The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson
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СКАЧАТЬ who planned assassinations and hatched conspiracies in the very purlieus of the royal palace. Ramesses himself would, apparently, have fallen a victim to a plot of the kind, had not the parties to it been discovered, arrested, tried by a Royal Commission, and promptly executed.

      The descendants of Ramesses III. occupied the throne from his death (about B.C. 1280) to B.C. 1100. Ten princes of the name of Ramesses, and one called Meri-Tum, bore sway during this interval, each of them showing, if possible, greater weakness than the last, and all of them sunk in luxury, idle, effeminate, sensual. Ramesses III. provoked caricature by his open exhibition of harem-scenes on the walls of his Medinet-Abou palace. His descendants, content with harem life, scarcely cared to quit the precincts of the royal abode, desisted from all war, and even devolved the task of government on other shoulders. The Pharaohs of the twentieth dynasty became absolute fainéants, and devolved their duties on the high-priests of the great temple of Ammon at Thebes, who "set themselves to play the same part which at a distant period was played by the Mayors of the Palace under the later French kings of the Merovingian line."

      In an absolute monarchy, the royal authority is the mainspring which controls all movements and all actions in every part of the State. Let this source of energy grow weak, and decline at once shows itself throughout the entire body politic. It is as when a fatal malady seizes on the seat of life in an individual—instantly every member, every tissue, falls away, suffers, shrinks, decays, perishes. Egyptian architecture is simply non-existent from the death of Ramesses III. to the age of Sheshonk; the "grand style" of pictorial art disappears; sculpture in relief becomes a wearisome repetition of the same stereotyped religious groups; statuary deteriorates and is rare; above all, literature declines, undergoing an almost complete eclipse. A galaxy of literary talent had, as we have seen, clustered about the reigns of Ramesses II. and Menephthah, under whose encouragement authors had devoted themselves to history, divinity, practical philosophy, poetry, epistolary correspondence, novels, travels, legend. From the time of Ramesses III.—nay, from the time of Seti II.—all is a blank: "the true poetic inspiration appears to have vanished," literature is almost dumb; instead of the masterpieces of Pentaour, Kakabu, Nebsenen, Enna, and others, which even moderns can peruse with pleasure, we have only documents in which "the dry official tone" prevails—abstracts of trials, lists of functionaries, tiresome enumerations in the greatest detail of gifts made to the gods, together with fulsome praises of the kings, written either by themselves or by others, which we are half inclined to regret the lapse of ages has spared from destruction. At the same time morals fall off. Sensuality displays itself in high places. Intrigue enters the charmed circle of the palace. The monarch himself is satirized in indecent drawings. Presently, the whole idea of a divinity hedging in the king departs; and a "thieves' society" is formed for rifling the royal tombs, and tearing the jewels, with which they have been buried, from the monarchs' persons. The king's life is aimed at by conspirators, who do not scruple to use magical arts; priests and high judicial functionaries are implicated in the proceedings. Altogether, the old order seems to be changed, the old ideas to be upset; and no new principles, possessing any vital efficacy, are introduced. Society gradually settles upon its lees; and without some violent application of force from without, or some strange upheaval from within, the nation seems doomed to fall rapidly into decay and dissolution.

      CARICATURE OF THE TIME OF RAMESSES III. CARICATURE OF THE TIME OF RAMESSES III.

      XVIII.

       The Priest-Kings—Pinetem and Solomon.

       Table of Contents

      The position of the priests in Egypt was, from the first, one of high dignity and influence. Though not, strictly speaking, a caste, they formed a very distinct order or class, separated by important privileges, and by their habits of life, from the rest of the community, and recruited mainly from among their own sons, and other near relatives. Their independence and freedom was secured by a system of endowments. From a remote antiquity a considerable portion of the land of Egypt—perhaps as much as one-third—was made over to the priestly class, large estates being attached to each temple, and held as common property by the "colleges," which, like the chapters of our cathedrals, directed the worship of each sacred edifice. These priestly estates were, we are told, exempt from taxation of any kind; and they appear to have received continual augmentation from the piety or superstition of the kings, who constantly made over to their favourite deities fresh "gardens, orchards, vineyards, fields," and even "cities."

      The kings lived always in a considerable amount of awe of the priests. Though claiming a certain qualified divinity themselves, they yet could not but be aware that there were divers flaws and Imperfections in their own divinity—"little rifts within the lute"—which made it not quite a safe support to trust to, or lean upon, entirely. There were other greater gods than themselves—gods from whom their own divinity was derived; and they could not be certain what power or influence the priests might not have with these superior beings, in whose existence and ability to benefit and injure men they had the fullest belief. Consequently, the kings are found to occupy a respectful attitude towards the priests throughout the whole course of Egyptian history, from first to last; and this respectful attitude Is especially maintained towards the great personages in whom the hierarchy culminates, the head officials, or chief priests, of the temples which are the principal centres of the national worship—the temple of Ra, or Tum, at Heliopolis, that of Phthah at Memphis, and that of Ammon at Thebes. According to the place where the capital was fixed for the time being, one or other of these three high-priests had the pre-eminence; and, in the later period of the Ramessides, Thebes having enjoyed metropolitan dignity for between five and six centuries, the Theban High-Priest of Ammon was recognized as beyond dispute the chief of the sacerdotal order, and the next person in the kingdom after the king.

      It had naturally resulted from this high position, and the weight of influence which it enabled its possessor to exercise, that the office had become hereditary. As far back as the reign of Ramesses IX., we find that the holder of the position has succeeded his father in it, and regards himself as high-priest rather by natural right than by the will of the king. The priest of that time, Amenhotep by name, the son of Ramesses-nekht, undertakes the restoration of the Temple of Ammon at Thebes of his own proper motion, "strengthens its walls, builds it anew, makes its columns, inserts in its gates the great folding-doors of acacia wood." Formerly, the kings were the builders, and the high-priests carried out their directions and then in the name of the gods gave thanks to the kings for their pious munificence. Under the ninth Ramesses the order was reversed—"now it is the king who testifies his gratitude to the High-Priest of Ammon for the care bestowed on his temple by the erection of new buildings and the improvement and maintenance of the older ones." The initiative has passed out of the king's hands into those of his subject; he is active, the king is passive; all the glory is Amenhotep's; the king merely comes in at the close of all, as an ornamental person, whose presence adds a certain dignity to the final ceremony.

      HEAD OF HER-HOR. HEAD OF HER-HOR.

      Under the last of the Ramessides the High-Priest of Ammon at Thebes was a certain Her-hor. He was a man of a pleasing countenance, with features that were delicate and good, and an expression that was mild and agreeable. He had the art so to ingratiate himself with his sovereign as to obtain at his hands at least five distinct offices of state besides his sacred dignity. He was "Chief of Upper and Lower Egypt," "Royal son of Gush," "Fanbearer on the right hand of the King," "Principal Architect," and "Administrator of the Granaries," Some of these offices may have been honorary; but the duties of others must have been important, and their proper discharge would have required a vast amount of varied ability. It is not likely that Herhor possessed all the needful qualifications; rather we must presume that he grasped at the multiplicity of appointments in order to accumulate power, СКАЧАТЬ