Beside the respect and weight which the religious importance of their order, their general knowledge and science gave to the priests, it was to them more especially that the honour of serving the king fell. We cannot doubt that the public officers were mainly taken from the order of priests, which was also the order of scribes. Egypt was not, like the great monarchies of the ancient East, a state founded by conquest, in which the lord of the victorious people was master of the conquerors and the conquered also, and in which it was all-important to retain the conquered nation in subjection; it was a compact district inhabited by the same tribe. Here, if we make an exception in favour of the transitory conquests in Nubia and Arabia, there were no extensive and distant provinces to be held in check. The departments in the land were small, their number reached forty-four;[274]the officers, whom the king set over them, were in his sight, they could not assume theposition of refractory pashas. They were nominated out of the members of the royal house (the monuments furnish instances), the priests, the soldiers, and also out of the people. Royal scribes and judges, "scribes of justice," were allotted to these prefects. As the Egyptians early arrived at a written law, as religion and justice were closely connected, and the priests were acquainted with the art of writing, the prefects of the provinces were without doubt assisted by men from the priestly order in the exercise of their judicial duties. Besides the maintenance of the peace and the administration of justice, it was their duty to provide for the cultivation of the land, the collection and transmission of the taxes to the king. Even the soldiers settled in the provinces seem to have been subject to their rule. The gold and copper mines on the Upper Nile and in Sinai appear to have been put under the care of special officers, and the products were conveyed under military protection to the treasury of the king (p. 105).
The officers of the central government surrounded the person of the king (p. 190). Even the administration of justice, according to Diodorus, was centred in a supreme court, consisting of thirty judges, ten of the best men from Heliopolis, ten from Memphis, and ten from Thebes. Without doubt these judges belonged to the three priestly colleges of Memphis, Thebes, and Heliopolis. From these thirty the president was chosen, and on his breast, attached to a golden chain, he wore a shield of precious stones, beautifully wrought, which the Egyptians named "Truth" (p. 174). This court of the thirty no doubt gave very honourable decisions, and in accordance with law, unless the king were interested in the result, or preferred to pass sentence himself. Diodorus further informs us that the laws of the Egyptianswere collected in eight books, and were always kept at hand by the judges. The first written laws were given by Menes to the Egyptians, who declared that he had received them from the god Thoth. These laws had been enlarged by "Sasychis," who at the same time left the most accurate rubrics for the service of the gods, discovered geometry, and taught astronomy. Then Sesosis (Sesostris) laid down the laws for the kings, and the army. Finally the kings Bocchoris and Amasis completed the laws of Egypt. Herodotus praises a king "Asychis," whom he places after Menkera (p. 16), as the giver of the laws of mortgage. From Diodorus we also learn, and the monuments confirm his statement, that a written process went on before the court, that plaint and answer, rejoinder and reply, were given in, in writing; and this custom, considering the delight of the Egyptians in writing, did not appear for the first time in the later period of legal administration. The contracts and bills of sale found in tombs of the time of the Ptolemies are drawn up with the most circumstantial accuracy, and furnished with the signatures of many witnesses.[275]What Diodorus tells us of the law of Egypt with respect tomeumandtuumgives evidence of a certain gentleness and humanity. The interest was never to exceed the amount of the capital. Slavery for debt was not allowed; the sons of all the wives shared equally in the inheritance. The murder of a slave was punished with death, just as the murder of an Egyptian. Perjury was threatened with the same penalty. Anyone who falsified documents or measures had his hand cut off. In the confession which the souls made before Osiris (p. 79),especial emphasis is laid on the fact that the dead man had not falsified measures or seals, that he had practised no deceit in the law court, and had lent no money upon usury. The punishments inflicted on the guilty are characteristic of the East: the stocks, compulsory labour at the mines and quarries, loss of the nose, excision of the tongue, and mutilation were the usual penalties.[276]
Beside the law of the state stood the law of religion, of the priests. It was not sufficient to offer bread, and geese, and thighs of bulls, to pour drink-offerings of milk and wine, and "all things whereon the divine nature lives," to burn frankincense before the images of the gods, to offer the firstlings of the fruits, figs, onions, and flowers, to set up in the temples dedicatory offerings, small statues, crowns, and rings, to celebrate in honour of the gods of the district the great and small festivals, to honour the dead and bring sacrifice to them at the beginning and end of the year, at the festivals of the great and the little heat, on the monthly and fortnightly festivals (the calendars of the festivals on the monuments exhibit an almost unbroken series of sacrifices), to attend to the animals of the sacred kinds and bury them handsomely, "to give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and shelter to the wanderer"—the whole life must be a religious service. In their favoured land the Egyptians considered themselves a favoured people. Full of gratitude to the gods who had given them this land and this life, they looked with contempt on the unclean and perverse nations who dwelt beyond the valley of the Nile. To keep themselves clean from the unclean is the essential task of their lives. To the merely superficialview, cleanliness of body and clothing seems cleanliness of soul and life. But this purity, which the law of the priests required from every Egyptian, and above all and in an especial degree from the priests, was not limited to simple and natural cleanliness. There were beneficent life-giving gods, and there were also evil and destructive deities. To these belonged the side of nature which seemed to correspond to their being. Contact with this side of nature is not only displeasing to the good and pure gods, it gives the evil influences power over the men contaminated by it. Hence for the salvation of men such contact must be shunned. Certain things must be avoided for clothing and others for nourishment, certain impulses must not be satisfied, or must at any rate be limited.
This conception introduced certain usages and customs, which were developed by the priests into a system of rules for purification and food. Herodotus says, "the Egyptians are the most religious of all men; they have a severe and strict service, and many sacred customs." The boys were circumcised. Beans, rye, and barley might not be eaten; the flesh of many animals and many kinds of fish was forbidden. It was not lawful to eat the head of any animal. The animals for sacrifice must first be examined by the priests, to see that they did not belong to the sacred kinds—to sacrifice these was an inexpiable offence—and whether in other respects they were without blemish and pleasing to the gods. This examination was the duty of the class of temple-servants already mentioned, and it devolved on them to mark the animals found to be clean with a seal, which in bulls was placed on the horns. The Egyptians never ate at the same table with strangers, nor used a cup from which a stranger had drunk, nor ate flesh cooked in thevessel of a stranger and cut with a stranger's knife; all strangers and their utensils were unclean. Nothing woollen might be taken into a temple or a tomb. The Egyptians always wore newly-washed under-clothing of linen; they were obliged frequently to wash their bodies, and for three days in each month they used means of evacuation, clysters and emetics, in order to cleanse the body internally.[277]These statements are confirmed by papyrus rolls containing medicinal precepts. If the king, a sacred animal, or a member of the family died, no one was allowed to wear white or bright-coloured clothes; he must shave his eyebrows, and abstain from intercourse with his wife and from baths. Men and women threw dust on their heads and faces, and the women ran to and fro wailing with bare breasts.[278]
If an Egyptian had not committed murder, theft, or adultery, if he had not defamed the gods nor the king, nor those in authority over him, nor his own father, if he were not guilty of lying or slandering, if he had deceived neither gods nor men, nor oppressed his workmen in their daily tasks, nor drawn off the water, if he had allowed no one to be hungry, and caused no one to weep, if he were not slothful and idle in his occupation, if he sacrificed to the gods at the appointed time, and poured libations and observed all the regulations for cleanliness, then he might hope to find grace in the presence of the twenty-four judges before Osiris on the day of judgment in Amenti (p. 79). In order to gain by such conduct and careful observation of the laws of cleanliness and the ritual, a long life in this world, rest in the grave, and eternal life in the fields of the sun-god, the Egyptians worshipped theirgods with unwearied zeal, while their kings raised temple upon temple of enormous blocks in honour of the life-giving powers of heaven.
We cannot rate the knowledge and science of the Egyptians very low, however absurd and singular much in it appears to be. The early discovery of writing, however unwieldy the form, gave them the means of preserving not only invocations and incidents, but also the results of observation and experience, and of increasing slowly and surely their stock of knowledge. They made an unusually extensive use of writing. The walls of the temples are covered with inscriptions, which often enough only repeat once more what has been repeated already innumerable times. Even in the tombs at Beni Hassan from the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, we find scribes engaged in numbering the flocks and ticketing the sacks of corn. The scribes of the king registered the game obtained in hunting, the number of hands hewn off after a victory, and of prisoners, and calculated the amount of the booty. The temple-scribes are seen in the processions with pen in hand, and on the monuments the gods note down the years of the kings on the leaves of the arbor vitæ. Everything is to be enumerated, registered, and entered. Even ornaments and utensils are covered with inscriptions. As the hieroglyphics on the walls explained the images in the temples, and the hieroglyphics on the sides of the sepulchral chambers recorded the race and achievements of eminent persons and officers, so did the priests write down their wisdom, and private people their documents on a lighter material, the leaves of the papyrus, a tall reed growing in abundance in the swamps of Egypt.
Notwithstanding this extensive use, the system of writing among the Egyptians continued to the end aclumsy and difficult system, partly owing to the number of pictures and symbols, and partly to the variety of the phonetic pictures. The unchanging character of the Egyptians, the symbolical and mystic sense concealed in the hieroglyphics, the religious character of these old and sacred signs, stood in the way of the change to a more simple and phonetic mode of writing. Yet the effort to obtain such a system is unmistakable. After the year 1300B.C.a number of picture symbols were used as phonetic symbols, which up to that time had no phonetic value, and this change becomes more and more frequent in the last centuriesB.C.The habit of writing the hieroglyphics on the papyrus had early led to abbreviation in writing; the pictures were represented by simple outlines more adapted to the hand; and hence arose a cursive mode of writing the hieroglyphics, the so-called "hieratic" writing, which we already (pp.90,94) found in use on the pyramids under the old kingdom, and which was in use on an extensive scale at the time when the new kingdom was at its height. Finally, from the hieratic writing arose a third and more abbreviated kind, the demotic, which represented the language of ordinary intercourse and the national dialect. This was in existence when Herodotus travelled in Egypt. Here we see the most marked effort to avoid the ideographic element and picture signs, and to extend the use of the phonetic symbols. Beside the remains of the picture symbols, the demotic writing employs seventeen simple phonetic symbols and some fifty symbols of syllables. The hieroglyphic and hieratic modes of writing are called on the monuments the "writing of the gods," the demotic is "the writing of the books." For us the difficulty of the hieroglyphics is materially increased by the fact that the Coptic language in the formaccessible to us is removed by thousands of years from the form of words represented by the hieroglyphics of the old and new kingdom. The forms which we obtain from the records preserved in the demotic writing are about midway between those in the hieroglyphics and the forms retained in the Coptic translation of the Scriptures, and in some books of liturgies, which belong to the first centuriesA.D.[279]
In the circles of the priests the traditional invocations of the gods, the rules for the proper conduct of sacrifices and feasts, for the pure conversation which is the way to life and salvation in this world and the next, were without doubt committed to writing at a very early period. When gradually extended and continued, those writings grew into a liturgical canon and ecclesiastical codex of religious and moral law, and a comprehensive collection of all the wisdom known to the priests. We learn that the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two sacred books. Regarded as a collection of religious rules in every department of civilisation and life, as the measure of holy and upright conversation, and as rules of civil law, these books passed as the writings of the god Thoth, the scribe of heaven, the god of truth and justice. The civil law also was grounded upon the rules and axioms of religion; from these it arose, and the books of civil law without doubt formed a part of the sacred law, and of the books of the priests. Of these forty-two books ten belonged to the high priest, of which eight may have been the eight books of civil law (p. 202). In that case the two others would contain the doctrine concerning the gods, and the instruction of the priests. Ten other books belonged to the temple-scribe. Of these the first contained therules for the sacred writing; the second the geography and cosmogony; the third and fourth the arrangement of the sun, moon, and five planets; the fifth and sixth the description of Egypt and the Nile; the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, the weights and measures, the mode of registering the temple furniture and property. Again, ten books belonged to the chamberlain. These taught the ritual and the liturgy, the offering of first-fruits and sacrifices, hymns and prayers, together with the conduct of festivals and other things of the kind, and, finally, discipline and the rules for examining the animals for sacrifices. The two books of the minstrel contained the hymns and the contemplation of the life proper for a king (p. 188). The four books of the astrologer concluded the narrower circle of the sacred writings. Of these, the first contained the arrangement of the fixed stars; the second and third the coincidences of the orbits of the sun and moon; the fourth, the rising of the constellations. Besides these sacred books the pastophors (p. 196) had six books which taught the principles and practice of medicine;[280]for the art of healing,i. e.of preserving life, also belonged to the priests. The medicine of the Egyptians is commended as early as the Homeric poems (p. 15). Herodotus assures us that in Egypt every kind of sickness had a special physician, and Diodorus states that the art was carried out strictly according to the written principles,i. e.no doubt, according to these six sacred books. A hieratic papyrus on the subject of medicine has been recently found at Thebes, which is supposed to belong to the first centuries of the restoration of the monarchy. A section of this deals with diseases of the eye.[281]Egyptian physicians were much sought after in the East (the founder of the Persian kingdom, Cyrus, procured an oculist from Egypt), until the fame of the Greek medicine about 500B.C.threw Egyptian physicians into the shade.[282]
In the sacred books of the priests was drawn up the religious system into which the original conceptions of the gods were shaped and developed in the circles of the priests. The gods who passed for the greatest and mightiest in the various districts out of which Egypt was made up, the protecting deities of the separate localities, were here arranged in definite ranks and classes. And if, nevertheless, considerable differences can be observed in the teaching of the priests of Memphis and Thebes, they are sufficiently explained by the mode in which religion and state were developed in Egypt, and the rival position of the two great centres of ecclesiastical life. According to the doctrine of Memphis the seven highest deities were Ptah, the creative god of light of the lower country; Ra, the sun-god of Heliopolis; and Shu (Sosis,p. 50), the deity of the clear air; these three were followed by the forms belonging to the Osiris circle, on whose nature rested the moral basis of the life of the Egyptians; Seb, the father of Osiris; Osiris himself; then his opposite, Typhon; and lastly, Horus, the conqueror of Typhon.[283]The doctrine of Thebes placed Ammon at the head instead of Ptah, and in the place of Ra stood the two sun-gods of Upper Egypt, Tum (Atum,p. 51) and Mentu; these were followed by Shu, and the gods of the Osiris circle. To the seven or eight great gods was appended a circle of twelvegods, and among these Thoth and Anubis. The twelve were followed by a number of spirits, genii and demigods. With this system of gods the doctrine of the priests was connected. Even from the attributes of Ptah, Neith, and other deities, it is clear that there was among the priests a strong tendency to gather up the divine powers into the forms of Ptah, Tum, Osiris, and Ra. The teaching of the priests evidently desired to grasp the connection of life, and attain to a theogony and a theory of creation. It has been already pointed out on the authority of documents belonging to the times of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, that the priests in their doctrine were at pains to discover the unity of the divine spirits, and to conceive the forms of the gods as manifestations of one being. They regarded the animals as the manifestations of special characteristics of the gods, and men as phænomena of a divine origin and nature, who would return to the place whence they came. To go further and grasp the heart of the system is impossible in the present condition of our researches. Conceptions and inferences of the Græco-Egyptian speculation of the time of the Ptolemies and the first centuries after Christ cannot be accepted as the true form of the old Egyptian religion, or as the doctrine of the priests of ancient Egypt.
With the Egyptians, as with other nations, poetry probably arose out of the invocations of the gods and hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Religious poetry had a fixed canon in the books of the minstrels. That national songs were also in vogue is shown by the monuments (p. 222). Diodorus told us above that the achievements of Sesostris were celebrated in poetry (p. 144). The description of a deed of arms of Ramses II. which he must have regarded as ofconsiderable importance has been preserved. The battle he fought with the Cheta in the fifth year of his reign (p. 152), he caused to be represented in the rock temple at Abu Simbel and in the Ramesseum, and a description of it is engraved in these temples, as at Luxor and Beth-el-Walli, and in the walls of the great temple at Karnak. It is found in still greater detail in a papyrus of the British Museum.[284]At the end is the observation that the scribe Pentaur composed it in the seventh year of the reign of Ramses II. In this poem we are told that the chief of the Cheta had come with his archers and chariots, three men on each chariot. North-west of Kadesh they lay in ambush. The king, urging on his chariot, pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta. He found himself surrounded by 2,500 chariots. "My bowmen and my chariots have abandoned me, this is what the king said; none of them is here to fight beside me. What is the will of my father Ammon? Is he a father who denies his son? Or have I followed my own thoughts? Did I not set forth at thy command; has not thy mouth led my armies, and thy counsel guided them? Have I not celebrated many brilliant festivals, and filled thy house with booty? Thirty thousand bulls I have sacrificed with odorous herbs and perfumes of all kinds. I have built thee temples of stone, I bring obelisks from Elephantine, and cause the everlasting stones to be carried down. For thee—the great ships swim upon the sea, to bring thee the tribute of the nations. Has the like been done before? Ruin on him who opposes thee: salvation to him who comprehends thee, Ammon. On thee I call. I am alone before thee in the midst of unknown nations. My bowmen and chariotsleft me when I called; no one heard me when I cried for help. But I choose Ammon before thousands of bowmen and millions of chariots. The devices of men are nothing; Ammon will deliver from them. These words echoed in Hermonthis. Ra comes to him who calls upon him. He reaches to thee his hand. He flies to thee, Ramses Miamun. I am with thee, I am thy father, the sun, and my hand is with thee. Their hearts shall waver in their breasts and all their limbs shall fail. They shall not shoot their arrows; their lances they shall not be able to hold. The chief of the Cheta sent princes, the prince of Aratus (Aradus) and the prince of Kirkamischa (Karchemish). My charioteer was weak, and a great terror came upon his limbs. He said, Brave king, hold, and let us save the breath of our lives. What can we do, noble lord, Ramses Miamun? Mark what his majesty answered to his charioteer. Courage! Stablish thine heart, my charioteer. Like the divine hawk, I will swoop into their midst, they shall be overthrown and hewn down into the dust. Ammon were no god if he glorified not my face before their countless hosts. The king pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta, six times he pressed into their midst. My bowmen and charioteers came at the hour of evening from their camp: they found the whole region covered with dead bathed in their blood. His holiness answered his army and the captains who had not fought. Ye did not well to leave me alone in the midst of the enemies. I have fought, I have beaten back thousands of enemies, and I was alone. The horses which drew me were 'Might in Thebes,' and 'Rest in the upper land.' As soon as I am within my royal gates, I command that they have corn every day before the god Ra. When the earth again became light,he began the conflict again; he dashed into the battle like a bull, which hurls himself upon geese, and with him the mighty lion beside his horses. Rage inflamed all his limbs. They were hewn in pieces before his mares. The chief of the miserable Cheta sent to call upon the great name of his majesty. Thou art the sun, the god of both worlds, thou art Sutech the great conqueror, the son of heaven. Baal is in all thy limbs. Terror is upon the land of Cheta; thou hast possessed thyself of their inwards for ever. The slave said, as he spoke to Pharaoh: Since Ammon has granted to thee that Egypt and the nation of the Cheta shall be slaves at thy feet, and Ra has granted thee the dominion over them, thou canst slay thy slaves; they are in thy power; we lie bowed to the earth, ready to obey thy command. O brave king, delight of the warriors, grant us the breath of our lives! The king summoned his generals in order to hear the message and write an answer, and toward midday he took ship. He returned in peace with his army to Egypt. The whole earth has subjected itself to his name, and the princes, lying on the ground, worship his countenance."[285]
Not only certain turns in this description, but passages in invocations which have come down to us, show that in expressing themselves, the Egyptians, in spite of the predominant vein of reflection, were not without force of imagination, or striking figures, or largeness and vigour of conception. That they are not free from bombast, foolish exaggeration, and incessant repetition, any more, or even so little, as the other nations of the East, is proved more especially by the inscriptions in the temples recording the mighty deeds of the kings. Our knowledge of the manuscripts does not as yet allow us to pass a moredefinite judgment. Yet it is beyond doubt that even in the centuries immediately preceding the irruption of the Hyksos, under the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, they were in possession of a written literature, that even then the oldest parts of the "Book of the Dead" were not only in existence, but already commentated upon, and that after the restoration of the kingdom, beside the comprehensive books of the priests, and manuscripts on medicine (p. 209), there was at any rate after the fourteenth centuryB.C., and the reign of Ramses II., a literature of a considerable extent. There is a second papyrus in existence by the author of the description of the battle, of which the title runs, "Beginning of the Rudiments of the Art of Letter-writing by the Scribe Pentaur, composed in the 10th year of Ramses II."[286]The fifth letter of this collection is addressed by Ameneman, the head of the keepers of the archives of the treasure of the king, to Pentaur; it is said that Pentaur has turned his back on the sacred writings, and applied himself to agriculture. The farmer has to fear grubs and rats, sparrows and locusts for his crops; and thieves too. Implements and horses wear out. The scribes come and demand the taxes, and the neighbours are away and busy with the harvest. On the other hand, the work of the scribe is the highest of all, and the scribe has no taxes to pay.[287]On a third papyrus a hymn, addressed by Ramses III. to Ammon, is said to have been found.[288]A fourth has the name-shields of Sethos II. (p. 163). It is a composition by a scribe of the name of Enna, and contains the story of the fate of two brothers.[289]A fifth papyrus,which is also attributed to the time of successors of Ramses II., has preserved a collection of apothegms.[290]In a country which placed such importance on preserving every incident, on enumerating, recording, and registering everything, care must have been taken to record the series of the kings. When the shepherds were driven out, the liberation from foreign dominion would give a strong impulse toward the attempt to keep firmly before the eyes the old days of independent Egypt. At the same time these attempts must have met with serious hindrances. The destruction which came upon numerous records and monuments of those old times, and the want of any definite æra of chronology, made it difficult to obtain a really correct order of succession, or a historical picture of the ancient period. The historical truth of the writings, which, in spite of these difficulties, were undertaken, as is shown by the monuments mentioned above, and the Turin papyrus (p. 25), was still more seriously impaired by the fact that the views of the priests were governed by the conception that the course of certain periods was allotted to the world by the gods, and in these periods the fortunes of Egypt had reached their fulfilment, and would continue to reach it. We have already become acquainted with this Sothis period (p. 29 ff). From the gods came life and the world. So the gods were said to have reigned in person over Egypt, before the kings, their divine successors, ruled over men. Hence the priests of Lower Egypt commenced the reign of the seven great gods with the beginning of aSothis period. The seven great gods were followed by the twelve gods of the second rank, Thoth, Anubis, Chunsu, &c., in reigns of gradually diminishing length through a certain number of Sothis periods. According to the scheme still preserved, Ptah reigned 9,000 years, and the last of the gods only seventy years, so that on an average each occupies exactly half a Sothis period, or 730 of our years. These nineteen gods were followed by thirty demigods; to each of whom was allotted the twelfth part of a Sothis period for a reign, so that the whole period of the reign of the gods takes up twelve Sothis periods, or 17,520 years. After this, according to some authorities, began the period of human rulers; others allotted four Sothis periods,i. e.5840 years, to another set of demigods. Then followed, beginning like the rest with the beginning of a Sothis period, the rule of human kings. This Sothis period commenced either in the year 5702B.C., or, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, with the year 4242B.C.This year, therefore, was the first of the history of Egypt. To Menes the priests attached the long list of names in one continuous series, without in the least regarding whether the dynasties were contemporaneous or successive, whether they ruled in Upper or Lower Egypt, over the whole land, or in certain districts only. If we calculate the rule of the human kings from the first of the dates given, the first Sothis period of men came to an end, according to the canon of Manetho, in 4242B.C.; the second in 2782B.C.The third ended in the time of Menephta I., in whose reign as a fact the Egyptian year did again coincide with the natural year.[291]
The Egyptians were devoted more than other nations to the contemplation of the heavens. The constellations announced to them the approach of the inundation, its height, and its decline. Moreover, their religion was to a great extent a worship of light and the sun, and as they plainly perceived the influence of the stars on the country in the rise and fall of the water, the increase and abatement of the heat, &c., it was natural that they should ascribe to the constellations and the movements of the heavenly bodies similar influences on the life and growth, the happiness and misery, of mankind; and this belief must in turn have contributed to the assiduous and accurate observation of the heavens. "If anywhere," says Diodorus, "it is in Egypt that the most accurate observation of the position and movements of the stars have been made. Of each of these they have records extending over an incredible series of years, the courses and positions of the planets also they have accurately observed, and they can accurately predict the eclipses of the sun and the moon."[292]Astronomical pictures are not uncommon on the monuments belonging to the period after the expulsion of the Hyksos. Fragments of a calendar of festivals from the time of Ramses II. are found on a gateway of the Ramesseum. The outer walls of the temple at Medinet Habu give a complete calendar of the festivals from the time of Ramses III. In the tomb of Sethos I. are pictures and names of the five divinities of the planets known to the Egyptians, Mercury, Venus (the star of the Bennu, p. 69), Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the same picture is found on the roof of the astronomical hall in the Ramesseum at Thebes, and on two pictures in thetombs of Ramses V. and IX. The painting in the Ramesseum—though the circle of 369 cubits, which, according to Diodorus, was once on the roof of the Ramesseum (p. 175), is wanting, being removed by Cambyses—presents a complete map of the Egyptian sky. The pictures in the tombs of the two kings give the rising of the stars at intervals of a fortnight. In the tomb of Ramses IV. the thirty-six Decan stars are given together with their deities.[293]The importance placed by the Egyptian priests on the knowledge of the sky is shown not only by the monuments, but also by the four books of the astrologer, and the third and fourth books of the temple scribe; and that their astronomical science was by no means slight is sufficiently proved by their early establishment of a solar year of 360, and then of 365 days, and by the observation and establishment of the Sothis periods. This fact is confirmed by the lists of the rising of the stars already mentioned. Yet the astronomical knowledge of the priests of Egypt cannot be placed beside that of the Babylonians. Representations of the zodiac are not found on the monuments till the time of the Ptolemies,[294]and Ptolemy, himself an Egyptian, has preserved for us observations of the Chaldees, but none made by his own countrymen. The greater part of the attention which the priests of Egypt bestowed upon the heavens was given in the interests of astrology rather than astronomy. As the months in the year belonged to certain gods, the first to Thoth, the third (Athyr) to Hathor, the last to Horus,so the days of the month had their deities. The first day belonged to Thoth, the second to Horus, the third to Osiris, &c.; and lastly, every hour of the day was allotted to a special influence. From the importance thus given to the days and hours the astrologers could foretell the fortune of life; they could ascertain what issue awaited any enterprise—whether the day and hour were favourable or not for this or that occupation or undertaking. For this object they possessed tables worked out in extensive detail. For instance, anyone born on the 14th of Athyr, the day when Typhon was said to have slain Osiris, had to expect a violent death; anyone born on the 23rd of Phaophi was doomed to be killed by a crocodile; and anyone born on the 27th of the same month, by a serpent. On the other hand, a child born on the 9th of Phaophi might look forward to a long life. In the tables of the hours we find for a given day—first hour, Orion is lord of the left elbow; second hour, the Twins have influence on the left ear; fifth hour, the Pleiads(?) are sovereign over both chambers of the heart; tenth hour, the feet of the Swine predominate over the left eye, &c.[295]
In the achievement won by Egyptian art the priests took a leading part. The buildings of the temples and the tombs of the kings could only be erected after their designs; for in these essentially sacred things, sacred measures and numbers, were concerned, and, like architecture, sculpture and painting were primarily employed in the service of religion. As we might expect from the character of the people, the architecture of the Egyptians aimed at the firm and durable. The structures rise up simple in their lines,like the ridges of rock which are the boundaries of Egypt, broad and massive. The pyramids, with great simplicity of form, were found to display a considerable skill in dealing with and uniting large masses of stone. Following this path, the architecture of Egypt has always preserved a severity and simplicity of outline even when employing richer forms and ornaments. Among the Egyptians sculpture and painting never attained independence; it was their vocation to support architecture, and assist her in preserving in the stream of time the picture of the king, his sacrifices, and his achievements, and this or that incident of his reign. The sculpture of the Egyptians exhibits a vigorous attempt to grasp the forms in a naive, but prosaic and merely intellectual manner; it preserves them free from any fanciful use of symbols, and conceives the human form in fixed proportions and characteristic expression of movement, while it is still more happy in the form and character of the animals. Like architecture, sculpture prefers to work in the hardest and most lasting material. But, as in all other departments of life, so here; the type when once fixed, the canon of proportion when once discovered, the mode of treatment and the law of form is rigorously retained. With complete accuracy of execution in the most difficult material, sculpture constantly repeats the same figures, geometrical rather than natural in form. Yet in spite of this typical character, in sculpture and painting, as in architecture, a considerable development took place. The statues of the times of the pyramids, the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, exhibit, comparatively speaking, very correct forms, lively energy in the expression of action, and a strong treatment of the muscles; but the sculptures of the new kingdom are distinguished by greater varietyof forms, a larger wealth of lines, and a delicacy of outline; the drawing of the figures is far more slender, and there is considerable grace in the treatment of massive pillars and capitals. The Tuthmosis and Amenophis, the Sethos, and the earliest Ramses, imposed upon Egyptian art an almost oppressive number of tasks, and in performing them she touched her highest point. But the amount of work must of itself have introduced a more and more conventional treatment within the limits of the typical circle in which sculpture moved; and at last this treatment was content with mere precision of outlines. This is the character of the sculpture of the times of Ramses III. down to the days of Psammetichus, in which, by a truer imitation of nature, and greater grace in the form of the bodies, it once more attained to a beautiful after-growth.
The industry and skill with which the cultivation of the land and of the vine, and the breeding of cattle and sheep, was carried on in Egypt even before the invasion of the Hyksos, has been already seen on the monuments of the time of the Sesurtesen and Amenemha (p. 118). The fields were tilled with ploughs drawn by oxen, or with the hoe. It was not in every case necessary to make furrows. In December and January, when the water had run off, the seed was cast into the moist ground and trodden in, as we see from the monuments, by sheep and goats. Everywhere the overseer is in the field with the labourers and herdmen. By the end of March harvest was ready; wheat and maize were cut with the sickle, and then the grain was trodden out by oxen. Meanwhile the thrasher sang, according to the inscription on a rock tomb at El Kab (above Thebes), "Thrash for yourselves, oxen, thrash for yourselves; thrash bushelsfor your masters."[296]Diodorus remarks that it was marvellous with what care and skill the herds were tended by their keepers in Egypt, what knowledge of healing plants and of food was to be found in these keepers, how their occupation came to them from their forefathers, with a large stock of experience and manual skill; and how their knowledge increased to an incredible degree the propagation of the animals.[297]On the monuments we find not only great herds of cattle, asses, sheep, and goats, but also whole droves of hens, ducks, and geese. Poultry-sellers and depots of poultry are often found. These sculptures confirm the statements of Diodorus of the careful tending of the animals; they also show us the medicinal treatment of ailing animals. Beside this wealth of cattle, there was an abundance of fish, provided by the Nile. These were caught partly with hooks, and partly with large nets. The upper classes fished for pleasure. Yet most kinds of fish were forbidden food: the priests, as we have seen, were not allowed to taste fish at all.
The monuments also teach us that hunting was not neglected by the Egyptians. Hares, foxes, antelopes, gazelles, hyænas, buffaloes, and lions were driven into inclosures surrounded by nets, or chased with the bow and arrow and dogs, or with the chariot and hounds. Gazelles and buffaloes were also taken with the lasso; traps were set for the hyænas; the hippopotamus was attacked with a spear from a boat.[298]
Of the industry of the Egyptians in trade we have already had striking evidence in the monuments of the old kingdom. There we saw all kinds of manufacturesin the various stages; we found on them the simple weaver's loom, which produced the robes of byssus, so highly valued in antiquity,—the lasting fabric which may still be examined in the clothing of mummies. The early development of technical skill meets us more especially in the pictures of the preparation of glass on the tombs at Beni Hassan. Glass cups and vessels are frequently found in the tombs, and Strabo observes that the earth required for making glass is among the products of Egypt.[299]The working of the copper mines in the mountains of Sinai goes considerably further back than the date of the tombs at Beni Hassan. They were open as early as the times of Snefru and Chufu.[300]Yet by far the greatest proportion of hands must have been employed upon the buildings of the kings and the tombs of the wealthy. On the monuments we see the masons in all their various occupations; painters and statuaries also are represented there in the different moments of their work; and the tables of proportion which they followed are still preserved.
Even before the invasion of the Hyksos, as we saw from the tombs at Beni Hassan, the life of the wealthy Egyptian was surrounded by considerable elegance (p. 118). The houses of the rich, built, according to the pictures on the monuments, in a light and graceful style, in contrast to the heavy structure of the temples, had several stories, and were provided with the galleries and terraces still usual in the East. Houses in the country had shady avenues of trees, planted in exact rows, and neat beds of flowers, graceful pavilions, and fountains of water. The common national dress was a linen shirt, and over it a woollen cloak; the labourerand the lowest class had only an apron round the body; but the clothing of the higher classes was choice and delicate. The women, who enjoyed considerable freedom in Egypt, wore various ornaments—necklaces, eardrops, and bracelets; rings of the most various shape adorned almost every finger. Their hair was carefully dressed; they bathed frequently, and made a considerable use of ointments. Life was sociable in ancient Egypt. In the tombs at Beni Hassan we find men carried in a palanquin to a social meeting; and in the tombs at Thebes they are driving in chariots to a similar gathering. Gaily-dressed men and women meet and converse with each other in the hall; slaves, light-coloured and black, in part handsomely-dressed, hand them garlands and cups. The table is spread. Bread, figs, and grapes are set out in baskets, wine in glass bottles; vegetables and poultry are also there. The solid food was eaten with the hand, liquids were taken with spoons. At these banquets the Egyptians do not seem to have been very moderate. Herodotus tells us that a small wooden image of a mummy was carried round at their entertainments, with the exhortation, "Look on this, drink and be merry. When dead, thou wilt be as this is!"[301]This admonition was not without its results. In the pictures on monuments we find not only men, but women, throwing up the surfeit of food and wine; others are carried away home by their servants. Indeed, excess and drunkenness are quoted among the forty-two chief sins of the Egyptians. During the meal dancers were introduced, and bands of musicians, male and female, who played on harps, guitars, and flutes; among which was mingled the sound of the tambourine. A chorus also sang to the harp. The company also played anddanced.[302]We have already seen that games of ball and mora were played under the old monarchy. Among the recreations of the new monarchy draughts are found. We often find on the monuments sketches of men and women who exhibit contortions of their bodies and feats of strength. Sham-fights at sea also occur, and wrestling matches are very common.
Proudly as the Egyptians, in the consciousness of their purity and culture, looked down on "the unclean and perverse" nations outside their land, and rarely as they travelled into other countries, Egypt was nevertheless the centre of a considerable trade. China and Japan also for a long time shut themselves up from the outer world, yet their trade was considerable, though permitted only at certain fixed places. The Egyptians also caused the products which they needed to be brought, without themselves going to seek them. Egypt required wood for the building of houses and ships, brass, ivory, slaves, and incense. Even before the year 1500B.C., Arabian caravans carried the products of the south coast of Arabia to Syria and Egypt.[303]The wandering tribes of Libya, Syria, and Arabia required corn, weapons, utensils, and implements, which they could buy in Egypt. Then at a later period came the trade of the Phenicians with Egypt. They could bring wood from the forests of Lebanon—wine, oil, slaves, amber, and tin, and exchange them for the manufactures of Egypt; for retail goods, glass, drugs, which Egypt produced in great quantities, fish, Egyptian fabrics, linen, and material prepared from the papyrus. The Greeks called fabrics made from this plant, "byblian," from the city Byblus,a proof that they first became acquainted with these Egyptian wares through the Phenicians, and mainly through the ships of Byblus, and received them from this quarter. Horses, also, and chariots were brought as articles of trade from Egypt to Syria about the year 1000B.C.; at that time a chariot cost in Egypt 600 shekels, and a horse 150.[304]So far as we can gather from the legends of the Greeks, the trading ships could only enter the Canopic mouth of the Nile, and intercourse with foreign merchants could only take place on the little island of Pharos, opposite the city of Thonis. Here the mariners of that day, the Phenicians, and with them, and after them, the Ionians, carried on their trade with the Egyptians. On land the only entrance was by Pelusium; and here as also at Pharos, an entrance-tax had apparently to be paid. From the Homeric poems we may conclude that there was then a trade with Egypt, and not only piratical descents upon the coasts; but when the Ionians, about the middle of the eighth century, began to enter into dangerous competition with the Phenicians, the latter seem to have succeeded in getting the Greeks excluded from Egypt, and obtaining for themselves the monopoly of the sea—a privilege which, however, they did not maintain for more than a century.[305]
Such was ancient Egypt, the land of marvel, whose richly developed civilization lies on the threshold of historical life. Excellently furnished by nature, and placed in a peculiarly favoured land, the Copts have transferred to their own lives and civilization the grave and solemn character of their sky and their country. Their conservative feeling is directed towards fixedand unalterable order; the sons repeat the lives of their fathers, and the nation is divided into various classes and corporations, which carry on the same occupations from generation to generation. The beneficent powers of nature, the mystery of life, the life returning out of death—these are the forces and laws which the Egyptians worshipped as their good gods, whose creation is the fruitful world, who manifest themselves in good creatures, whose unchangeable nature they seemed to recognise as embodied in the instinctive and unalterable life of certain animals. The life of the nation adapts itself also to priestly rules, which operate without alteration, like the laws of nature.
As the heart of this people was set upon the continuance of the race and occupation, on rule and law, so also was it their desire to prolong the existence of the individual. This impulse towards the preservation of self operated so strongly that the Egyptians busied themselves with the future quite as much as with the past. It was this trait in their character which caused the Egyptians to rescue their dead from corruption, and occupied the living with the construction of "eternal dwellings for the dead." This it was which made them a nation of scribes, builders, painters and sculptors. These efforts culminate in the buildings of the kings, who could command the whole powers of the land in preserving their names. The Egyptians were loath to end with death. It was the true vocation of every man worthily to build and "adorn his tomb;" and the essential object of life is—not to lose the everlasting life after death by unclean and unlawful conversation—to win a return to the divine origin of life.
With the simple confidence of childhood, with thepatient endurance of a man, and with iron perseverance, the Egyptians attempted to redeem the existence of man from destruction and decay, and rescue his life from oblivion. The power of the Egyptians exhausted itself in this toil after continuance of life. But however eager a man might be to preserve his own individuality, he loses it in the presence of his ruler, who gathers up in his own person the whole political life of the nation, and exhausts it. Like a god, or an incarnate Destiny, the Pharaoh stands in absolute supremacy over the land; "His countenance beams over Egypt as the sun;" before him all distinctions fade away, and all bow down in equal obedience. But even though the perishable was preserved, and made as lasting as the rocks of the land—though in the ceremonial, the ritual, and the rules of life the same unalterable constancy prevailed as in the laws of nature, there was still room beside fixed prescription and the will of the divine ruler for the vigorous pursuit of an industry which was not far behind that of modern Europe, for an enjoyment of life in the Oriental manner, which was not only social, but even luxurious and sensual.
The efforts of the Egyptians to preserve themselves and their actions, and to cause their names to live in the mouths of the generations after them, have not been without a result. What the Greeks and Romans knew of their history were traditions attached to the great monuments. Before our researches the Egyptian nation has literally risen from the tomb; the pyramids tell us the history of the old monarchy, and the temples at Thebes the history of the new. Without these monuments the kings of Manetho would have remained an empty and unintelligible echo. Thesemountains of stone at the threshold of history, these chronicles of hieroglyphics, this nation of mummies proclaim, beyond contradiction, that nations do succeed in outliving themselves by their works, but also that their life reaches only so far as their development.