israel, S. Palestine, 'all lands.' There is no corroborative evidence for an Asiatic campaign of Mrnpth ; possibly, in the fashion of the age, he is here merely assuming to himself the conquests of his predecessors. The • 8m StMltberg In Indoger. For. v1. 1S4.

t The (omier, which oocun twice, c&n b« localized tn the district Ephmlm-Dan (aee W. M. Mullcr, Alien, 164). I His rei^n lii-ts^an, occordintf to Mahler, ill 12SU, name Israel is written so as unmistakably to indicate a people, not, like the other names, a locality. Further, the words used of its condition imply devastation and the destruction of crops.

The obvious and only safe conclusions to be drawn from these facts are that Israel, or a part of that people, was already in some part of Syria, and had been in hostile contact with Egypt. On the assumption that 'Pithom and Haamses' were built for Ramses U., whose long reign answereil the requirements of Ex ii.

23, the Pharaoh of the Exodus has been identified as Mmjdh ; * though, owing to the supposed more appropriate political conditions, others would place the Exodus 30 or 40 years later, about the time of Stnht.

If we assume that by the reign of Mrnpth the Exodus had already been accomplished, — the name Isrw is found in the previous reigns in the territory of the tribe of Asher, — we have an argument for the jjroposed identification of the Hebrews with the Khabiri, of whose invasion of Palestine, some 150 years earlier, the Amarna letters say so much, and whom it is proposed to identify with the S'sw chastised by Sethos l.t The story of the priest Osarsiph (?

= Osiris + z) and the impious lepers, whose revolt he led, converted by Josephus into a history of Moses and the Hebrew struggle for freedom, has been with some probability re- ferred rather to a reminiscence of the expulsion of the heretics of Amenophis iv.J The name Hebrews has not been met with in Egyptian texts.

That of the foreign tribe of ' prw, found variously employed throughout the 19th Dynasty, is rarely now held to represent it, and may be merely a form of a familiar Egyptian term for 'workmen.' The Egyptian names given to Joseph, his wife, and father-in-law in Gn xli. 45 have received various inadmissible interpretations. The only transcriptions which conform to Egyptian gram- mar and u.

sage are ( 1 ) JcphnouttfOncfi, ' God speaks (and) he lives'; (2) \^N]asncith, 'devoted to (the goddess) Neith ' ; (3) Pedephri, ' he whom the sun- j;od gives.' AU three names are cast in forms increasingly frequent from the time of the 22nd Dynasty onwards, but |>ractically unknown earlier — except, indeed, the .second ; and this fact agrees with tlie date (8th cent.) to which the document E is assigned. § For a dilficult word used in the story of Joseph, ■^iik Gn xli.

43, a parallel ex- pression has been noticed in a text of the 21st Dynasty, where the words ib rk seem to form an interjection, 'Give hccdl' or the like.H X. Kklioion. — Our sources of information on this subject are very numerous, but at the same time very inadequate. Egyptian texts not bear- ing, even indirectly, upon some aspect of the religion are in an extremely small minority; yet some primary questions remain un.solved for lack of explanatory documents.

Since it is wholly owing to the supremo importance attached to the preparation tor a future life that Egyptian antiquitj' has come again within our reach, it is natural that the side of religious life upon which we are best informed should be that dealing with the dead. Of the everyday religion of the [jcople we know practically notliing.

W» have the names of many deities, and can enumerate their functions, attributes, and temples ; but we are quite ignorant as to the way in which they were worshipped. It has been mentioned that llomnkol * On the still less demonslrahle assumption that the Ilehrow inimi^,'ration hod been a part of the Hyksos invasion, Mahtet lia.s<.-8 calculations which (five lllll.'i (t.r. Ramses ll.)

oa tlio year, and, with the help of Itabhinical tradition, March 27 ae the da; of the Exmlus {Der Pharao dtt Hzodu*, 1806). t See Ed. Meyer In FetUchr./. Eliirt, 75. J Ed. Meyer, Ouch. jKg 278; WUckcn in Ftittehr./. Sbtrs 146. I See StelndorfT, .iKg. Zeiltchr. xxvil. 41. II See Spieifelberg In Sot. el Bxtr. xxxiv. 261. 666 EGYPT EGYPT la eager to demonstrate a Babylonian origin for the civilization of E"ypt.

One of his chief conten- tions is that some of the principal Egyptian deities can be proved identical with those of Babylon, from the identity of their attributes, distinctive animals, legends, etc.

It is, however, as yet in many cases impossible to recognize what were the original roles and functions of the Egyptian gods, and it seems more probable that, should a pre- historic immigration from Mesopotamia ever be demonstrated, the invaders will be found to have at most adopted certain of the native divinities and combined them with corresponding figures from their own Pantheon.

No religious document of the earlier ages com- pares in importance with the great body of texts — some 4000 lines — collected and copied on the interiors of the otli and 6th Dynasty Pyramids, but in partial use, too, in all succeeding ages.

Some of the documents thus brought together belong »in- doubtedly to a far earlier period, and give evidence that the official religion was even then completely developed, many of the gods having already the roles by which they are characterized throughout history, and several of the most popular myths— notably that of Osiris — being referred to as already current.

Certain of the gods are con- spicuously absent from the Pyramid texts ; Amon, for exainple, who being originally but the local god of Thebes, remained obscure until hia city rose (Dyn. 11) to political importance. Indeed the local divinities as such play a remark- ably small part in these texts.

Yet the local cults were the real basis of the popular religion, which did not, so far as we can see, recognize any single unifying element before the various tribal districts had been united under the first historic Dynasties. The nomes (see above) corresponded to independent cults, each centred in the shrine of the local god, who revealed himself to his worshippers in an anincal, tree, or other material object — perhaps once the tribal totem.

One aspect of the advance from this primitive stage of fetish worship can be seen in the semi-human and finally completely human representations of certain of"^ the gods in art. Yet the sacred animal was revered side by side with the anthropomorphic god, receiving, as we know, much honour even in Greek and Roman times.

Beyond the famous story of Osiris and many otherwise unknown legends, the Pyramids contain countless allusions to that cycle of myths which subsequently produced the doctrines of the other great school of theology.

For as Abydos appears very early — though probably not originally — as the home of the Osirian legend and of the all- important views of future life and retribution attached to it, so does Heliopolis ('ily, I'm) become the centre of the solar theology represented by the myth of Re', the sun-god, and his daily contest with the dragon of darkness. A number of tlie gods — many merely local deities once — had been gradually drawn within the cycles of Osiris or of Re'.

The chief actors in the former story are, besides Osiris himself (whose original locality and character are very obscure), his brother S6t-Typhon, regarded now as the impersonation of darkness (when Osiris is a solar god), now as the god of the barren desert (when Osiris is the fruitful river- valley ) ; Isis, wife of Osiris, a goddess (from the Delta or Phila;) of merely mythological im- portance until the base epochs ; Horus, his son and avenger, a puzzling figure owing to the variety of his local forms ; and Thouth, the god of Hermopolis, the ally of Uorus.

The myths of the sno-god are concerned either with the phases of the sun s daily and also supposed nightly, invisible journeys, or with cosmic plieno- mena. In the former, Horus again plays a part, now as the son of Re'; in the latter, local divinities such as Jim (Turn) of Heliopolis, or elemental gods, as ^h, Ntct, Sw, Tfnwt, are introduced. Cosmic speculations produced a variety of myths.

In one heaven and earth are female and male ; in another the sky is a cow with spotted hide (the stars) ; another held the earth to be a box, with the sky for its raised lid, supported on the encircling hills or on four tree-stems. The goda and goddesses associated with Re' are 9 in number (Ennead), and are regarded as a related family, just as later tlieology grouped several of tlie local deities into family ' triads.'

Not all cosmic doctrines, however, were con- cerned with the Heliopolitan gods; various local fods had once been regarded as creators, e.ff. ^rn772ic-Chnoubi3 who, in the clay districts near the Cataracts, had formed the world upon a potter's wheel ; and Ptah of Memphis was a similar artisan god. Other and very ancient divinities were the local earth and harvest gods, e.g. MSn of Coptos and (perhaps) Amon of Thebes. Others, again, were water deities, e.ff.

Sbk-Soachoa of the Fayyftm and Ombos — for the same god is frequently met with in several localities, though originally proper, no doubt, to but one of them. Several were guardians of the local cemeteries, e.g. Sokaris at Memphis, Anubis at Siut, 'The Lord of those in the West ' at Abydos.

The doctrines and practices of which the Osirian legend was at once the pattern and consequence are chiefly to be studied — beyond very numerous Eassages in the Pyramid texts — in the great eterogeneous collection of incantations known to us as the ' Book of the Dead,' but to the Egyptians probably as ('the Book of) coming out from (i.e. departing from) the Day and from the Necropolis.'

The work is composed of texts (' chapters'), some as ancient as those of the Pyramids, others much later, and was intended as a guide through the various difficulties, and a magical protection against the enemies to be encountered by the dead, with whom a copy of it was buried. Some of the texts seem to be remnants of primitive rituals, but all had been by the time of their definite collection (beginning of the New Kingdom) edited for the use of the dead himself.

It is this more than once repeated editing which has rendered the Book for the most part unintelligible to us. It may be asserted that none of the older chapters are now available in their first simplicity. The oldest MS& (Dyn. 12, 13) already show the glosses of more than one redactor, and each successive gloss seems but to obscure the original text. Several totally divergent views. Solar and Osirian, as to the future life are represented in the work.

The soul is, according to some chapters, to take the form of a bird and quit tlie tomb, and may accompany the sun bark on its heavenly journey ; elsewhere it is regarded as appearing before Osiris, and, after the famous 'negative confession,' receiv- ing merited justice. If judged 'of true voice,' i.e.

correctly pronouncing the potent ma^ic formulae, the deceased proceeds to the ' Fields of I'rw,' and spends eternity in a verr materialistic paradise, conceived upon the moael of rural life in Egypt. The elements in man which survived death were four : b' soul, ihw spirit (?), ^' ybt shadow, and k' double.

What were intended by the first three of tliese it is difficult to say ; the fourth is that of which we hear most ; for its maintenance was the object of all the funerary rites which from the earliest times occupied so much attention among all classes. The double, in appearance the exact counterpart of the man, after accompanying him EGYPT EGYPTIAN, THE 667 through life, lived on in the tomb so long as the corpse remained intact, and the piety of the Bursivors provided sufficient noiuishment.

Hence the processes of mummification, the inscriptions whose magic could, if supplies failed, call up food, the portrait-statues into which the double could enter. Certain of the Pyramid texts and recent ex- cavations do indeed recall an age in which funer- ary practices diO'ered much from those of his- toric times — an age in which cannibalism and human sacrifice were not extinct, and in which all but the most rudimentary embalmment was unknown.

Confusion of doctrines is not characteristic of the funerary literature alone ; it is common to all aspects of the Egyptian religion. The priestly tendency, discernible from the first TheVjan supre- macy onwards, to assimilate all secondary deities to those at the bead of the Pantheon, and, finally, to teach that all were but manifestations of the supreme deity (i.e. the sun-god), introduced, indeed, a kind of order, though for us the course of the foregoing development is thereby but obscured.

The supremacy of the Theban Amon, assimilated in the farst place to the sun-god, led to his identi- fication with such a host of other deities, while the wealth and power of his priests became so threaten- ing a dauiger to the state, that Amenophis IV., urged perhaps by the ancient hierarchy of Ileliopolis, was tempted to a reform which should replace as the state religion the worship of Amon and his asso- ciated divinities by that of the sun's orb, itn, alone.

This is the only conscious movement towards monotheism recorded in the religious history of Eeypt. It is not necessary to seek in it the retfexion of some of the foreign influences of the time ; the itn was a recognized aspect of the sun- god in Egypt in previous periods. The reformed doctrine contained conceptions far more lofty and enlightened than those of the ancient religion ; yet it had but an ephemeral success, and became extinct shortly after the reforming king's death.