VOLUME IX SLICE I Edwardes to Ehrenbreitstein (continued 8)

XIV. 2112 2793

XV. 1780 1680* 2533

XVI. 1928 2249

XVII. 1738 1731

XVIII. 1530 1587 1580 1580 1580

XIX. 1320 1327 1321 1350 1323

* Meyer makes XIII. overlap XV. (Hyksos), and XIV. (Xoite), contemporary with XVI. (Hyksos) and XVII. (Theban).

The duration of the reigns in several dynasties is fairly well known from the incontrovertible evidence of contemporary monuments. The XXVIth Dynasty, which lasted 139 years, is particularly clear, and synchronisms fix its regnal dates to the years b.c. within an error of one or two years at most. The lengths of several reigns in the XIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties are known, and the sum total for the XIIth Dynasty is preserved better than any other in the Turin Papyrus, which was written under the XIXth Dynasty. The succession and number of the kings are also ascertained for other dynasties, together with many regnal dates, but very serious gaps exist in the records of the Egyptian monuments, the worst being between the XIIth and the XVIIIth Dynasties, between the XIth and the VIth, and at Dynasties I.-III. For the chronology before the time of the XXVIth Dynasty Herodotus’s history is quite worthless. Manetho alone of all authorities offers a complete chronology from the 1st Dynasty to the XXXth. In the case of the six kings of the XXVIth Dynasty, Africanus, the best of his excerptors, gives correct figures for five reigns, but attributes six instead of sixteen years to Necho; the other excerptors have wrong numbers throughout. For the XIXth Dynasty Manetho’s figures are wrong wherever we can check them; the names, too, are seriously faulty. In the XVIIIth Dynasty he has too many names and few are clearly identifiable, while the numbers are incomprehensible. In the XIIth Dynasty the number of the kings is correct and many of the names can be justified, but the reign-lengths are nearly, if not quite, all wrong. The summations of years for the Dynasties XII. and XVIII. are likewise wrong. It seems, therefore, that the known texts of Manetho, serviceable as they have been in the reconstruction of Egyptian history, cannot be employed as a serious guide to the early chronology, since they are faulty wherever we can check them, even in the XXVIth Dynasty whose kings were so celebrated among the Greeks. There remain the astronomical data. Of these, the Sothic date furnished by a calendar in the Ebers Papyrus of the 9th year of Amenophis I. (when interpreted on the assumption stated above), and another at Elephantine of an uncertain year of Tethmosis III., tally well with each other (1550-1546, 1474-1470 b.c.) and with the Babylonian synchronism (not yet accurately determined) under Amenhotp IV. (Akhenaton). Another Sothic date of the 7th year of Senwosri III. on a Berlin papyrus from Kahūn, similarly interpreted (1882-1878 b.c.), gives for the XIIth Dynasty a range from 2000 to 1788 b.c. This (discovered by L. Borchardt in 1899) seems to offer a welcome ray, piercing the obscurity of early Egyptian chronology; guided by it the historian Ed. Meyer, and K. Sethe have framed systems of chronology in close agreement with each other, reaching back to the 1st Dynasty at about 3400 b.c. To Meyer is further due a calculation that the Egyptian calendar was introduced in 4241-4238 b.c.19 Their results in general have been adopted by the “Berlin school,” including Erman, Steindorff (in Baedeker’s Egypt) and Breasted in America. Nevertheless many Egyptologists are unwilling to accept the new chronology, the chief obstacle being that it allows so short an interval for the six dynasties between the XIIth and the XVIIIth. If the XIIth Dynasty ended about 1790 b.c. and the XVIIIth began about 1570 b.c., taking what seems to be the utmost interval that it permits, 220 years have to contain a crowd of kings of whom nearly 100 are already known by name from monuments and papyri, while fresh names are being added annually to the long list; the shattered fragments of the last columns in the Turin Papyrus show space for 150 or perhaps 180 kings of this period, apparently without reaching the XVIIth Dynasty. An estimate of 160 to 200 kings would therefore not be excessive. The dates that have come down to us are very few; the only ones known from the Hyksos period are of a 12th and a 33rd year. In the Turin Papyrus two reign-lengths of less than a year, seven others of less than five years each, one of ten years and one of thirteen seem attributable to the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties. Probably most of the reigns were short, as Manetho also decidedly indicates. It is possible that the compiler of the Turin Papyrus, who excluded contemporary reigns in the period between the VIth and the XIIth Dynasties, here admitted such; nor is a correspondingly large number of kings in so short a period without analogies in history. Professor Petrie, however, thinks it best, while accepting the evidence of the Sirius date, to suppose further that a whole Sothic period of 1460 years had passed in the interval, making a total of 1650 years for the six dynasties in place of 220 years. This, however, seems greatly in excess of probability, and several Egyptologists familiar with excavation are willing to accept Meyer’s figures on archaeological grounds. To the present writer it seems that Meyer’s chronology provides a convenient working theory, but involves such an improbability in regard to the interval between the XIIth and the XVIIIth Dynasties that the interpretation of the Sothic date on which it is founded must be viewed with suspicion until clear facts are found to corroborate it. Corroboration has been sought by Mahler, Sethe and Petrie in the dates of new moons, of warlike and other expeditions, and of high Nile, but their evidence so far is too vague and uncertain to affect the question seriously. It is remarkable that no records of eclipses are known from Egyptian documents. The interesting date of the harvest at El Bersha, quoted by Meyer in Breasted, Records, i. p. 48, confirms the Sothic date for the XIIth Dynasty in some measure, but it belongs to the same age, and therefore its evidence would be equally vitiated with the other by any subsequent alteration in the Egyptian calendar. Before the discovery of the Kahun Sothic date, Professor Petrie put the end of the XIIth Dynasty at 2565 b.c.; in 1884 even Meyer had suggested 1930 b.c. as its minimum date, thus allowing 400 years at the least for the period from the XIIIth Dynasty to the XVIIth.

Dynasty. Wiedemann 1884. Meyer 1884. Petrie 1905-1906. Breasted 1906. Maspero 1904.

XIX. 1490 1320 (1328), 1322 1350

XX. 1280 1180 1202 1200

XXI. 1100 1060 1102 1090

XXII. 975 930 952 945

XXIII. 810 755 745

XXIV. 720 721 718

XXV. 715 728 715 712

XXVI. 664 663 664 663

XXVII. 525 525 525 525 425

XXVIII. 415 405 c. 405

XXIX. 408 399 399

XXX. 387 378 380

Ochus 350 342 342

Beyond the XIIth Dynasty estimates must again be vague. The spacing of the years on the Palermo stone has given rise to some calculations for the early dynasties. Others are grounded on the dates of certain operations which are likely to have taken place at particular seasons of the year so that they can be roughly calculated on the Sothic basis, others on Manetho’s figures, average lengths of reigns, evidence of the Turin Papyrus, &c.

Table I. page 79 shows the chronology of the first nineteen dynasties, according to recent authorities, before and after the discovery of the Kahun Sothic date.

The dates of the earlier dynasties in this table are always intended to be only approximate; for instance, Meyer in 1904 allowed an error of 100 years either of excess or deficiency in the dates he assigned to the dynasties from the Xth upwards.

The other dynasties are dated as in Table II. by different authorities.

See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, Bd. i. (Stuttgart, 1884), Geschichte des alten Ägyptens (1887), Ägyptische Chronologie (Abhandl. of Prussian Academy) (Berlin, 1904, with the supplement Nachträge zur ägypt. Chronologie, ib. 1907); K. Sethe, “Beiträge zur ältesten Geschichte Ägyptens” (in his Untersuchungen, Bd. iii.) (Leipzig, 1905); J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, “Historical Documents,” vol. i. (Chicago, 1906); W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. i. (London, 1884), vol. iii. (1905), Researches in Sinai (London, 1906); G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’orient (Paris, 1904); A. Wiedemann, Ägyptische Geschichte (Gotha, 1884); articles by Mahler and others in the Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache and Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (recent years).

(F. Ll. G.)

III. History

1. From the Earliest Times to the Moslem Conquest.

In the absence of a strict chronology, the epochs of Pharaonic history are conveniently reckoned in dynasties according to Manetho’s scheme, and these dynasties are grouped into longer periods:—the Old Kingdom (Dynasties I. to VIII.), including the Earliest Dynasties (I. to III.) and the Pyramid Period (Dynasties IV. to VI.); the Middle Kingdom (Dynasties IX. to XVII.), including the Heracleopolite Dynasties (IX. to X.) and the Hyksos Period (Dynasties XV. to XVII.); the New Empire (Dynasties XVIII. to XX.); the Deltaic Dynasties (Dynasties XXI. to XXXI.), including the Saite and Persian Periods (Dynasties XXVI. to XXXI.). The conquest by Alexander ushers in the Hellenistic age, comprising the periods of Ptolemaic and Roman rule.

The Prehistoric Age.—One of the most striking features of recent Egyptology is the way in which the earliest ages of the civilization, before the conventional Egyptian style was formed, have been illustrated by the results of excavation. Until 1895 there seemed little hope of reaching the records of those remote times, although it was plain that the civilization had developed in the Nile valley for many centuries before the IVth Dynasty, beyond which the earliest known monuments scarcely reached. Since that year, however, there has been a steady flow of discoveries in prehistoric and early historic cemeteries, and, partly in consequence of this, monuments already known, such as the annals of the Palermo stone, have been made articulate for the beginnings of history in Egypt.

It is probable that certain rudely chipped flints, so-called eoliths, in the alluvial gravels (formed generally at the mouth of wadis opening on to the Nile) at Thebes and elsewhere, are the work of primitive man; but it has been shown that such are produced also by natural forces in the rush of torrents. On the surface of the desert, at the borders of the valley, palaeolithic implements of well-defined form are not uncommon, and bear the marks of a remote antiquity. In some cases they appear to lie where they were chipped on the sites of flint factories. Geologists and anthropologists are not yet agreed on the question whether the climate and condition of the country have undergone large changes since these implements were deposited. As yet none have been found in such association with animal remains as would help in deciding their age, nor have any implements been discovered in rock-shelters or in caves.

Of neolithic remains, arrowheads and other implements are found in some numbers in the deserts. In the Fayūm region, about the borders of the ancient Lake of Moeris and beyond, they are particularly abundant and interesting in their forms. But their age is uncertain; some may be contemporary with the advanced culture of the XIIth Dynasty in the Nile valley. Definite history on the other hand has been gained from the wonderful series of “prehistoric” cemeteries excavated by J. de Morgan, Petrie, Reisner and others on the desert edgings of the cultivated alluvium. The succession of archaeological types revealed in them has been tabulated by Petrie in his Diospolis Parva; and the detailed publication of Reisner’s unusually careful researches is bringing much new light on the questions involved, amongst other things showing the exact point at which the “prehistoric” series merges into the Ist Dynasty, for, as might be surmised, in many cases the prehistoric cemeteries continued in use under the earliest dynasties. The finest pottery, often painted but all hand-made without the wheel, belongs to the prehistoric period; so also do the finest flint implements, which, in the delicacy and exactitude of their form and flaking, surpass all that is known from other countries. Metal seems to be entirely absent from the earliest type of graves, but immediately thereafter copper begins to appear (bronze is hardly to be found before the XIIth Dynasty). The paintings on the vases show boats driven by oars and sails rudely figured, and the boats bear emblematic standards or ensigns. The cemeteries are found throughout Upper and Middle Egypt, but as yet have not been met with in the Delta or on its borders. This might be accounted for by the inhabitants of Lower Egypt having practised a different mode of disposing of the dead, or by their cemeteries being differently placed.

Tradition, mythology and later customs make it possible to recover a scrap of the political history of that far-off time. Menes, the founder of the Ist Dynasty, united the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the prehistoric period, therefore, these two realms were separate. The capital of Upper Egypt was Nekheb, now represented by the ruins of El Kab, with the royal residence across the river at Nekhen (Hieraconpolis); that of Lower Egypt was at Buto (Putō or Dep) in the marshes, with the royal residence in the quarter called Pe. Nekhêbi, goddess of El Kab, represented the Upper or Southern Kingdom, which was also under the tutelage of the god Seth, the goddess Buto and the god Horus similarly presiding over the Lower Kingdom. The royal god in the palace of each was a hawk or Horus. The spirits of the deceased kings were honoured respectively as the jackal-headed spirits of Nekhen and the hawk-headed spirits of Pe. As we hear also of the “spirits of On” it is probable that Heliopolis was at one time capital of a kingdom. In after days the prehistoric kings were known as “Worshippers of Horus” and in Manetho’s list they are the νέκυες “Dead,” and ἥρωες “Heroes,” being looked upon as intermediate between the divine dynasties and those of human kings. It is impossible to estimate the duration of the period represented by the prehistoric cemeteries; that the two kingdoms existed throughout unchanged is hardly probable.

According to the somatologist Elliott Smith, the most important change in the physical character of the people of Upper Egypt, in the entire range of Egyptian archaeology, took place at the beginning of the dynastic period; and he accounts for this by the mingling of the Lower with the Upper Egyptian population, consequent on the uniting of the two countries under one rule. From remains of the age of the IVth Dynasty he is able to define to some extent the type of the population of Lower Egypt as having a better cranial and muscular development than that of Upper Egypt, probably through immigration from Syria. The advent of the dynasties, however, produced a quickening rather than a dislocation in the development of civilization.

It is doubtful whether we possess any writing of the prehistoric age. A few names of the kings of Lower Egypt are preserved in the first line of the Palermo stone, but no annals are attached to them. Petrie considers that one of the kings buried at Abydos, provisionally called Nar-mer and whose real name may be Mer or Beza, preceded Menes; of him there are several inscribed records, notably a magnificent carved and inscribed slate palette found at Hieraconpolis, with figures of the king and his vizier, war-standards and prisoners. To identify him with Bezau (Boethos) of the IInd Dynasty runs counter to much archaeological evidence. Sethe places him next after Menes and some would identify him with that king. Another inscribed palette may be pre-dynastic; it perhaps mentions a king named “Scorpion.”

The Old Kingdom.—The names of a number of kings attributable to the Ist Dynasty are known from their tombs at Abydos. Unfortunately, they are almost exclusively Horus titles , in place of the personal names by The earliest dynasties. which they were recorded in the lists of Abydos and Manetho; some, however, of the latter are found, and prove that the scribes of the New Kingdom were unable to read them correctly. Important changes and improvements took place in the writing even during the Ist Dynasty. The personal name of Menes is given by one only of many relics of a king whose Horus-name was Aha, “the Fighter.” Doubts have been expressed about the identification with Menes, but it is strongly corroborated by the very archaic style of the remains. The name of Aha (Menes) was found in two tombs, one at Nagāda north of Thebes and nearly opposite the road to the Red Sea, the other at Abydos. Manetho makes the Ist Dynasty Thinite, this being the capital of the nome in which Abydos lay. Upper Egypt always had precedence over Lower Egypt, and it seems clear that Menes came from the former and conquered the latter. According to tradition he founded Memphis which lay on the frontier of his conquest; probably he resided there as well as at Abydos; at any rate relics of one of the later kings of the Ist Dynasty have already been recognized in its vast necropolis. Of the eight kings of the Ist Dynasty, three—the fifth, sixth and seventh in the Ramesside list of Abydos—are positively identified by tomb-remains from Abydos, and others are scarcely less certain. Two of the kings have also left tablets at the copper and turquoise mines of Wadi Maghāra in Sinai. The royal tombs are built of brick, but one of them, that of Usaphais, had its floor of granite from Elephantine. They must have been filled with magnificent furniture and provisions of every kind, including annual record-tablets of the reigns, carved in ivory and ebony. From a fragment on the Palermo stone it is clear that material existed as late as the Vth Dynasty for a brief note of the height of the Nile and other particulars in each year of the reign of these kings.

The IInd Dynasty of Manetho appears to have been separated from the Ist even on the Palermo stone; it also was Thinite, and the tombs of several of its nine (?) kings were found at Abydos. The IIIrd Dynasty is given as Memphite by Manetho. Two of the kings built huge mastaba-tombs at Bêt Khallaf near Abydos, but the architect and learned scribe Imhōtp designed for one of these two kings, named Zoser, a second and mightier monument at Memphis, the great step-pyramid of Sakkara. In Ptolemaic times Imhōtp was deified, and the traditional importance of Zoser is shown by a forged grant of the Dodecaschoenus to the cataract god Khnûm, purporting to be from his reign, but in reality dating from the Ptolemaic age. With Snefru, at the end of this dynasty, we reach the beginning of Egyptian history as it was known before the recent discoveries. Monuments and written records are henceforth more numerous and important, and the Palermo annals show a fuller scale of record. The events in the three years that are preserved include a successful raid upon the negroes, and the construction of ships and gates of cedar-wood which must have been brought from the forests of the Lebanon. Snefru also set up a tablet at Wadi Maghāra in Sinai. He built two pyramids, one of them at Mēdūm in steps, the other, probably in the perfected form, at Dahshūr, both lying between Memphis and the Fayūm.

Pyramids did not cease to be built in Egypt till the New Kingdom; but from the end of the IIIrd to the VIth Dynasty is pre-eminently the time when the royal pyramid in stone was the chief monument left by each successive king. Zoser and Snefru have been already noticed. The personal name enclosed in a cartouche is henceforth the commonest title of the king. We now reach the IVth Dynasty containing the famous The pyramid period. names of Cheops (q.v.), Chephren (Khafrê) and Mycerinus (Menkeurê), builders respectively of the Great, the Second and the Third Pyramids of Giza. In the best art of this time there was a grandeur which was never again attained. Perhaps the noblest example of Egyptian sculpture in the round is a diorite statue of Chephren, one of several found by Mariette in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx. This “temple” proves to be a monumental gate at the lower end of the great causeway leading to the plateau on which the pyramids were built. A king Dedefrê, between Cheops and Chephren, built a pyramid at Abu-Roāsh. Shepseskaf is one of the last in the dynasty. Tablets of most of these kings have been found at the mines of Wadi Maghāra. In the neighbourhood of the pyramids there are numerous mastabas of the court officials with fine sculpture in the chapels, and a few decorated tombs from the end of this centralized dynasty of absolute monarchs are known in Upper Egypt. A tablet which describes Cheops as the builder of various shrines about the Great Sphinx has been shown to be a priestly forgery, but the Sphinx itself may have been carved out of the rock under the splendid rule of the IVth Dynasty.

The Vth Dynasty is said to be of Elephantine, but this must be a mistake. Its kings worshipped Rē, the sun, rather than Horus, as their ancestor, and the title “son of the Sun” began to be written by them before the cartouche containing the personal name, while another “solar” cartouche, containing a name compounded with Rē, followed the title “king of Upper and Lower Egypt.” Sahurē and the other kings of the dynasty built magnificent temples with obelisks dedicated to Rē, one of which, that of Neuserrē at Abusīr, has been thoroughly explored. The marvellous tales of the Westcar Papyrus, dating from the Middle Kingdom, narrate how three of the kings were born of a priestess of Rē. The pyramids of several of the kings are known. The early ones are at Abusīr, and the best preserved of the pyramid temples, that of Sahurē, excavated by the German Orient-Gesellschaft, in its architecture and sculptured scenes has revealed an astonishingly complete development of art and architecture as well as of warlike enterprise by sea and land at this remote period; the latest pyramid belonging to the Vth Dynasty, that of Unas at Sakkāra, is inscribed with long ritual and magical texts. Exquisitely sculptured tombs of this time are very numerous at Memphis and are found throughout Upper Egypt. Of work in the traditional temples of the country no trace remains, probably because, being in limestone, it has all perished. The annals of the Palermo stone were engraved and added to during this dynasty; the chief events recorded for the time are gifts and endowments for the temples. Evidently priestly influence was strong at the court. Expeditions to Sinai and Puoni (Punt) are commemorated on tablets.

The VIth Dynasty if not more vigorous was more articulate; inscribed tombs are spread throughout the country. The most active of its kings was the third, named Pepi or Phiops, from whose pyramid at Sakkara the capital, hitherto known as “White Walls,” derived its later name of Memphis (mn-nfr, Mempi); a tombstone from Abydos celebrates the activity of a certain Una during the reigns of Pepi and his successor in organizing expeditions to the Sinai peninsula and south Palestine, and in transporting granite from Elephantine and other quarries. Herkhuf, prince of Elephantine and an enterprising leader of caravans to the south countries both in Nubia and the Libyan oases, flourished under Merenrē and Pepi II. called Neferkerē. On one occasion he brought home a dwarf dancer from the Sudan, described as being like one brought from Puoni in the time of the fifth-dynasty king Assa; this drew from the youthful Pepi II. an enthusiastic letter which was engraved in full upon the façade of Herkhuf’s tomb. The reign of the last-named king, begun early, lasted over ninety years, a fact so long remembered that even Manetho attributes to him ninety-four years; its length probably caused the ruin of the dynasty. The local princelings and monarchs had been growing in culture, wealth and power, and after Pepi II. an ominous gap in the monuments, pointing to civil war, marks the end of the Old Kingdom. The VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties are said to have been Memphite, but of them no record survives beyond some names of kings in the lists.

The Middle Kingdom.—The long Memphite rule was broken by the IXth and Xth Dynasties, of Heracleopolis Magna (Hês) in Middle Egypt. Kheti or Achthoës was apparently a favourite name with the kings, but they are very Heracleopolite period. obscure. They may have spread their rule by conquest over Upper Egypt and then overthrown the Memphite dynasty. The chief monuments of the period are certain inscribed tombs at Assiūt; it appears that one of the kings, whose praenomen was Mikerê, supported by a fleet and army from Upper Egypt, and especially by the prince of Assiūt, was restored to his paternal city of Heracleopolis, from which he had probably been driven out; his pyramid, however, was built in the old royal necropolis at Memphis. Later the princes of Thebes asserted their independence and founded the XIth Dynasty, which pushed its frontiers northwards until finally it occupied the whole country. Its kings were named Menthotp, from Mont, one of the gods of Thebes; others, perhaps sub-kings, were named Enyotf (Antef). They were buried at Thebes, whence the coffins of several were obtained by the early collectors of the 19th century. Nibhôtp Menthotp I. probably established his rule over all Egypt. The funerary temple of Nebheprê Menthotp III., the last but one of these kings, has been excavated by the Egypt Exploration Fund at Deir el Bahri, and must have been a magnificent monument. His successor Sankhkerê Menthotp IV. is known to have sent an expedition by the Red Sea to Puoni.

The XIIth Dynasty is the central point of the Middle Kingdom, to which the decline of the Memphite and the rise of the Heracleopolite dynasty mark the transition, while the growth of Thebes under the XIth Dynasty is its true starting-point. Monuments of the XIIth Dynasty are abundant and often of splendid design and workmanship, whereas previously there had been little produced since the VIth Dynasty that was not half barbarous. Although not much of the history of the XIIth Dynasty is ascertained, the Turin Papyrus and many dated inscriptions fix the succession and length of reign of the eight kings very accurately. The troubled times that the kingdom had passed through taught the long-lived monarchs the precaution of associating a competent successor on the throne. The nomarchs and the other feudal chiefs were inclined to strengthen themselves at the expense of their neighbours; a firm hand was required to hold them in check and distribute the honours as they were earned by faithful service. The tombs of the most favoured and wealthy princes are magnificent, particularly those of certain families in Middle Egypt at Beni Hasan, El Bersha, Assiūt and Deir Rīfa, and it is probable that each had a court and organization within his nome like that of the royal palace in miniature. Eventually, in the reigns of Senwosri III. and Amenemhê III., the succession of strong kings appears to have centralized all authority very completely. The names in the dynasty are Amenemhê (Ammenemes) and Senwosri (formerly read Usertesen or Senusert). The latter seems to be the origin of the Sesostris (q.v.) and Sesoosis of the legends. Amenemhê I., the first king, whose connexion with the previous dynasty is not known, reigned for thirty years, ten of them being in partnership with his son Senwosri I. He had to fight for his throne and then reorganize the country, removing his capital or residence from Thebes to a central situation near Lisht about 25 m. south of Memphis. His monuments are widespread in Egypt, the quarries and mines in the desert as far as Sinai bear witness to his great activity, and we know of an expedition which he made against the Nubians. The “Instructions of Amenemhê to his son Senwosri,” whether really his own or a later composition, refer to these things, to his care for his subjects, and to the ingratitude with which he was rewarded, an attempt on his life having been made by the trusted servants in his own palace. The story of Sinûhi is the true or realistic history of a soldier who, having overheard the secret intelligence of Amenemhê’s death, fled in fear to Palestine or Syria and there became rich in the favour of the prince of the land; growing old, however, he successfully sued for pardon from Senwosri and permission to return and die in Egypt.

Senwosri I. was already the executive partner in the time of the co-regency, warring with the Libyans and probably in the Sudan. After Amenemhê’s death he fully upheld the greatness of the dynasty in his long reign of forty-five years. The obelisk of Heliopolis is amongst his best-known monuments, and the damming of the Lake of Moeris (q.v.) must have been in progress in his reign. He built a temple far up the Nile at Wadi Halfa and there set up a stela commemorating his victories over the tribes of Nubia. The fine tombs of Ameni at Beni Hasan and of Hepzefa at Assiūt belong to his reign. The pyramids of both father and son are at Lisht.

Amenemhê II. was buried at Dahshūr; he was followed by Senwosri II., whose pyramid is at Illahūn at the mouth of the Fayūm. In his reign were executed the fine paintings in the tomb of Khnemhotp at Beni Hasan, which include a remarkable scene of Semitic Bedouins bringing eye-paint to Egypt from the eastern deserts. In Manetho he is identified with Sesostris (see above), but Senwosri I., and still more Senwosri III., have a better claim to this distinction. The latter warred in Palestine and in Nubia, and marked the south frontier of his kingdom by a statue and stelae at Semna beyond the Second Cataract. Near his pyramid was discovered the splendid jewelry of some princesses of his family (see Jewelry ad init.). The tomb of Thethotp at El Bersha, celebrated for the scene of the transport of a colossus amongst its paintings, was finished in this reign.

Amenemhê III. completed the work of Lake Moeris and began a series of observations of the height of the inundation at Semna which was continued by his successors. In his long reign of forty-six years he built a pyramid at Dahshūr, and at Hawāra near the Lake of Moeris another pyramid together with the Labyrinth which seems to have been an enormous funerary temple attached to the pyramid. His name was remembered in the Fayūm during the Graeco-Roman period and his effigy worshipped there as Pera-marres, i.e. Pharaoh Marres (Marres being his praenomen graecized). Amenemhê IV.’s reign was short, and the dynasty ended with a queen Sebeknefru (Scemiophris), whose name is found in the scanty remains of the Labyrinth. The XIIth Dynasty numbered eight rulers and lasted for 213 years. Great as it was, it created no empire outside the Nile valley, and its most imposing monument, which according to the testimony of the ancients rivalled the pyramids, is now represented by a vast stratum of chips.

The history of the following period down to the rise of the New Empire is very obscure. Manetho gives us the XIIIth (Diospolite) Dynasty, the XIVth (Xoite from Xois in Lower Egypt), the XVth and XVIth (Hyksos) and the XVIIth (Diospolite), but his names are lost except for the Hyksos kings. The Abydos tablet ignores all between the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties. The Turin Papyrus preserves many names on its shattered fragments, and the monuments are for ever adding to the list, but it is difficult to assign them accurately to their places. The Hyksos names can in some cases be recognized by their foreign aspect, the peculiar style of the scarabs on which they are engraved or by resemblances to those recorded in Manetho. The kings of the XVIIth Dynasty too are generally recognizable by the form of their name and other circumstances. Manetho indicates marvellous crowding for the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties, but it seems better to suggest a total duration of 300 or 400 years for the whole period than to adopt Meyer’s estimate of about 210 years (see above, Chronology).

Amongst the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty (including perhaps the XIVth), not a few are represented by granite statues of colossal size and fine workmanship, especially at Thebes and Tanis, some by architectural fragments, some by graffiti on the rocks about the First Cataract. Some few certainly reigned over all Egypt. Sebkhotp (Sekhotp, Σοχωτης) is a favourite name, no doubt to be connected with the god of the Fayūm. Several of the Theban kings named Antef (Enyotf) must be placed here rather than in the XIth Dynasty. A decree of one of them degrading a monarch who had sided with his enemies was found at Coptos engraved on a doorway of Senwosri I.

In its divided state Egypt would fall an easy prey to the foreigner. Manetho says that the Hyksos (q.v.) gained Egypt without a blow. Their domination must have lasted a considerable time, the Rhind mathematical papyrus The Hyksos period. having been copied in the thirty-third year of a king Apophis. The monuments and scarabs of the Hyksos kings are found throughout Upper and Lower Egypt; those of Khian somehow spread as far as Crete and Bagdad. The Hyksos, in whom Josephus recognized the children of Israel, worshipped their own Syrian deity, identifying him with the Egyptian god Seth, and endeavoured to establish his cult throughout Egypt to the detriment of the native gods. It is to be hoped that definite light may one day be forthcoming on the whole of this critical episode which had such a profound effect on the character and history of the Egyptian people. The spirited overthrow of the Hyksos ushered in the glories in arms and arts which marked the New Empire. The XVIIth Dynasty probably began the struggle, at first as semi-independent kinglets at Thebes. Seqenenrê is here a leading name; the mummy of the third Seqenenrê, the earliest in the great find of royal mummies at Deir el Bahri, shows the head frightfully hacked and split, perhaps in a battle with the Hyksos.

The New Empire.—The epithet “new” is generally attached to this period, and “empire” instead of “kingdom” marks its wider power. The glorious XVIIIth Dynasty seems to have been closely related to the XVIIth. Its first XVIIIth Dynasty. task was to crush the Hyksos power in the north-east of the Delta; this was fully accomplished by its founder Ahmosi (dialectically Ahmasi, Amōsis or Amāsis I.) capturing their great stronghold of Avāris. Amasis next attacked them in S.W. Palestine, where he captured Sharuhen after a siege of three years. He fought also in Syria and in Nubia, besides overcoming factious opposition in his own land. The principal source for the history of this time is the biographical inscription at El Kab of a namesake of the king, Ahmosi son of Abana, a sailor and warrior whose exploits extend to the reign of Tethmōsis I. Amenōphis I. (Amenhotp), succeeding Amasis, fought in Libya and Ethiopia. Tethmosis I. (c. 1540 b.c.) was perhaps of another family, but obtained his title to the throne through his wife Ahmosi. After some thirty years of settled rule uninterrupted by revolt, Egypt was now strong and rich enough to indulge to the full its new taste for war and lust of conquest. It had become essentially a military state. The whole of the administration was in the hands of the king with his vizier and other court officials; no trace of the feudalism of the Middle Kingdom survived. Tethmosis thoroughly subdued Cush, which had already been placed under the government of a viceroy. This province of Cush extended from Napata just below the Fourth Cataract on the south to El Kab in the north, so that it included the first three nomes of Upper Egypt, which agriculturally were not greatly superior to Nubia. Turning next to Syria, Tethmosis carried his arms as far as the Euphrates. It is possible that his predecessor had also reached this point, but no record survives to prove it. These successful campaigns were probably not very costly, and prisoners, plunder and tribute poured in from them to enrich Egypt. Tethmosis I. made the first of those great additions to the temple of the Theban Ammon at Karnak by which the Pharaohs of the Empire rendered it by far the greatest of the existing temples in the world. The temple of Deir el Bahri also was designed by him. Towards the end of his reign, Queen Hatshepsut. his elder sons being dead, Tethmosis associated Hatshepsut, his daughter by Ahmosi, with himself upon the throne. Tethmosis I. was the first of the long line of kings to be buried in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings of Thebes. At his death another son Tethmosis II. succeeded as the husband of his half-sister, but reigned only two or three years, during which he warred in Nubia and placed Tethmosis III., his son by a concubine Ēsi, upon the throne beside him (c. 1500 b.c.). After her husband’s death the ambitious Hatshepsut assumed the full regal power; upon her monuments she wears the masculine garb and aspect of a king though the feminine gender is retained for her in the inscriptions. On some monuments of this period her name appears alone, on others in conjunction with that of Tethmosis III., while the latter again may appear without the queen’s; but this extraordinary woman must have had a great influence over her stepson and was the acknowledged ruler of Egypt. Tethmosis, to judge by the evidence of his mummy and the chronology of his reign, was already a grown man, yet no sign of the immense powers which he displayed later has come down to us from the joint reign. Hatshepsut cultivated the arts of peace. She restored the worship in those temples of Upper and Lower Egypt which had not yet recovered from the religious oppression and neglect of the Hyksos. She completed and decorated the temple of Deir el Bahri, embellishing its walls with scenes calculated to establish her claims, representing her divine origin and upbringing under the protection of Ammon, and her association on the throne by her human father. The famous sculptures of the great expedition by water to Puoni, the land of incense on the Somali coast, are also here, with many others. At Karnak Hatshepsut laboured chiefly to complete the works projected in the reigns of Tethmosis I. and II., and set up two obelisks in front of the entrance as it then was. One of these, still standing, is the most brilliant ornament of that wonderful temple. A date of the twenty-second year of her reign has been found at Sinai, no doubt counted from the beginning of the co-regency with Tethmosis I. Not much later, in his twenty-second year, Tethmosis III. is reigning alone in full vigour. While she lived, the personality of the queen secured the devotion of her servants and held all ambitions in check. Not long after her death there was a violent reaction. Prejudice against the rule of a woman, particularly one who had made her name and figure so conspicuous, was probably the cause of this outbreak, and perhaps sought justification in the fact that, however complete was her right, she had in some degree usurped a place to which her stepson (who was also her nephew) had been appointed. Her cartouches began to be defaced or her monuments hidden up by other buildings, and the same rage pursued some of her most faithful servants in their tombs. But the beauty of the work seems to have restrained the hand of the destroyer. Then came the religious fanaticism of Akhenaton, mutilating all figures of Ammon and all inscriptions containing his name; this made havoc of the exquisite monuments of Hatshepsut; and the restorers of the XIXth Dynasty, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the queen, had no scruples in replacing her names by those of the associate kings Tethmosis I., II. or III. These acts of vandalism took place throughout Egypt, but in the distant mines of Sinai the cartouches of Hatshepsut are untouched. In the royal lists of Seti I. and Rameses II. Hatshepsut has no place, nor is her reign referred to on any later monument.20

The immense energy of Tethmosis III. now found its outlet in war. Syria had revolted, perhaps on Hatshepsut’s death, but by his twenty-second year the monarch was ready to lead his army against the rebels. The revolt, headed Wars of Tethmosis III. by the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, embraced the whole of western Syria. The movements of Tethmosis in this first campaign, including a battle with the Syrian chariots and infantry at Megiddo and the capture of that city, were chronicled from day to day, and an extract from this chronicle is engraved on the walls of the sanctuary of Karnak, together with a brief record of the subsequent expeditions. In a series of five carefully planned campaigns he consolidated his conquests in southern Syria and secured the ports of Phoenicia (q.v.). Kadesh fell in the sixth campaign. In the next year Tethmosis revisited the Phoenician ports, chastised the rebellious and received the tribute of Syria, all the while preparing for further advance, which did not take place until another year had gone by. Then, in the thirty-third year of his reign, he marched through Kadesh, fought his way to Carchemish, defeated the forces that opposed him there and crossed over the Euphrates into the territory of the king of Mitanni. He set up a tablet by the side of that of Tethmosis I. and turned southward, following the river as far as Niy. Here he stayed to hunt a herd of 120 elephants, and then, marching westwards, received the tribute of Naharina and gifts from the Hittites in Asia Minor and from the king of Babylon. In all he fought seventeen campaigns in Syria until the spirit of revolt was entirely crushed in a second capture of Kadesh. The wars in Libya and Ethiopia were of less moment. In the intervals of war Tethmosis III. proved to be a wonderfully efficient administrator, with his eye on every corner of his dominions. The Syrian expeditions occupied six months in most of his best years, but the remaining time was spent in activity at home, repressing robbery and injustice, rebuilding and adorning temples with the labour of his captives and the plunder and tribute of conquered cities, or designing with his own hand the gorgeous sacred vessels of the sanctuary of Ammon. In his later years some expeditions took place into Nubia. Tethmosis died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign. His mummy, found in the cachette at Deir el Bahri, is said to be that of a very old man. He was the greatest Pharaoh in the New Empire, if not in all Egyptian history.

Tethmosis III. was succeeded by his son Amenophis II., whom he had associated on the throne at the end of his reign. One of the first acts of the new king was to lead an army into Syria, where revolt was again rife; he reached and perhaps crossed the Euphrates and returned home to Thebes with seven captive kings of Tikhsi and much spoil. The kings he sacrificed to Ammon and hanged six bodies on the walls, while the seventh was carried south to Napata and there exposed as a terror to the Ethiopians. Amenophis reigned twenty-six years and left his throne to his son Tethmosis IV., who is best remembered by a granite tablet recording his clearance of the Great Sphinx. He also warred in northern Syria and in Cush. His son Amenophis III., c. 1400 b.c., was a mighty builder, especially at Thebes, where his reign marks a new epoch in the history of the great temples, Luxor being his creation, while avenues of rams, pylons, &c., were added on a vast scale to Karnak. He married a certain Taia, who, though apparently of humble parentage, was held in Amenophis III. great honour by her husband as afterwards by her son. Amenophis III. warred in Ethiopia, but his sway was long unquestioned from Napata to the Euphrates. Small objects with his name and that of Taia are found on the mainland and in the islands of Greece. Through the fortunate discovery of cuneiform tablets deposited by his successor in the archives at Tell el-Amarna, we can see how the rulers of the great kingdoms beyond the river, Mitanni, Assyria and even Babylonia, corresponded with Amenophis, gave their daughters to him in marriage, and congratulated themselves on having his friendship. The king of Cyprus too courted him; while within the empire the descendants of the Syrian dynasts conquered by his father, having been educated in Egypt, ruled their paternal possessions as the abject slaves of Pharaoh. A constant stream of tribute poured into Egypt, sufficient to defray the cost of all the splendid works that were executed. Amenophis caused a series of large scarabs unique in their kind to be engraved with the name and parentage of his queen Taia, followed by varying texts commemorating like medals the boundaries of his kingdom, his secondary marriage with Gilukhipa, daughter of the king of Mitanni, the formation of a sacred lake at Thebes, a great hunt of wild cattle, and the number of lions the king slew in the first ten years of his reign. The colossi known to the Greeks by the name of the Homeric hero Memnon, which look over the western plain of Thebes, represent this king and were placed before the entrance of his funerary temple, the rest of which has disappeared. His palace lay farther south on the west bank, built of crude brick covered with painted stucco. Towards the end of his reign of thirty-six years, Syria was invaded by the Hittites from the north and the people called the Khabiri from the eastern desert; some of the kinglets conspired with the invaders to overthrow the Egyptian power, while those who remained loyal sent alarming reports to their sovereign.

Amenophis IV., son of Amenophis III. and Taia, was perhaps the most remarkable character in the long line of the Pharaohs. He was a religious fanatic, who had probably been high priest of the sun-god at Heliopolis, and had come to Amenophis IV. view the sun as the visible source of life, creation, growth and activity, whose power was demonstrated in foreign lands almost as clearly as in Egypt. Thrusting aside all the multitudinous deities of Egypt and all the mythology even of Heliopolis, he devoted himself to the cult of the visible sun-disk, applying to it as its chief name the hitherto rare word Aton, meaning “sun”; the traditional divine name Harakht (Horus of the horizon), given to the hawk-headed sun-god of Heliopolis, was however allowed to subsist and a temple was built at Karnak to this god. The worship of the other gods was officially recognized until his fifth year, but then a sweeping reform was initiated by which apparently the new cult alone was permitted. Of the old deities Ammon represented by far the wealthiest and most powerful interests, and against this long favoured deity the Pharaoh hurled himself with fury. He changed his own name from Amenhotp, “Ammon is satisfied,” to Akhenaton, “pious to Aton,” erased the name and figure of Ammon from the monuments, even where it occurred as part of his own father’s name, abandoned Thebes, the magnificent city of Ammon, and built a new capital at El Amarna in the plain of Hermopolis, on a virgin site upon the edge of the desert. This with a large area around he dedicated to Aton in the sixth year, while splendid temples, palaces, houses and tombs for his god, for himself and for his courtiers were rising around him; apparently also this “son of Aton” swore an oath never to pass beyond the boundaries of Aton’s special domain. There are signs also that the polytheistic word “gods” was obliterated on many of the monuments, but other divine names, though almost entirely excluded from Akhenaton’s work, were left untouched where they already existed. In all local temples the worship of Aton was instituted. The confiscated revenues of Ammon and the tribute from Syria and Cush provided ample means for adorning Ekhaton (Akhetaton), “the horizon of Aton,” the new capital, and for richly rewarding those who adopted the Aton teaching fervently. But meanwhile the political needs of the empire were neglected; the dangers which threatened it at the end of the reign of Amenophis III. were never properly met; the dynasts in Syria were at war amongst themselves, intriguing with the great Hittite advance and with the Khabiri invaders. Those who relied on Pharaoh and remained loyal as their fathers had done sent letter after letter appealing for aid against their foes. But though a general was despatched with some troops, he seems to have done more harm than good in misjudging the quarrels. At length the tone of the letters becomes one of despair, in which flight to Egypt appears the only resource left for the adherents of the Egyptian cause. Before the end of the reign Egyptian rule in Syria had probably ceased altogether. Akhenaton died in or about the seventeenth year of his reign, c. 1350 b.c. He had a family of daughters, who appeared constantly with him in all ceremonies, but no son. Two sons-in-law followed him with brief reigns; but the second, Tutenkhaton, soon changed his name to Tutenkhamûn, and, without abandoning Ekhaton entirely, began to restore to Karnak its ancient splendour, with new monuments dedicated to Ammon. Akhenaton’s reform had not reached deep amongst the masses of the population; they probably retained all their old religious customs and superstitions, while the priesthoods throughout the country must have been fiercely opposed to the heretic’s work, even if silenced during his lifetime by force and bribes. One more adherent of his named Ay, a priest, ruled for a short time, but now Aton was only one of many gods. At length a general named Harmahib, who had served under Akhenaton, came to the throne as a whole-hearted supporter of the old religion; soon Aton and his royal following suffered the fate that they had imposed upon Ammon; their monuments were destroyed and their names and figures erased, while those of Ammon were restored. From the time of Rameses II. onwards the years of the reigns of the heretics were counted to Harmahib, and Akhenaton was described as “that criminal of Akhetaton.” Harmahib had to bring order as a practical man into the long-neglected administration of the country and to suppress the extortions of the official classes by severe measures. His laws to this end were engraved on a great stela in the temple of Karnak, of which sufficient remains to bear witness to his high aims, while the prosperity of the succeeding reigns shows how well he realized the necessities of the state. He probably began also to re-establish the prestige of Egypt by military expeditions in the surrounding countries.

Harmahib appears to have legitimated his rule by marriage to a royal princess, but it is probable that Rameses I., who succeeded as founder of the XIXth Dynasty, was not closely related to him. Rameses in his brief reign of XIXth Dynasty. two years planned and began the great colonnaded hall of Karnak, proving that he was a man of great ideas, though probably too old to carry them out; this task he left to his son Seti I., who reigned one year with his father and on the latter’s death was ready at once to subdue the Bedouin Shasu, who had invaded Palestine and withheld all tribute. This task was quickly accomplished and Seti pushed onward to the Lebanon. Here cedars were felled for him by the Syrian princes, and the Phoenicians paid homage before he returned home in triumph. The Libyans had also to be dealt with, and afterwards Seti advanced again through Palestine, ravaged the land of the Amorites and came into conflict with the Hittites. The latter, however, were now firmly established in the Orontes valley, and a treaty with Mutallu, the king of Kheta, reigning far away in Cappadocia, probably ended the wars of Seti. In his ninth year he turned his attention to the gold mines in the eastern desert of Nubia and improved the road thither. Meanwhile the great work at Karnak projected by his father was going forward, and throughout Egypt the injuries done to the monuments by Akhenaton were thoroughly repaired; the erased inscriptions and figures were restored, not without many blunders. Seti’s temple at Abydos and his galleried tomb in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings stand out as the most splendid examples of their kind in design and in Rameses II. decoration. Rameses II. succeeded at an early age and reigned sixty-seven years, during which he finished much that was begun by Seti and filled all Egypt and Nubia with his own monuments, some of them beautiful, but most, necessarily entrusted to inferior workmen, of coarse execution. The excavation of the rock temple of Abu Simbel and the completion of the great hall of Karnak were his greatest achievements in architecture. His wars began in his second year, their field comprising the Nubians, the Libyans, the Syrians and the Hittites. In his fifth year, near Kadesh on the Orontes, his army was caught unprepared and divided by a strong force of chariots of the Hittites and their allies, and Rameses himself was placed in the most imminent danger; but through his personal courage the enemy was kept at bay till reinforcements came up and turned the disaster into a victory. The incidents of this episode were a favourite subject in the sculptures of his temples, where their representation was accompanied by a poetical version of the affair and other explanatory inscriptions. Kadesh, however, was not captured, and after further contests, in his twenty-first year Rameses and the Hittite king Khattusil (Kheta-sar) made peace, with a defensive alliance against foreign aggression and internal revolt (see Hittites). Thanks to Winckler’s discoveries, the cuneiform text of this treaty from Boghaz Keui can now be compared with the hieroglyphic text at Karnak. In the thirty-fourth year, c. 1250 b.c., Khattusil with his friend or subject the king of Kode came from his distant capital to see the wonders of Egypt in person, bringing one of his daughters to be wife of the splendid Pharaoh. Rameses II. paid much attention to the Delta, which had been neglected until the days of Seti I., and resided there constantly; the temple of Tanis must have been greatly enlarged and adorned by him; a colossus of the king placed here was over 90 ft. in height, exceeding in scale even the greatest of the Theban colossi which he had erected in his mortuary temple of the Ramesseum. Towards the end of the long reign the vigilance and energy of the old king diminished. The military spirit awakened in the struggle with the Hyksos had again departed from the Egyptian nation; mercenaries from the Sudan, from Libya and from the northern nations supplied the armies, while foreigners settled in the rich lands of the Delta and harried the coasts. It was a time too when the movements of the nations that so frequently occurred in the ancient world were about to be particularly active. Mineptah, c. 1225 b.c., succeeding his father Rameses II., had to fight many battles for the preservation of his kingdom and empire. Apparently most of the fighting was finished by the fifth year of his reign; in his mortuary temple at Thebes he set up a stela of that date recording a great victory over the Libyan immigrants and invaders, which rendered the much harried land of Egypt safe. The last lines picture this condition with the crushing of the surrounding tribes. Libya was wasted, the Hittites pacified, Canaan, Ashkelon (Ascalon), Gezer, Yenoam sacked and plundered: “Israel is desolated, his seed is not, Khor (Palestine) has become a widow (without protector) for Egypt.” The Libyans are accompanied by allies whose names, Sherden, Shekelesh, Ekwesh, Lukku, Teresh, suggest identifications with Sardinians, Sicels, Achaeans, Lycians and Tyrseni or Etruscans. The Sherden had been in the armies of Rameses II., and are distinguished by their remarkable helmets and apparently body armour of metal. The Lukku are certainly the same as the Lycians. Probably they were all sea-rovers from the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, who were willing to leave their ships and join the Libyans in raids on the rich lands of Egypt. Mineptah was one of the most unconscionable usurpers of the monuments of his predecessors, including those of his own father, who, it must be admitted, had set him the example. The coarse cutting of his cartouches contrasts with the splendid finish of the Middle Kingdom work which they disfigure. It may be questioned whether it was due to a wave of enthusiasm amongst the priests and people, leading them to rededicate the monuments in the name of their deliverer, or a somewhat insane desire of the king to perpetuate his own memory in a singularly unfortunate manner. Mineptah, the thirteenth son in the huge family of Rameses, must have been old when he ascended the throne; after his first years of reign his energies gave way, and he was followed by a quick succession of inglorious rulers, Seti II., the queen Tuosri, Amenmesse, Siptah; the names of the last two were erased from their monuments.

A great papyrus written after the death of Rameses III. and recording his gifts to the temples briefly reviews the conditions of these troublous times. “The land of Egypt was in the hands of chiefs and rulers of towns, great and XXth Dynasty. small slaying each other; afterwards a certain Syrian made himself chief; he made the whole land tributary before him; he united his companions and plundered their property (i.e. of the other chiefs). They made the gods like men, and no offerings were presented in the temples. But when the gods inclined themselves to peace ... they established their son Setenkhot (Setnekht) to be ruler of every land.” Of the Syrian occupation we know nothing further. Setenkhot, c. 1200 b.c., had a very short reign and was not counted as legitimate, but he established a lasting dynasty (probably by conciliating the priesthood). He was father of Rameses III., who revived the glories of the empire. The dangers that menaced Egypt now were similar to those which Mineptah had to meet at his accession. Again the Libyans and the “peoples of the sea” were acting in concert. The latter now comprised Peleset (the Cretans, ancestors of the Philistines), Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen (Danaoi?) and Weshesh; they had invaded Syria from Asia Minor, reaching the Euphrates, destroying the Hittite cities and progressing southwards, while their ships gathered plunder from the coasts of the Delta. This fleet joined the Libyan invaders, but was overthrown with heavy loss by the Egyptians, in whose ranks there actually served many Sherden and Kehaka, Sardinian and Libyan mercenaries. Egypt itself was thus clear of enemies; but the chariots and warriors of the Philistines and their associates were advancing through Syria, their families and goods following in ox-carts, and their ships accompanying them along the shore. Rameses led out his army and fleet against them and struck them so decisive a blow that the migrating swarm submitted to his rule and paid him tribute. In his eleventh year another Libyan invasion had to be met, and his suzerainty in Palestine forcibly asserted. His vigour was equal to all these emergencies and the later years of his reign were spent in peace. Rameses III., however, was not a great ruler. He was possessed by the spirit of decadence, imitative rather than originating. It is evident that Rameses II. was the model to which he endeavoured to conform, and he did not attempt to preserve himself from the weakening influences of priestcraft. To the temples he not only restored the property which had been given to them by former kings, but he also added greatly to their wealth; the Theban Ammon naturally received by far the greatest share, more than those of all the other gods together. The land held in the name of different deities is estimated at about 15% of the whole of Egypt; various temples of Ammon owned two-thirds of this, Re of Heliopolis and Ptah of Memphis being the next in wealth. His palace was at Medinet Habu on the west bank of Thebes in the south quarter; and here he built a great temple to Ammon, adorned with scenes from his victories and richly provided with divine offerings. Although Egypt probably was prosperous on the whole, there was undoubtedly great distress amongst certain portions of the population. We read in a papyrus of a strike of starving labourers in the Theban necropolis who would not work until corn was given to them, and apparently the government storehouse was empty at the time, perhaps in consequence of a bad Nile. Shortly before the death of the old king a plot in the harem to assassinate him, and apparently to place one of his sons on the throne, was discovered and its investigation ordered, leading after his death to the condemnation of many high-placed men and women. Nine kings of the name of Rameses now followed each other ingloriously in the space of about eighty years to the end of the XXth Dynasty, the power of the high priests of Ammon ever growing at their expense. At this time the Theban necropolis was being more systematically robbed than ever before. Under Rameses IX. an investigation took place which showed that one of the royal tombs before the western cliffs had been completely ransacked and the mummies burnt. Three years later the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings was attacked and the sepulchres of Seti I. and Rameses II. were robbed.

The authority of the last king of the XXth Dynasty, Rameses XII., was shadowy. Hrihor, the high priest in his reign, gradually gathered into his own hands all real power, and succeeded him at Thebes, c. 1100 b.c., The Deltaic Dynasties; Libyan period. while a prince at Tanis named Smendes (Esbentêti) founded a separate dynasty in the Delta (Dynasty XXI.). From this period dates a remarkable papyrus containing the report of an envoy named Unamûn, sent to Syria by Hrihor to obtain cedar timber from Byblus. He took with him an image of Ammon to bestow life and health on the prince of Byblus, but apparently no other provision for the journey or for the negotiations beyond a letter of recommendation to Smendes and a little gold and silver. Smendes had trading ships in the Phoenician ports, but even his influence was not greater than that of other commercial or pirate centres, while Hrihor was of no account except in so far as he might pay well for the cedar wood he required. Unamûn was robbed on the voyage, the prince of Byblus rebuffed him, and when at last the latter agreed to provide the timber it was only in exchange for substantial gifts hastily sent for from Egypt (including rolls of papyrus) and the promise of more to follow. The prince, however, seems to have acknowledged to some extent the divinity of Ammon and the debt owed by Phoenicia to Egyptian culture, and pitied the many misfortunes of Unamûn. The narrative shows the feebleness of Egypt abroad. The Tanite line of kings generally had the over-lordship of the high priests of Thebes; the descendants of Hrihor, however, sometimes by marriage with princesses of the other line, could assume cartouches and royal titles, and in some cases perhaps ruled the whole of Egypt. Ethiopia may have been ruled with the Thebais, but the records of the time are very scanty. Syria was wholly lost to Egypt. The mummies from the despoiled tombs of the kings were the object of much anxious care to the kings of this dynasty; after being removed from one tomb to another, they were finally deposited in a shaft near the temple of Deir el Bahri, where they remained for nearly three thousand years, until the demand for antiquities at last brought the plunderer once more to their hiding-place; eventually they were all secured for the Cairo museum, where they may now be seen.

Libyan soldiers had long been employed in the army, and their military chiefs settled in the large towns and acquired wealth and power, while the native rulers grew weaker and weaker. The Tanite dynasty may have risen from a Libyan stock, though there is nothing to prove it; the XXIInd Dynasty are clearly from their names of foreign extraction, and their genealogy indicates distinctly a Libyan military origin in a family of rulers of Heracleopolis Magna, in Middle Egypt. Sheshonk (Shishak) I., the founder of the dynasty, c. 950 b.c., seems to have fixed his residence at Bubastis in the Delta, and his son married the daughter of the last king of the Tanite dynasty. Heracleopolis seems henceforth for several centuries to have been capital of Middle Egypt, which was considered as a more or less distinct province. Sheshonk secured Thebes, making one of his sons high priest of Ammon, and whereas Solomon appears to have dealt with a king of Egypt on something like an equal footing, Sheshonk re-established Egyptian rule in Palestine and Nubia, and his expedition in the fifth year of Rehoboam subdued Israel as well as Judah, to judge by the list of city names which he inscribed on the wall of the temple of Karnak. Osorkon I. inherited a prosperous kingdom from his father, but no further progress was made. It required a strong hand to curb the Libyan chieftains, and divisions soon began to show themselves in the kingdom. The XXIInd Dynasty lasted through many generations; but there were rival kings, and M. Legrain thinks that he has proof that the XXIIIrd Dynasty was contemporaneous with the end of the XXIInd. The kings of the XXIIIrd Dynasty had little hold upon the subject princes, who spent the resources of the country in feuds amongst themselves. A native kingdom had meanwhile been established in Ethiopia. Our first knowledge of it is at this moment, when the Ethiopian king Pankhi already held the Thebais. The energetic prince of Sais, Tefnakht, followed by most of the princes of the Delta, subdued most of Middle Egypt, and by uniting these forces threatened the Ethiopian border. Heracleopolis Magna, however, with its petty king Pefteuaubasti, held out against Tefnakht, and Pankhi coming to its aid not only drove Tefnakht out of Middle Egypt, but also captured Memphis and received the submission of the princes and chiefs; in all these included four “kings” and fourteen other chiefs. According to Diodorus the Ethiopian state was theocratic, ruled through the king by the priests of Ammon. The account is probably exaggerated; but even in Pankhi’s record the piety of the king, especially towards Ammon, is very marked.

The XXIVth Dynasty consisted of a single Saite king named Bocchoris (Bekerrinf), son of Tefnachthus, apparently the above Tefnakht. Another Ethiopian invader, Shabako (Sabacon), is said to have burnt Bocchoris alive. The Ethiopian Dynasty. Ethiopian rule of the XXVth Dynasty was now firmly established, and the resources of the two countries together might have been employed in conquest in Syria and Phoenicia; but at this very time the Assyrian empire, risen to the highest pitch of military greatness, began to menace Egypt. The Ethiopian could do no more than encourage or support the Syrians in their fight for freedom against Sargon and Sennacherib. Shabako was followed by Shebitku and Shebitku by Tirhaka (Tahrak, Taracos). Tirhaka was energetic in opposing the Assyrian advance, but in 670 b.c. Esarhaddon defeated his army on the border of Egypt, captured Memphis with the royal harem and took great spoil. The Egyptian resistance to the Assyrians was probably only half-hearted; in the north especially there must have been a strong party against the Ethiopian rule. Tirhaka laboured to propitiate the north country, and probably rendered the Ethiopian rule acceptable throughout Egypt. Notwithstanding, the Assyrian king entrusted the government and collection of tribute to the native chiefs; twenty princes in all are enumerated in the records, including one Assyrian to hold the key of Egypt at Pelusium. Scarcely had Esarhaddon withdrawn before Tirhaka returned from his refuge in the south and the Assyrian garrisons were massacred. Esarhaddon promptly prepared a second expedition, but died on the way to Egypt in 668 b.c.; his son Assur-bani-pal sent it forward, routed Tirhaka and reinstated the governors. At the head of these was Necho (Niku), king of Sais and Memphis, father of Psammetichus, the founder of the XXVIth Dynasty. We next hear that correspondence with Tirhaka was intercepted, and that Necho, together with Pekrûr of Psapt (at the entrance to the Wadi Tumilat) and the Assyrian governor of Pelusium, was taken to Nineveh in chains to answer the charge of treason. Whatever may have occurred, it was deemed politic to send Necho back loaded with honours and surrounded by a retinue of Assyrian officials. Upper Egypt, however, was loyal to Tirhaka, and even at Memphis the burial of an Apis bull was dated by the priests as in his reign. Immediately afterwards he died. His nephew Tandamane, received by the Upper country with acclamations, besieged and captured Memphis, Necho being probably slain in the encounter. But in 661 (?) Assur-bani-pal drove the Ethiopian out of Lower Egypt, pursued him up the Nile and sacked Thebes. This was the last and most tremendous visitation of the Assyrian scourge.

Psammetichus (Psammêtk), 664-610 b.c., the son of Necho, succeeded his father as a vassal of Assyria in his possessions of Memphis and Sais, allied himself with Gyges, king of Lydia, and aided by Ionian and Carian mercenaries, XXVIth Dynasty. extended and consolidated his power.21 By the ninth year of his reign he was in full possession of Thebes. Assur-bani-pal’s energies throughout this crisis were entirely occupied with revolts nearer home, in Babylon, Elam and Arabia. The Assyrian arms again triumphed everywhere, but at the cost of complete exhaustion. Under the firm and wise rule of Psammetichus, Egypt recovered its prosperity after the terrible losses inflicted by internal wars and the decade of Assyrian invasions. The revenue went up by leaps and bounds. Psammetichus guarded the frontiers of Egypt with three strong garrisons, placing the Ionian and Carian mercenaries especially at the Pelusiac Daphnae in the N.E., from which quarter the most formidable enemy was likely to appear. The Assyrians did not move against him, but a great Scythian horde, destroying all before it in its southward advance, is said by Herodotus to have been turned back by presents and entreaties. Diplomacy backed up by vigorous preparations may have deterred the Scythians from the dangerous enterprise of crossing the desert to Egypt. Before his death Psammetichus had advanced into southern Palestine and captured Azotus.

When Psammetichus began to reign the situation of Egypt was very different from what it had been under the Empire. The development of trade in the Mediterranean and contact with new peoples and new civilizations in peace and war had given birth to new ideas among the Egyptians and at the same time to a loss of confidence in their own powers. The Theban supremacy was gone and the Delta was now the wealthy and progressive part of Egypt; piety increased amongst the masses, unenterprising and unwarlike, but proud of their illustrious antiquity. Thebes and Ammon and the traditions of the Empire savoured too much now of the Ethiopian; the priests of the Memphite and Deltaic dynasty thereupon turned deliberately for their models to the times of the ancient supremacy of Memphis, and the sculptures and texts on tomb and temple had to conform as closely as possible to those of the Old Kingdom. In other than religious matters, however, the Egyptians were inventing and perhaps borrowing. To enumerate a few examples of this which are already definitely known: we find that the forms of legal and business documents became more precise; the mechanical arts of casting in bronze on a core and of moulding figures and pottery were brought to the highest pitch of excellence; and portraiture in the round on its highest plane was better than ever before and admirably lifelike, revealing careful study of the external anatomy of the individual.

Psammetichus died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign and was succeeded by his son Necho, 610-594 b.c. Taking advantage of the helpless state of the Assyrians, whose capital was assailed by the Medes and the Babylonians, the new Pharaoh prepared an expedition to recover the ancient possessions of the Empire in Syria. Josiah alone, faithful to the king of Assyria, opposed him with his feeble force at Megiddo and was easily overcome and slain. Necho went forward to the Euphrates, put the land to tribute, and, in the case of Judah at any rate, filled the throne with his own nominee (see Jehoiakim). The fall of Nineveh and the division of the spoil gave to Nabopolasser, king of Babylon, the inheritance of the Assyrians in the west, and he at once despatched his son Nebuchadrezzar to fight Necho. The Babylonian and Egyptian forces met at Carchemish (605), and the rout of the latter was so complete that Necho relinquished Syria and might have lost Egypt as well had not the death of Nabopolasser recalled the victor to Babylon. Herodotus relates that in Necho’s reign a Phoenician ship despatched from Egypt actually circumnavigated Africa, and the attempt was made to complete a canal through the Wadi Tumilat, which connected the Mediterranean and Red Seas by way of the Lower Egyptian Nile. (See Suez.) The next king, Psammetichus II., 594-589 b.c., according to one account made an expedition to Syria or Phoenicia, and apparently sent a mercenary force into Ethiopia as far as Abu Simbel. Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), 589-570 b.c., fomented rebellion against the Babylonian suzerainty in Judah, but accomplished little there. Herodotus, however, describes his reign as exceedingly prosperous. The mercenary troops at Elephantine mutinied and attempted to desert to Ethiopia, but were brought back and punished. Later, however, a disastrous expedition sent to aid the Libyans against the Greek colony of Cyrene roused the suspicion and anger of the native soldiery at favours shown to the mercenaries, who of course had taken no part in it. Amasis (Aḥmosi) II. was chosen king by the former (570-525 b.c.), and his swarm of adherents overcame the Greek troops in Apries’ pay (see Amasis). None the less Amasis employed Greeks in numbers, and cultivated the friendship of their tyrants. His rule was confined to Egypt (and perhaps Cyprus), but Egypt itself was very prosperous. At the beginning of his long reign of forty-four years he was threatened by Nebuchadrezzar; later he joined the league against Cyrus and saw with alarm the fall of his old enemy. A few months after his death, 525 b.c., the invading host of the Persians led by Cambyses reached Egypt and dethroned his son Psammetichus III.

Cambyses at first conciliated the Egyptians and respected their religion; but, perhaps after the failure of his expedition into Ethiopia, he entirely changed his policy, and his memory was generally execrated. He left Egypt so The Persian period, XXVIIth Dynasty. completely crushed that the subsequent usurpation of the Persian throne was marked by no revolt in that quarter. Darius, 521-486 b.c., proved himself a beneficent ruler, and in a visit to Egypt displayed his consideration for the religion of the country. In the Great Oasis he built a temple to Ammon. The annual tribute imposed on the satrapy of Egypt and Cyrene was heavy, but it was probably raised with ease. The canal from the Nile to the Red Sea was completed or repaired, and commerce flourished. Documents dated in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of Darius are not uncommon, but apparently at the very end of his reign, some years after the disaster of Marathon, Egypt was induced to rebel. Xerxes, 486-467 b.c., who put down the revolt with severity, and his successor Artaxerxes, 466-425 b.c., like Cambyses, were hateful to the Egyptians. The disorders which marked the accession of Artaxerxes gave Egypt another opportunity to rebel. Their leaders were Inaros the Libyan of Marea and the Egyptian Amyrtaeus. Aided by an Athenian force, Inaros slew the satrap Achaemenes at the battle of Papremis and destroyed his army; but the garrison of Memphis held out, and a fresh host from Persia raised the siege and in turn besieged the Greek and Egyptian forces on the island of Papremis. At last, after two years, having diverted the river from its channel, they captured and burnt the Athenian ships and quickly ended the rebellion. The reigns of Xerxes II. and Darius II. are marked by no recorded incident in Egypt until a successful revolt about 405 b.c. interrupted the Persian domination.

Monuments of the Persian rule in Egypt are exceedingly scanty. The inscriptions of Pefteuauneit, priest of Neith at Sais, and from his position the native authority who was most likely to be consulted by Cambyses and Darius, tells of his relations with these two kings. For the following reigns Egyptian documents hardly exist, but some papyri written in Aramaic have been found at Elephantine and at Memphis. Those from the former locality show that a colony of Jews with a temple dedicated to Yahweh (Jehovah) had established themselves at that garrison and trading post (see Assuan). Herodotus visited Egypt in the reign of Artaxerxes, about 440 b.c. His description of Egypt, partly founded on Hecataeus, who had been there about fifty years earlier, is the chief source of information for the history of the Saite kings and for the manners of the times, but his statements prove to be far from correct when they can be checked by the scanty native evidence.

(F. Ll. G.)

Amyrtaeus (Amnertais) of Sais, perhaps a son of Pausiris and grandson of the earlier Amyrtaeus, revolted from Darius II. c. 405 b.c., and Egypt regained its independence for about sixty years. The next king Nefeurēt Dynasties XXVIII.-XXXI. (Nepherites I.) was a Mendesian and founded the XXIXth Dynasty. After Hakor and Nefeurēt II. the sovereignty passed to Dynasty XXX., the last native Egyptian line. Monuments of all these kings are known, and art flourished particularly under the Mendesian kings Nekhtharheb (Nectanebes or Nectanebus I.) and Nekhtnebf (Nectanebes II.). The former came to the throne when a Persian invasion was imminent, 378 b.c. Hakor had already formed a powerful army, largely composed of Greek mercenaries. This army Nekhtharheb entrusted to the Athenian Chabrias. The Persians, however, succeeded in causing his recall and in gaining the services of his fellow-countryman Iphicrates. The invading army consisted of 200,000 barbarians under Pharnabazus and 20,000 Greeks under Iphicrates. After the Egyptians had experienced a reverse, Iphicrates counselled an immediate advance on Memphis. His advice was not followed by Pharnabazus; the Egyptian king collected his forces and won a pitched battle near Mendes. Pharnabazus retreated and Egypt was free.

Nekhtharheb was succeeded by Tachos or Teos, whose short reign was occupied by a war with Persia, in which the king of Egypt secured the services of a body of Greek mercenaries under the Spartan king Agesilaus and a fleet under the Athenian general Chabrias. He entered Phoenicia with every prospect of success, but having offended Agesilaus he was dethroned in a military revolt which gave the crown to Nekhtnebf or Nectanebes II., the last native king of Egypt. At this moment a revolt broke out. The prince of Mendes almost succeeded in overthrowing the new king. Agesilaus defeated the rival pretender and left Nekhtnebf established on the throne. But the opportunity of a decisive blow against Persia was lost. The new king, Artaxerxes III. Ochus, determined to reduce Egypt. A first expedition was defeated by the Greek mercenaries of Nekhtnebf, but a second, commanded by Ochus himself, subdued Egypt with no further resistance than that of the Greek garrison of Pelusium. Nekhtnebf, instead of endeavouring to relieve them, retreated to Memphis and fled thence to Ethiopia, 340 (?) b.c. Thus miserably fell the monarchy of the Pharaohs, after an unexampled duration of 3000 years, or as some think far longer. More than 2000 years have since passed, and though Egypt has from time to time been independent, not one native prince has sat on the throne of the Pharaohs. “There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt” (Ezek. xxx. 13) was prophesied in the days of Apries as the final state of the land.

Ochus treated his conquest barbarously. From this brief re-establishment of Persian dominion (counted by Manetho as Dynasty XXXI.) no document survives except one papyrus that appears to be dated in the reign of Darius III.

See J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (New York and London, 1905); A History of the Ancient Egyptians (New York and London, 1908); Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, collected, edited and translated (5 vols., Chicago, 1906-1907); W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt (from the earliest times to the XXXth Dynasty) (3 vols., London, 1899-1905); E. A. W. Budge, A History of Egypt, vols. i-vii. (London, 1902); G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’orient (6th ed., 1904), The Dawn of Civilization, The Struggle of the Nations, The Passing of the Empires (London, 1904, &c.); P. E. Newberry and J. Garstang, A Short History of Ancient Egypt (London, 1904); G. Steindorff, Die Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches (Dyn. XVIII.) (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1900); H. Winckler, The Tell el Amarna Letters (Berlin, London and New York, 1896).

The Conquest by Alexander.—When, in 332 b.c., after the battle of Issus, Alexander entered Egypt, he was welcomed as a deliverer. The Persian governor had not forces enough to oppose him, and he nowhere experienced even the show of resistance. He visited Memphis, founded Alexandria, and went on pilgrimage to the oracle of Ammon (Oasis of Siwa). The god declared him to be his son, renewing thus an old Egyptian convention or belief; Olympias was supposed to have been in converse with Ammon, even as the mothers of Hatshepsut and Amenophis III. are represented in the inscriptions of the Theban temples to have received the divine essence. At this stage of his career the treasure and tribute of Egypt were of great importance to the Macedonian conqueror. He conciliated the inhabitants by the respect which he showed for their religion; he organized the government of the natives under two officers, who must have been already known to them (of these Petisis, an Egyptian, soon resigned his share into the charge of his colleague Doloaspis, who bears a Persian name.) But Alexander designed his Greek foundation of Alexandria to be the capital, and entrusted the taxation of Egypt and the control of its army and navy to Greeks. Early in 331 b.c. he was ready to depart, and led his forces away to Phoenicia. A granite gateway to the temple of Khnūm at Elephantine bears his name in hieroglyphic, and demotic documents are found dated in his reign.

The Ptolemaic Period.—On the division of Alexander’s dominions in 323 b.c., Egypt fell to Ptolemy the son of Lagus, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty (see Ptolemies). Under these rulers the rich kingdom was heavily taxed to supply the sinews of war and to support every kind of lavish expenditure. Officials, and the higher ones were nearly all Greeks, were legion, but the whole system was so judiciously worked that there was little discontent amongst the patient peasantry. During the reign of Philadelphus the land gained from the bed of the lake of Moeris was assigned to veteran soldiers; the great armies of the Ptolemies were rewarded or supported by grants of farm lands, and men of Macedonian, Greek and Hellenistic extraction were planted in colonies and garrisons or settled themselves in the villages throughout the country. Upper Egypt, farthest from the centre of government, was probably least affected by the new influences, though the first Ptolemy established the Greek colony of Ptolemais to be its capital. Intermarriages, however, gradually had their effect; after the revolt of the natives in the reign of Ptolemy V., we find the Greek and Egyptian elements closely intermingled. Ptolemy I. had established the cult of the Memphite Serapis in a Graeco-Egyptian form, affording a common ground for native and Hellenistic worshippers. The greater number of the temples to the native deities in Upper Egypt and in Nubia (to 50 m. south of the Cataract, within the Dodecaschoenus) were built under the Ptolemies. No serious effort was made to extend the Ptolemaic rule into Ethiopia, and Ergamenes, the Hellenizing king of Ethiopia, was evidently in alliance with Philopator; in the next reign two native kings, probably supported by Ethiopia, reigned in succession at Thebes. That famous city lost all except its religious importance under the Ptolemies; after the “destruction” or dismantling by Lathyrus it formed only a series of villages. The population of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I. is put at 7,000,000 by Diodorus, who also says that it was greater then than it ever was before; at the end of the dynasty, in his own day, it was not much less though somewhat diminished. Civil wars and revolts must have greatly injured both Upper and Lower Egypt. It is remarkable that, while the building and decoration of temples continued in the reigns of Ptolemy Auletes and the later Ptolemies and Cleopatra, papyri of those times whether Greek or Egyptian are scarcely to be found.

The Roman Period.—In 30 b.c. Augustus took Egypt as the prize of conquest. He treated it as a part of his personal domain, free from any interference by the senate. In the main lines the Ptolemaic organization was preserved, but Romans were gradually introduced into the highest offices. On Egypt Rome depended for its supplies of corn; entrenched there, a revolting general would be difficult to attack, and by simply holding back the grain ships could threaten Rome with starvation. No senator therefore was permitted to take office or even to set foot in the country without the emperor’s special leave, and by way of precaution the highest position, that of prefect, was filled by a Roman of equestrian rank only. As the representative of the emperor, this officer assumed the place occupied by the king under the old order, except that his power was limited by the right of appeal to Caesar. The first prefect, Cornelius Gallus, tamed the natives of Upper Egypt to the new yoke by force of arms, and meeting ambassadors from Ethiopia at Philae, established a nominal protectorate of Rome over the frontier district, which had been abandoned by the later Ptolemies. The third prefect, Gaius Petronius, cleared the neglected canals for irrigation; he also repelled an invasion of the Ethiopians and pursued them far up the Nile, finally storming the capital of Napata. But no attempt was made to hold Ethiopia. In succeeding reigns much trouble was caused by jealousies and quarrels between the Greeks and the Jews, to whom Augustus had granted privileges as valuable as those accorded to the Greeks. Aiming at the spice trade, Aelius Gallus, the second prefect of Egypt under Augustus, had made an unsuccessful expedition to conquer Arabia Felix; the valuable Indian trade, however, was secured by Claudius for Egypt at the expense of Arabia, and the Red Sea routes were improved. Nero’s reign especially marks the commencement of an era of prosperity which lasted about a century. Under Vespasian the Jewish temple at Leontopolis in the Delta, which Onias had founded in the reign of Ptolemy Philometor, was closed; worse still, a great Jewish revolt and massacre of the Greeks in the reign of Trajan resulted, after a stubborn conflict of many months with the Roman army under Marcius Livianus Turbo, in the virtual extermination of the Jews in Alexandria and the loss of all their privileges. Hadrian, who twice visited Egypt (a.d. 130, 134), founded Antinoë in memory of his drowned favourite. From this reign onwards buildings in the Graeco-Roman style were erected throughout the country. A new Sothic cycle began in a.d. 139. Under Marcus Aurelius a revolt of the Bucolic or native troops recruited for home service was taken up by the whole of the native population and was suppressed only after several years of fighting. The Bucolic war caused infinite damage to the agriculture of the country and marks the beginning of its rapid decline under a burdensome taxation. The province of Africa was now of equal importance with Egypt for the grain supply of the capital. Avidius Cassius, who led the Roman forces in the war, usurped the purple, and was acknowledged by the armies of Syria and Egypt. On the approach of Marcus Aurelius, the adherents of Cassius slew him, and the clemency of the emperor restored peace. After the downfall of the house of the Antonines, Pescennius Niger, who commanded the forces in Egypt, was proclaimed emperor on the death of Pertinax (a.d. 193). Severus overthrew his rival (a.d. 194) and, the revolt having been a military one, did not punish the province; in 202 he gave a constitution to Alexandria and the nome capitals. In his reign the Christians of Egypt suffered the first of their many persecutions. When Christianity was planted in the country we do not know, but it must very early have gained adherents among the Christianity. learned Jews of Alexandria, whose school of thought was in some respects ready to welcome it. From them it rapidly passed to the Greeks. Ultimately the new religion spread to the Egyptians; their own creed was worn out, and they found in Christianity a doctrine of the future life for which their old belief had made them not unready; while the social teaching of Christianity came with special fitness to a subject race. The history of the Coptic Version has yet to be written. It presents some features of great antiquity, and, unlike all others, has the truly popular character of being written in the three dialects of the language. Side by side there grew up an Alexandrian church, philosophic, disputative, ambitious, the very centre of Christian learning, and an Egyptian church, ascetic, contemplative, mystical. The two at length influenced one another; still we can generally trace the philosophic teachers to a Greek origin, the mystics to an Egyptian.

Caracalla, in revenge for an affront, massacred all the men capable of bearing arms in Alexandria. His granting of the Roman citizenship to all Egyptians in common with the other provincials was only to extort more taxes. Under Decius, a.d. 250, the Christians again suffered from persecution. When the empire broke up in the weak reign of Gallienus, the prefect Aemilianus, who took the surname Alexander or Alexandrinus, was made emperor by the troops at Alexandria, but was conquered by the forces of Gallienus. In his brief reign of only a few months he had driven back an invasion of the Blemmyes. This predatory tribe, issuing from Nubia, was long to be the terror of Upper Egypt. Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, after an unsuccessful invasion, on a second attempt conquered Egypt, which she added to her empire, but lost it when Aurelian made war upon her (a.d. 272). The province was, however, unsettled, and the conquest of Palmyra was followed in the same year by the suppression of a revolt in Egypt (a.d. 273). Probus, who had governed Egypt for Aurelian and Tacitus, was subsequently chosen by the troops to succeed Tacitus, and is the first governor of this province who obtained the whole of the empire. He expelled the Blemmyes, who were dominating the whole of the Thebaid. Diocletian invited the Nobatae to settle in the Dodecaschoenus as a barrier against their incursions, and subsidized both Blemmyes and Nobatae. The country, however, was still disturbed, and in a.d. 296 a formidable revolt broke out, led by Achilleus, who as emperor took the name Domitius Domitianus. Diocletian, finding his troops unable to determine the struggle, came to Egypt, captured Alexandria and put his rival to death (296). He then reorganized the whole province, and the well-known “Pompey’s Pillar” was set up by the grateful and repentant Alexandrians to commemorate his gift to them of part of the corn tribute.

The Coptic era of Diocletian or of the Martyrs dates from the accession of Diocletian (a.d. 284). The edict of a.d. 303 against the Christians, and those which succeeded it, were rigorously carried out in Egypt, where Paganism was still strong and face to face with a strong and united church. Galerius, who succeeded Diocletian in the government of the East, implacably pursued his policy, and this great persecution did not end until the persecutor, perishing, it is said, of the dire malady of Herod and Philip II. of Spain, sent out an edict of toleration (a.d. 311).

By the edict of Milan (a.d. 313), Constantine, with the agreement of his colleague Licinius, acknowledged Christianity as having at least equal rights with other religions, and when he gained sole power he wrote to all his subjects advising them, like him, to become Christians (a.d. 324). The Egyptian Church, hitherto free from schism, was now divided by a fierce controversy, in which we see two Greek parties, rather than a Greek and an Egyptian, in conflict. The council of Nicaea was called together (a.d. 325) to determine between the Orthodox and the party of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. At that council the native Egyptian bishops were chiefly remarkable for their manly protest against enforcing celibacy on the clergy. The most conspicuous controversialist on the Orthodox side was the young Alexandrian deacon Athanasius, who returned home to be made archbishop of Alexandria (a.d. 326). After being four times expelled by the Arians, and once by the emperor Julian, he died, a.d. 373, at the moment when an Arian persecution began. So large a proportion of the population had taken religious vows that under Valens it became necessary to abolish the privilege of monks which exempted them from military service. The reign of Theodosius I. witnessed the overthrow of Arianism, and this was followed by the suppression of Paganism, against which a final edict was promulgated a.d. 390. In Egypt, the year before, the temple of Serapis at Alexandria had been captured after much bloodshed by the Christian mob and turned into a church. Generally the Coptic Christians were content to build their churches within the ancient temples, plastering over or effacing the sculptures which were nearest to the ground and in the way of the worshippers. They do not seem to have been very zealous in the work of destruction; the native religion was already dead and they had no fear of it. The prosperity of the church was the sign of its decay, and before long we find persecution and injustice disgracing the seat of Athanasius. Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria (a.d. 415), expelled the Jews from the capital with the aid of the mob, and by the murder of the beautiful philosopher Hypatia marked the lowest depth to which ignorant fanaticism could descend. A schism now produced lengthened civil war and alienated Egypt from the empire. The distinction between religion and politics seemed to be lost, and the government grew weaker and weaker. The system of local government by citizens had now entirely disappeared. Offices, with new Byzantine names, were now almost hereditary in the wealthy land-owning families. The Greek rulers of the Orthodox faith were unable to protect the tillers of the soil, and these being of the Monophysite persuasion and having their own church and patriarch, hated the Orthodox patriarch (who from the time of Justinian onwards was identical with the prefect) and all his following. Towards the middle of the 5th century, the Blemmyes, quiet since the reign of Diocletian, recommenced their incursions, and were even joined in them by the Nobatae. These tribes were twice brought to account severely for their misdoings, but not effectually checked. It was in these circumstances that Egypt fell without a conflict when attacked by Chosroës (a.d. 616). After ten years of Persian dominion the success of Heraclius restored Egypt to the empire, and for a time it again received a Greek governor. The Monophysites, who had taken advantage of the Persian occupation, were persecuted and their patriarch expelled. The Arab conquest was welcomed by the native Christians, but with it they ceased to be the Egyptian nation. Their language is still used in their churches, but it is no longer spoken, and its literature, which is wholly ecclesiastical, has been long unproductive.