The History of Antiquity Volume I Part 11

[248] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 128.

[249] Lepsius, "Briefe," s. 266; Rosellini, "Mon. Stor." 3, 2, 284.

[250] Bunsen, "aegypten," 4, 213.

[251] On the sketch of this tomb on a Turin papyrus, cf. Lepsius, "Abh.

der Berl. Akad." 1867.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE AND MANNERS OF THE EGYPTIANS.

We have already called attention to the peculiar features in the position and nature of their country which favoured the development of the Egyptians. The shape of the land, so conducive to unity, must have led at an early time to a community of life; the protection of this favoured valley against the plundering tribes of the desert must have called into existence a military monarchy. But it is no longer in the form of a patriarchal rule or military chieftainship that the monuments and tradition display the government of Egypt. It is the form of despotism peculiar to the East, which meets us at the threshold of history, meets us, too, in a very sharply-defined form. Herodotus says that the Egyptians could not have lived without a king, and Diodorus tells us that the Egyptians worshipped their kings, and prostrated themselves before them as though they were really G.o.ds. Of men who could confer such great blessings as their kings the Egyptians a.s.sumed that they partook of the nature of G.o.ds.[252] As a fact, we see on the monuments not only the commanders and magistrates of the districts, but even the priests, in the dust before the kings. It is true that it was the universal custom in the East to approach the ruler kneeling, as one on whose nod depended the life and death of every subject at every moment of his existence; but the Egyptians, led by their peculiar religious views, have gone further than any other nation in the exaltation of the power of the monarch; they worshipped their kings as the deities of the land. As in the beginning, according to the teaching of the priests, the G.o.ds ruled over Egypt, so in subsequent times the Pharaohs occupy the place of the G.o.ds. They do not merely spring from the G.o.ds; they are themselves G.o.ds of the land. They are not only called children of the sun; but to their subjects they are the "sun itself, which is given to the world," which beams over the land and gives blessing and increase; they are the "outpourers of life," like the G.o.ds.

Like the G.o.ds, they are lords of truth and justice; they preserve order, punish the bad, and reward the good, and keep away the unclean enemies; through their care it is that their subjects share in the fruits of the earth, hence they cause Egypt to live. The king of Egypt is called, and is, "the mighty Horus," the G.o.d who gives blessing to the land. If to the Egyptians animals and men were the manifestations of the divine nature, must they not recognise such manifestations in peculiar potency in the life of the king, in the ruling, arranging, and sustaining power of the king over the whole land? This conception of the king as a G.o.d on earth has been already brought before us in the inscription on the statue of Chafra, the builder of the second largest pyramid, which describes him as the "good G.o.d, the master and gold Horus" (p. 95). It continues unchanged to the last centuries of the kingdom, and even survives the independence of Egypt. In the inscriptions of the temples the Ptolemies and Roman Caesars are named by the same solemn t.i.tles as the ancient Pharaohs.[253]

We saw that priests were allotted to the spirits of the buried kings (p.

99). In the ruins at Luxor, spirits of heaven are carrying Amenophis III. into the presence of Ammon, who consecrates him king (p. 138). In the Ramesseum and in the palace at Medinet Habu we have pictures of the coronation of Ramses II. and Ramses III. In both, the four geese of the four spirits of heaven are bidden by the priest to announce to the spirits of the east and west, of the north and the south, that the king has put on the double crown. In the rock temple at Selseleh (p. 149), the G.o.ddess Anuke gives her breast to king Horus, who is depicted as already grown into a youth; in the rock temple at Beth-el-Walli, Isis and Anuke allow Ramses II. to suck at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. In the Ramesseum, Ramses II. is led by the G.o.ds Mentu and Chunsu and the G.o.ddess Mut before Ammon (p. 171). These pictures, in which G.o.ds bring the kings before Ammon, and worship him, that he may bestow life and purity on the princes presented by them, are constantly recurring. On the monuments the kings are found sacrificing, not only to their divine forefathers, but also to themselves and their own divinity (p. 24). Tuthmosis III.

dedicated a temple to the G.o.d Sesurtesen III., and ordained regular sacrifices to him; and Amenophis III. built a temple in Nubia to his own divinity (pp. 134, 137).

Nowhere do we find a trace to show that the kings stood in need of the intervention of the priests in order to approach the G.o.ds, and without such intervention there can be no supremacy of the priests over the sovereigns of the state. Everywhere the kings come independently before the G.o.ds. Everywhere we find the sacrifices of the kings, not of the priests, offered. It is the kings who consecrate temples to the G.o.ds, in order that the king may obtain "lasting life and purity." It is the Pharaohs and not the priests who represent the state and people before the G.o.ds. The kings are at the same time the high priests, and stand at the head of religion as at the head of the state; their sons and grandsons, their mothers, wives, and daughters, are, according to the inscriptions, the priests of this or that G.o.d or G.o.ddess. The kings, as Diodorus a.s.sures us, were not waited upon by slaves, but by the sons of the most distinguished priests; by priests only could the ruling G.o.d of the country be served--and the priests did not omit to mention on their tombs, even at a very early period, the king in whose service they were prophets, scribes, and minstrels. In a word, the Pharaoh was not merely the head of the state, but also of the church, if such an expression may be allowed, and the power of the priests, without any real and ceremonial support, does not extend beyond the moral influence which religion exercised upon the heart of the king. Finally, it is the kings who are celebrated as the lawgivers of the land, and this excludes any thought of a supremacy of priests. Yet the influence of religion and of the priesthood on the king is not to be contested, although, under the military princes who governed Egypt after the expulsion of the Hyksos, the priests had to share their influence with the leaders of the army.

Not till the time of Menephta, do we observe a more influential position a.s.sumed by the high priests at Thebes. This influence goes on increasing under the weak successors of Ramses III., and reaches its summit under the first princes of the dynasty of Tanis. Then it declined, and afterwards only came into operation under foreign supremacy.

If further proof were needed for the unlimited power of the kings than their representation of Ra and Horus, and the menial position of the priests, we should find it in the gigantic structures which the Pharaohs left behind them. To carry out works of this kind is impossible unless the monarch has absolute disposal of the labour of his subjects. But these buildings were undoubtedly the main interest and the main occupation of the kings. In this they follow the characteristic traits of the whole nation. In building temples and erecting images, their object was just as much to confer honour on the G.o.ds as to preserve the remembrance of the homage which they had offered to them. The preservation of their own actions and names, which these buildings in the eyes of the Egyptians "caused to live," is the main object of the structure, and along with the sacrifices of the kings, and the evidence of the favour of the G.o.ds, the sculptures on the temples display the martial exploits of the kings. If the kings erected pyramid tombs, it was in order that their corpses might rest in security, and the tumulus "cause their name to live" in the generations to come. If they built temples, it was that the gates, walls, frescoes, and inscriptions might preserve their acts for posterity. The buildings of the Pharaohs are the history of their reigns written in stone.

The ceremonial which surrounded the life of the Pharaohs is described by Diodorus. In the morning the king first read the communications received from every quarter; then he performed his ablutions, put on his robes, and offered sacrifice to the G.o.ds. While the sacrificial animal was being led to the altar the high priest offered prayer to the G.o.ds, beseeching them to grant life and all good things to the king, as he was a righteous ruler. He was pious to the G.o.ds, gentle towards men, strong, just, and courageous, an enemy of lies, a sharer of his goods with others, and master of his desires; one who did not punish the wicked so severely as they deserved, and gave to the good more than their proportionate share. Then the priest laid the punishment of any error into which the king might have fallen on his servants, and urged him to a pious life, "not by reproaches," as Diodorus expressly observes, "but by commendations." When the sacrifice was finished, the priest read to the king the apothegms and achievements of distinguished men, that is, no doubt, of previous kings, out of the sacred books. We know that poems of considerable extent on historical subjects were in existence.[254] In the same way the remaining part of the day was allotted to definite occupations. For walking, for bathing, even for sleeping with the queen, definite hours were appointed. The king might only eat the flesh of calves and geese--the food of the priests--and take a fixed portion of wine. Diodorus regards it as wonderful that the kings should have subjected themselves to this ceremonial. In this he leaves out of sight the fact that the G.o.d of the land was expected to lead the life of a G.o.d, and also, a thing which could not indeed be so obvious to him, that all periods present proofs to what oppressive rules of state and etiquette rulers are willing to subject themselves in order to exhibit their dignity and majesty. Yet this was not the object chiefly held in view in the regulation of the king's life, nor was it the love of the Egyptians for systematic and fixed arrangements. The king was at the same time the first priest of the land; and therefore the regulations of the priestly life applied to him also. Moreover, the Egyptians were extremely careful to keep themselves pure from the unclean, in order by such purity to preserve life and salvation. With this object, priests and laity alike regulated all their actions, their eating and drinking, feeding and clothing, by a minute ritual. It was the first duty of the king to protect the purity of Egypt. He was the Horus of the land, who had struck down disorder, impurity, and evil, and therefore, like the victorious G.o.d, he must shine out in the brightness of unsullied purity.

Thus the king had to lead the pure life of a priest; he could eat none but the priestly food, and every duty must be performed at a favourable moment, for the Egyptians were under the dominion of a widespread astrological superst.i.tion. This system further required that every fault he might happen to commit should be taken from him and laid upon others.

It is probably the plan sketched by the priests for the king's life, of which Diodorus has preserved some traces; we know that among the sacred books those of the minstrels contained regulations for the life of the king. Whatever flattery and homage was thus intended for the great and gracious king, the Pharaohs no doubt observed so much as seemed suitable to them. Of a later king, Amasis, we are told that he emanc.i.p.ated himself from the customary ceremonial, and when business was over, gave himself up to relaxation and enjoyment. Yet his reign was a long one, and regarded with affection by the Egyptians.

The Pharaohs were surrounded with all the state of Oriental despots. On the picture of the coronation, the a.s.sumption of the Pschent by Ramses III. at Medinet Habu, the procession is led by trumpeters, who are followed by commanders and magistrates. Twenty-two priests lead the statue of Ammon, who is followed by a priest with incense, and a scribe who appears to read a proclamation. The king is then carried in by twelve richly-attired men on a throne under a canopy. Beside the throne walk certain officers, who cool the king with large fans; others carry the weapons of the king and the insignia of his power. Behind follow the captains of the army and the body-guard. Then a white bull is led in the procession by priests, and the whole closes with priests carrying the name-shields of the predecessors of the king. On descending from the throne the king makes a libation towards Ammon, burns incense to him, and cuts off some ears of corn with a golden sickle.[255] The court was numerous: fan-bearers on the right, and fan-bearers on the left, bearers of the parasol, keepers of the king's bow, captains of the body-guard, overseers of the palace, overseers of the buildings in Upper and Lower Egypt, overseers of the horses, books, and music, stewards of the granaries in Upper and Lower Egypt, stewards of the royal flocks, treasurers, butlers of the palace, and other officers are mentioned.[256] According to the monuments, the king's household furniture was profuse in silver and gold. The gondolas were gilded, with variegated sails, the trappings of the horses were splendidly ornamented, the stuffed seats curiously carved and richly decked; and of the complicated occupations of the royal kitchen, of the number of people employed, of cup-bearers and master cooks, as well as of the preparation of the food--the monuments give us a very complete idea.

The death of the king was mourned for seventy days, like the death of an Apis. During this time everyone had to abstain from baths, from flesh and wine, until the son of the ruler, who had entered into Amenti, ascended the throne as a new Horus and giver of life to the land, and the visage of the new lord again "beamed like a sun over both the lands of Egypt" after the days of lamentation. The succession, so far as we can see, was not infrequently broken by usurpations, which have always been inseparable from the despotic form of government.[257]

It is characteristic of the all-absorbing power of the monarchy in Egypt that tradition can scarcely mention a single eminent person beside the names of the kings. We hear nothing of generals or statesmen, and scarcely of priests. All stood in equal subjection to the king. Though families may have at one time arisen from the nation, which were in a position, from wealth and inclination, to undertake the defence of the valley of the Nile against the tribes of the desert, and though the monarchy may have arisen out of the ranks of this military n.o.bility, which in bygone times united the valley of the Nile into a kingdom, still, so far as the monuments allow us to see, there is no trace left of the eminent position of any n.o.bility, whether military or hereditary.

The military order, as presented to us on the monuments, and by the tradition of the Greeks, no longer consisted of wealthy landowners who went to war at the bidding of the king with their chariots and horses and retainers; they are merely soldiers--families, who for a certain portion of land given to them by the state are pledged to service in war, and who receive their weapons from the armouries of the state. Such are the warriors on the monuments even in the times of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, and also under Ramses III. Herodotus tells us that each family of warriors possessed twelve measures of good land, free of taxes, the measure being 100 Egyptian cubits in length and breadth. This would make the allotment more than twelve acres. These families, according to Herodotus, could, even about the middle of the fifth century B.C., put in the field 400,000 men, although two hundred years before, under Psammetichus I., a large number of them, it is said more than 200,000, migrated into Ethiopia. The military order was divided into two cla.s.ses: the Hermotybians, numbering at most 160,000 men, and the Kalasirians, about 250,000 strong. In the time of Herodotus, the first were settled in Upper Egypt in the province of Chemmis, and mainly in the western Delta; the Kalasirians were in the province of Thebes, and in the central and eastern Delta.[258] Each division furnished yearly 1,000 men for the bodyguard of the king, who were handsomely provided for, and the garrisons in the border towns and strongholds, which were also relieved year by year. From the ma.s.ses of the two divisions so many may have been told off for field duty as were considered necessary. From the numbers which Herodotus gives it is not impossible that the armies of Sethos and Ramses II., when all the soldiers were called out, were, if not 700,000, yet from 400,000 to 500,000 strong. Under Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.) the army of Egypt was estimated at 240,000 men.

The monuments prove that even at the time of the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, war was scientifically carried on, and the soldiers regularly drilled. From the royal armouries the infantry were provided with bows, helmets, shields, lances, and crooked knives, and were divided into battalions, each carrying its own ensign. The heavy infantry moved in ranks to the sound of trumpets. Attacks were not made on fortified cities without the ram, and sheds to protect the attacking party.

Instead of cavalry, which never occur on the monuments, we find, though not till after the time of the Hyksos, numerous war-chariots in use.

Those who fought in the chariots, as the kings, who are invariably represented as fighting from a chariot, made use of bows. The monuments often exhibit practice in archery. With the Egyptians, as with the whole of the East in antiquity, the bow was the favourite weapon.

To the priestly order Egypt owed the growth and establishment of her cultus, the peculiar turn of her religious conceptions, her moral law, her writings, her art, and her science. The piety of the people and the kings had amply endowed the temples. "The priests eat nothing of their own," says Herodotus; "sacred bread is daily baked for them, and they obtain vegetables, geese, calves' flesh, and wine in sufficient quant.i.ties."[259] Diodorus tells us that the land in ancient Egypt was divided into three portions, of which a third belonged to the kings, a third to the priests for their support and the maintenance of the sacrifices and festivals, and another third to the military order, and that all the farmers in Egypt held on leases;[260] and we have already seen that at any rate a part of the land, though by no means so much as a third, was really allotted to the soldiers, who could scarcely have leased their small patches, but must have cultivated them in person if they wished to live upon them with their families. Another part of the land was marked off for the maintenance of the priests and the expenses of public worship; but it appears that this land also belonged to the king, for Herodotus speaks of the incomes of the priests as gifts received from the king;[261] and the Hebrew Scriptures also tell us that "the priests had a portion a.s.signed them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them."[262] From these data--even if the statement of Herodotus, that Sesostris (Ramses II.) had given an equal square of land to every Egyptian, must be limited to a measurement of the land, in order to regulate the taxes[263]--it appears that the Pharaohs looked on themselves as the proprietors of the soil--a view by no means strange to the despotisms of the East--and in consequence they allotted to the soldiers so much as was necessary, and of the rest allowed a great portion, which was estimated at a third of the whole, to pay taxes to the temples, while the remainder contributed to themselves.

According to the statements of the Hebrews the taxes amounted to a fifth of the produce,[264] and hence all the farmers could with justice be considered leaseholders, or at any rate as having copyhold estates. It is expressly observed that only the farms of the soldiers were free from taxes,[265] and that the land which was taxed for the temples contributed nothing to Pharaoh.[266] At the same time it is easily intelligible that the piety of the subjects provided additional incomes for the priests, and that, so far as it was possible to make any arrangements of the kind, land and revenues were presented to the temples.[267]

The maintenance which they derived from the incomes and contributions of the temple-lands, in corn, wine, and animals for sacrifice, enabled the priests to live for their religious duties, for the complete performance of their customs in regard to purification and food, and for the study of the holy scriptures. They were divided into various cla.s.ses and corporations. In every temple there was one upper priest,--the head of the temple--the prophet,[268] a temple scribe, who was especially skilled in writing, and managed the temple property, a chamberlain, who took care of the clothing of the images, the sacrifices, and the ritual, an astronomer, who had to observe the heavens, and a minstrel. In the processions the prophet carried the jar of water for purifications; the chamberlain carried the cubit of justice and a basin for sprinkling water; the scribe can be recognised by the feather in his head-dress, the roll of books in one hand, and the pen in the other; the astronomer by an hour-gla.s.s and a palm branch, the symbol of the seasons among the Egyptians. These higher cla.s.ses of the priesthood were followed by the lower; the pastophors, who carried the images in the processions, and practised medicine, the attendants, male and female ("the nurses"), of the sacred animals, the persons whose duty it was to select and seal the animals for sacrifice, the embalmers, and lastly, the temple-servants, who were responsible for the purifications.

The first sanctuaries in Egypt were the temples of Ammon at Thebes, of Ptah at Memphis, and of Ra at Heliopolis. The colleges at these temples were the most important centres of priestly life and doctrine. So long as Thebes was the metropolis of the kingdom, the high priest of Ammon at Thebes was the first priest in the land. Herodotus tells us from the lips of the priests of Thebes that the office of high priest descended from father to son, and Diodorus maintains that the same was the case with all the officers of the temples.[269] These statements are contradicted by the inscriptions. They mention five places in the temples through which all "fifth priests" must pa.s.s. From a memorial stone of a priest, Bakenchunsu, we learn that for fifteen years he was third priest, and for twelve years second priest of Ammon at Thebes; then he became first priest of this G.o.d, and continued to be so to the end of his life.

The priests had to lead a holier and purer life than the laity. The ritual, the rules for purification and food, which the priests laid upon themselves, were stricter than those expected from the rest of the people. The priest must wash twice in each day and each night. Every third day he must shave his whole body, more especially his eyebrows and beard. He might only wear linen clothing (byssus), and shoes of papyrus.

Any other clothing, and especially the hair and skins of beasts, defiled a priest; though on monuments the priests of Osiris wear leopard skins, especially at the ceremony of the burial. The flesh of sheep, swine, and most other animals was forbidden to the priests; they might never touch fish. Pulse they might not eat, and beans were not even to be looked at.

They observed frequent fasts. From time to time they underwent certain mortifications, which in one instance continued for forty-two days, in order to destroy in themselves the forty-two deadly sins. Finally the priests could only marry one wife; while the laity were allowed to have other wives beside the first. The kings had more than one wife, and this was the rule among the wealthier cla.s.s in Egypt.[270]

We are not informed how sharply the different orders in Egypt were separated, or how far the different occupations were distinguished among the labouring or trading population in addition to the cla.s.ses of priests and soldiers. We do not know, for instance, in what degree the tiller of the soil was distinguished from the artizan. We are only told that the people were divided into husbandmen, artizans, and shepherds, and the shepherds were regarded as the lowest cla.s.s. But we learn that no one was allowed to follow any other occupation than that derived from his father.[271] The inscriptions tell us that the same office, as for instance that of architect, remained in the same family for twenty-three generations;[272] and in the seventh century B.C. a kind of caste grew up out of a number of Egyptian boys, whom Psammetichus handed over to his Ionian mercenaries. Hence we may conclude that the impulse to perpetuate types and lock up occupations in hereditary circles and fixed families was very strong, as was natural enough with the fixed and conservative character of the Egyptians. But however strong the impulse, however deeply rooted the custom for the son to follow the father's profession, there was in Egypt no caste in the strict sense of the term.

Marriages between the orders were not forbidden, and it is exclusiveness in this point which completes the idea of caste. Moreover in Egypt there were adoptions and transitions from one order to another. The sepulchral pillars never lay any weight on birth in a certain order, but rather show that members of the same family had belonged to different orders--that a man could be at once a priest and a soldier, and Diodorus remarks that in Egypt all were regarded as of equally honourable birth.

The statement that the shepherds were held in the least estimation is probably correct, for the reason that their unrestrained occupation was least adapted for subjection to fixed rules of life and a strict ritual; but that statement, like the a.s.sertion in Genesis that "cowherds were an abomination to the Egyptians," is not to be taken in reference to the breeders of oxen and the care of flocks, which was carried on with great vigour among the Egyptians, but to the nomadic tribes who wandered with their flocks on the broad marshes of the Delta, or on the pastures of the Libyan and Arabian ranges, and were wholly strangers to all settled life. When we are told that the swineherds were held in especial contempt, we must remember that to the Egyptians the swine was an unclean animal.[273] Hence we may consider it as certain that custom required the Egyptian to follow the trade of his father, and caused the father to live again in his son, but no law of religion or state turned the orders into castes, and that the various cla.s.ses of trades and professions were neither haughty and exclusive, nor servile and submissive towards each other, but all lived together on a tolerable equality.

Beside the respect and weight which the religious importance of their order, their general knowledge and science gave to the priests, it was to them more especially that the honour of serving the king fell. We cannot doubt that the public officers were mainly taken from the order of priests, which was also the order of scribes. Egypt was not, like the great monarchies of the ancient East, a state founded by conquest, in which the lord of the victorious people was master of the conquerors and the conquered also, and in which it was all-important to retain the conquered nation in subjection; it was a compact district inhabited by the same tribe. Here, if we make an exception in favour of the transitory conquests in Nubia and Arabia, there were no extensive and distant provinces to be held in check. The departments in the land were small, their number reached forty-four;[274] the officers, whom the king set over them, were in his sight, they could not a.s.sume the position of refractory pashas. They were nominated out of the members of the royal house (the monuments furnish instances), the priests, the soldiers, and also out of the people. Royal scribes and judges, "scribes of justice,"

were allotted to these prefects. As the Egyptians early arrived at a written law, as religion and justice were closely connected, and the priests were acquainted with the art of writing, the prefects of the provinces were without doubt a.s.sisted by men from the priestly order in the exercise of their judicial duties. Besides the maintenance of the peace and the administration of justice, it was their duty to provide for the cultivation of the land, the collection and transmission of the taxes to the king. Even the soldiers settled in the provinces seem to have been subject to their rule. The gold and copper mines on the Upper Nile and in Sinai appear to have been put under the care of special officers, and the products were conveyed under military protection to the treasury of the king (p. 105).

The officers of the central government surrounded the person of the king (p. 190). Even the administration of justice, according to Diodorus, was centred in a supreme court, consisting of thirty judges, ten of the best men from Heliopolis, ten from Memphis, and ten from Thebes. Without doubt these judges belonged to the three priestly colleges of Memphis, Thebes, and Heliopolis. From these thirty the president was chosen, and on his breast, attached to a golden chain, he wore a shield of precious stones, beautifully wrought, which the Egyptians named "Truth" (p. 174).

This court of the thirty no doubt gave very honourable decisions, and in accordance with law, unless the king were interested in the result, or preferred to pa.s.s sentence himself. Diodorus further informs us that the laws of the Egyptians were collected in eight books, and were always kept at hand by the judges. The first written laws were given by Menes to the Egyptians, who declared that he had received them from the G.o.d Thoth. These laws had been enlarged by "Sasychis," who at the same time left the most accurate rubrics for the service of the G.o.ds, discovered geometry, and taught astronomy. Then Sesosis (Sesostris) laid down the laws for the kings, and the army. Finally the kings Bocchoris and Amasis completed the laws of Egypt. Herodotus praises a king "Asychis," whom he places after Menkera (p. 16), as the giver of the laws of mortgage. From Diodorus we also learn, and the monuments confirm his statement, that a written process went on before the court, that plaint and answer, rejoinder and reply, were given in, in writing; and this custom, considering the delight of the Egyptians in writing, did not appear for the first time in the later period of legal administration. The contracts and bills of sale found in tombs of the time of the Ptolemies are drawn up with the most circ.u.mstantial accuracy, and furnished with the signatures of many witnesses.[275] What Diodorus tells us of the law of Egypt with respect to _meum_ and _tuum_ gives evidence of a certain gentleness and humanity. The interest was never to exceed the amount of the capital. Slavery for debt was not allowed; the sons of all the wives shared equally in the inheritance. The murder of a slave was punished with death, just as the murder of an Egyptian. Perjury was threatened with the same penalty. Anyone who falsified doc.u.ments or measures had his hand cut off. In the confession which the souls made before Osiris (p. 79), especial emphasis is laid on the fact that the dead man had not falsified measures or seals, that he had practised no deceit in the law court, and had lent no money upon usury. The punishments inflicted on the guilty are characteristic of the East: the stocks, compulsory labour at the mines and quarries, loss of the nose, excision of the tongue, and mutilation were the usual penalties.[276]

Beside the law of the state stood the law of religion, of the priests.

It was not sufficient to offer bread, and geese, and thighs of bulls, to pour drink-offerings of milk and wine, and "all things whereon the divine nature lives," to burn frankincense before the images of the G.o.ds, to offer the firstlings of the fruits, figs, onions, and flowers, to set up in the temples dedicatory offerings, small statues, crowns, and rings, to celebrate in honour of the G.o.ds of the district the great and small festivals, to honour the dead and bring sacrifice to them at the beginning and end of the year, at the festivals of the great and the little heat, on the monthly and fortnightly festivals (the calendars of the festivals on the monuments exhibit an almost unbroken series of sacrifices), to attend to the animals of the sacred kinds and bury them handsomely, "to give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and shelter to the wanderer"--the whole life must be a religious service. In their favoured land the Egyptians considered themselves a favoured people. Full of grat.i.tude to the G.o.ds who had given them this land and this life, they looked with contempt on the unclean and perverse nations who dwelt beyond the valley of the Nile. To keep themselves clean from the unclean is the essential task of their lives. To the merely superficial view, cleanliness of body and clothing seems cleanliness of soul and life. But this purity, which the law of the priests required from every Egyptian, and above all and in an especial degree from the priests, was not limited to simple and natural cleanliness. There were beneficent life-giving G.o.ds, and there were also evil and destructive deities. To these belonged the side of nature which seemed to correspond to their being. Contact with this side of nature is not only displeasing to the good and pure G.o.ds, it gives the evil influences power over the men contaminated by it. Hence for the salvation of men such contact must be shunned. Certain things must be avoided for clothing and others for nourishment, certain impulses must not be satisfied, or must at any rate be limited.

This conception introduced certain usages and customs, which were developed by the priests into a system of rules for purification and food. Herodotus says, "the Egyptians are the most religious of all men; they have a severe and strict service, and many sacred customs." The boys were circ.u.mcised. Beans, rye, and barley might not be eaten; the flesh of many animals and many kinds of fish was forbidden. It was not lawful to eat the head of any animal. The animals for sacrifice must first be examined by the priests, to see that they did not belong to the sacred kinds--to sacrifice these was an inexpiable offence--and whether in other respects they were without blemish and pleasing to the G.o.ds.

This examination was the duty of the cla.s.s of temple-servants already mentioned, and it devolved on them to mark the animals found to be clean with a seal, which in bulls was placed on the horns. The Egyptians never ate at the same table with strangers, nor used a cup from which a stranger had drunk, nor ate flesh cooked in the vessel of a stranger and cut with a stranger's knife; all strangers and their utensils were unclean. Nothing woollen might be taken into a temple or a tomb. The Egyptians always wore newly-washed under-clothing of linen; they were obliged frequently to wash their bodies, and for three days in each month they used means of evacuation, clysters and emetics, in order to cleanse the body internally.[277] These statements are confirmed by papyrus rolls containing medicinal precepts. If the king, a sacred animal, or a member of the family died, no one was allowed to wear white or bright-coloured clothes; he must shave his eyebrows, and abstain from intercourse with his wife and from baths. Men and women threw dust on their heads and faces, and the women ran to and fro wailing with bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s.[278]

If an Egyptian had not committed murder, theft, or adultery, if he had not defamed the G.o.ds nor the king, nor those in authority over him, nor his own father, if he were not guilty of lying or slandering, if he had deceived neither G.o.ds nor men, nor oppressed his workmen in their daily tasks, nor drawn off the water, if he had allowed no one to be hungry, and caused no one to weep, if he were not slothful and idle in his occupation, if he sacrificed to the G.o.ds at the appointed time, and poured libations and observed all the regulations for cleanliness, then he might hope to find grace in the presence of the twenty-four judges before Osiris on the day of judgment in Amenti (p. 79). In order to gain by such conduct and careful observation of the laws of cleanliness and the ritual, a long life in this world, rest in the grave, and eternal life in the fields of the sun-G.o.d, the Egyptians worshipped their G.o.ds with unwearied zeal, while their kings raised temple upon temple of enormous blocks in honour of the life-giving powers of heaven.

We cannot rate the knowledge and science of the Egyptians very low, however absurd and singular much in it appears to be. The early discovery of writing, however unwieldy the form, gave them the means of preserving not only invocations and incidents, but also the results of observation and experience, and of increasing slowly and surely their stock of knowledge. They made an unusually extensive use of writing. The walls of the temples are covered with inscriptions, which often enough only repeat once more what has been repeated already innumerable times.

Even in the tombs at Beni Ha.s.san from the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, we find scribes engaged in numbering the flocks and ticketing the sacks of corn. The scribes of the king registered the game obtained in hunting, the number of hands hewn off after a victory, and of prisoners, and calculated the amount of the booty. The temple-scribes are seen in the processions with pen in hand, and on the monuments the G.o.ds note down the years of the kings on the leaves of the arbor vitae.

Everything is to be enumerated, registered, and entered. Even ornaments and utensils are covered with inscriptions. As the hieroglyphics on the walls explained the images in the temples, and the hieroglyphics on the sides of the sepulchral chambers recorded the race and achievements of eminent persons and officers, so did the priests write down their wisdom, and private people their doc.u.ments on a lighter material, the leaves of the papyrus, a tall reed growing in abundance in the swamps of Egypt.

Notwithstanding this extensive use, the system of writing among the Egyptians continued to the end a clumsy and difficult system, partly owing to the number of pictures and symbols, and partly to the variety of the phonetic pictures. The unchanging character of the Egyptians, the symbolical and mystic sense concealed in the hieroglyphics, the religious character of these old and sacred signs, stood in the way of the change to a more simple and phonetic mode of writing. Yet the effort to obtain such a system is unmistakable. After the year 1300 B.C. a number of picture symbols were used as phonetic symbols, which up to that time had no phonetic value, and this change becomes more and more frequent in the last centuries B.C. The habit of writing the hieroglyphics on the papyrus had early led to abbreviation in writing; the pictures were represented by simple outlines more adapted to the hand; and hence arose a cursive mode of writing the hieroglyphics, the so-called "hieratic" writing, which we already (pp. 90, 94) found in use on the pyramids under the old kingdom, and which was in use on an extensive scale at the time when the new kingdom was at its height.

Finally, from the hieratic writing arose a third and more abbreviated kind, the demotic, which represented the language of ordinary intercourse and the national dialect. This was in existence when Herodotus travelled in Egypt. Here we see the most marked effort to avoid the ideographic element and picture signs, and to extend the use of the phonetic symbols. Beside the remains of the picture symbols, the demotic writing employs seventeen simple phonetic symbols and some fifty symbols of syllables. The hieroglyphic and hieratic modes of writing are called on the monuments the "writing of the G.o.ds," the demotic is "the writing of the books." For us the difficulty of the hieroglyphics is materially increased by the fact that the Coptic language in the form accessible to us is removed by thousands of years from the form of words represented by the hieroglyphics of the old and new kingdom. The forms which we obtain from the records preserved in the demotic writing are about midway between those in the hieroglyphics and the forms retained in the Coptic translation of the Scriptures, and in some books of liturgies, which belong to the first centuries A.D.[279]

In the circles of the priests the traditional invocations of the G.o.ds, the rules for the proper conduct of sacrifices and feasts, for the pure conversation which is the way to life and salvation in this world and the next, were without doubt committed to writing at a very early period. When gradually extended and continued, those writings grew into a liturgical canon and ecclesiastical codex of religious and moral law, and a comprehensive collection of all the wisdom known to the priests.

We learn that the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two sacred books.

Regarded as a collection of religious rules in every department of civilisation and life, as the measure of holy and upright conversation, and as rules of civil law, these books pa.s.sed as the writings of the G.o.d Thoth, the scribe of heaven, the G.o.d of truth and justice. The civil law also was grounded upon the rules and axioms of religion; from these it arose, and the books of civil law without doubt formed a part of the sacred law, and of the books of the priests. Of these forty-two books ten belonged to the high priest, of which eight may have been the eight books of civil law (p. 202). In that case the two others would contain the doctrine concerning the G.o.ds, and the instruction of the priests.

Ten other books belonged to the temple-scribe. Of these the first contained the rules for the sacred writing; the second the geography and cosmogony; the third and fourth the arrangement of the sun, moon, and five planets; the fifth and sixth the description of Egypt and the Nile; the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, the weights and measures, the mode of registering the temple furniture and property. Again, ten books belonged to the chamberlain. These taught the ritual and the liturgy, the offering of first-fruits and sacrifices, hymns and prayers, together with the conduct of festivals and other things of the kind, and, finally, discipline and the rules for examining the animals for sacrifices. The two books of the minstrel contained the hymns and the contemplation of the life proper for a king (p. 188). The four books of the astrologer concluded the narrower circle of the sacred writings. Of these, the first contained the arrangement of the fixed stars; the second and third the coincidences of the orbits of the sun and moon; the fourth, the rising of the constellations. Besides these sacred books the pastophors (p. 196) had six books which taught the principles and practice of medicine;[280] for the art of healing, _i.e._ of preserving life, also belonged to the priests. The medicine of the Egyptians is commended as early as the Homeric poems (p. 15). Herodotus a.s.sures us that in Egypt every kind of sickness had a special physician, and Diodorus states that the art was carried out strictly according to the written principles, _i.e._ no doubt, according to these six sacred books. A hieratic papyrus on the subject of medicine has been recently found at Thebes, which is supposed to belong to the first centuries of the restoration of the monarchy. A section of this deals with diseases of the eye.[281] Egyptian physicians were much sought after in the East (the founder of the Persian kingdom, Cyrus, procured an oculist from Egypt), until the fame of the Greek medicine about 500 B.C. threw Egyptian physicians into the shade.[282]

In the sacred books of the priests was drawn up the religious system into which the original conceptions of the G.o.ds were shaped and developed in the circles of the priests. The G.o.ds who pa.s.sed for the greatest and mightiest in the various districts out of which Egypt was made up, the protecting deities of the separate localities, were here arranged in definite ranks and cla.s.ses. And if, nevertheless, considerable differences can be observed in the teaching of the priests of Memphis and Thebes, they are sufficiently explained by the mode in which religion and state were developed in Egypt, and the rival position of the two great centres of ecclesiastical life. According to the doctrine of Memphis the seven highest deities were Ptah, the creative G.o.d of light of the lower country; Ra, the sun-G.o.d of Heliopolis; and Shu (Sosis, p. 50), the deity of the clear air; these three were followed by the forms belonging to the Osiris circle, on whose nature rested the moral basis of the life of the Egyptians; Seb, the father of Osiris; Osiris himself; then his opposite, Typhon; and lastly, Horus, the conqueror of Typhon.[283] The doctrine of Thebes placed Ammon at the head instead of Ptah, and in the place of Ra stood the two sun-G.o.ds of Upper Egypt, Tum (Atum, p. 51) and Mentu; these were followed by Shu, and the G.o.ds of the Osiris circle. To the seven or eight great G.o.ds was appended a circle of twelve G.o.ds, and among these Thoth and Anubis. The twelve were followed by a number of spirits, genii and demiG.o.ds. With this system of G.o.ds the doctrine of the priests was connected. Even from the attributes of Ptah, Neith, and other deities, it is clear that there was among the priests a strong tendency to gather up the divine powers into the forms of Ptah, Tum, Osiris, and Ra. The teaching of the priests evidently desired to grasp the connection of life, and attain to a theogony and a theory of creation. It has been already pointed out on the authority of doc.u.ments belonging to the times of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, that the priests in their doctrine were at pains to discover the unity of the divine spirits, and to conceive the forms of the G.o.ds as manifestations of one being. They regarded the animals as the manifestations of special characteristics of the G.o.ds, and men as phaenomena of a divine origin and nature, who would return to the place whence they came. To go further and grasp the heart of the system is impossible in the present condition of our researches. Conceptions and inferences of the Graeco-Egyptian speculation of the time of the Ptolemies and the first centuries after Christ cannot be accepted as the true form of the old Egyptian religion, or as the doctrine of the priests of ancient Egypt.

With the Egyptians, as with other nations, poetry probably arose out of the invocations of the G.o.ds and hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

Religious poetry had a fixed canon in the books of the minstrels. That national songs were also in vogue is shown by the monuments (p. 222).

Diodorus told us above that the achievements of Sesostris were celebrated in poetry (p. 144). The description of a deed of arms of Ramses II. which he must have regarded as of considerable importance has been preserved. The battle he fought with the Cheta in the fifth year of his reign (p. 152), he caused to be represented in the rock temple at Abu Simbel and in the Ramesseum, and a description of it is engraved in these temples, as at Luxor and Beth-el-Walli, and in the walls of the great temple at Karnak. It is found in still greater detail in a papyrus of the British Museum.[284] At the end is the observation that the scribe Pentaur composed it in the seventh year of the reign of Ramses II. In this poem we are told that the chief of the Cheta had come with his archers and chariots, three men on each chariot. North-west of Kadesh they lay in ambush. The king, urging on his chariot, pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta. He found himself surrounded by 2,500 chariots. "My bowmen and my chariots have abandoned me, this is what the king said; none of them is here to fight beside me. What is the will of my father Ammon? Is he a father who denies his son? Or have I followed my own thoughts? Did I not set forth at thy command; has not thy mouth led my armies, and thy counsel guided them? Have I not celebrated many brilliant festivals, and filled thy house with booty? Thirty thousand bulls I have sacrificed with odorous herbs and perfumes of all kinds. I have built thee temples of stone, I bring obelisks from Elephantine, and cause the everlasting stones to be carried down. For thee--the great ships swim upon the sea, to bring thee the tribute of the nations. Has the like been done before? Ruin on him who opposes thee: salvation to him who comprehends thee, Ammon. On thee I call. I am alone before thee in the midst of unknown nations. My bowmen and chariots left me when I called; no one heard me when I cried for help. But I choose Ammon before thousands of bowmen and millions of chariots. The devices of men are nothing; Ammon will deliver from them. These words echoed in Hermonthis.

Ra comes to him who calls upon him. He reaches to thee his hand. He flies to thee, Ramses Miamun. I am with thee, I am thy father, the sun, and my hand is with thee. Their hearts shall waver in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and all their limbs shall fail. They shall not shoot their arrows; their lances they shall not be able to hold. The chief of the Cheta sent princes, the prince of Aratus (Aradus) and the prince of Kirkamischa (Karchemish). My charioteer was weak, and a great terror came upon his limbs. He said, Brave king, hold, and let us save the breath of our lives. What can we do, n.o.ble lord, Ramses Miamun? Mark what his majesty answered to his charioteer. Courage! Stablish thine heart, my charioteer. Like the divine hawk, I will swoop into their midst, they shall be overthrown and hewn down into the dust. Ammon were no G.o.d if he glorified not my face before their countless hosts. The king pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta, six times he pressed into their midst. My bowmen and charioteers came at the hour of evening from their camp: they found the whole region covered with dead bathed in their blood. His holiness answered his army and the captains who had not fought. Ye did not well to leave me alone in the midst of the enemies. I have fought, I have beaten back thousands of enemies, and I was alone.

The horses which drew me were 'Might in Thebes,' and 'Rest in the upper land.' As soon as I am within my royal gates, I command that they have corn every day before the G.o.d Ra. When the earth again became light, he began the conflict again; he dashed into the battle like a bull, which hurls himself upon geese, and with him the mighty lion beside his horses. Rage inflamed all his limbs. They were hewn in pieces before his mares. The chief of the miserable Cheta sent to call upon the great name of his majesty. Thou art the sun, the G.o.d of both worlds, thou art Sutech the great conqueror, the son of heaven. Baal is in all thy limbs.

Terror is upon the land of Cheta; thou hast possessed thyself of their inwards for ever. The slave said, as he spoke to Pharaoh: Since Ammon has granted to thee that Egypt and the nation of the Cheta shall be slaves at thy feet, and Ra has granted thee the dominion over them, thou canst slay thy slaves; they are in thy power; we lie bowed to the earth, ready to obey thy command. O brave king, delight of the warriors, grant us the breath of our lives! The king summoned his generals in order to hear the message and write an answer, and toward midday he took ship. He returned in peace with his army to Egypt. The whole earth has subjected itself to his name, and the princes, lying on the ground, worship his countenance."[285]

Not only certain turns in this description, but pa.s.sages in invocations which have come down to us, show that in expressing themselves, the Egyptians, in spite of the predominant vein of reflection, were not without force of imagination, or striking figures, or largeness and vigour of conception. That they are not free from bombast, foolish exaggeration, and incessant repet.i.tion, any more, or even so little, as the other nations of the East, is proved more especially by the inscriptions in the temples recording the mighty deeds of the kings. Our knowledge of the ma.n.u.scripts does not as yet allow us to pa.s.s a more definite judgment. Yet it is beyond doubt that even in the centuries immediately preceding the irruption of the Hyksos, under the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, they were in possession of a written literature, that even then the oldest parts of the "Book of the Dead" were not only in existence, but already commentated upon, and that after the restoration of the kingdom, beside the comprehensive books of the priests, and ma.n.u.scripts on medicine (p. 209), there was at any rate after the fourteenth century B.C., and the reign of Ramses II., a literature of a considerable extent. There is a second papyrus in existence by the author of the description of the battle, of which the t.i.tle runs, "Beginning of the Rudiments of the Art of Letter-writing by the Scribe Pentaur, composed in the 10th year of Ramses II."[286] The fifth letter of this collection is addressed by Ameneman, the head of the keepers of the archives of the treasure of the king, to Pentaur; it is said that Pentaur has turned his back on the sacred writings, and applied himself to agriculture. The farmer has to fear grubs and rats, sparrows and locusts for his crops; and thieves too. Implements and horses wear out.

The scribes come and demand the taxes, and the neighbours are away and busy with the harvest. On the other hand, the work of the scribe is the highest of all, and the scribe has no taxes to pay.[287] On a third papyrus a hymn, addressed by Ramses III. to Ammon, is said to have been found.[288] A fourth has the name-shields of Sethos II. (p. 163). It is a composition by a scribe of the name of Enna, and contains the story of the fate of two brothers.[289] A fifth papyrus, which is also attributed to the time of successors of Ramses II., has preserved a collection of apothegms.[290] In a country which placed such importance on preserving every incident, on enumerating, recording, and registering everything, care must have been taken to record the series of the kings.

When the shepherds were driven out, the liberation from foreign dominion would give a strong impulse toward the attempt to keep firmly before the eyes the old days of independent Egypt. At the same time these attempts must have met with serious hindrances. The destruction which came upon numerous records and monuments of those old times, and the want of any definite aera of chronology, made it difficult to obtain a really correct order of succession, or a historical picture of the ancient period. The historical truth of the writings, which, in spite of these difficulties, were undertaken, as is shown by the monuments mentioned above, and the Turin papyrus (p. 25), was still more seriously impaired by the fact that the views of the priests were governed by the conception that the course of certain periods was allotted to the world by the G.o.ds, and in these periods the fortunes of Egypt had reached their fulfilment, and would continue to reach it. We have already become acquainted with this Sothis period (p. 29 ff). From the G.o.ds came life and the world. So the G.o.ds were said to have reigned in person over Egypt, before the kings, their divine successors, ruled over men. Hence the priests of Lower Egypt commenced the reign of the seven great G.o.ds with the beginning of a Sothis period. The seven great G.o.ds were followed by the twelve G.o.ds of the second rank, Thoth, Anubis, Chunsu, &c., in reigns of gradually diminishing length through a certain number of Sothis periods. According to the scheme still preserved, Ptah reigned 9,000 years, and the last of the G.o.ds only seventy years, so that on an average each occupies exactly half a Sothis period, or 730 of our years. These nineteen G.o.ds were followed by thirty demiG.o.ds; to each of whom was allotted the twelfth part of a Sothis period for a reign, so that the whole period of the reign of the G.o.ds takes up twelve Sothis periods, or 17,520 years. After this, according to some authorities, began the period of human rulers; others allotted four Sothis periods, _i.e._ 5840 years, to another set of demiG.o.ds. Then followed, beginning like the rest with the beginning of a Sothis period, the rule of human kings. This Sothis period commenced either in the year 5702 B.C., or, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, with the year 4242 B.C. This year, therefore, was the first of the history of Egypt. To Menes the priests attached the long list of names in one continuous series, without in the least regarding whether the dynasties were contemporaneous or successive, whether they ruled in Upper or Lower Egypt, over the whole land, or in certain districts only.

If we calculate the rule of the human kings from the first of the dates given, the first Sothis period of men came to an end, according to the canon of Manetho, in 4242 B.C.; the second in 2782 B.C. The third ended in the time of Menephta I., in whose reign as a fact the Egyptian year did again coincide with the natural year.[291]

The Egyptians were devoted more than other nations to the contemplation of the heavens. The constellations announced to them the approach of the inundation, its height, and its decline. Moreover, their religion was to a great extent a worship of light and the sun, and as they plainly perceived the influence of the stars on the country in the rise and fall of the water, the increase and abatement of the heat, &c., it was natural that they should ascribe to the constellations and the movements of the heavenly bodies similar influences on the life and growth, the happiness and misery, of mankind; and this belief must in turn have contributed to the a.s.siduous and accurate observation of the heavens.

"If anywhere," says Diodorus, "it is in Egypt that the most accurate observation of the position and movements of the stars have been made.