Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ countries, whether of warfare or commerce. During all this time the plain of Thebes lay bare.

      The next sovereignty that was established in the valley was at This, about sixty miles below Thebes. A succession of monarchs reigned here, some say sixteen, some more, while the plain of Thebes still lay bare.

      While these sovereigns were reigning at This, and before Thebes was heard of, the kings of Memphis were building the Pyramids of Geezeh. It is certain that the builders of these pyramids were learned men. How much science is requisite for the erection of such edifices need hardly be pointed out; – the mathematical skill and accuracy, the astronomical science shown in the placing of them true to the cardinal points, the command of mechanical powers which are at this day unknown to us, and the arts of writing and decoration shown in the inscriptions which covered their outside in the days of Herodotus,¹¹ though the casing which contained them is now destroyed. In the neighbouring tombs, however, we have evidence, as will be shown hereafter, of the state of some of the arts at that date; and I may mention here that the sign of the inkstand and reed pen are among the representations in the tombs. There is no doubt as to who built the Pyramids. Colonel Howard Vyse found the kings' names inscribed in them. When the Pyramids were built, it was a thousand years before Abraham was born, and the plain of Thebes still lay bare.

      Now we must turn southwards, and look over as far as Dongola. For a long way above the Second Cataract there are no monuments. This is probably owing to the river not being navigable there, so that there were no trading stations. There are obvious reasons why temples and other monuments should rise where commerce halts, where men congregate, and desire protection of person and property, and exercise their social passions and affections. So, for the twenty-five days' journey where the river is impracticable, there are few monuments. Then some occur of a rather modern date: and far beyond them – up in Dongola – we come upon traces of a time when men were trafficking, building, and worshipping, while yet the plain of Thebes lay bare. To this point did the sovereigns of Memphis and of This extend their hand of power, erecting statues as memorials of themselves, and by their subjects, trading in such articles of use and luxury as they derived from the east. While the Ethiopian subjects of these early Pharaohs were building up that character for piety and probity which spread over the world, and found its way into the earliest legends and poems of distant nations, the plain of Thebes still lay wild and bare: not one stone yet placed upon another.

      And now the time had arrived for the Theban kings to arise, give glory to the close of the Old Monarchy, and preserve the national name and existence during the thousand years of foreign domination which were to follow. In the course of reigns at which we have now arrived, El-Karnac began to show its massive buildings, and the plain of Thebes to present temptation to a foreign conqueror.

      We have now arrived at the end of the First great Period of ascertained Egyptian history; – a period supposed, from astronomical calculation and critical research, to comprehend 889 years. – A dark and humiliating season was now drawing on.

      Considering the great wealth and power of the kings now reigning at Memphis and at Thebes, we are obliged to form a high opinion of the strength of the Shepherd Race who presently subdued Egypt. Whence they came, no one seems to know, – further than that it was somewhere from the East. Whether they were Assyrians, as some have conjectured, or the Phoenicians, who were encroaching upon the Delta at a subsequent time, or some third party, we cannot learn, the Egyptians having always, as is natural, kept silence about them. The pride of the Egyptians was in their agriculture and commerce; and to be conquered by a pastoral people, whose business lay anywhere among the plains of the earth, rather than in the richly-tilled, narrow valley of the Nile, was a hard stroke of adversity for them. So, in their silence, all that we know of their strong enemy is that the Shepherd Race took Memphis, put garrisons in all the strong places of Egypt, made the kings of Memphis and Thebes tributary to them, and held their empire for 929 years – that is, for a time equal to that which extends from the death of our King Alfred to our own: a long season of subjugation, from which it is wonderful that the native Egyptian race should have revived. This dark season, during which the native kings were not absolutely dethroned, but depressed and made tributary, is commonly called the Middle Monarchy. It is supposed to extend from B.C. 2754 to B.C. 1825.

      About this time, a visitor arrived in Egypt, and remained a short while, whose travels are interesting to us, and whose appearance affords a welcome rest to the imagination, after its wanderings in the dim regions of these old ages. The richest of the Phoenicians, who found themselves restricted for room and pasturage by the numbers of Chaldeans who moved westwards into Syria, found their way, through Arabia, to the abundance of corn which Lower Egypt afforded. Among these was Abraham, a man of such wealth and distinction that he and his followers were entertained as guests at Memphis, and his wife was lodged in the palace of the king. He must have looked up at the Pyramids, and learned some of the particulars which we, following on his traces, long in vain to know: – how they were reared, and for what purpose precisely; and perhaps many details of the progress of the work. It is true these pyramids had then stood somewhere about 1500 years: the builders, tens of thousands in number, had slept for many centuries in their graves: the kings who had reared them lay embalmed in the stillness of ages, and the glory of a supremacy which had passed away; and these edifices had become so familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants, that they were like natural features of the landscape: but as Abraham walked round those vast bases, and looked up at the smooth pictured surfaces of their sides, he might have had explained to him those secrets of ancient civilisation which we seek to pry into in vain.

      We now come to the brilliant Third Period.

      The Theban kings had been growing in strength for some time; and at length they were able to rise up against the Shepherd Race, and expel them from Memphis, and afterwards from their stronghold, Abaris. On the surrender of this last place, the enemy were permitted to march out of the country in safety, the number of their men being recorded as 240,000. – The period of 1300 years now entered upon was the grandest of Egyptian history – if, we may add, the Sesostris of old renown was, as some recent students have supposed, the Ramases II. of this Period. Some high authorities, as Lepsius and Bunsen, believe Sesostris to have belonged to the old Monarchy. However this may be, all agree that the deeds of many heroes are attributed to the one who now bears the name of Sesostris; and the achievements of Ramases the Great are quite enough to glorify his age, whether he had a predecessor like himself or not. Of these achievements I shall say nothing here, as they will come before us quite often enough in our study of the temples. Suffice it that the empire of Egypt was extended by conquest southwards to Abyssinia; westwards over Libya; northwards over Greece; and eastwards beyond the banks of the Ganges. The rock statues and stelae of Sesostris may yet be seen in countries far apart, but within this range: his Babylonian captives were employed on some of the great edifices we have seen, and were afterwards permitted to build a city for themselves near the point of the Delta; and the tributary kings and chiefs of all the conquered countries were required to come up to Egypt once a year, to pay homage by drawing the conqueror's chariot, in return for which they received gifts and favour. The kings of Lower Egypt appear to have declined about this period; if even they were not tributary to those of Upper Egypt. Of these kings, one was he who received Joseph into favour,¹² and made him his prime minister; and another was he who afterwards »knew not Joseph.« Of Joseph's administration of the affairs of Lower Egypt we know more than of the rule of any other minister of the Pharaohs. I have walked upon the mounds which cover the streets of Memphis, through which Joseph rode, on occasion of his investiture, and where the king's servants ran before him, to bid the people bow the knee. And when at Heliopolis, I was on the spot where he married his wife – the daughter of the priest and governor of On, afterwards Heliopolis.

      It was in the early part of this Third Period of the Egyptian Monarchy that Cecrops is supposed (fable being here mingled with history) to have led a colony from Sais, and to have founded the kingdom of Athens,¹³ beginning here the long series of obligations that Greece, and, through Greece, Rome and the world, have been under to Egypt. It is almost overpowering to the imagination to contemplate the vast СКАЧАТЬ