The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians Part 15

DIODORUS SICULUS. Hanoviae, Typis Wechelianis, An 1604.

PLUTARCHUS. Lutetiae Parisiorum, apud Societatem Graecanum Editionum, An.

1624.

STRABO. Lutetiae Parisiorum, Typis regiis, An. 1620.

ATHENaeUS. Lugdani, An. 1612.

PAUSANIAS. Hanoviae, Typis Wechelianis, An. 1613.

APPIa.n.u.s ALEXANDER. Apud Henric. Stephan. An. 1592.

PLATO. Ex nova Joannis Serrani interpretatione. Apud Henric.u.m Stephanum, An. 1578.

ARISTOTELES. Lutetiae Parisiorum, apud Societatem Graecarum Editionum, An.

1619.

ISOCRATES. Apud Paulum Stephanum, An. 1604.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS. Apud Henric.u.m Stepnanum, An. 1594.

DEMOSTHENES. Francof. An. 1604.

ARRIa.n.u.s. Lugd. Batav. An. 1704.

BOOK THE FIRST. THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIANS.

Part The First. Description of Egypt: with an Account of whatever is most curious and remarkable in that Country.

Egypt comprehended anciently, within limits of no very great extent, a prodigious number of cities,(255) and an incredible mult.i.tude of inhabitants.

It is bounded on the east by the Red-Sea and the Isthmus of Suez; on the south by Ethiopia, on the west by Libya, and on the north by the Mediterranean. The Nile runs from south to north, through the whole country, about two hundred leagues in length. This country is enclosed on each side with a ridge of mountains, which very often leave, between the foot of the hills and the river Nile, a tract of ground, of not above half a day's journey in length,(256) and sometimes less.

On the west side, the plain grows wider in some places, and extends to twenty-five or thirty leagues. The greatest breadth of Egypt is from Alexandria to Damietta, being about fifty leagues.

Ancient Egypt may be divided into three princ.i.p.al parts: Upper Egypt, otherwise called Thebais, which was the most southern part; Middle Egypt, or Heptanomis, so called from the seven Nomi or districts it contained; Lower Egypt, which included what the Greeks call Delta, and all the country as far as the Red-Sea, and along the Mediterranean to Rhinocolura, or Mount Casius. Under Sesostris, all Egypt became one kingdom, and was divided into thirty-six governments, or Nomi; ten in Thebais, ten in Delta, and sixteen in the country between both.(257)

The cities of Syene and Elephantina divided Egypt from Ethiopia; and in the days of Augustus were the boundaries of the Roman empire: _Claustra olim Romani Imperii_, Tacit. _Annal._ Lib. ii. cap. 61.

Chapter I. Thebais.

Thebes, from whence Thebais had its name, might vie with the n.o.blest cities in the universe. Its hundred gates, celebrated by Homer,(258) are universally known; and acquired it the surname of Hecatompylos, to distinguish it from the other Thebes in Botia. Its population was proportionate to its extent; and, according to History, it could send out at once two hundred chariots, and ten thousand fighting men at each of its gates.(259) The Greeks and Romans have celebrated its magnificence and grandeur, though they saw it only in its ruins; so august were the remains of this city.(260)

In the Thebaid, now called Said, have been discovered temples and palaces which are still almost entire, adorned with innumerable columns and statues.(261) One palace especially is admired, the remains whereof seem to have existed purely to eclipse the glory of the most pompous edifices.

Four walks extending farther than the eye can see, and bounded on each side with sphinxes, composed of materials as rare and extraordinary as their size is remarkable, serve as avenues to four porticos, whose height is amazing to behold. And even they who have given us the description of this wonderful edifice, had not time to go round it; and are not sure that they saw above half: however, what they had a sight of was astonishing. A hall, which, in all appearance, stood in the middle of this stately palace, was supported by a hundred-and-twenty pillars, six fathoms round, of a proportionable height, and intermixed with obelisks, which so many ages have not been able to demolish. Painting had displayed all her art and magnificence in this edifice. The colours themselves, which soonest feel the injury of time, still remain amidst the ruins of this wonderful structure, and preserve their beauty and l.u.s.tre; so happily could the Egyptians imprint a character of immortality on all their works. Strabo, who was on the spot, describes a temple he saw in Egypt, very much resembling that of which I have been speaking.(262)

The same author, describing the curiosities of Thebais,(263) speaks of a very famous statue of Memnon, the remains whereof he had seen. It is said that this statue, when the beams of the rising sun first shone upon it in the morning, uttered an articulate sound.(264) And, indeed, Strabo himself was an ear-witness of this; but then he doubts whether the sound came from the statue.

Chapter II. Middle Egypt, or Heptanomis.

Memphis was the capital of this part of Egypt. In this city were to be seen many stately temples, among them that of the G.o.d Apis, who was honoured here after a peculiar manner. I shall speak of it hereafter, as well as of the pyramids which stood in the neighbourhood of this place, and rendered it so famous. Memphis was situated on the west side of the Nile.

Grand Cairo, which seems to have succeeded Memphis, is built on the other side of that river.(265) The castle of Cairo is one of the greatest curiosities in Egypt. It stands on a hill without the city, has a rock for its foundation, and is surrounded with walls of a vast height and solidity. You go up to the castle by a way hewn out of the rock, and which is so easy of ascent, that loaded horses and camels get up without difficulty. The greatest rarity in this castle is Joseph's well, so called, either because the Egyptians are pleased with ascribing what is most remarkable among them to that great man, or because such a tradition has been preserved in the country. This is a proof, at least, that the work in question is very ancient; and it is certainly worthy the magnificence of the most powerful kings of Egypt. This well has, as it were, two stories, cut out of the solid rock to a prodigious depth. The descent to the reservoir of water, between the two wells, is by a staircase seven or eight feet broad, consisting of two hundred and twenty steps, and so contrived, that the oxen employed to throw up the water, go down with all imaginable ease, the descent being scarcely perceptible. The well is supplied from a spring, which is almost the only one in the whole country. The oxen are continually turning a wheel with a rope, to which a number of buckets are fastened. The water thus drawn from the first and lower-most well, is conveyed by a little ca.n.a.l into a reservoir, which forms the second well; from whence it is drawn to the top in the same manner, and then conveyed by pipes to all parts of the castle. As this well is supposed by the inhabitants of the country to be of great antiquity, and has, indeed, much of the antique manner of the Egyptians, I thought it might deserve a place among the curiosities of ancient Egypt.

Strabo speaks of a similar engine, which, by wheels and pulleys, threw up the water of the Nile to the top of a very high hill; with this difference, that, instead of oxen, a hundred and fifty slaves were employed to turn these wheels.(266)

The part of Egypt of which we now speak, is famous for several rarities, each of which deserves a particular examination. I shall mention only the princ.i.p.al, such as the obelisks, the pyramids, the labyrinth, the lake of Mris, and the Nile.

SECT. I. THE OBELISKS.-Egypt seemed to place its chief glory in raising monuments for posterity. Its obelisks form at this day, on account of their beauty as well as height, the princ.i.p.al ornament of Rome; and the Roman power, despairing to equal the Egyptians, thought it honour enough to borrow the monuments of their kings.

An obelisk is a quadrangular, taper, high spire or pyramid, raised perpendicularly, and terminating in a point, to serve as an ornament to some open square; and is very often covered with inscriptions or hieroglyphics, that is, with mystical characters or symbols used by the Egyptians to conceal and disguise their sacred things, and the mysteries of their theology.

Sesostris erected in the city of Heliopolis two obelisks of extreme hard stone, brought from the quarries of Syene, at the extremity of Egypt.(267) They were each one hundred-and-twenty cubits high, that is, thirty fathoms, or one hundred and eighty feet.(268) The emperor Augustus, having made Egypt a province of the empire, caused these two obelisks to be transported to Rome, one whereof was afterwards broken to pieces. He dared not venture to make the same attempt upon a third, which was of a monstrous size.(269) It was made in the reign of Rameses: it is said that twenty thousand men were employed in the cutting of it. Constantius, more daring than Augustus, caused it to be removed to Rome. Two of these obelisks are still to be seen there, as well as another a hundred cubits, or twenty-five fathoms high, and eight cubits, or two fathoms, in diameter. Caius Caesar had it brought from Egypt in a ship of so odd a form, that, according to Pliny, the like had never been seen.(270)

Every part of Egypt abounded with this kind of obelisks; they were for the most part cut in the quarries of Upper Egypt, where some are now to be seen half finished. But the most wonderful circ.u.mstance is, that the ancient Egyptians should have had the art and contrivance to dig even in the very quarry a ca.n.a.l, through which the water of the Nile ran in the time of its inundation; from whence they afterwards raised up the columns, obelisks, and statues on rafts,(271) proportioned to their weight, in order to convey them into Lower Egypt. And as the country was intersected every where with ca.n.a.ls, there were few places to which those huge bodies might not be carried with ease; although their weight would have broken every other kind of engine.

SECT. II. THE PYRAMIDS.-A PYRAMID is a solid or hollow body, having a large, and generally a square base, and terminating in a point.(272)

There were three pyramids in Egypt more famous than the rest, one whereof was justly ranked among the seven wonders of the world; they stood not very far from the city of Memphis. I shall take notice here only of the largest of the three. This pyramid, like the rest, was built on a rock, having a square base, cut on the outside as so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. It was built with stones of a prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramid, which to those who viewed it from below seemed a point, was a fine platform, composed of ten or twelve ma.s.sy stones, and each side of that platform sixteen or eighteen feet long.

M. de Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences, who went purposely to the spot in 1693, gives us the following dimensions:

The side of the square base 110 fathoms; the fronts are equilateral triangles, and therefore the superficies of the base is 12100 square fathoms; the perpendicular height, 77-3/4 fathoms; the solid contents, 313590 cubical fathoms. A hundred thousand men were constantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the same number.

Ten complete years were spent in hewing out the stones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless rooms and apartments. There were expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, the sums it cost only for garlic, leeks, onions, and other vegetables of this description, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver,(273) that is, four millions five hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was easy to conjecture what a vast sum the whole expense must have amounted to.

Such were the famous Egyptian pyramids, which by their figure, as well as size, have triumphed over the injuries of time and the Barbarians. But what efforts soever men may make, their nothingness will always appear.

These pyramids were tombs; and there is still to be seen, in the middle of the largest, an empty sepulchre, cut out of one entire stone, about three feet deep and broad, and a little above six feet long.(274) Thus all this bustle, all this expense, and all the labours of so many thousand men for so many years, ended in procuring for a prince, in this vast and almost boundless pile of building, a little vault six feet in length. Besides, the kings who built these pyramids, had it not in their power to be buried in them; and so did not enjoy the sepulchre they had built. The public hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to their subjects, in laying such heavy tasks upon them, occasioned their being interred in some obscure place, to prevent their bodies from being exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace.

This last circ.u.mstance, which historians have taken particular notice of, teaches us what judgment we ought to pa.s.s on these edifices, so much boasted of by the ancients.(275) It is but just to remark and esteem the n.o.ble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent; and to be intent on real beauties, without deviating in the least from a n.o.ble simplicity, in which the highest perfection of the art consists. But what idea ought we to form of those princes, who considered as something grand, the raising by a mult.i.tude of hands, and by the help of money, immense structures, with the sole view of rendering their names immortal; and who did not scruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain glory! They differed very much from the Romans, who sought to immortalize themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but, at the same time, of public utility.

Pliny gives us, in few words,(276) a just idea of these pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless ostentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings; _Regum pecuniae otiosa ac stulta ostentatio._ And adds, that by a just punishment their memory is buried in oblivion; the historians not agreeing among themselves about the names of those who first raised those vain monuments: _Inter eos non constat a quibus factae sint, justissimo casu obliteratis tantae vanitatis auctoribus._ In a word, according to the judicious remark of Diodorus, the industry of the architects of those pyramids is no less valuable and praiseworthy, than the design of the Egyptian kings is contemptible and ridiculous.

But what we should most admire in these ancient monuments, is, the true and standing evidence they give of the skill of the Egyptians in astronomy; that is, in a science which seems incapable of being brought to perfection, but by a long series of years, and a great number of observations. M. de Chazelles, when he measured the great pyramid in question, found that the four sides of it were turned exactly to the four quarters of the world; and, consequently, showed the true meridian of that place. Now, as so exact a situation was, in all probability, purposely pitched upon by those who piled up this huge ma.s.s of stones, above three thousand years ago, it follows, that during so long a s.p.a.ce of time, there has been no alteration in the heavens in that respect, or (which amounts to the same thing) in the poles of the earth or the meridians. This is M.

de Fontenelle's remark in his eulogium of M. de Chazelles.