* This is apparently what we gather from the picture inserted in chapter xvii. of the "Book of the Dead," where we see the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt guiding the divine bark and the deceased with them.

The idea which the Egyptians thus formed of the other world, and of the life of the initiated within it, reacted gradually on their concept of the tomb and of its befitting decoration. They began to consider the entrances to the pyramid, and its internal passages and chambers, as a conventional representation of the gates, passages, and halls of Hades itself; when the pyramid passed out of fashion, and they had replaced it by a tomb cut in the rock in one or other of the branches of the Bab el-Moluk valley, the plan of construction which they chose was an exact copy of that employed by the Memphites and earlier Thebans, and they hollowed out for themselves in the mountain-side a burying-place on the same lines as those formerly employed within the pyramidal structure. The relative positions of the tunnelled tombs along the valley were not determined by any order of rank or of succession to the throne; each Pharaoh after Ramses I. set to work on that part of the rock where the character of the stone favoured his purpose, and displayed so little respect for his predecessors, that the workmen, after having tunnelled a gallery, were often obliged to abandon it altogether, or to change the direction of their excavations so as to avoid piercing a neighbouring tomb. The architect's design was usually a mere project which could be modified at will, and, which he did not feel bound to carry out with fidelity; the actual measurements of the tomb of Ramses IV. are almost everywhere at variance with the numbers and arrangement of the working drawing of it which has been preserved to us in a papyrus. The general disposition of the royal tombs, however, is far from being complicated; we have at the entrance the rectangular door, usually surmounted by the sun, represented by a yellow disk, before which the sovereign kneels with his hands raised in the posture of adoration; this gave access to a passage sloping gently downwards, and broken here and there by a level landing and steps, leading to a first chamber of varying amplitude, at the further end of which a second passage opened which descended to one or more apartments, the last of which, contained the coffin. The oldest rock-tombs present some noteworthy exceptions to this plan, particularly those of Seti I. and Ramses III.; but from the time of Ramses IV., there is no difference to be remarked in them except in the degree of finish of the wall-paintings or in the length of the passages. The shortest of the latter extends some fifty-two feet into the rock, while the longest never exceeds three hundred and ninety feet. The same artifices which had been used by the pyramid-builders to defeat the designs of robbers—false mummy-pits, painted and sculptured walls built across passages, stairs concealed under a movable stone in the corner of a chamber—were also employed by the Theban engineers. The decoration of the walls was suggested, as in earlier times, by the needs of the royal soul, with this difference—that the Thebans set themselves to render visible to his eyes by paintings that which the Memphites had been content to present to his intelligence in writing, so that the Pharaoh could now see what his ancestors had been able merely to read on the walls of their tombs. Where the inscribed texts in the burial-chamber of Unas state that Unas, incarnate in the Sun, and thus representing Osiris, sails over the waters on high or glides into the Elysian fields, the sculptured or painted scenes in the interior of the Theban catacombs display to the eye Ramses occupying the place of the god in the solar bark and in the fields of laid. Where the walls of Unas bear only the prayers recited over the mummy for the opening of his mouth, for the restoration of the use of his limbs, for his clothing, perfuming, and nourishment, we see depicted on those of Seti I. or Ramses IV. the mummies of these kings and the statues of their doubles in the hands of the priests, who are portrayed in the performance of these various offices. The starry ceilings of the pyramids reproduce the aspect of the sky, but without giving the names of the stars: on the ceilings of some of the Ramesside rock-tombs, on the other hand, the constellations are represented, each with its proper figure, while astronomical tables give the position of the heavenly bodies at intervals of fifteen days, so that the soul could tell at a glance into what region of the firmament the course of the bark would bring him each night. In the earlier Ramesside tombs, under Seti I. and Ramses II., the execution of these subjects shows evidence of a care and skill which are quite marvellous, and both figures and hieroglyphics betray the hand of accomplished artists. But in the tomb of Ramses III. the work has already begun to show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of the reds and blues remind us of a child's first efforts at painting. This decline is even more marked under the succeeding Ramessides; the drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude, and the latest paintings seem but a lamentable caricature of the earlier ones.

The courtiers and all those connected with the worship of Amon-Ra—priests, prophets, singers, and functionaries connected with the necropolis—shared the same belief with regard to the future world as their sovereign, and they carried their faith in the sun's power to the point of identifying themselves with him after death, and of substituting the name of Ra for that of Osiris; they either did not venture, however, to go further than this, or were unable to introduce into their tombs all that we find in the Bab el-Moluk. They confined themselves to writing briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the "Book of the Dead," a copy of the "Book of knowing what there is in Hades," or of some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed. Hastily prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory illustrations. The representations of the gods in them are but little better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs. Although Amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the Egyptians: the other divinities previously associated with him still held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with a more decided personality. The goddess regarded as his partner was at first represented as childless, in spite of the name of Maut or Mut—the mother—by which she was invoked, and Amon was supposed to have adopted Montu, the god of Hermonthis, in order to complete his triad. Montu, however, formerly the sovereign of the Theban plain, and lord over Amon himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine son.



* Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette in the Gizeh Museum.

** Drawn by Thuillier: A is the pylon, B the court, C the hypostyle hall, E the passage isolating the sanctuary, D the sanctuary, F the opisthodomos with its usual chambers.

The priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage of lesser importance, named Khonsu, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. How they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and Thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the XIXth dynasty drew to its close. Khonsu, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing Montu, but finally supplanting him in the third place of the Triad. From the time of Sesostris onwards, Theban dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with Amon-Ra and Mut the divine mother.

* It is possible that this assimilation originated in the fact that Khonsu is derived from the verb "khonsu," to navigate: Khonsu would thus have been he who crossed the heavens in his bark—that is, the moon-god.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

It was now incumbent on the Pharaoh to erect to this newly made favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the rank to which his votaries had exalted him. To this end, Ramses III. chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of Karnak, close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.*

* The proof that the temple was founded by Ramses III. is furnished by the inscriptions of the sanctuary and the surrounding chambers.

Its proportions are by no means perfect, the sculpture is wanting in refinement, the painting is coarse, and the masonry was so faulty, that it was found necessary in several places to cover it with a coat of stucco before the bas-reliefs could be carved on the walls; yet, in spite of all this, its general arrangement is so fine, that it may well be regarded, in preference to other more graceful or magnificent buildings, as the typical temple of the Theban period. It is divided into two parts, separated from each other by a solid wall. In the centre of the smaller of these is placed the Holy of Holies, which opens at both ends into a passage ten feet in width, isolating it from the surrounding buildings. To the right and left of the sanctuary are dark chambers, and behind it is a hall supported by four columns, into which open seven small apartments. This formed the dwelling-place of the god and his compeers. The sanctuary communicates, by means of two doors placed in the southern wall, with a hypostyle hall of greater width than depth, divided by its pillars into a nave and two aisles. The four columns of the nave are twenty-three feet in height, and have bell-shaped capitals, while those of the aisles, two on either side, are eighteen feet high, and are crowned with lotiform capitals.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The roof of the nave was thus five feet higher than those of the aisles, and in the clear storey thus formed, stone gratings, similar to those in the temple of Amon, admitted light to the building. The courtyard, surrounded by a fine colonnade of two rows of columns, was square, and was entered by four side posterns in addition to the open gateway at the end placed between two quadrangular towers.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger and Daniel Heron.

This pylon measures 104 feet in length, and is 32 feet 6 inches wide, by 58 feet high. It contains no internal chambers, but merely a narrow staircase which leads to the top of the doorway, and thence to the summit of the towers. Four long angular grooves run up the facade of the towers to a height of about twenty feet from the ground, and are in the same line with a similar number of square holes which pierce the thickness of the building higher up. In these grooves were placed Venetian masts, made of poles spliced together and held in their place by means of hooks and wooden stays which projected from the four holes; these masts were to carry at their tops pennons of various colours. Such was the temple of Khonsu, and the majority of the great Theban buildings—at Luxor, Qurneh, and Bamesseum, or Medinet-Uabu—were constructed on similar lines. Even in their half-ruined condition there is something oppressive and uncanny in their appearance. The gods loved to shroud themselves in mystery, and, therefore, the plan of the building was so arranged as to render the transition almost imperceptible from the blinding sunlight outside to the darkness of their retreat within. In the courtyard, we are still surrounded by vast spaces to which air and light have free access. The hypostyle hall, however, is pervaded by an appropriate twilight, the sanctuary is veiled in still deeper darkness, while in the chambers beyond reigns an almost perpetual night. The effect produced by this gradation of obscurity was intensified by constructional artifices. The different parts of the building are not all on the same ground-level, the pavement rising as the sanctuary is approached, and the rise is concealed by a few steps placed at intervals. The difference of level in the temple of Khonsu is not more than five feet three inches, but it is combined with a still more considerable lowering of the height of the roof. From the pylon to the wall at the further end the height decreases as we go on; the peristyle is more lofty than the hypostyle hall, this again is higher than the sanctuary and the hall of columns, and the chamber beyond it drops still further in altitude.*

* This is "the law of progressive diminution of heights" of Perrot-Chipiez.

Karnak is an exception to this rule; this temple had in the course of centuries undergone so many restorations and additions, that it formed a collection of buildings rather than a single edifice. It might have been regarded, as early as the close of the Theban empire, as a kind of museum, in which every century and every period of art, from the XIIth dynasty downwards, had left its distinctive mark.*

* A on the plan denotes the XIIth dynasty temple; B is the great hypostyle hall of Seti I. and Ramses II.; C the temple of Ramses III.



All the resources of architecture had been brought into requisition during this period to vary, at the will of each sovereign, the arrangement and the general effect of the component parts. Columns with sixteen sides stand in the vicinity of square pillars, and lotiform capitals alternate with those of the bell-shape; attempts were even made to introduce new types altogether. The architect who built at the back of the sanctuary what is now known as the colonnade of Thutmosis III., attempted to invert the bell-shaped capital; the bell was turned downwards, and the neck attached to the plinth, while the mouth rested on the top of the shaft. This awkward arrangement did not meet with favour, for we find it nowhere repeated; other artists, however, with better taste, sought at this time to apply the flowers symbolical of Upper and Lower Egypt to the decorations of the shafts. In front of the sanctuary of Karnak two pillars are still standing which have on them in relief representations respectively of the fullblown lotus and the papyrus. A building composed of so many incongruous elements required frequent restoration—a wall which had been undermined by water needed strengthening, a pylon displaying cracks claimed attention, some unsafe colonnade, or a colossus which had been injured by the fall of a cornice, required shoring up—so that no sooner had the corvee for repairs completed their work in one part, than they had to begin again elsewhere.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The revenues of Amon must, indeed, have been enormous to have borne the continual drain occasioned by restoration, and the resources of the god would soon have been exhausted had not foreign wars continued to furnish him during several centuries with all or more than he needed.

The gods had suffered severely in the troublous times which had followed the reign of Seti II., and it required all the generosity of Ramses III. to compensate them for the losses they had sustained during the anarchy under Arisu. The spoil taken from the Libyans, from the Peoples of the Sea, and from the Hittites had flowed into the sacred treasuries, while the able administration of the sovereign had done the rest, so that on the accession of Ramses IV. the temples were in a more prosperous state than ever.* They held as their own property 169 towns, nine of which were in Syria and Ethiopia; they possessed 113,433 slaves of both sexes, 493,386 head of cattle, 1,071,780 arurse of land, 514 vineyards and orchards, 88 barks and sea-going vessels, 336 kilograms of gold both in ingots and wrought, 2,993,964 grammes of silver, besides quantities of copper and precious stones, and hundreds of storehouses in which they kept corn, oil, wine, honey, and preserved meats—the produce of their domains. Two examples will suffice to show the extent of this latter item: the live geese reached the number of 680,714, and the salt or smoked fish that of 494,800.** Amon claimed the giant share of this enormous total, and three-fourths of it or more were reserved for his use, namely—-86,486 slaves, 421,362 head of cattle, 898,168 arurse of cornland, 433 vineyards and orchards, and 56 Egyptian towns. The nine foreign towns all belonged to him, and one of them contained the temple in which he was worshipped by the Syrians whenever they came to pay their tribute to the king's representatives: it was but just that his patrimony should surpass that of his compeers, since the conquering Pharaohs owed their success to him, who, without the co-operation of the other feudal deities, had lavished victories upon them.

* The donations of Ramses III., or rather the total of the donations made to the gods by the predecessors of that Pharaoh, and confirmed and augmented by him, are enumerated at length in the Great Harris Papyrus.

** An abridgement of these donations occupies seven large plates in the Great Harris Papyrus.

His domain was at least five times more considerable than that of Ra of Heliopolis, and ten times greater than that of the Memphite Phtah, and yet of old, in the earlier times of history, Ra and Phtah were reckoned the wealthiest of the Egyptian gods. It is easy to understand the influence which a god thus endowed with the goods of this world exercised over men in an age when the national wars had the same consequences for the immortals as for their worshippers, and when the defeat of a people was regarded as a proof of the inferiority of its patron gods. The most victorious divinity became necessarily the wealthiest, before whom all other deities bowed, and whom they, as well as their subjects, were obliged to serve.

So powerful a god as Amon had but few obstacles to surmount before becoming the national deity; indeed, he was practically the foremost of the gods during the Ramesside period, and was generally acknowledged as Egypt's representative by all foreign nations.* His priests shared in the prestige he enjoyed, and their influence in state affairs increased proportionately with his power.

* From the XVIIIth dynasty, at least, the first prophet of Amon had taken the precedence of the high priests of Heliopolis and Memphis, as is proved by the position he occupies in the Egyptian hierarchy in the Hood Papyrus.

The chief of their hierarchy, however, did not bear the high titles which in ancient times distinguished those of Memphis and Heliopolis; he was content with the humble appellation of first prophet of Amon. He had for several generations been nominated by the sovereign, but he was generally chosen from the families attached hereditarily or otherwise to the temple of Karnak, and must previously have passed through every grade of the priestly hierarchy. Those who aspired to this honour had to graduate as "divine fathers;" this was the first step in the initiation, and one at which many were content to remain, but the more ambitious or favoured advanced by successive stages to the dignity of third, and then of second, prophet before attaining to the highest rank.*

* What we know on this subject has been brought to light mainly by the inscriptions on the statue of Baukuni-Khonsu at Munich, published and commented on by Deveria, and by Lauth. The cursus honorum of Rama shows us that he was first third, then second prophet of Amon, before being raised to the pontificate in the reign of Minephtah.

The Pharaohs of the XIXth dynasty jealously supervised the promotions made in the Theban temples, and saw that none was elected except him who was devoted to their interests—such as, for example, Baukuni-khonsu and Unnofri under Ramses II. Baukuni-khonsu distinguished himself by his administrative qualities; if he did not actually make the plans for the hypostyle hall at Karnak, he appears at least to have superintended its execution and decoration. He finished the great pylon, erected the obelisks and gateways, built the bari or vessel of the god, and found a further field for his activity on the opposite bank of the Nile, where he helped to complete both the chapel at Qurneh and also the Ramesseum. Ramses II. had always been able to make his authority felt by the high priests who succeeded Baukuni-khonsu, but the Pharaohs who followed him did not hold the reins with such a strong hand. As early as the reigns of Minephtah and Seti II. the first prophets, Rai and Rama, claimed the right of building at Karnak for their own purposes, and inscribed on the walls long inscriptions in which their own panegyrics took precedence of that of the sovereign; they even aspired to a religious hegemony, and declared themselves to be the "chief of all the prophets of the gods of the South and North." We do not know what became of them during the usurpation of Arisu, but Nakhtu-ramses, son of Miribastit, who filled the office during the reign of Ramses III., revived these ambitious projects as soon as the state of Egypt appeared to favour them. The king, however pious he might be, was not inclined to yield up any of his authority, even though it were to the earthly delegate of the divinity whom he reverenced before all others; the sons of the Pharaoh were, however, more accommodating, and Nakhtu-ramses played his part so well that he succeeded in obtaining from them the reversion of the high priesthood for his son Amenothes. The priestly office, from having been elective, was by this stroke suddenly made hereditary in the family. The kings preserved, it is true, the privilege of confirming the new appointment, and the nominee was not considered properly qualified until he had received his investiture from the sovereign.*

* This is proved by the Maunier stele, now in the Louvre; it is there related how the high priest Manakh-pirri received his investiture from the Tanite king.

Practically the Pharaohs lost the power of choosing one among the sons of the deceased pontiff; they were forced to enthrone the eldest of his survivors, and legalise his accession by their approbation, even when they would have preferred another. It was thus that a dynasty of vassal High Priests came to be established at Thebes side by side with the royal dynasty of the Pharaohs.

The new priestly dynasty was not long in making its power felt in Thebes. Nakhtu-ramses and Amenothes lived to a great age—from the reign of Ramses III. to that of Ramses X., at the least; they witnessed the accession of nine successive Pharaohs, and the unusual length of their pontificates no doubt increased the already extraordinary prestige which they enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of Egypt. It seemed as if the god delighted to prolong the lives of his representatives beyond the ordinary limits, while shortening those of the temporal sovereigns. When the reigns of the Pharaohs began once more to reach their normal length, the authority of Amenothes had become so firmly established that no human power could withstand it, and the later Ramessides were merely a set of puppet kings who were ruled by him and his successors. Not only was there a cessation of foreign expeditions, but the Delta, Memphis, and Ethiopia were alike neglected, and the only activity displayed by these Pharaohs, as far as we can gather from their monuments, was confined to the service of Amon and Khonsu at Thebes. The lack of energy and independence in these sovereigns may not, however, be altogether attributable to their feebleness of character; it is possible that they would gladly have entered on a career of conquest had they possessed the means. It is always a perilous matter to allow the resources of a country to fall into the hands of a priesthood, and to place its military forces at the same time in the hands of the chief religious authority. The warrior Pharaohs had always had at their disposal the spoils obtained from foreign nations to make up the deficit which their constant gifts to the temples were making in the treasury. The sons of Ramses III., on the other hand, had suspended all military efforts, without, however, lessening their lavish gifts to the gods, and they must, in the absence of the spoils of war, have drawn to a considerable extent upon the ordinary resources of the country; their successors therefore found the treasury impoverished, and they would have been entirely at a loss for money had they attempted to renew the campaigns or continue the architectural work of their forefathers. The priests of Amon had not as yet suffered materially from this diminution of revenue, for they possessed property throughout the length and breadth of Egypt, but they were obliged to restrict their expenditure, and employ the sums formerly used for the enlarging of the temples on the maintenance of their own body. Meanwhile public works had been almost everywhere suspended; administrative discipline became relaxed, and disturbances, with which the police were unable to cope, were increasing in all the important towns. Nothing is more indicative of the state to which Egypt was reduced, under the combined influence of the priesthood and the Ramessides, than the thefts and pillaging of which the Theban necropolis was then the daily scene. The robbers no longer confined themselves to plundering the tombs of private persons; they attacked the royal burying-places, and their depredations were carried on for years before they were discovered. In the reign of Ramses IX., an inquiry, set on foot by Amenothes, revealed the fact that the tomb of Sovkumsauf I. and his wife, Queen Nubk-has, had been rifled, that those of Amenothes I. and of Antuf IV. had been entered by tunnelling, and that some dozen other royal tombs in the cemetery of Drah abu'l Neggah were threatened.*

* The principal part of this inquiry constitutes the Abbott Papyrus, acquired and published by the British Museum, first examined and made the subject of study by Birch, translated simultaneously into French by Maspero and by Chabas, into German by Lauth and by Erman. Other papyri relate to the same or similar occurrences, such as the Salt and Amherst Papyri published by Chabas, and also the Liverpool Papyri, of which we possess merely scattered notices in the writings of Goodwin, and particularly in those of Spiegelberg.

The severe means taken to suppress the evil were not, however, successful; the pillagings soon began afresh, and the reigns of the last three Ramessides between the robbers and the authorities, were marked by a struggle in which the latter did not always come off triumphant.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.

A system of repeated inspections secured the valley of Biban el-Moluk from marauders,* but elsewhere the measures of defence employed were unavailing, and the necropolis was given over to pillage, although both Amenothes and Hrihor had used every effort to protect it.

* Graffiti which are evidences of these inspections have been drawn on the walls of several royal tombs by the inspectors. Others have been found on several of the coffins discovered at Deir el-Bahari, e.g. on those of Seti I. and Ramses II.; the most ancient belong to the pontificate of Hrihor, others belong to the XXIst dynasty.

Hrihor appears to have succeeded immediately after Amenothes, and his accession to the pontificate gave his family a still more exalted position in the country. As his wife Nozmit was of royal blood, he assumed titles and functions to which his father and grandfather had made no claim. He became the "Royal Son" of Ethiopia and commander-in-chief of the national and foreign troops; he engraved his name upon the monuments he decorated, side by side with that of Ramses XII.; in short, he possessed all the characteristics of a Pharaoh except the crown and the royal protocol. A century scarcely had elapsed since the abdication of Ramses III., and now Thebes and the whole of Egypt owned two masters: one the embodiment of the ancient line, but a mere nominal king; the other the representative of Amon, and the actual ruler of the country.

What then happened when the last Ramses who bore the kingly title was gathered to his fathers? The royal lists record the accession after his death of a new dynasty of Tanitic origin, whose founder was Nsbindidi or Smendes; but, on the other hand, we gather from the Theban monuments that the crown was seized by Hrihor, who reigned over the southern provinces contemporaneously with Smendes. Hrihor boldly assumed as prenomen his title of "First Prophet of Amon," and his authority was acknowledged by Ethiopia, over which he was viceroy, as well as by the nomes forming the temporal domain of the high priests. The latter had acquired gradually, either by marriage or inheritance, fresh territory for the god, in the lands of the princes of Nekhabit, Kop-tos, Akhmim, and Abydos, besides the domains of some half-dozen feudal houses who, from force of circumstances, had become sacerdotal families; the extinction of the direct line of Ramessides now secured the High Priests the possession of Thebes itself, and of all the lands within the southern provinces which were the appanage of the crown.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.

They thus, in one way or another, became the exclusive masters of the southern half of the Nile valley, from Elephantine to Siut; beyond Siut also they had managed to acquire suzerainty over the town of Khobit, and the territory belonging to it formed an isolated border province in the midst of the independent baronies.*

* The extent of the principality of Thebes under the high priests has been determined by means of the sacerdotal titles of the Theban princesses.

The representative of the dynasty reigning at Tanis held the remainder of Egypt from Shit to the Mediterranean—the half belonging to the Memphite Phtah and the Helio-politan Ra, as opposed to that assigned to Anion. The origin of this Tanite sovereign is uncertain, but it would appear that he was of more exalted rank than his rival in the south. The official chronicling of events was marked by the years of his reign, and the chief acts of the government were carried out in his name even in the Thebaid.* Repeated inundations had caused the ruin of part of the temple of Karnak, and it was by the order and under the auspices of this prince that all the resources of the country were employed to accomplish the much-needed restoration.**

* I have pointed out that the years of the reign mentioned in the inscriptions of the high priests and the kings of the sacerdotal line must be attributed to their suzerains, the kings of Tanis. Hrihor alone seems to have been an exception, since to him are attributed the dates inscribed in the name of the King Siamon: M. Daressy, however, will not admit this, and asserts that this Siamon was a Tanite sovereign who must not be identified with Hrihor, and must be placed at least two or three generations later than the last of the Ramessides.

* The real name Nsbindidi and the first monument of the Manethonian Smendes were discovered in the quarries of Dababieh, opposite Gebelen.

It would have been impossible for him to have exercised any authority over so rich and powerful a personage as Hrihor had he not possessed rights to the crown, before which even the high priests of Amon were obliged to bow, and hence it has been supposed that he was a descendant of Ramses II. The descendants of this sovereign were doubtless divided into at least two branches, one of which had just become extinct, leaving no nearer heir than Hrihor, while another, of which there were many ramifications, had settled in the Delta. The majority of these descendants had become mingled with the general population, and had sunk to the condition of private individuals; they had, however, carefully preserved the tradition of their origin, and added proudly to their name the qualification of royal son of Ramses. They were degenerate scions of the Ramessides, and had neither the features nor the energy of their ancestor. One of them, Zodphta-haufonkhi, whose mummy was found at Deir el-Bahari, appears to have been tall and vigorous, but the head lacks the haughty refinement which characterizes those of Seti I. and Ramses II., and the features are heavy and coarse, having a vulgar, commonplace expression.



Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Insinger.

It seems probable that one branch of the family, endowed with greater capability than the rest, was settled at Tanis, where Sesostris had, as we have seen, resided for many years; Smendes was the first of this branch to ascend the throne. The remembrance of his remote ancestor, Ramses IL, which was still treasured up in the city he had completely rebuilt, as well as in the Delta into which he had infused new life, was doubtless of no small service in securing the crown for his descendant, when, the line of the Theban kings having come to an end, the Tanites put in their claim to the succession. We are unable to discover if war broke out between the two competitors, or if they arrived at an agreement without a struggle; but, at all events, we may assume that, having divided Egypt between them, neither of them felt himself strong enough to overcome his rival, and contented himself with the possession of half the empire, since he could not possess it in its entirety. We may fairly believe that Smendes had the greater right to the throne, and, above all, the more efficient army of the two, since, had it been otherwise, Hrihor would never have consented to yield him the priority.

The unity of Egypt was, to outward appearances, preserved, through the nominal possession by Smendes of the suzerainty; but, as a matter of fact, it had ceased to exist, and the fiction of the two kingdoms had become a reality for the first time within the range of history. Henceforward there were two Egypts, governed by different constitutions and from widely remote centres. Theban Egypt was, before all things, a community recognizing a theocratic government, in which the kingly office was merged in that of the high priest. Separated from Asia by the length of the Delta, it turned its attention, like the Pharaohs of the VIth and XIIth dynasties, to Ethiopia, and owing to its distance from the Mediterranean, and from the new civilization developed on its shores, it became more and more isolated, till at length it was reduced to a purely African state. Northern Egypt, on the contrary, maintained contact with European and Asiatic nations; it took an interest in their future, it borrowed from them to a certain extent whatever struck it as being useful or beautiful, and when the occasion presented itself, it acted in concert with Mediterranean powers. There was an almost constant struggle between these two divisions of the empire, at times breaking out into an open rupture, to end as often in a temporary re-establishment of unity. At one time Ethiopia would succeed in annexing Egypt, and again Egypt would seize some part of Ethiopia; but the settlement of affairs was never final, and the conflicting elements, brought with difficulty into harmony, relapsed into their usual condition at the end of a few years. A kingdom thus divided against itself could never succeed in maintaining its authority over those provinces which, even in the heyday of its power, had proved impatient of its yoke.

Asia was associated henceforward in the minds of the Egyptians with painful memories of thwarted ambitions, rather than as offering a field for present conquest. They were pursued by the memories of their former triumphs, and the very monuments of their cities recalled what they were anxious to forget. Wherever they looked within their towns they encountered the representation of some Asiatic scene; they read the names of the cities of Syria on the walls of their temples; they saw depicted on them its princes and its armies, whose defeat was recorded by the inscriptions as well as the tribute which they had been forced to pay. The sense of their own weakness prevented the Egyptians from passing from useless regrets to action; when, however, one or other of the Pharaohs felt sufficiently secure on the throne to carry his troops far afield, he was always attracted to Syria, and crossed her frontiers, often, alas! merely to encounter defeat.



CHAPTER II—THE RISE OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

PHOENICIA AND THE NORTHERN NATIONS AFTER THE DEATH OP RAMSES III.—THE FIRST ASSYRIAN EMPIRE: TIGLATH-PILESUR I.—THE ARAMAEANS AND THE KHATI.

The continuance of Egyptian influence over Syrian civilization after the death of Ramses III.—Egyptian myths in Phoenicia: Osiris and Isis at Byblos—Horus, Thot, and the origin of the Egyptian alphabet—The tombs at Arvad and the Kabr-Hiram; Egyptian designs in Phoenician glass and goldsmiths'work—Commerce with Egypt, the withdrawal of Phoenician colonies in the AEgean Sea and the Achaeans in Cyprus; maritime expeditions in the Western Mediterranean.

Northern Syria: the decadence of the Hittites and the steady growth of the Aramaean tribes—The decline of the Babylonian empire under the Cossaean kings, and its relations with Egypt: Assuruballit, Bammdn-nirdri I. and the first Assyrian conquests—Assyria, its climate, provinces, and cities: the god Assur and his Ishtar—The wars against Chaldaea: Shalmaneser I., Tulculi-ninip I., and the taking of Babylon—Belchadrezzar and the last of the Cosssaeans.

The dynasty of Pashe: Nebuchadrezzar I., his disputes with Elam, his defeat by Assurrishishi—The legend of the first Assyrian empire, Ninos and Semiramis—The Assyrians and their political constitution: the limmu, the king and his divine character, his hunting and his wars—The Assyrian army: the infantry and chariotry, the crossing of rivers, mode of marching in the plains and in the mountain districts—Camps, battles, sieges; cruelty shown to the vanquished, the destruction of towns and the removal of the inhabitants, the ephemeral character of the Assyrian conquests.

Tiglath pileser I.: Ms campaign against the Mushhu, his conquest of Kurhhi and of the regions of the Zab—The petty Asiatic kingdoms and their civilization: art and writing in the old Hittite states—Tiglath-pileser I. in Nairi and in Syria: his triumphal stele at Sebbeneh-Su—His buildings, his hunts, his conquest of Babylon—Merodach-nadin-akhi and the close of the Pashe dynasty—Assur-belkala and Samsi-ramman III.: the decline of Assyria—Syria without a foreign rider: the incapacity of the Khdti to give unity to the country.



CHAPTER II—THE RISE OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

Phoenicia and the northern nations after the death of Ramses III.—The first Assyrian empire: Tiglath-pileser I.—The Aramoans and the Khati.

The cessation of Egyptian authority over countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression which it had made upon their constitution and customs. While the nobles and citizens of Thebes were adopting the imported worship of Baal and Astarte, and were introducing into the spoken and written language words borrowed from Semitic speech, the Syrians, on the other hand, were not unreceptive of the influence of their conquerors. They had applied themselves zealously to the study of Egyptian arts, industry and religion, and had borrowed from these as much, at least, as they had lent to the dwellers on the Nile. The ancient Babylonian foundation of their civilization was not, indeed, seriously modified, but it was covered over, so to speak, with an African veneer which varied in depth according to the locality.*

* Most of the views put forth in this part of the chapter are based on posterior and not contemporary data. The most ancient monuments which give evidence of it show it in such a complete state that we may fairly ascribe it to some centuries earlier; that is, to the time when Egypt still ruled in Syria, the period of the XIXth and even the XVIIIth dynasty.

Phoenicia especially assumed and retained this foreign exterior. Its merchants, accustomed to establish themselves for lengthened periods in the principal trade-centres on the Nile, had become imbued therein with something of the religious ideas and customs of the land, and on returning to their own country had imported these with them and propagated them in their neighbourhood. They were not content with other household utensils, furniture, and jewellery than those to which they had been accustomed on the Nile, and even the Phonician gods seemed to be subject to this appropriating mania, for they came to be recognised in the indigenous deities of the Said and the Delta. There was, at the outset, no trait in the character of Baalat by which she could be assimilated to Isis or Hathor: she was fierce, warlike, and licentious, and wept for her lover, while the Egyptian goddesses were accustomed to shed tears for their husbands only. It was this element of a common grief, however, which served to associate the Phonician and Egyptian goddesses, and to produce at length a strange blending of their persons and the legends concerning them; the lady of Byblos ended in becoming an Isis or a Hathor,* and in playing the part assigned to the latter in the Osirian drama.

* The assimilation must have been ancient, since the Egyptians of the Theban dynasties already accepted Baalat as the Hathor of Byblos.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Prisse d'Avennes

This may have been occasioned by her city having maintained closer relationships than the southern towns with Buto and Mendes, or by her priests having come to recognise a fundamental agreement between their theology and that of Egypt. In any case, it was at Byblos that the most marked and numerous, as well as the most ancient, examples of borrowing from the religions of the Nile were to be found. The theologians of Byblos imagined that the coffin of Osiris, after it had been thrown into the sea by Typhon, had been thrown up on the land somewhere near their city at the foot of a tamarisk, and that this tree, in its rapid growth, had gradually enfolded within its trunk the body and its case. King Malkander cut it down in order to use it as a support for the roof of his palace: a marvellous perfume rising from it filled the apartments, and it was not long before the prodigy was bruited abroad. Isis, who was travelling through the world in quest of her husband, heard of it, and at once realised its meaning: clad in rags and weeping, she sat down by the well whither the women of Byblos were accustomed to come every morning and evening to draw water, and, being interrogated by them, refused to reply; but when the maids of Queen Astarte* approached in their turn, they were received by the goddess in the most amiable manner—Isis deigning even to plait their hair, and to communicate to them the odour of myrrh with which she herself was impregnated.

* Astarte is the name taken by the queen in the Phoenician version: the Egyptian counterpart of the same narrative substituted for it Nemanous or Saosis; that is to say, the two principal forms of Hathor—the Hermopolitan Nahmauit and the Heliopolitan lusasit. It would appear from the presence of these names that there must have been in Egypt two versions at least of the Phoenician adventures of Isis—the one of Hermopolitan and the other of Heliopolitan origin.

Their mistress came to see the stranger who had thus treated her servants, took her into her service, and confided to her the care of her lately born son. Isis became attached to the child, adopted it for her own, after the Egyptian manner, by inserting her finger in its mouth; and having passed it through the fire during the night in order to consume away slowly anything of a perishable nature in its body, metamorphosed herself into a swallow, and flew around the miraculous pillar uttering plaintive cries. Astarte came upon her once while she was bathing the child in the flame, and broke by her shrieks of fright the charm of immortality. Isis was only able to reassure her by revealing her name and the object of her presence there. She opened the mysterious tree-trunk, anointed it with essences, and wrapping it in precious cloths, transmitted it to the priests of Byblos, who deposited it respectfully in their temple: she put the coffin which it contained on board ship, and brought it, after many adventures, into Egypt. Another tradition asserts, however, that Osiris never found his way back to his country: he was buried at Byblos, this tradition maintained, and it was in his honour that the festivals attributed by the vulgar to the young Adonis were really celebrated. A marvellous fact seemed to support this view. Every year a head of papyrus, thrown into the sea at some unknown point of the Delta, was carried for six days along the Syrian coast, buffeted by wind and waves, and on the seventh was thrown up at Byblos, where the priests received it and exhibited it solemnly to the people.* The details of these different stories are not in every case very ancient, but the first fact in them carries us back to the time when Byblos had accepted the sovereignty of the Theban dynasties, and was maintaining daily commercial and political relations with the inhabitants of the Nile valley.**

* In the later Roman period it was letters announcing the resurrection of Adonis-Osiris that the Alexandrian women cast into the sea, and these were carried by the current as far as Byblos. See on this subject the commentaries of Cyril of Alexandra and Procopius of Gaza on chap, xviii. of Isaiah.

** It is worthy of note that Philo gives to the divinity with the Egyptian name Taautos the part in the ancient history of Phoenicia of having edited the mystic writings put in order by Sanchoniathon at a very early epoch.

The city proclaimed Horus to be a great god.* El-Kronos allied himself with Osiris as well as with Adonis; Isis and Baalat became blended together at their first encounter, and the respective peoples made an exchange of their deities with the same light-heartedness as they displayed in trafficking with the products of their soil or their industry.

* This is confirmed by one of the names inscribed on the Tel el-Amarna tablets as being that of a governor of Byblos under Amenothes IV. This name was read Rabimur, Anrabimur, or Ilrabimur, and finally Ilurabihur: the meaning of it is, "Muru is the great god," or "Horus is the great god." Muru is the name which we find in an appellation of a Hittite king, Maurusaru, "Mauru is king." On an Aramoan cylinder in the British Museum, representing a god in Assyrian dress fighting with two griffins, there is the inscription "Horkhu," Harmakhis.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio engraved in Cesnola. The Phoenician figures of Horus and Thot which I have reproduced were pointed out to me by my friend Clermont-Ganneau.

After Osiris, the Ibis Thot was the most important among the deities who had emigrated to Asia. He was too closely connected with the Osirian cycle to be forgotten by the Phoenicians after they had adopted his companions. We are ignorant of the particular divinity with whom he was identified, or would be the more readily associated from some similarity in the pronunciation of his name: we know only that he still preserved in his new country all the power of his voice and all the subtilty of his mind. He occupied there also the position of scribe and enchanter, as he had done at Thebes, Memphis, Thinis, and before the chief of each Heliopolitan Ennead. He became the usual adviser of El-Kronos at Byblos, as he had been of Osiris and Horus; he composed charms for him, and formulae which increased the warlike zeal of his partisans; he prescribed the form and insignia of the god and of his attendant deities, and came finally to be considered as the inventor of letters.*

* The part of counsellor which Thot played in connexion with the god of Byblos was described at some length in the writings attributed to Sankhoniathon.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after an intaglio engraved in M. de Vogue.

The epoch, indeed, in which he became a naturalised Phoenician coincides approximately with a fundamental revolution in the art of writing—that in which a simple and rapid stenography was substituted for the complicated and tedious systems with which the empires of the ancient world had been content from their origin. Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Arvad, had employed up to this period the most intricate of these systems. Like most of the civilized nations of Western Asia, they had conducted their diplomatic and commercial correspondence in the cuneiform character impressed upon clay tablets. Their kings had had recourse to a Babylonian model for communicating to the Amenothes Pharaohs the expression of their wishes or their loyalty; we now behold them, after an interval of four hundred years and more*—during which we have no examples of their monuments—possessed of a short and commodious script, without the encumbrance of ideograms, determinatives, polyphony and syllabic sounds, such as had fettered the Egyptian and Chaldaean scribes, in spite of their cleverness in dealing with them. Phonetic articulations were ultimately resolved into twenty-two sounds, to each of which a special sign was attached, which collectively took the place of the hundreds or thousands of signs formerly required.

* The inscription on the bronze cup dedicated to the Baal of the Lebanon, goes back probably to the time of Hiram I., say the Xth century before our era; the reasons advanced by Winckler for dating it in the time of Hiram II. have not been fully accepted up to the present. By placing the introduction of the alphabet somewhere between Amenothes IV. in the XVth and Hiram I. in the Xth century before our era, and by taking the middle date between them, say the accession of the XXIs'dynasty towards the year 1100 B.C. for its invention or adoption, we cannot go far wrong one way or the other.



Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure. This is the cup of the Baal of the Lebanon.

This was an alphabet, the first in point of time, but so ingenious and so pliable that the majority of ancient and modern nations have found it able to supply all their needs—Greeks and Europeans of the western Mediterranean on the one hand, and Semites of all kinds, Persians and Hindus on the other.



It must have originated between the end of the XVIIIth and the beginning of the XXIst dynasties, and the existence of Pharaonic rule in Phoenicia during this period has led more than one modern scholar to assume that it developed under Egyptian influence.*

* The hypothesis of an Egyptian origin, suggested casually by Champollion, has been ably dealt with by E. de Rouge. E. de Rouge derives the alphabet from the Hieratic, and his identifications have been accepted by Lauth, by Brugsch, by P. Lenormant, and by Isaac Taylor. Halevy would take it from the Egyptian hieroglyphics directly without the intervention of the Hieratic. The Egyptian origin, strongly contested of late, has been accepted by the majority of scholars.

Some affirm that it is traceable directly to the hieroglyphs, while others seek for some intermediary in the shape of a cursive script, and find this in the Hieratic writing, which contains, they maintain, prototypes of all the Phoenician letters. Tables have been drawn up, showing at a glance the resemblances and differences which appear respectively to justify or condemn their hypothesis. Perhaps the analogies would be more evident and more numerous if we were in possession of inscriptions going back nearer to the date of origin. As it is, the divergencies are sufficiently striking to lead some scholars to seek the prototype of the alphabet elsewhere—either in Babylon, in Asia Minor, or even in Crete, among those barbarous hieroglyphs which are attributed to the primitive inhabitants of the island. It is no easy matter to get at the truth amid these conflicting theories. Two points only are indisputable; first, the almost unanimous agreement among writers of classical times in ascribing the first alphabet to the Phoenicians; and second, the Phonician origin of the Greek, and afterwards of the Latin alphabet which we employ to-day.

To return to the religion of the Phoenicians: the foreign deities were not content with obtaining a high place in the estimation of priests and people; they acquired such authority over the native gods that they persuaded them to metamorphose themselves almost completely into Egyptian divinities.



Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a photograph reproduced in Clermont-Ganneau.

One finds among the majority of them the emblems commonly used in the Pharaonic temples, sceptres with heads of animals, head-dress like the Pschent, the crux ansata, the solar disk, and the winged scarab. The lady of Byblos placed the cow's horns upon her head from the moment she became identified with Hathor.* The Baal of the neighbouring Arvad—probably a form of Bashuf—was still represented as standing upright on his lion in order to traverse the high places: but while, in the monument which has preserved the figure of the god, both lion and mountain are given according to Chaldaean tradition, he himself, as the illustration shows, is dressed after the manner of Egypt, in the striped and plaited loin-cloth, wears a large necklace on his neck and bracelets on his arms, and bears upon his head the white mitre with its double plume and the Egyptian uraaus.**

* She is represented as Hathor on the stele of Iehav-melek, King of Byblos, during the Persian period.

** This monument, which belonged to the Peretie collection, was found near Amrith, at the place called Nahr-Abrek. The dress and bearing are so like those of the Rashuf represented on Egyptian monuments, that I have no hesitation in regarding this as a representation of that god.

He brandishes in one hand the weapon of the victor, and is on the point of despatching with it a lion, which he has seized by the tail with the other, after the model of the Pharaonic hunters, Amenothes I. and Thutmosis III. The lunar disk floating above his head lends to him, it is true, a Phonician character, but the winged sun of Heliopolis hovering above the disk leaves no doubt as to his Egyptian antecedents.*

* The Phonician symbol represents the crescent moon holding the darkened portion in its arms, like the symbol reserved in Egypt for the lunar gods.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Renan.

The worship, too, offered to these metamorphosed gods was as much changed as the deities themselves; the altars assumed something of the Egyptian form, and the tabernacles were turned into shrines, which were decorated at the top with a concave groove, or with a frieze made up of repetitions of the uraeus. Egyptian fashions had influenced the better classes so far as to change even their mode of dealing with the dead, of which we find in not a few places clear evidence. Travellers arriving in Egypt at that period must have been as much astonished as the tourist of to-day by the monuments which the Egyptians erected for their dead.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. This monument was in the Louvre Museum. Analogous figures of gods or kings holding a lion by the tail are found on various monuments of the Theban dynasties.

The pyramids which met their gaze, as soon as they had reached the apex of the Delta, must have far surpassed their ideas of them, no matter how frequently they may have been told about them, and they must have been at a loss to know why such a number of stones should have been brought together to cover a single corpse. At the foot of these colossal monuments, lying like a pack of hounds asleep around their master, the mastabas of the early dynasties were ranged, half buried under the sand, but still visible, and still visited on certain days by the descendants of their inhabitants, or by priests charged with the duty of keeping them up. Chapels of more recent generations extended as a sort of screen before the ancient tombs, affording examples of the two archaic types combined—the mastaba more or less curtailed in its proportions, and the pyramid with a more or less acute point. The majority of these monuments are no longer in existence, and only one of them has come down to us intact—that which Amenothes III. erected in the Serapeum at Memphis in honour of an Apis which had died in his reign.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration by Thobois, as given in Renan. The cuttings made in the lower stonework appear to be traces of unfinished steps. The pyramid at the top is no longer in existence, but its remains are scattered about the foot of the monument, and furnished M. Thobois with the means of reconstructing with exactness the original form.

Phoenicians visiting the Nile valley must have carried back with them to their native country a remembrance of this kind of burying-place, and have suggested it to their architects as a model. One of the cemeteries at Arvad contains a splendid specimen of this imported design.*

* Pietschmann thinks that the monument is not older than the Greek epoch, and it must be admitted that the cornice is not such as we usually meet with in Egypt in Theban times; nevertheless, the very marked resemblance to the Theban mastaba shows that it must have been directly connected with the Egyptian type which prevailed from the XVIIIth to the XXth dynasties.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a water-colour by Thobois, reproduced in Renan.

It is a square tower some thirty-six feet high; the six lower courses consist of blocks, each some sixteen and a half feet long, joined to each other without mortar. The two lowest courses project so as to form a kind of pedestal for the building. The cornice at the top consists of a deep moulding, surmounted by a broad flat band, above which rises the pyramid, which attains a height of nearly thirty feet. It is impossible to deny that it is constructed on a foreign model; it is not a slavish imitation, however, but rather an adaptation upon a rational plan to the conditions of its new home. Its foundations rest on nothing but a mixture of soil and sand impregnated with water, and if vaults had been constructed beneath this, as in Egypt, the body placed there would soon have corrupted away, owing to the infiltration of moisture. The dead bodies were, therefore, placed within the structure above ground, in chambers corresponding to the Egyptian chapel, which were superimposed the one upon the other. The first storey would furnish space for three bodies, and the second would contain twelve, for which as many niches were provided. In the same cemetery we find examples of tombs which the architect has constructed, not after an Egyptian, but a Chaldaean model. A round tower is here substituted for the square structure and a cupola for the pyramid, while the cornice is represented by crenellated markings. The only Egyptian feature about it is the four lions, which seem to support the whole edifice upon their backs.*

* The fellahin in the neighbourhood call these two monuments the Meghazil or "distaffs."

Arvad was, among Phoenician cities, the nearest neighbour to the kingdoms on the Euphrates, and was thus the first to experience either the brunt of an attack or the propagation of fashions and ideas from these countries. In the more southerly region, in the country about Tyre, there are fewer indications of Babylonian influence, and such examples of burying-places for the ruling classes as the Kabr-Hiram and other similar tombs correspond with the mixed mastaba of the Theban period. We have the same rectangular base, but the chapel and its crowning pyramid are represented by the sarcophagus itself with its rigid cover. The work is of an unfinished character, and carelessly wrought, but there is a charming simplicity about its lines and a harmony in its proportions which betray an Egyptian influence.



Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch by Thobois, reproduced by Renan.

The spirit of imitation which we find in the religion and architecture of Phoenicia is no less displayed in the minor arts, such as goldsmiths'work, sculpture in ivory, engraving on gems, and glass-making. The forms, designs, and colours are all rather those of Egypt than of Chaldaea. The many-hued glass objects, turned out by the manufacturers of the Said in millions, furnished at one time valuable cargoes for the Phoenicians; they learned at length to cast and colour copies of these at home, and imitated their Egyptian models so successfully that classical antiquity was often deceived by them.*

* Glass manufacture was carried to such a degree of perfection among the Phoenicians, that many ancient authors attributed to them the invention of glass.

Their engravers, while still continuing to employ cones and cylinders of Babylonian form, borrowed the scarab type also, and made use of it on the bezils of rings, the pendants of necklaces, and on a kind of bracelet used partly for ornament and partly as a protective amulet. The influence of the Egyptian model did not extend, however, amongst the masses, and we find, therefore, no evidence of it in the case of common objects, such as those of coarse sand or glazed earthenware. Egyptian scarab forms were thus confined to the rich, and the material upon which they are found is generally some costly gem, such as cut and polished agate, onyx, haematite, and lapis-lazuli. The goldsmiths did not slavishly copy the golden and silver bowls which were imported from the Delta; they took their inspiration from the principles displayed in the ornamentation of these objects, but they treated the subjects after their own manner, grouping them afresh and blending them with new designs. The intrinsic value of the metal upon which these artistic conceptions had been impressed led to their destruction, and among the examples which have come down to us I know of no object which can be traced to the period of the Egyptian conquest. It was Theban art for the most part which furnished the Phoenicians with their designs. These included the lotus, the papyrus, the cow standing in a thicket and suckling her calf, the sacred bark, and the king threatening with his uplifted arm the crowd of conquered foes who lie prostrate before him.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Grifi.

The king's double often accompanied him on some of the original objects, impassive and armed with the banner bearing the name of Horus. The Phoenician artist modified this figure, which in its original form did not satisfy his ideas of human nature, by transforming it into a protective genius, who looks with approval on the exploits of his protege, and gathers together the corpses of those he has slain. Once these designs had become current among the goldsmiths, they continued to be supplied for a long period, without much modification, to the markets of the Eastern and Western worlds. Indeed, it was natural that they should have taken a stereotyped form, when we consider that the Phoenicians who employed them held continuous commercial relations with the country whence they had come—a country of which, too, they recognised the supremacy. Egypt in the Ramesside period was, as we have seen, distinguished for the highest development of every branch of industry; it had also a population which imported and exported more raw material and more manufactured products than any other.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Longperier.

The small nation which acted as a commercial intermediary between Egypt and the rest of the world had in this traffic a steady source of profit, and even in providing Egypt with a single article—for example, bronze, or the tin necessary for its preparation—could realise enormous profits. The people of Tyre and Sidon had been very careful not to alienate the good will of such rich customers, and as long as the representatives of the Pharaoh held sway in Syria, they had shown themselves, if not thoroughly trustworthy vassals, at least less turbulent than their neighbours of Arvad and Qodshu. Even when the feebleness and impotence of the successors of Ramses III. relieved them from the obligation of further tribute, they displayed towards their old masters such deference that they obtained as great freedom of trade with the ports of the Delta as they had enjoyed in the past. They maintained with these ports the same relations as in the days of their dependence, and their ships sailed up the river as far as Memphis, and even higher, while the Egyptian galleys continued to coast the littoral of Syria. An official report addressed to Hrihor by one of the ministers of the Theban Amon, indicates at one and the same time the manner in which these voyages were accomplished, and the dangers to which their crews were exposed. Hrihor, who was still high priest, was in need of foreign timber to complete some work he had in hand, probably the repair of the sacred barks, and commanded the official above mentioned to proceed by sea to Byblos, to King Zikarbal,* in order to purchase cedars of Lebanon.

* This is the name which classical tradition ascribed to the first husband of Dido, the founder of Carthage—Sicharbas, Sichaeus, Acerbas.

The messenger started from Tanis, coasted along Kharu, and put into the harbour of Dor, which then belonged to the Zakkala: while he was revictualling his ship, one of the sailors ran away with the cash-box. The local ruler, Badilu, expressed at first his sympathy at this misfortune, and gave his help to capture the robber; then unaccountably changing his mind he threw the messenger into prison, who had accordingly to send to Egypt to procure fresh funds for his liberation and the accomplishment of his mission. Having arrived at Byblos, nothing occurred there worthy of record. The wood having at length been cut and put on board, the ship set sail homewards. Driven by contrary winds, the vessel was thrown upon the coast of Alasia, where the crew were graciously received by the Queen Khatiba. We have evidence everywhere, it may be stated, as to the friendly disposition displayed, either with or without the promptings of interest, towards the representative of the Theban pontiff. Had he been ill-used, the Phoenicians living on Egyptian territory would have been made to suffer for it.

Navigators had to take additional precautions, owing to the presence of AEgean or Asiatic pirates on the routes followed by the mercantile marine, which rendered their voyages dangerous and sometimes interrupted them altogether. The Syrian coast-line was exposed to these marauders quite as much as the African had been during the sixty or eighty years which followed the death of Ramses II.; the seamen of the north—Achaeans and Tyrseni, Lycians and Shardanians—had pillaged it on many occasions, and in the invasion which followed these attacks it experienced as little mercy as Naharaim, the Khati, and the region of the Amorites. The fleets which carried the Philistines, the Zakkala, and their allies had devastated the whole coast before they encountered the Egyptian ships of Ramses III. near Magadil, to the south of Carmel. Arvad as well as Zahi had succumbed to the violence of their attack, and if the cities of Byblos, Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre had escaped, their suburbs had been subjected to the ravages of the foe.*

* See, for this invasion, vol. v. pp. 305-311, of the present work.

Peace followed the double victory of the Egyptians, and commerce on the Mediterranean resumed once more its wonted ways, but only in those regions where the authority of the Pharaoh and the fear of his vengeance were effective influences. Beyond this sphere there were continual warfare, piracy, migrations of barbaric hordes, and disturbances of all kinds, among which, if a stranger ventured, it was at the almost certain risk of losing his life or liberty. The area of undisturbed seas became more and more contracted in proportion as the memory of past defeats faded away. Cyprus was not comprised within it, and the AEgeans, who were restrained by the fear of Egypt from venturing into any region under her survey, perpetually flocked thither in numerous bodies. The Achaeans, too, took up their abode on this island at an early date—about the time when some of their bands were infesting Libya, and offering their help to the enemies of the Pharaoh. They began their encroachments on the northern side of the island—the least rich, it is true, but the nearest to Cilicia, and the easiest to hold against the attacks of their rivals. The disaster of Piriu had no doubt dashed their hopes of finding a settlement in Egypt: they never returned thither any more, and the current of emigration which had momentarily inclined towards the south, now set steadily towards the east, where the large island of Cyprus offered an unprotected and more profitable field of adventure. We know not how far they penetrated into its forests and its interior. The natives began, at length, under their influence, to despise the customs and mode of existence with which they had been previously contented: they acquired a taste for pottery rudely decorated after the Mycenean manner, for jewellery, and for the bronze swords which they had seen in the hands of the invaders. The Phoenicians, in order to maintain their ground against the intruders, had to strengthen their ancient posts or found others—such as Carpasia, Gerynia, and Lapathos on the Achaean coast itself, Tamassos near the copper-mines, and a new town, Qart-hadashat, which is perhaps only the ancient Citium under a new name.* They thus added to their earlier possessions on the island regions on its northern side, while the rest either fell gradually into the hands of Hellenic adventurers, or continued in the possession of the native populations. Cyprus served henceforward as an advance-post against the attacks of Western nations, and the Phoenicians must have been thankful for the good fortune which had made them see the wisdom of fortifying it. But what became of their possessions lying outside Cyprus? They retained several of them on the southern coasts of Asia Minor, and Rhodes remained faithful to them, as well as Thasos, enabling them to overlook the two extremities of the Archipelago;** but, owing to the movements of the People of the Sea and the political development of the Mycenean states, they had to give up the stations and harbours of refuge which they held in the other islands or on the continent.

* It is mentioned in the inscription of Baal of Lebanon, and in the Assyrian inscriptions of the VII"'century B.C.

* This would appear to be the case, as far as Rhodes is concerned, from the traditions which ascribed the final expulsion of the Phoenicians to a Doric invasion from Argos. The somewhat legendary accounts of the state of affairs after the Hellenic conquest are in the fragments of Ergias and Polyzelos.

They still continued, however, to pay visits to these localities—sometimes in the guise of merchants and at others as raiders, according to their ancient custom. They went from port to port as of old, exposing their wares in the market-places, pillaging the farms and villages, carrying into captivity the women and children whom they could entice on board, or whom they might find defenceless on the strand; but they attempted all this with more risk than formerly, and with less success. The inhabitants of the coast were possessed of fully manned ships, similar in form to those of the Philistines or the Zakkala, which, at the first sight of the Phoenicians, set out in pursuit of them, or, following the example set by their foe, lay in wait for them behind some headland, and retaliated upon them for their cruelty. Piracy in the Archipelago was practised as a matter of course, and there was no islander who did not give himself up to it when the opportunity offered, to return to his honest occupations after a successful venture. Some kings seem to have risen up here and there who found this state of affairs intolerable, and endeavoured to remedy it by every means within their power: they followed on the heels of the corsairs and adventurers, whatever might be their country; they followed them up to their harbours of refuge, and became an effective police force in all parts of the sea where they were able to carry their flag. The memory of such exploits was preserved in the tradition of the Cretan empire which Minos had constituted, and which extended its protection over a portion of continental Greece.

If the Phoenicians had had to deal only with the piratical expeditions of the peoples of the coast or with the jealous watchfulness of the rulers of the sea, they might have endured the evil, but they had now to put up, in addition, with rivalry in the artistic and industrial products of which they had long had the monopoly. The spread of art had at length led to the establishment of local centres of production everywhere, which bade fair to vie with those of Phoenicia. On the continent and in the Cyclades there were produced statuettes, intaglios, jewels, vases, weapons, and textile fabrics which rivalled those of the East, and were probably much cheaper. The merchants of Tyre and Sidon could still find a market, however, for manufactures requiring great technical skill or displaying superior taste—such as gold or silver bowls, engraved or decorated with figures in outline—but they had to face a serious falling off in their sales of ordinary goods. To extend their commerce they had to seek new and less critical markets, where the bales of their wares, of which the AEgean population was becoming weary, would lose none of their attractions. We do not know at what date they ventured to sail into the mysterious region of the Hesperides, nor by what route they first reached it. It is possible that they passed from Crete to Cythera, and from this to the Ionian Islands and to the point of Calabria, on the other side of the straits of Otranto, whence they were able to make their way gradually to Sicily.*

* Ed. Meyer thinks that the extension of Phoenician commerce to the Western Mediterranean goes back to the XVIIIth dynasty, or, at the latest, the XVth century before our era. Without laying undue stress on this view, I am inclined to ascribe with him, until we get further knowledge, the colonisation of the West to the period immediately following the movements of the People of the Sea and the diminution of Phoenician trade in the Grecian Archipelago. Exploring voyages had been made before this, but the founding of colonies was not earlier than this epoch.

Did the fame of their discovery, we may ask, spread so rapidly in the East as to excite there the cupidity and envy of their rivals? However this may have been, the People of the Sea, after repeated checks in Africa and Syria, and feeling more than ever the pressure of the northern tribes encroaching on them, set out towards the west, following the route pursued by the Phoenicians. The traditions current among them and collected afterwards by the Greek historians give an account, mingled with many fabulous details, of the causes which led to their migrations and of the vicissitudes which they experienced in the course of them. Daedalus having taken flight from Crete to Sicily, Minos, who had followed in his steps, took possession of the greater part of the island with his Eteocretes. Iolaos was the leader of Pelasgic bands, whom he conducted first into Libya and finally to Sardinia. It came also to pass that in the days of Atys, son of Manes, a famine broke out and raged throughout Lydia: the king, unable to provide food for his people, had them numbered, and decided by lot which of the two halves of the population should expatriate themselves under the leadership of his son Tyrsenos. Those-who were thus fated to leave their country assembled at Smyrna, constructed ships there, and having embarked on board of them what was necessary, set sail in quest of a new home. After a long and devious voyage, they at length disembarked in the country of the Umbrians, where they built cities, and became a prosperous people under the name of Tyrseni, being thus called after their leader Tyrsenos.*

* Herodotus, whence all the information of other classical writers is directly or indirectly taken. Most modern historians reject this tradition. I see no reason for my own part why they should do so, at least in the present state of our knowledge. The Etrurians of the historical period were the result of a fusion of several different elements, and there is nothing against the view that the Tursha—one of these elements—should have come from Asia Minor, as Herodotus says. Properly understood, the tradition seems well founded, and the details may have been added afterwards, either by the Lydians themselves, or by the Greek historians who collected the Lydian traditions.

The remaining portions of the nations who had taken part in the attack on Egypt—of which several tribes had been planted by Ramses III. in the Shephelah, from Gaza to Carmel—proceeded in a series of successive detachments from Asia Minor and the AEgean Sea to the coasts of Italy and of the large islands; the Tursha into that region which was known afterwards as Etruria, the Shardana into Sardinia, the Zakkala into Sicily, and along with the latter some Pulasati, whose memory is still preserved on the northern slope of Etna. Fate thus brought the Phonician emigrants once more into close contact with their traditional enemies, and the hostility which they experienced in their new settlements from the latter was among the influences which determined their further migration from Italy proper, and from the region occupied by the Ligurians between the Arno and the Ebro. They had already probably reached Sardinia and Corsica, but the majority of their ships had sailed to the southward, and having touched at Malta, Gozo, and the small islands between Sicily and the Syrtes, had followed the coast-line of Africa, until at length they reached the straits of Gribraltar and the southern shores of Spain. No traces remain of their explorations, or of their early establishments in the western Mediterranean, as the towns which they are thought—with good reason in most instances—to have founded there belong to a much later date. Every permanent settlement, however, is preceded by a period of exploration and research, which may last for only a few years or be prolonged to as many centuries. I am within the mark, I think, in assuming that Phonician adventurers, or possibly even the regular trading ships of Tyre and Sidon, had established relations with the semi-barbarous chiefs of Botica as early as the XIIth century before our era, that is, at the time when the power of Thebes was fading away under the weak rule of the pontiffs of Amon and the Tanite Pharaohs.

The Phoenicians were too much absorbed in their commercial pursuits to aspire to the inheritance which Egypt was letting slip through her fingers. Their numbers were not more than sufficient to supply men for their ships, and they were often obliged to have recourse to their allies or to mercenary tribes—the Leleges or Carians—in order to provide crews for their vessels or garrisons for their trading posts; it was impossible, therefore, for them to think of raising armies fit to conquer or keep in check the rulers on the Orontes or in Naharaim. They left this to the races of the interior—the Amorites and Hittites—and to their restless ambition. The Hittite power, however, had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted on it at the time of the Asianic invasion.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Barthelemy.

The confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by Sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other. At this time the entire plain between the Amanus and the Euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins. Arabian and Byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the Greek or Persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time. The history of Syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* The Khati proper were settled to the south of the Taurus in the basin of the Sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed Carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others. Its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the Khati. The Patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the Mediterranean above the plains of Naharairn and beyond the Orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient Alasia. Aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the Patinu between the two Lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of Hamath and Qobah.**

* The results of the excavations at Zinjirli are evidence of what historical material we may hope to find in these tumuli. See the account of the earlier results in P. von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 1893.

** The Aramaeans are mentioned by Tiglath-pileser I. as situated between the Balikh, the Euphrates, and the Sajur.

The valleys of the Amanus and the southern slopes of the Taurus included within them some half-dozen badly defined principalities—Samalla on the Kara-Su,* Gurgum** around Marqasi, the Qui*** and Khilakku**** in the classical Cilicia, and the Kasku^ and Kummukh^^ in a bend of the Euphrates to the north and north-east of the Khati.

* The country of Samalla, in Egyptian Samalua, extended around the Tell of Zinjirli, at the foot of the Amanus, in the valley of Marash of the Arab historians.

** The name has been read Gamgumu, Gaugum, and connected by Tom-kins with the Egyptian Augama, which he reads Gagama, in the lists of Thutmosis III. The Aramaean inscription on the statue of King Panammu shows that it must be read Gurgumu, and Sachau has identified this new name with that of Jurjum, which was the name by which the province of the Amanus, lying between Baias and the lake of Antioch, was known in the Byzantine period; the ancient Gurgum stretches further towards the north, around the town of Marqasi, which Tomkins and Sachau have identified with Marash.

*** The site of the country of Qui was determined by Schrader; it was that part of the Cilician plain which stretches from the Amanus to the mountains of the Ketis, and takes in the great town of Tarsus. F. Lenor-mant has pointed out that this country is mentioned twice in the Scriptures (1 Kings x, 28 and 2 Chron. i. 16), in the time of Solomon. The designation of the country, transformed into the appellation of an eponymous god, is found in the name Qauisaru, "Qaui is king."

**** Khilakku, the name of which is possibly the same as the Egyptian Khalakka, is the Cilicia Trachsea of classical geographers.

^ The country of Kashku, which has been connected with Kashkisha, which takes the place of Karkisha in an Egyptian text, was still a dependency of the Hittites in the time of Tiglath-pileser. It was in the neighbourhood of the Urumu, whose capital seems to have been Urum, the Ourima of Ptolemy, near the bend of the Euphrates between Sumeisat and Birejik; it extended into the Commagene of classical times, on the borders of Melitene and the Tubal.

^^ Kummukh lay on both sides of the Euphrates and of the Upper Tigris; it became gradually restricted, until at length it was conterminous with the Commagene of classical geographers.

The ancient Mitanni to the east of Carchemish, which was so active in the time of the later Amenothes, had now ceased to exist, and there was but a vague remembrance of its farmer prowess. It had foundered probably in the great cataclysm which engulfed the Hittite empire, although its name appears inscribed once more among those of the vassals of Egypt on the triumphal lists of Ramses III. Its chief tribes had probably migrated towards the regions which were afterwards described by the Greek geographers as the home of the Matieni on the Halys and in the neighbourhood of Lake Urmiah. Aramaean kingdoms, of which the greatest was that of Bit-Adini,* had succeeded them, and bordered the Euphrates on each side as far as the Chalus and Balikh respectively; the ancient Harran belonged also to them, and their frontier stretched as far as Hamath, and to that of the Patinu on the Orontes.

* The province of Bit-Adini was specially that part of the country which lay between the Euphrates and the Balikh, but it extended also to other Syrian provinces between the Euphrates and the Aprie.

It was, as we have seen, a complete breaking up of the old nationalities, and we have evidence also of a similar disintegration in the countries to the north of the Taurus, in the direction of the Black Sea. Of the mighty Khati with whom Thutmosis III. had come into contact, there was no apparent trace: either the tribes of which they were composed had migrated towards the south, or those who had never left their native mountains had entered into new combinations and lost even the remembrance of their name. The Milidu, Tabal (Tubal), and Mushku (Meshech) stretched behind each other from east to west on the confines of the Tokhma-Su, and still further away other cities of less importance contended for the possession of the Upper Saros and the middle region of the Halys. These peoples, at once poor and warlike, had been attracted, like the Hittites of some centuries previous, by the riches accumulated in the strongholds of Syria. Eevolutions must have been frequent in these regions, but our knowledge of them is more a matter of conjecture than of actual evidence. Towards the year 1170 B.C. the Mushku swooped down on Kummukh, and made themselves its masters; then pursuing their good fortune, they took from the Assyrians the two provinces, Alzi and Purukuzzi, which lay not far from the sources of the Tigris and the Balikh.*

* The Annals of Tiglath-pileser I. place their invasion fifty years before the beginning of his reign. Ed. Meyer saw a connexion between this and the invasion of the People of the Sea, which took place under Ramses III. I think that the invasion of the Mushku was a purely local affair, and had nothing in common with the general catastrophe occasioned by the movement of the Asiatic armies.

A little later the Kashku, together with some Aramaeans, broke into Shubarti, then subject to Assyria, and took possession of a part of it. The majority of these invasions had, however, no permanent result: they never issued in the establishment of an empire like that of the Khati, capable by its homogeneity of offering a serious resistance to the march of a conqueror from the south. To sum up the condition of affairs: if a redistribution of races had brought about a change in Northern Syria, their want of cohesion was no less marked than in the time of the Egyptian wars; the first enemy to make an attack upon the frontier of one or other of these tribes was sure of victory, and, if he persevered in his efforts, could make himself master of as much territory as he might choose. The Pharaohs had succeeded in welding together their African possessions, and their part in the drama of conquest had been played long ago; but the cities of the Tigris and the Lower Euphrates—Nineveh and Babylon-were ready to enter the lists as soon as they felt themselves strong enough to revive their ancient traditions of foreign conquest.

The successors of Agumkakrime were not more fortunate than he had been in attempting to raise Babylon once more to the foremost rank; their want of power, their discord, the insubordination and sedition that existed among their Cossaean troops, and the almost periodic returns of the Theban generals to the banks of the Euphrates, sometimes even to those of the Balikh and the Khabur, all seemed to conspire to aggravate the helpless state into which Babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of Uruazagga. Elam was pressing upon her eastern, and Assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship of such of their relatives as were left widows or minors, and, when the occasion presented itself, they took possession of the throne of Bel, or bestowed it on one of their creatures. Assyria particularly seemed to regard Babylon with a deadly hatred. The capitals of the two countries were not more than some one hundred and eighty-five miles apart, the intervening district being a flat and monotonous alluvial plain, unbroken by any feature which could serve as a natural frontier. The line of demarcation usually followed one of the many canals in the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris; it then crossed the latter, and was formed by one of the rivers draining the Iranian table-land,—either the Upper Zab, the Radanu, the Turnat, or some of their ramifications in the spurs of the mountain ranges. Each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and to keep it there at all hazards. This narrow area was the scene of continual war, either between the armies of the two states or those of partisans, suspended from time to time by an elaborate treaty which was supposed to settle all difficulties, but, as a matter of fact, satisfied no one, and left both parties discontented with their lot and jealous of each other. The concessions made were never of sufficient importance to enable the conqueror to crush his rival and regain for himself the ancient domain of Khammurabi; his losses, on the other hand, were often considerable enough to paralyse his forces, and prevent him from extending his border in any other direction. When the Egyptians seized on Naharaim, Assyria and Babylon each adopted at the outset a different attitude towards the conquerors. Assyria, which never laid any permanent claims to the seaboard provinces of the Mediterranean, was not disposed to resent their occupation by Egypt, and desired only to make sure of their support or their neutrality. The sovereign then ruling Assyria, but of whose name we have no record, hastened to congratulate Thutmosis III. on his victory at Megiddo, and sent him presents of precious vases, slaves, lapis-lazuli, chariots and horses, all of which the Egyptian conqueror regarded as so much tribute. Babylon, on the other hand, did not take action so promptly as Assyria; it was only towards the latter years of Thutmosis that its king, Karaindash, being hard pressed by the Assyrian Assurbelnishishu, at length decided to make a treaty with the intruder.*