 Chapter 2 The Memphite Empire, Part 6 It was stated, however, in the time of the Ptolemies, that the Fifth Dynasty had no connection with the Sixth. It was regarded at Memphis as an intruder, and it was asserted that it came from Elephantine. The tradition was a very old one, and its influences betrayed in a popular story, which was current at Thebes in the first years of the New Empire. Keops, while in search of the mysterious books of thought, in order to transcribe from them the texts for his sepulcher chamber, had asked the Magician Didi to be good enough to procure them for him, but the latter refused the perilous task imposed upon him. Sire, my lord, it is not I who shall bring them to thee. His Majesty asks, who then will bring them to me? Didi replies, it is the eldest of the three children who are in the womb of Rudidit, who will bring them to thee. His Majesty says, by the love of Ra, what is this that thou tellest me, and who is she, this Rudidit? Didi says to him, she is the wife of a priest of Ra, Lord of Sakhibu. She carries in her womb three children of Ra, Lord of Sakhibu, and the God has promised to her that they shall fulfill this beneficent office in this whole earth, and that the eldest shall be the High Priest at Heliopolis. His Majesty, his heart was troubled at it, but Didi says to him, what are these thoughts, Sire, my lord? Is it because of these three children? Then I say to thee, thy son, his son, then one of these. The good King Keops doubtless tried to lay his hands upon this threatening trio at the moment of their birth, but Ra had anticipated this, and saved his offspring. When the time for their birth drew near, the Majesty of Ra, Lord of Sakhibu, gave orders to Isis, Nephthis, Pasconet, Hikwit, and Knumu, come, make haste, and run to deliver Rudidit of these three children which she carries in her womb to fulfill that beneficent office in this whole earth, and they will build you temples, they will furnish your altars with offsprings, they will supply your tables with libations, and they will increase your mortemain possessions. The goddesses disguised themselves as dancers and itinerant musicians. Knumu assumed the character of a servant to this band of notch-girls, and filled the bag with provisions, and they all then proceeded together to knock at the door of the house in which Rudidit was awaiting her delivery. The earthly husband, Bausir, unconscious of the honour that the gods had in store for him, introduced them to the presence of his wife, and immediately three male children were brought into the world one after the other. Isis named them, Masconet predicted for them their royal fortune, while Knumu infused into their limbs vigor and health. The eldest was called Yusercov, the second Sahuri, the third Kakyu. Bausir was anxious to discharge his obligation to these unknown persons, and proposed to do so in wheat, as if they were ordinary mortals. They had accepted it without compunction, and were already on their way to the firmament, when Isis recalled them to a sense of their dignity, and commanded them to store the honorarium bestowed upon them in one of the chambers of the house, where henceforth prodigies of the strangest character never ceased to manifest themselves. Every time one entered the place a murmur was heard of singing, music, and dancing, while acclamations such as those with which kings are want to be received gave sure prestige of the destiny which awaited the newly born. The manuscript is mutilated, and we do not know how the prediction was fulfilled. If we may trust the romance, the first three princes of the Fifth Dynasty were brothers, and of priestly descent, but our experience of similar stories does not encourage us to take this one very seriously. Did not such tales affirm that Keops and Kefren were brothers also? The Fifth Dynasty manifested itself in every respect as the sequel and complement of the Fourth. It reckons nine pharaohs after the three which tradition made sons of the God Ra, himself, and of Rudidit. They reigned for a century and a half. The majority of them have left monuments, and the last four, at least, Usuniri Anu, Mankal Horu, Dadkari Asi, and Unas, appear to have ruled gloriously. They all built pyramids, they repaired temples, and founded cities. The Bedouin of the Sinatic Peninsula gave them much to do. Sahuri brought these nomads to reason, and perpetuated the memory of his victories by a stele, engraved on the face of one of the rocks in the Wadi Magara. Anu obtained some successes over them, and Asi repulsed them in the fourth year of his reign. On the whole, they maintained Egypt in the position of prosperity and splendor to which their predecessors had raised it. In one respect they even increased it. Egypt was not so far isolated from the rest of the world as to prevent her inhabitants from knowing, either by personal contact or by hearsay, at least some of the peoples dwelling outside Africa, to the north and east. They knew that beyond the very green, almost at the foot of the mountains behind which the sun travelled during the night, stretched fertile islands or countries and nations without number, some barbarous or semi-barbarous, cultures as civilized as they were themselves. They cared but little by what names they were known, but called them all by a common epithet, the peoples beyond the seas. Haoui Nibu. If they travelled in person to collect the riches which were offered to them by these peoples in exchange for the products of the Nile, the Egyptians could not have been the unadventurous and home-loving people we have imagined. They willingly left their own towns in pursuit of fortune or adventure, and the sea did not inspire them with fear or religious horror. The ships which they launched upon it were built on the model of the Nile boats, and only differed from the latter in details which would now pass unnoticed. The hull, which was built on a curved keel, was narrow, had a sharp stem and stern, was decked from end to end, low forward and much raised aft, and had a long deck cabin, the steering apparatus consisted of one or two large stout oars, each supported on a forked post and managed by a steersman. It had one mast, sometimes composed of a single tree, sometimes formed of a group of smaller masts planted at a slight distance from each other, but united at the top by strong ligatures and strengthened at intervals by cross-pieces, which made it look like a ladder. Its single sail was bent sometimes to one yard, sometimes two, while its complement consisted of some fifty men, horsemen, sailors, pilots and passengers. Such were the vessels for cruising or pleasure. The merchant ships resembled them, but they were of heavier build, of greater tonnage, and had a higher free-board. They had no hold. The merchandise had to be piled up on deck, leaving only just room enough for the working of the vessel. They nevertheless succeeded in making lengthy voyages, and in transporting troops into the enemy's territory from the mouths of the Nile to the southern coast of Syria. Inveterate prejudice alone could prevent us from admitting that the Egyptians of the Memphite period went to the ports of Asia and to the high Nibu by sea. Some, at all events, of the wood required for building and for joiner's work of a civil or funerarial character, such as pine, cypress or cedar, was brought from the forest of Lebanon or those of Amanus. Beads of amber are still found near Abidos in the tombs of the oldest necropolis, and we may well ask how many hands they had passed through before reaching the banks of the Nile from the shores of the Baltic. The tin used to alloy copper for making bronze, and perhaps bronze itself, entered doubtless by the same route as the amber. The tribes of unknown race who then peopled the coast of the Aegean Sea were amongst the latest to receive these metals, and they transmitted them either directly to the Egyptians or Asiatic intermediaries who carried them to the Nile Valley. Asia Minor had, moreover, its treasures of metal as well as those of wood, copper, lead and iron, which certain tribes of miners and smiths had worked from the earliest times. Caravans plied between Egypt and the lands of Chaldean civilization, crossing Syria and Mesopotamia, perhaps even by the shortest desert route, as far as Ur and Babylon. The communications between nation and nation were frequent from this time forward, and very productive, but their existence and importance are matters of inference, as we have no direct evidence of them. The relations with these nations continued to be Pacific, and with the exception of Sinai, Pharaoh had no desire to leave the Nile Valley and take long journeys to pillage or subjugate countries, from whence came so much treasure. The desert and the sea which protected Egypt on the north and east from Asiatic cupidity protected Asia with equal security from the greed of Egypt. On the other hand, towards the south, the Nile afforded an easy means of access to those who wished to penetrate into the heart of Africa. The Egyptians had, at the outset, possessed only the northern extremity of the valley, from the sea to the narrow pass of Silsila. They had then advanced as far as the first cataract, and Syene for some time marked the extreme limit of their empire. At what period did they cross this second frontier and resume their march southwards, as if again to seek the cradle of their race? They had approached nearer and nearer to the great bend described by the river near the present village of Khorosco, but the territory thus conquered had, under the Fifth Dynasty, not as yet either name or separate organization. It was a dependency of the Fifedom of Elephantine, and was under the immediate authority of its princes. Those natives who dwelt on the banks of the river appear to have afforded but a slight resistance to the invaders. The desert tribes proved more difficult to conquer. The Nile divided them into two distinct bodies. On the right side, the confederation of the A'au Ayu spread in the direction of the Red Sea, from the district around Amboes to the neighborhood of Khorosco, in the valleys now occupied by the Ababdas. It was bounded on the south by the Mazayu tribe, from whom our contemporary Mazah have probably descended. The Amamiu were settled on the left bank opposite to the Mazayu, and the country of Irritit lay facing the territory of the U'au Ayu. None of these barbarous peoples were subject to Egypt, but they all acknowledged its suzerainty, a somewhat dubious one indeed, analogous to that exercised over their descendants by the Khedivs of today. The desert does not furnish them with the means of subsistence. The scanty pastriges of their wadis support a few flocks of sheep and asses, and still fewer oxen, but the patches of cultivation which they attempt in the neighborhood of springs yield only a poor produce of vegetables or dura. They would literally die of starvation where they not able to have access to the banks of the Nile for provisions. On the other hand, it is a great temptation to them to fall unawares on villages or isolated habitations on the outskirts of the fertile lands, and to carry off cattle, grain, and male and female slaves. They would almost always have time to reach the mountains again with their spoil, and to protect themselves there from pursuit, before even the news of the attack could reach the nearest police station. Under treaties concluded with the authorities of the country, they are permitted to descend into the plain in order to exchange peaceably for corn and dura, the acacia wood of their forests, the charcoal that they make, gums, game, skins of animals, and the gold and precious stones which they get from their mines. They agree in return to refrain from any act of plunder and to constitute a desert police provided that they receive a regular pay. The same arrangement existed in ancient times. The tribes hired themselves out to Pharaoh. They brought him beams of saunt at the first demand when he was in need of materials to build a fleet beyond the first cataract. They provided him with bands of men ready armed when a campaign against the Libyans or the Asiatic tribes forced him to seek recruits for his armies. The mazayu entered the Egyptian service in such numbers that their names served to designate the soldiery in general, just as in Cairo porters and night watchmen are all called barbarians. Among these people, respect for their oath of fealty yielded sometimes to their natural disposition, and they allowed themselves to be carried away to plunder the principalities which they had agreed to defend. The colonists in Nubia were often obliged to complain of their exactions. When these exceeded all limits and it became impossible to wink at their misdoings any longer, light-armed troops were sent against them who quickly brought them to reason. As at Sinai these were easy victories. They were covered in one expedition what the u'ayu had stolen in ten, both in Phlox and Felahin, and the successful general perpetuated the memory of his exploits by inscribing, as he returned, the name of Pharaoh on some rock at Syene or Elephantine. We may surmise that it was after this fashion that Usurkaf, no Firiiri Kiri, and Unas carried on the wars in Nubia. Their armies probably never went beyond the Second Cataract, if they even reached so far. Further south the country was only known by the accounts of the natives or by the few merchants who had made their way into it. Beyond the mazayu, but still between the Nile and the Red Sea lay the country of Puanit, rich in ivory, ebony, gold, metals, gums, and sweet-smelling resins. When some Egyptian, bolder than his fellows, ventured to travel dither, he could choose one of several routes for approaching it by land or sea. The navigation of the Red Sea was, indeed, far more frequent than is usually believed, and the same kind of vessels in which the Egyptians coasted along the Mediterranean conveyed them by following the coast of Africa, as far as the straits of Bob El-Mandeb. They preferred, however, to reach it by land, and they returned with caravans of heavily laden asses and slaves. CHAPTER II. THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE PART VII. All that lay beyond Puanit was held to be a fabulous region, a kind of intermediate boundary land between the world of man and that of the gods, the island of the double, land of the shades, where the living came into close contact with the souls of the departed. It was inhabited by the Dangas, tribes of half-savaged dwarves whose grotesque faces and wild gestures reminded the Egyptians of the god Bisu, Bess. The chances of war or trade brought some of them from time to time to Puanit, or among the Amamiu, the merchant who succeeded in acquiring and bringing them to Egypt had his fortune made. Pharaoh valued the Dangas highly, and was anxious to have some of them at any price among the dwarves with whom he loved to be surrounded. None knew better than they the dance of the god, that to which Bisu unrestrainedly gave way in his merry moments. Towards the end of his reign, Asi procured one which a certain Biradidi had purchased in Puanit. Was this the first which had made its appearance at court, or had others preceded it in the good graces of the pharaohs? His wildness and activity, and the extraordinary positions which he assumed, made a lively impression upon the courtiers of the time, and nearly a century later there were still reminiscences of him. A great official born in the time of Shapsisqaf, and living on to a great age in the reign of Nafiriri Kiri, is described on his tomb as the scribe of the House of Books. This simple designation, occurring incidentally among two higher titles, would have been sufficient in itself to indicate the extraordinary development which Egyptian civilization had attained at this time. The House of Books was doubtless in the first place, a depository of official documents, such as the registers of the survey and taxes, the correspondence between the court and the provincial governors or feudal lords, deeds of gift to temples or individuals, and all kinds of papers required in the administration of the state. It contained, also, however, literary works, many of which even at this early date were already old, prayers drawn up during the first dynasties, devout poetry belonging to times prior to the misty personage called Meeney, hymns to the gods of light, formulas of black magic, collections of mystical works, such as the Book of the Dead and the Ritual of the Tomb, scientific treatises on medicine, geometry, mathematics, and astronomy, manuals of practical morals, and lastly, romances, or those marvellous stories which preceded the romance among Oriental peoples. All these, if we had them, would form a library much more precious to us than that of Alexandria. Unfortunately, up to the present we have been able to collect only insignificant remains of such rich stores. In the tombs have been found here and there fragments of popular songs. The pyramids have furnished almost intact a ritual of the dead, which is distinguished by its verbosity, its numerous pious platitudes, and obscure allusions to things of the other world. But among all this trash are certain portions full of movement and savage figure, in which poetic glow and religious emotion reveal their presence in a mass of mythological phraseology. In the Berlin papyrus we may read the end of a philosophic dialogue between an Egyptian and his soul, in which the latter applies himself to show that death has nothing terrifying to man. I say to myself every day, as is the convalescence of a sick person who goes to the court after his affliction, such as death. I say to myself every day, as is the inhaling of the scent of a perfume, as a seat under the protection of an outstretched curtain, on that day such as death. I say to myself every day, as the inhaling of the odor of a garden of flowers, as a seat upon the mountain of the country of intoxication, such as death. I say to myself every day, as a road which passes over the flood of inundation, as a man who goes as a soldier whom nothing resists, such as death. I say to myself every day, as the clearing again of the sky, as a man who goes out to catch birds with a net, and suddenly finds himself in an unknown district, such as death. Another papyrus, presented by priest Dalvin to the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, contains the only complete work of their primitive wisdom which has come down to us. It was certainly transcribed before the Eighteenth Dynasty, and contains the works of two classic writers, one of whom is assumed to have lived under the Third, and the other under the Fifth Dynasty. It is not without reason therefore that it has been called the oldest book in the world. The first leaves are wanting, and the portion preserved has, towards its end, the beginning of a moral treatise attributed to Quanimie, a contemporary of Hunie. Then followed a work now lost, one of the ancient possessors of the papyrus having effaced it with the view of substituting for it another piece, which was never transcribed. The last fifteen pages are occupied by a kind of pamphlet which has had a considerable reputation under the name of the Proverbs of Ptahotpu. This Ptahotpu, a king's son, flourished under men Kahori and Asi. His tomb is still to be seen in the Necropolis of Sakara. He had sufficient reputation to permit the inscription to him without violence to probability of the editing of a collection of political and moral maxims which indicate a profound knowledge of the court and of men generally. It is supposed that he presented himself in his declining years before the Pharaoh Asi, exhibited to him the piteous state to which old age had reduced him, and asked the authority to hand down for the benefit of posterity the treasures of wisdom which he had stored up in his long career. The nomark Ptahotpu says, Sire, my Lord, when age is at that point and decrepitude has arrived, debility comes and a second infancy upon which misery falls heavily every day. The eyes become smaller, the ears narrower, strength is worn out while the heart continues to beat. The mouth is silent and speaks no more. The heart becomes darkened and no longer remembers yesterday. The bones become painful. Everything which was good becomes bad. Taste banishes entirely. Old age renders a man miserable in every respect, for his nostrils close up and he breathes no longer, whether he rises up or sits down. If the humble servant who is in thy presence receives an order to enter on a discourse befitting an old man, then I will tell to thee the language of those who know the history of the past, of those who have heard the gods. For if thou conductest thyself like them, discontent shall disappear from among men, and the two lands shall work for thee. The majesty of this God says, instruct me in the language of old times, for it will work a wonder for the children of the nobles. Whosoever enters and understands it, his heart weighs carefully what it says, and it does not produce satiety. We must not expect to find in this work any great profundity of thought. Clever analysis, subtle discussions, metaphysical abstractions were not in fashion in the time of Patahatpu. Actual facts were preferred to speculative fancies. Man himself was the subject of observation, his passions, his habits, his temptations and his defects, not for the purpose of constructing a system therefrom, but in the hope of reforming the imperfections of his nature and of pointing out to him the road to fortune. Patahatpu, therefore, does not show much invention or make deductions. He writes down his reflections just as they occur to him, without formulating them or drawing any conclusion from them as a whole. Knowledge is indispensable to getting on in the world. Hence he recommends knowledge. Gentleness to subordinates is politic and shows good education. Hence he praises gentleness. He mingles advice throughout on the behavior to be observed in the various circumstances of life, on being introduced into the presence of a haughty and choleric man, on entering society, on the occasion of dining with a dignitary, on being married. If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house and love thy wife at home, thou wilt give her abundance of food, thou wilt clothe her back with garments. All that covers her limbs, her perfumes, is the joy of her life. As long as thou locus to this, she is a profitable field to her master. To analyze such a work in detail is impossible. It is still more impossible to translate the whole of it. The nature of the subject, the strangeness of certain precepts, the character of the style, all tend to disconcert the reader and to mislead him in his interpretations. From the earliest times ethics has been considered as a healthy and praiseworthy subject in itself, but so hackneyed was it that a change in the mode of expressing it could alone give it freshness. Patahakpu is a victim to the exsigences of the style he adopted. Others before him had given utterances to the truths he wished to convey. He was obliged to clothe them in a startling and interesting form to arrest the attention of his readers. In some places he has expressed his thought with such subtlety that the meaning is lost in the jingle of the words. The art of the Memphite dynasties has suffered as much as the literature from the hand of time, but in the case of the former the fragments are at least numerous and accessible to all. The kings of this period erected temples in their cities, and not to spink of the chapel of the Sphinx, we find in the remains still existing of those buildings chambers of granite, alabaster, and limestone, covered with religious scenes like those of more recent periods, although in some cases the walls are left bare. Their public buildings have all, or nearly all, perished. Breaches have been made in them by invading armies or by civil wars, and they have been altered, enlarged, and restored scores of times in the course of ages. But the tombs of the old kings remain, and afford proof of the skill and perseverance exhibited by the architects in devising and carrying out their plans. Many of the mastabas occurring at intervals between Giza and Metem have, indeed, been hastily and carelessly built, as if by those who were anxious to get them finished, or who had an eye to economy. We may observe in all of them neglect and imperfection. All the trade tricks which an unscrupulous Jerry-builder then, as now, could be guilty of, in order to keep down the net cost and satisfy the natural parsimony of his patrons, without lessening his own profits. Where, however, the master mason has not been hampered by being forced to work hastily or cheaply, he displays his conscientiousness, and the choice of materials, the regularity of the courses, and the homogenousness of the building leave nothing to be desired. The blocks are adjusted with such precision that the joints are almost invisible, and the mortar between them has been spread with such a skillful hand that there is scarcely an appreciable difference in its uniform thickness. The long low flat mass which the finished tomb presented to the eye is wanting in grace, but it has the characteristics of strength and indestructibility well suited to an eternal house. The façade, however, was not wanting in a certain graceful severity. The play of light and shade distributed over its surface by the stela, niches, and deep-set doorways varied its aspect in the course of the day, without lessening the impression of its majesty and serenity which nothing could disturb. The pyramids themselves are not, as we might imagine, the course and ill-considered reproduction of a mathematical figure disproportionately enlarged. The architect who made an estimate for that of chaos must have carefully thought out the relative value of the elements contained in the problem which had to be solved. The vertical height of the summit, the length of the sides on the ground line, the angle of pitch, the inclination of the lateral faces to one another, before he discovered the exact proportions and the arrangement of lines which render his monument a true work of art and not merely a costly and mechanical arrangement of stones. The impressions which he desired to excite have been felt by all who came after him when brought face to face with the pyramids. From a great distance they appear like mountain peaks, breaking the monotony of the Libyan horizon. As we approach them they apparently decrease in size and seem to be merely unimportant inequalities of ground on the surface of the plain. It is not till we reach their bases that we guess their enormous size. The lower courses then stretch seemingly into infinity to right and left, while the summit soars up out of our side into the sky. The effect is gained by majesty and simplicity of form in the contrast and disproportion between the stature of man and the immensity of his handiwork. The eye fails to take it in. It is even difficult for the mind to grasp it. We see we may touch hundreds of courses formed of blocks, two hundred cubic feet in size, and thousands of others scarcely less in bulk, and we are at a loss to know what force has moved, transported, and raised so great a number of colossal stones. How many men were needed for the work? What amount of time was required for it? What machinery they used? And in proportion to our inability to answer these questions we increasingly admire the power which regarded such obstacles as trifles. The descriptions mention in detail the princes, nobles, and scribes who presided over all the works undertaken by the Sovereign, but they have never deigned to record the name of a single architect. They were people of humble extraction, living hard lives under fear of the stick, and their ordinary assistants, the draftsmen, painters, and sculptors, were no better off than themselves. They were looked upon as mechanics of the same social status as the neighboring shoemaker or carpenter. The majority of them were, in fact, clever mechanical workers of varying capability, accustomed to chisel out a ball-relief or set a statue firmly on its legs, in accordance with invariable rules which they transmitted unaltered from one generation to another. Some were found among them, however, who displayed unmistakable genius in their art, and who, rising above the general mediocrity, produced masterpieces. Their equipment of tools was very simple. Iron picks with wooden handles, mallets of wood, small hammers, and a bow for boring holes. The sycamore and acacia furnished them with a material of a delicate grain and soft texture, which they used to good advantage. Egyptian art has left us nothing which, impurity of hue and delicacy of modeling, surpasses the panels of the tomb of Hosi, with their seated or standing male figures and their vigorously cut hieroglyphs in the same relief as the picture. Egypt possesses, however, but few trees of suitable fiber for sculptural purposes, and even those which were fitted for this use were too small and stunted to furnish blocks of any considerable size. The sculptor, therefore, turned by preference to the soft white limestone of Torah. He quickly detached the general form of his statue from the mass of stone, fixed the limits of its contour by means of dimension guides applied horizontally from top to bottom, and then cut away the angles projecting beyond the guides, and softened off the outline till he made his modeling correct. This simple and regular method of procedure was not suited to hard stone. The latter had to be first chiseled, but when by dint of patience the rough hewing had reached the desired stage, the work of completion was not entrusted to metal tools. Stone hatchets were used for smoothing off the superficial roughnesses, and it was assiduously polished to efface the various tool marks left upon its surface. The statue did not present that variety of gesture, expression, and attitude which we aim at today. They were above all things the accessories of a temple or tomb, and their appearance reflects the particular ideas entertained with regard to their nature. The artist did not seek to embody in them the ideal type of male or female beauty. They were representatives made to perpetuate the existence of the model. The Egyptians wished the double to be able to adapt itself easily to its image, and in order to compass that end it was imperative that the stone presentment should be at least an approximate likeness, and should reproduce the proportions and peculiarities of the living prototype for whom it was meant. The head had to be the faithful portrait of the individual. It was enough for the body to be, so to speak, an average one, showing him at his fullest development and in the complete enjoyment of his physical powers. The men were always represented in their maturity. The women never lost the rounded breasts and slight hips of their girlhood. But a dwarf always preserved his congenital ugliness, for his salvation in the other world demanded that it should be so. Had he been given normal stature, the double, accustomed to the deformity of his members in this world, would have been unable to accommodate himself to an upright carriage, and would not have been in a fit condition to resume his course of life. The particular pose of the statue was dependent on the social position of the person. The king, the nobleman, and the master are always standing or sitting. It was in these postures they received the homage of their vassals or relatives. The wife shares her husband's seat, stands upright beside him, or crouches at his feet as in daily life. The son, if his statue was ordered while he was a child, wears the dress of childhood. If he had arrived to manhood he is represented in the dress and with the attitude suited to his calling. Slaves grind the grain, cellarers coat their emphori with pitch, bakers need their dough, mourners make lamentation and tear their hair. The exigencies of rank clung to the Egyptians in temple and tomb, wherever their statues were placed, and left the sculptor who represented them scarcely any liberty. He might be allowed to vary the details and arrange the accessories to his taste. He might alter nothing in the attitude or the general likeness without compromising the end and aim of his work. The statues of the Memphite period may be counted at the present day by hundreds. Some are in the heavy and barbaric style which has caused them to be mistaken for primeval monuments. As, for instance, the statues of Sopi and his wife, now in the Louvre, which are attributed to the beginning of the third dynasty or even earlier. Groups exactly resembling these in appearance are often found in the tombs of the fifth and sixth dynasties, which according to this reckoning would be still older than that of Sopi. They were productions of an inferior studio, and their supposed archaism is merely the want of skill of an ignorant sculptor. The majority of the remaining statues are not characterized either by glaring faults or by striking merits. They constitute an array of honest good-natured folk without much individuality of character and no originality. They may be easily divided into five or six groups, each having a style in common and all apparently having been executed on the lines of a few chosen models. The sculptors who worked for the Mastaba contractors were distributed among a very few studios in which a traditional routine was observed for centuries. They did not always wait for orders, but like our modern tombstone-makers, kept by them a tolerable sortment of half-finished statues, from which the purchaser could choose according to his taste. The hands, feet, and busts lacked only the coloring and final polish, but the head was merely rough hewn, and there were no indications of dress. When the future occupant of the tomb or his family had made their choice, a few hours of work were sufficient to transform the rough sketch into a portrait, such as it was, of the deceased they desired to commemorate and to arrange his garment according to the latest fashion. If, however, the relatives or the sovereign declined to be satisfied with these commonplace images, and demanded a less conventional treatment of body for the double of him whom they had lost, there were always some among the assistants to be found capable of entering into their wishes and of seizing the lifelike expression of limbs and features. We possess at the present day, scattered about in museums, some score of statues of this period, examples of consummate art, the Kefrens, the Kyaps, the Anu, the Nofrit, the Rahatpu I have already mentioned, the Sheikh El-Beled and his wife, the sitting scribe of the Louvre and that of Giza, and the kneeling scribe. Ka'ap Piru, the Sheikh El-Beled, was probably one of the directors of the Corvée employed to build the Great Pyramid. He seems to be coming forward to meet the beholder, with an acacia staff in his hand. He has the head and shoulders of a bull, and a common cast of countenance, whose vulgarity is not wanting in energy. The large, widely open eye has, by a trick of the sculptor, an almost uncanny reality about it. The socket which holds it has been hollowed out and filled with an arrangement of black and white enamel. A rim of bronze marks the outline of the lids, while a little silver peg, inserted at the back of the pupil, reflects the light and gives the effect of the sparkle of a living glance. The statue, which is short in height, is of wood, and one would be inclined to think that the relative plasticity of the material counts for something in the boldness of the execution, were it not that though the sitting scribe of the Louvre is of limestone, the sculptor has not shown less freedom in its composition. We recognize in this figure one of those somewhat flabby and heavy, subordinate officials of whom so many examples are to be seen in Oriental courts. He is squatting cross-legged on the pedestal, pen in hand, with the outstretched leaf of papyrus conveniently placed on the right. He waits after an interval of six thousand years until Pharaoh or his vizier deigns to resume the interrupted dictation. His colleague at the Giza Museum awakens in us no less wonder at his vigor and self-possession. But, being younger, he exhibits a fuller and firmer figure with a smooth skin, contrasting strongly with the deeply wrinkled appearance of the other, aggravated as it is by his flabbiness. The kneeling scribe preserves in his pose and on his countenance that stamp of resigned indecision and monotonous gentleness, which is impressed upon subordinate officials by the influence of a life spent entirely under the fear of the stick. Ben O'Fear, on the contrary, is a noble lord looking upon his vassals, passing in file before him. His mean is proud, his head disdainful, and he has that air of haughty indifference which is befitting a favorite of the Pharaoh, possessor of generously bestowed sinicures, and a lord of a score of domains. The same haughtiness of attitude distinguishes the director of the granaries no fear. We rarely encounter a small statue so expressive of vigor and energy. Sometimes there may be found among these short-garmined people an individual wrapped and almost smothered in an immense abaya, or a naked man representing a peasant on his way to market, his bag on his left shoulder, slightly bent under the weight, carrying his sandals in his other hand lest they should be worn out too quickly in walking. Everywhere we observe the traves a character distinctive of the individual and his position, rendered with a scrupulous fidelity. Nothing is omitted, no detail of the characteristics of the model is suppressed. Idealization we must not expect, but we have here an intelligent and sometimes too realistic fidelity. Portraits have been conceived among other peoples and in other periods in a different way. They have never been better executed. The decoration of the sepulchres provided employment for scores of draftsmen, sculptors and painters, whose business it was to multiply in these tombs scenes of everyday life which were indispensable to the happiness or comfort of the double. The walls are sometimes decorated with isolated pictures only, each one of which represents a distinct operation. More frequently we find traced upon them a single subject whose episodes are superimposed one upon the other from the ground to the ceiling, and represent an Egyptian panorama from the Nile to the desert. In the lower portion, boats pass to and fro and collide with each other, while the boatmen come to blows with their boat-hooks within sight of hippopotamia and crocodiles. In the upper portions we see a band of slaves engaged in fouling among the thickets of the river bank, or in the making of small boats, the manufacture of ropes, the scraping and salting of fish. Under the cornice hunters and dogs drive the gazelle across the undulating plains of the desert. Every row represents one of the features of the country, but the artist, instead of arranging the pictures in perspective, separated them and depicted them one above the other. The groups are repeated in one tomb after another. They are always the same, but sometimes they are reduced to two or three individuals, sometimes increased in number, spread out and crowded with figures and inscriptions. Each chief draftsman had his book of subjects and texts, which he combined in various ways, at one time bringing them close together, at another duplicating or extending them according to means put at his disposal or the space he had to cover. The same men, the same animals, the same features of the landscape, the same accessories appear everywhere. It is industrial and mechanical art at its highest. The whole is, however, harmonious, agreeable to the eye and instructive. The conventionalisms of the drawing as well as those of the composition are very different from ours. Whether it is man or beast, the subject is invariably presented and outlined by the brush, or by the graving tool in sharp relief upon the background. But the animals are represented in action, with their usual gait, movement, and play of limbs distinguishing each species. The slow and measured walk of the ox, the short step, meditative ears, and the ironical mouth of the ass, the calm strength of the lion at rest, the grimaces of the monkeys, the slender gracefulness of the gazelle and antelope, are invariably presented with a consummate skill in drawing and expression. The human figure is the least perfect. Everyone is acquainted with those strange figures whose heads in profile, with the eye drawn in full face, are attached to a torso seen from the front and supported by limbs in profile. These are truly anatomical monsters, and yet the appearance they present to us is neither laughable nor grotesque. The defective limbs are so deftly connected with those which are normal that the hole becomes natural. The correct and fictitious lines are so ingeniously blunt together that they seem to rise necessarily from each other. The actors in these dramas are constructed in such paradoxical fashion that they could not exist in this world of ours. They live notwithstanding in spite of the ordinary laws of physiology, and to any one who will take the trouble to regard them without prejudice, their strangeness will add a charm which is lacking in works more conformable to nature. A layer of color spread over the hole heightens and completes them. This coloring is never quite true to nature, nor yet entirely false. It approaches reality as far as possible, but without pretending to copy it in a servile way. The water is always a uniform blue, or broken up by black zigzag lines. The skin of the men is invariably brown, that of the women pale yellow. The shade befitting each being or object was taught in the workshops, and once the receipt for it was drawn up, it was never varied in application. The effect produced by these conventional colors, however, was neither discordant nor jarring. The most brilliant colors were placed alongside each other with extreme audacity, but with a perfect knowledge of their mutual relations and combined effect. They do not jar with or exaggerate or kill each other. They enhance each other's value and by their contact give rise to half shades which harmonize with them. The sepulcher chapels, in cases where their decoration had been completed, and where they have reached dust intact, appear to us as chambers hung with beautifully luminous and interesting tapestry, in which rest ought to be pleasant during the heat of the day to the soul which dwells within them, and to the friends who come there to hold intercourse with the dead. The decoration of palaces and houses was not less sumptuous than that of the sepulchres, but it has been so completely destroyed that we should find it difficult to form an idea of the furniture of the living if we did not see it frequently depicted in the abode of the double. The great arm chairs, folding seats, foot stools, and beds of carved wood, painted and inlaid, the vases of hard stone, metal or enameled wear, the necklaces, bracelets, and ornaments on the walls, even the common pottery of which we find the remains in the neighborhood of the pyramids, are generally distinguished by an elegance and grace reflecting credit on the workmanship and taste of the makers. The squares of ivory, which they apply to their linen chests and their jewel cases often contained actual bow-relieves in miniature, as of bold workmanship and skillful execution as the most beautiful pictures in the tombs. On these, moreover, were scenes of private life, dancing or processions bringing offerings and animals. One would like to possess some of those copper and golden statues which the pharaoh kiosks consecrated to Isis in honor of his daughter. Only the representation of them upon a stela has come down to us, and the fragments of sceptres or other objects which too rarely have reached us have, unfortunately, no artistic value. A taste for pretty things was common, at least among the upper classes, including not only those about the court, but also those in the most distant nomads of Egypt. The provincial lords, like the courtiers of the palace, took a pride in collecting around them in the other world everything of the finest that the art of the architect, sculptor, and painter could conceive and execute. Their mansions as well as their temples have disappeared, but we find, here and there on the side of the hills, the sepulchres, which they had prepared for themselves in rivalry with those of the courtiers or the members of the reigning family. They turned the valley into a vast series of catacombs, so that wherever we look the horizon is bounded by a row of historic tombs. Thanks to their rock-cut sepulchres we are beginning to know the nomarks of the gazelle and the hare, those of the serpent mountain, of Akmim, Denis, Kassar et Said, and Aswan, all the science, in fact, of that feudal government which preceded the royal sovereignty on the banks of the Nile, and of which royalty was never able to entirely disembarrass itself. The pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty had kept them in such check that we can hardly find any indications during their reigns of the existence of these great barons. The heads of the pharaonic administration were not recruited from among the latter, but from the family and domestic circle of the sovereign. It was in the time of the kings of the Fifth Dynasty, it would appear, that the barons again entered into favor and gradually gained the upper hand. We find them in increasing numbers about Anu, Menqahoru, and Asi. Did Unas, who was the last ruler of the dynasty of Elephantine, die without issue, or were his children prevented from succeeding him by force? The Egyptian annals of the time of the ramicides bring the direct line of many's to an end with this king. A new line of Memphite origin begins after him. It is almost certain that the transmission of power was not accomplished without contention, and that there were many claimants to the crown. One of the latter, Imhotpu, whose legitimacy was always disputed, has left hardly any traces of his accession to power, but Ati established himself firmly on the throne for at least a year. He pushed on actively the construction of his pyramid and sent to the valley of Hamamat for the stone of his sarcophagus. We know not whether revolution or sudden death put an end to his activity. The mastaba El Furun of Sakara, in which he hoped to rest, never exceeded the height which it has at present. His name was, however, inscribed in certain official lists, and a tradition of the Greek period maintained that he had been assassinated by his guards. Teddy III was the actual founder of the Sixth Dynasty, historians representing him as having been the immediate successor of Unas. He lived long enough to build at Sakara a pyramid whose internal chambers are covered with inscriptions, and his son succeeded him without opposition. Papi I reigned at least twenty years. He manifested his activity in all corners of his empire, in the nomes of the Syed as well as in those of the Delta, and his authority extended beyond the frontiers by which the power of his immediate predecessors had been limited. He owned sufficient territory south of Elephantine to regard Nubia as a new kingdom added to those which constituted ancient Egypt. We therefore see him entitled in his preamble the Triple Golden Horus, the Triple Conqueror Horus, the Delta Horus, the Syed Horus, the Nubia Horus. The tribes of the desert furnished him, as was customary, with recruits for his army, for which he had need enough, for the Bedouin of the Sinatic Peninsula were on the move, and were even becoming dangerous. Papi, aided by Uni, his prime minister, undertook against them a series of campaigns, in which he reduced them to a state of helplessness, and extended their sovereignty of Egypt for the time over regions hitherto unconquered. Uni began his career under Teddy. At first a simple page in the palace he succeeded in obtaining a post in the Administration of the Treasury, and afterwards that of Inspector of the Woods of the Royal Domain. Papi took him into his friendship at the beginning of his reign, and conferred upon him the title of Friend, and the Office of Head of the Cabinet, in which position he acquitted himself with credit. Alone, without other help than that of a subordinate scribe, he transacted all the business and drew up all the documents connected with the harem and the Privy Council. He obtained an ample reward for his services. Pharaoh granted to him, as a proof of his complete satisfaction, the furniture of a tomb in choice white limestone, one of the officials of the Necropolis was sent to obtain from the quarries at Troy-U, the blocks required, and brought back with him a sarcophagus in its lid, a door-shaped stela with its settings and a table of offerings. He affirms with much self-satisfaction that never before had such a thing happened to any one. Moreover, he adds, My wisdom charmed his majesty, my zeal pleased him, and his majesty's heart was delighted with me. All this is pure hyperbole, but no one was surprised at it in Egypt. Etiquette required that a faithful subject should declare the favors of his sovereign to be something new and unprecedented, even when they presented nothing extraordinary or out of the common. Gifts of sepulchre furniture were frequent occurrence, and we know of more than one instance of them previous to the Sixth Dynasty. For example, the case of the physician Sokat Nyanukku, whose tomb still exists at Sakara, and whom Pharaoh Sahuri rewarded by presenting him with a monumental stela in stone from Tura. Henceforth, Uni could face without apprehension the future, which awaited him in the other world. At the same time he continued to make his way no less quickly in this, and was soon afterwards promoted to the rank of sole friend and superintendent of the irrigated lands of the king. The sole friends were closely attached to the person of their master. In all ceremonies their appointed place was immediately behind him, a place of the highest honor and trust, for those who occupied it literally held his life in their hands. They made all the arrangements for his processions and journeys, and saw that the proper ceremonial was everywhere observed, and that no accident was allowed to interrupt the progress of his train. Lastly, they had to take care that none of the nobles ever departed from the precise position to which his birth or office entitled him. This was a task which required a great deal of tact, for questions of precedence gave rise to nearly as many heart-burnings in Egypt as in modern courts. CHAPTER II. THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE PART X Uni acquitted himself so dexterously that he was called upon to act in a still more delicate capacity. Queen Amitsi was the king's chief consort. Whether she had dabbled in some intrigue of the palace, or had been guilty of unfaithfulness in act or in intention, or had been mixed up in one of those feminine dramas which so frequently disturbed the peace of harems would do not know. At any rate Poppy considered it necessary to proceed against her, and appointed Uni to judge the case. Aided only by his secretary he drew up the indictment and decided the action so discreetly that to this day we do not know of what crime Amitsi was accused, or how the matter ended. Uni felt great pride at having been preferred before all others for this affair, and not without reason. For, says he, my duties were to superintend the royal forests, and never before me had a man in my position been initiated into the secrets of the royal harem. But his majesty initiated me into them because my wisdom pleased his majesty, more than that of any of his other leges, more than that of any other of his mamluks, more than that of any other of his servants. These antecedents did not seem calculated to mark out Uni as a future minister of war, but in the East, when a man has given proofs of his ability in one branch of administration, there is a tendency to consider him equally well fitted for service in any of the others, and the fiat of a prince transforms the clever scribe of today into the general of tomorrow. No one is surprised, not even the person promoted. He accepts his new duties without flinching, and frequently distinguishes himself as much in their performance as though he had been bred to them from his youth up. When Papi had resolved to give a lesson to the Bedouin of Sinai, he at once thought of Uni, his sole friend, who had so skillfully conducted the case of Queen Amitsi. The expedition was not one of those which could be brought to a successful issue by the troops of the frontier nomes. It required a considerable force, and the whole military organization of the country had to be brought into play. His Majesty raised troops to the number of several myriads, in the whole of the South from Elephantine to the Nome of the Honche in the Delta, in the two halves of the valley, in each fort of the forts of the desert, in the land of Irritit, among the blacks of the land of Maza, among the blacks of the land of Amamit, among the blacks of the land of U'au'it, among the blacks of the land of Ka'a, among the blacks of the land of Tohtamu, and His Majesty sent me at the head of this army. It is true, there were chiefs there, there were Mamluks of the King there, there were sole friends of the Great House there, there were princes and governors of castles from the South and from the North, gilded friends, directors of the prophets from the South and the North, directors of districts at the head of troops from the South and the North, of castles and towns that each one ruled, and also blacks from the regions which I have mentioned. But it was I who gave them their orders, although my post was only that of Superintendent of the Irrigated Lands of Pharaoh, so much so that every one of them obeyed me like the others. It is not without much difficulty that he brought this motley crowd into order, equipped them, and supplied them with rations. At length he succeeded in arranging everything satisfactorily, by dint of patience and perseverance. Each one took his biscuit and sandals for the march, and each one of them took bread from the towns, and each one of them took goats from the peasants. He collected his forces on the frontier of the Delta, in the Isle of the North, between the gate of Imhatpu and the tell of Horu Nibmite, and set out into the desert. He advanced probably by Gebel Maghara and Gebel Helal, as far as Wadi El Arish, into the rich and populous country which lay between the southern slopes of Gebel T. and the south of the Dead Sea. Once there he acted with all the rigor permitted by the articles of war, and paid back with interest the ill usage which the Bedouin had inflicted on Egypt. This army came in peace. It completely destroyed the country of the Lords of the Sands. This army came in peace. It pulverized the country of the Lords of the Sands. This army came in peace. It demolished their doors. This army came in peace. It cut down their fig trees and their vines. This army came in peace. It burnt the houses of all their people. This army came in peace. It slaughtered their troops to the number of many myriads. This army came in peace. It brought back great numbers of their people as living captives, for which thing his Majesty praised me more than for odd else. As a matter of fact, these poor wretches were sent off as soon as taken to the quarries or to the dockyards, thus relieving the king from the necessity of imposing compulsory labor too frequently on his Egyptian subjects. His Majesty sent me five times to lead this army in order to penetrate into the country of the Lords of the Sands. On each occasion of their revolt against this army, and I bore myself so well that his Majesty praised me beyond everything. The better one at length submitted, but the neighboring tribes to the north of them, who had no doubt assisted them, threatened to dispute with Egypt with possession of the territory which it had just conquered. As these tribes had a seaboard on the Mediterranean, Ooni decided to attack them by sea, and got together a fleet in which he embarked his army. The troops landed on the coast of the District of Tiba, to the north of the country of the Lords of the Sands. Thereupon they set out. I went, I smote all the barbarians, and I killed all those of them who resisted. On his return Ooni obtained the most distinguished marks of favour that a subject could receive, the right to carry a staff and to wear his sandals in the palace in the presence of Pharaoh. These wars had occupied the latter part of the rain. The last of them took place very shortly before the death of the sovereign. The domestic administration of Papi I seems to have been as successful in its results as was his activity abroad. He successfully worked the mines of Sinai, caused them to be regularly inspected, and obtained an unusual quantity of minerals from them. The expedition he sent thither, in the eighteenth year of his reign, left behind it a bar relief in which are recorded the victories of Ooni over the barbarians and the grants of territory made to the goddess Hathor. Work was carried on uninterruptedly at the quarries of Hattnubu and Kahanu. Building operations were carried on at Memphis, where the Pyramid was in course of erection. At Abidos, whether the Oracle of Osiris was already attracting large numbers of pilgrims, at Tannis, at Bubastus, and at Heliopolis. The temple of Dendura was falling into ruins. It was restored on the lines of the original plans which were accidentally discovered, and this piety displayed towards one of the most honored deities was rewarded, as it deserved to be, by the insertion of the title of Son of Horus in the Royal Cartouche. The vassals rivaled their sovereign in action, and built new towns on all sides to serve them as residences, more than one of which was named after the Pharaoh. The death of Papi I did nothing to interrupt this movement. The elder of his two sons, by his second wife, Miriri Anknas, succeeded him without opposition. Miriri, Metimsof I, Metasophis, was almost a child when he ascended the throne. The recently conquered Bedouin gave him no trouble. The memory of their reverses was still too recent to encourage them to take advantage of his minority and renew hostilities. Uni, moreover, was at hand, ready to recommend his campaigns at the slightest provocation. Metasophis had retained him in all his offices, and had even entrusted him with new duties. Pharaoh appointed me Governor General of Upper Egypt, from Elephantine in the South to Letopolis in the North, because my wisdom was pleasing to his Majesty, because my zeal was pleasing to his Majesty, because the heart of his Majesty was satisfied with me. When I was in my place I was above all his vassals, all his Mamluks, and all his servants, for never had so great a dignity been previously conferred upon a mere subject. I fulfilled to the satisfaction of the King my office a superintendent of the South, so satisfactorily that it was granted to me to be second in rank to him, accomplishing all the duties of a superintendent of works, judging all the cases which the Royal Administration had to judge in the South of Egypt as a second judge, to render judgment at all hours determined by the Royal Administration in this South of Egypt as second judge, transacting as a Governor all the business there was to do in this South of Egypt. The honour of fetching the hard stone blocks intended for the King's Pyramid fell to him by right. He proceeded to the quarries of Abayt, opposite Sahel, to select the granite for the Royal Sarcophagus and its cover, and to those of Hatnubu for the alabaster for the table of offerings. The transport of the table was a matter of considerable difficulty, for the Nile was low, and the stone of colossal size. Ooni constructed on the spot a raft to carry it, and brought it promptly to Saqqara in spite of the sandbanks, which obstruct the navigation when the river is low. This was not the limit of his enterprise. The pharaohs had not as yet a fleet in Nubia, and even if they had had, the condition of the Channel was such as to prevent it from making the passage of the cataract. He demanded acacia wood from the tribes of the desert, the peoples of Irritate and U'ayit, from the M'zayu, buried down his ships on the stocks, built three galleys and two large lighters in a single year. During this time the Riverside laborers had cleared five channels through which the flotilla passed and made its way to Memphis with the ballast of granite. This was Ooni's last exploit. He died shortly afterwards and was buried in the cemetery at Abidos, in the Sarcophagus which had been given him by Papi I. Was it solely to obtain materials for building the pyramid that he had re-established communication by water between Egypt and Nubia? The Egyptians were gaining ground in the south every day, and under their rule the town of Elephantine was fast becoming a depot for trade with the Sudan. The town occupied only the smaller half of a long, narrow island, which was composed of detached masses of granite, formed gradually into a compact hole by accumulations of sand, and over which the Nile, from time immemorial, had deposited a thick coating of its mud. It is now shaded by acacias, mulberry trees, date-palms, and dome-palms, growing in some places in lines along the pathways, in others distributed in groups among the fields. Half a dozen sequias, ranged in line along the riverbank, raised water day and night, with scarcely any cessation of their monotonous creaking. The inhabitants do not allow a foot of their narrow domain to lie idle. They have cultivated whenever it is possible small plots of dura and barley, bursam and beds of vegetables. A few scattered buffaloes and cows graze in corners, while fowls and pigeons without number roam about in flocks, on the lookout for what they can pick up. It is a world in miniature, tranquil and pleasant, where life is passed without effort, in a perpetually clear atmosphere and in the shade of trees which never lose their leaf. The ancient city was crowded into the southern extremity, on a high plateau of granite beyond the reach of inundations. Its ruins, occupying a space half a mile in circumference, are heaped around a shattered temple of Kanumu, of which the most ancient parts do not date back beyond the sixteenth century before our era. Chapter 2 The Memphite Empire Part XI It was surrounded with walls, and a fortress of sun-dried brick perched upon a neighboring island to the southwest gave it complete command over the passages of the cataract. An arm of the river ninety yards wide separated it from Suanit, whose closely built habitations were ranged along the steep bank and formed as it were a suburb. Marshy pastures occupied the modern site of Sain. Beyond these were gardens, vines, furnishing wine celebrated throughout the whole of Egypt, and a forest of date palms running towards the north along the banks of the stream. The princes of the Nome Avnubia encamped here, so to speak, as frontier posts of civilization, and maintained frequent but variable relations with the people of the desert. It gave the former no trouble to throw, as occasion demanded it, bodies of troops on the right or left sides of the valley, in the direction of the Red Sea, or in that of the Oasis. However little they might carry away on their raids, of oxen, slaves, wood, charcoal, gold dust, amethysts, cornelian, or green-felled spar for the manufacture of ornaments. It was always so much to the good, and the treasury of the prince profited by it. They never went very far in their expeditions. If they desired to strike a blow at a distance, to reach, for example, those regions of Puanit, of whose riches the barbarians were want to boast, the aridity of the district around the second cataract would arrest the advance of their foot soldiers, while the rapids of Wadi Haifa would offer an almost impassable barrier to their ships. In such distant operations they did not have recourse to arms, but disguise themselves as peaceful merchants. An easy road led almost direct from their capital to Rasbanat, which they called the Head of Nekhabit, on the Red Sea, arrived at the spot where in later times stood one of the numerous Speranises, and having quickly put together a boat from the wood of the neighboring forest, they made voyages along the coast, as far as the Sinatic Peninsula, and the Hirushayitu on the north, as well as to the land of Puanit itself on the south. The small size of these improvised vessels rendered such expeditions dangerous. While it limited their gain, they preferred therefore for the most part the land journey. It was fatiguing and interminable. Donkeys, the only beast of burden they were acquainted with, or at least employed, could make but short stages, and they spent months upon months in passing through countries which a caravan of camels would now traverse in a few weeks. The roads upon which they ventured were those which, owing to the necessity for the frequent watering of the donkeys, and the impossibility of carrying with them adequate supplies of water, were marked out at frequent intervals by wells and springs, and were therefore necessarily of a torturous and devious character. Their choice of objects for barter was determined by the smallness of their bulk and weight in comparison with their value. The Egyptians on the one side were provided with stocks of beads, ornaments, coarse cutlery, strong perfumes, and rolls of wider-colored cloth, which after the lapse of thirty-five centuries are objects still coveted by the peoples of Africa. The Aborigines paid for these articles of small value, in gold, either in dust or in bars, in ostrich feathers, lions and leopard skins, elephants tusks, cowrie shells, billets of ebony, incense and gum arabic. Considerable value was attached to synosephaly and green monkeys, with which the kings or the nobles amused themselves, and which they were accustomed to fasten to the legs of their chairs on days of solemn reception. But the dwarf, the danga, was the rare commodity which was always in demand, but hardly ever attainable. Partly by commerce and partly by pillage, the lords of elephantine became rapidly wealthy, and began to play an important part among the nobles of the Syed. They were soon obliged to take serious precautions against the cupidity which their wealth excited among the tribes of Canuset. They entrenched themselves behind a wall of sun-dried brick, some seven-and-a-half miles long, of which the ruins are still an object of wonder to the traveller. It was flanked towards the north by the ramparts of Syene, and followed pretty regularly the lower course of the valley to its abutment at the port of Mahada opposite Phyllis. Guards distributed along it, kept an eye upon the mountain, and uttered a call to arms when the enemy came within sight. Beyond this bulwark the population felt quite at ease, and could work without fear at the granite quarries on behalf of the Pharaoh, or pursue in security their callings of fishermen and sailors. The inhabitants of the village of Satit and of the neighbouring islands claimed from earliest times the privilege of piloting the ships, which went up and down the rapids, and of keeping clear the passages which were used for navigation. They worked under the protection of their goddesses, Anukit, and Satit. Travellers of position were accustomed to sacrifice in the temple of the goddesses at Sahel, and to cut on the rock votive inscriptions in their honour, in gratitude for the prosperous voyage accorded them. We meet their scrawls on every side, at the entrance and exit of the cataract, and on the small islands where they moored their boats at nightfall, during the four or five days required for the passage. The bank of the stream between Elephantine and Phile is, as it were, an immense visitor's book, in which every generation of ancient Egypt has in turn inscribed itself. The markets and streets of the twin cities must have presented at that time the same motley blending of types and costumes, which we might have found some years back in the bazaars of modern Sain. Nubians, negroes of the Sudan, perhaps people from southern Arabia, jostled there with Libyans and Egyptians of the delta. What the princes did to make the sojourn of strangers agreeable, what temples they consecrated to their god Khnumu and his companions, in gratitude for the good things he had bestowed upon them, we have no means of knowing up to the present. Elephantine and Sain have preserved for us nothing of their ancient edifices, but the tombs which they have left tell us their history. They honeycomb in long lines the sides of the steep hill which looks down upon the whole extent of the left bank of the Nile, opposite the narrow channel of the port of Aswan. A rude flight of stone steps led from the bank to the level of the sepulchres. The mummy, having been carried slowly on the soldiers of the bearers to the platform, was deposited for a moment at the entrance of the chapel. The decoration of the ladder was rather meager and was distinguished neither by the delicacy of its execution nor by the variety of the subjects. More care was bestowed upon the exterior and upon the walls on each side of the door which could be seen from the river or from the streets of Elephantine. An inscription borders the recesses and bows to every visitor of the character of the occupant, the portrait of the deceased, and sometimes that of his son, stand to the right and left. The scenes devoted to the offerings come next, when an artist of sufficient skill could be found to engrave them. The expeditions of the lords of Elephantine, crowned as they frequently were with success, soon attracted the attention of the pharaohs. Metasophists stained to receive in person at the cataract the homage of the chiefs of the U'ay'it and Iratit, and of the Maza'u during the early days of the fifth year of his reign. The most celebrated caravan guide at this time was Herkouf, own cousin to Mikou, Prince of Elephantine. He had entered upon office under the auspices of his father Eri, the sole friend. A king whose name he does not mention, but who was perhaps Unas, more probably Papi I, dispatched them both to the country of the Amamit. The voyage occupied seven months, and was extraordinarily successful. The sovereign, encouraged by this unexpected good fortune, resolved to send out a fresh expedition. Herkouf had the sole command of it. He made his way through Iratit, explored the districts of Satyr and Deros, and retraced his steps after an absence of eight months. He brought back with him a quantity of valuable commodities, the like of which no one had ever previously brought back. He was not inclined to regain his country by the ordinary route. He pushed boldly into the narrow wadis which furrowed the territory of the people of Iratit, and emerged upon the region of Situ, in the neighborhood of the cataract, by paths in which no official traveller who had visited the Amamit had up to this time dared to travel. A third expedition which started a few years later brought him into regions still less frequented. It set out by the oasis route, proceeded towards the Amamit, and found the country in an uproar. The shakes had convoked their tribes and were making preparations to attack the Timihu towards the west corner of the heaven, in that region where stand the pillars which support the iron firmament at the setting sun. The Timihu were probably Berbers by race and language. Their tribes, coming from beyond the Sahara, wandered across the frightful solitudes which bound the Nile Valley on the west. The Egyptians had constantly to keep a sharp lookout for them, and to take precautions against their incursions. Having for a long time acted only on the defensive. They at length took the offensive, and decided, not without religious misgivings, to pursue them to their retreats. As the inhabitants of Mendes and of Bucyrus had relegated the abode of their departed to the recesses of the impenetrable marshes of the Delta, so those of Siut and Thines had at first believed the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands. The god Jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the cleft or through the gate of the oven, to the green islands scattered over the desert, where the blessed dwelt in peace at a convenient distance from their native cities and their tombs. They constituted, as we know, a singular folk, those Uiti, whose members dwelt in coffins, and who had put on the swaddling clothes of the dead. The Egyptians called the Oasis which they had colonized the land of the shrouded, or of mummies, Uit. And the name continued to designate it long after the advance of geographical knowledge had removed this paradise further towards the west. The Oasis fell one after the other into the hands of frontier princes, that of Banesa coming under the dominion of the lord of Oksurincus, that of Dakhil under the lords of Thines. The Nubians of Amamid had relations, probably, with the Timihu, who owned the Oasis of Dush, a prolongation of that of Dakhil, on the parallel of Elephantine. Herkhoof accompanied the expedition to the Amamid, succeeded in establishing peace among the rival tribes, and persuaded them to worship all the gods of Pharaoh. He afterwards reconciled the Irritate, Amamid, and U'ayit, who lived in a state of perpetual hostility to each other, explored their valleys, and collected from them such quantities of incense, ebony, ivory, and skins that three hundred asses were required for their transport. He was even fortunate enough to acquire a danga from the land of ghosts, resembling the one brought from Puanit by Beirdidi in the reign of Asi eighty years before. Metasophis in the meantime had died, and his young brother and successor, Papi II, had already been a year upon the throne. The new king, delighted to possess a dwarf who could perform the dance of the god, addressed a rescript to Herkhoof to express his satisfaction. At the same time he sent him a special messenger, Unni, a distant relative to Papi I's minister, who was to invite him to come and give an account of his expedition. The boat in which the explorer embarked to go down to Memphis also brought the danga, and from that moment the latter became the most important personage of the party. For him all the royal officials, lords, and sacerdotal colleges hastened to prepare for visions and means of conveyance. His health was of greater importance than that of his protector, and he was anxiously watched lest he should escape. When he is with thee in the boat, let there be cautious persons about him, lest he should fall into the water. When he rests during the night, let careful people sleep beside him in case of his escaping quickly in the night time. For my majesty desires to see this dwarf more than all the treasures which are being imported from the land of Puanit. Herkhoof, on his return to Elephantine, engraved the royal letter and the detailed account of his journeys to the lands of the south on the façade of his tomb. CHAPTER II The Memphite Empire Part XII These repeated expeditions produced in course of time more important and permanent results than the capture of an accomplished dwarf or the acquisition of a fortune by an adventurous nobleman. The nations which these merchants visited were accustomed to hear so much of Egypt, its industries and its military force, that they came at last to entertain and admiration and respect for her, not unmingled with fear. They learned to look upon her as a power superior to all others, and upon her king as a god whom none might resist. They adopted Egyptian worship, yielded to Egypt their homage, and sent the Egyptians' presence. They were won over by civilization before being subdued by arms. We are not acquainted with the manner in which no fair Kiri Papi II turned these friendly dispositions to good account in extending his empire to the south. The expeditions did not all prove so successful as that of Herkhoof, and one at least of the princes of Elephantine, Papi Nakiti, met with his death in the course of one of them. Papi II had sent him on a mission, after several others, to make profit out of the Ua'i'u and the Iriteet. He killed considerable numbers in this raid and brought back great spoil, which he shared with Pharaoh, for he was at the head of many warriors chosen from among the bravest, which was the cause of his success in the enterprise with which his holiness had deigned to entrust him. Once, however, the king employed him in regions which were not so familiar to him as those of Nubia, and fate was against him. He had received orders to visit the Amu, the Asiatic tribes inhabiting the Sinatic Peninsula, and to repeat on a smaller scale in the south the expedition which U'ni had led against them in the north. He proceeded dither, and his sojourn having come to an end, he chose to return by sea. To sail towards Puanit, to coast up as far as the head of Nakhabit, and to land there and make straight for Elephantine by the shortest route, presented no unusual difficulties, and doubtless more than one traveler or general of those times had safely accomplished it. Papi Nakhiti failed miserably. As he was engaged in constructing his vessel, the Hirusha'i Tu fell upon him and massacred him, as well as the detachment of troops who accompanied him. The remaining soldiers brought home his body which was buried by the side of the other princes in the mountain opposite Sain. Papi II had ample leisure to avenge the death of his vessel and to send fresh expeditions to irritate, among the Amamit and even beyond. If indeed, as the author of the chronological canon of Turin asserts, he really reigned for more than ninety years. But the monuments are almost silent with regard to him, and give us no information about his possible exploits in Nubia. An inscription of his second year proves that he continued to work the Sionatic minds, and that he protected them from the Bedouin. On the other hand, the number and beauty of the tombs in which mention is made of him bear witness to the fact that Egypt enjoyed continued prosperity. Recent discoveries have done much to surround this king and his immediate predecessors with an air of reality which is lacking in many of the later pharaohs. Their pyramids, whose familiar designations we have deciphered in the texts, have been uncovered at Saqqara, and the inscriptions which they contain reveal to us the names of the sovereigns who were posed within. Unas, Teddy III, Papi I, Metasophis I, and Papi II now have as clearly defined a personality for us as Romases II or Seddy I. Even the mummy of Metasophis has been discovered near his sarcophagus, and can be seen under glass in the Giza Museum. The body is thin and slender, the head refined, and ornamented with the thick side lock of boyhood. The features can be easily distinguished, although the lower jaw has disappeared and the pressure of the bandages has flattened the nose. All the pyramids of the dynasty are of a uniform type, the model being furnished by that of Unas. The entrance is in the center of the northern façade, underneath the lowest course, and on the ground level. An inclined passage, obstructed by enormous stones, leads to an antechamber, whose walls are partly bare and partly covered with long columns of hieroglyphs. A level passage, blocked towards the middle by three granite barriers, ends in a nearly square chamber. On the left are three low cells devoid of ornament, and on the right an oblong chamber containing the sarcophagus. These two principal rooms had high-pitched They were composed of large slabs of limestone, the upper edges of which leaned one against the other, while the lower edges rested on a continuous ledge which ran round the chamber. The first row of slabs was surmounted by a second, and that again by a third, and the three together effectively protected the apartments of the dead against the thrust of the super-incumbent mass, or from the attacks of robbers. The wall surfaces closed to the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Unas are decorated with many colored ornaments, and sculptured and painted doors representing the front of a house. This was, in fact, the dwelling of the double in which he resided with the dead body. The inscriptions, like the pictures in the tombs, were meant to furnish the sovereign with provisions, to dispel servants and malevolent divinities, to keep his soul from death, and to lead him into the bark of the sun, or into the paradise of Osiris. They constitute a portion of a vast book, whose chapters are found scattered over the monuments of subsequent periods. They are the means of restoring to us not only the religion, but the most ancient language of Egypt. The majority of the formulas contained in them were drawn up in the time of the earliest human kings, perhaps even before many's. The history of the Sixth Dynasty loses itself in legend and fable. Two more kings are supposed to have succeeded Pafi Noferkiri, Mir Niri, Mitim Saot, Metasophus II, and Nittokrit, Nittokris. Metasophus II was killed, so runs the tale in a riot a year after his accession. His sister, Nittokris, the Rosie-cheeked, to whom, as was the custom he was married, succeeded him and avenged his death. She built an immense subterranean hall, under pretext of inaugurating its completion, but in reality with a totally different aim. She then invited to a great feast and received in this hall a considerable number of Egyptians from among those whom she knew to have been instigators of the crime. During the entertainment she diverted the waters of the Nile into the hall by means of a canal which she had kept concealed. This is what is related of her. They add that after this the queen of her own will threw herself into a great chamber filled with ashes in order to escape punishment. She completed the pyramid of Mycorinos by adding to it that costly casing of cyanite which excited the admiration of travellers. She reposed in a sarcophagus of blue basalt in the very centre of the monument, above the secret chamber where the pious pharaoh had hidden his mummy. The Greeks, who had heard from their Drago-mans the story of the Rosie-cheeked beauty, metamorphised the princess into a courtesan, and for the name of Nytocris substituted the more harmonious one of Rodopus, which was the exact translation of the characteristic epithet of the Egyptian queen. One day while she was bathing in the river an eagle stole one of her gilded sandals, carried it off in the direction of Memphis, and let it drop in the lap of the king who was administering justice in the open air. The king, astonished at the singular occurrence and at the beauty of the tiny shoe, caused a search to be made throughout the country for the woman to whom it belonged. Rodopus thus became queen of Egypt, and could build herself a pyramid. Even Christianity and the Arab conquest did not entirely efface the remembrance of the courtesan princess. It is said that the spirit of the southern pyramid never appears abroad, except in the form of a naked woman who is very beautiful, but whose manner of acting is such that when she desires to make people fall in love with her and lose their wits, she smiles upon them, and immediately they draw near to her, and she attracts them towards her, and makes them infatuated with love, so that they at once lose their wits and wander aimlessly about the country. Many have seen her moving round the pyramid about midday and towards sunset. It is nitocris still haunting the monument of her shame and her magnificence. After her even tradition is silent, and the history of Egypt remains a mere blank for several centuries. Manetho admits the existence of two other Memphite dynasties, of which the first contains seventy kings during as many days. Actheus, the most cruel of tyrants, followed next, and oppressed his subjects for a long period. He was at last the victim of raving madness, and met with his death from the Jaws of a crocodile. It is related that he was of herocleopelite extraction, and the two dynasties which succeeded him, the ninth and the tenth, were also herocleopolitan. The table of Abidus is incomplete, and the Turin papyrus, in the absence of other documents, too mutilated to furnish us with any exact information. The contemporaries of the Ptolemies were almost entirely ignorant of what took place between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the twelfth dynasty. And Egyptologists, not finding any monuments which they could attribute to this period, thereupon concluded that Egypt had passed their some formidable crisis, out of which she with difficulty extracted herself. The so-called herocleopolitites of Manetho were assumed to have been the chiefs of a barbaric people of Asiatic origin, those same lords of the sands so roughly handled by Uni, but who are considered to have invaded the delta soon after, settled themselves and herocleopolitus Parva as their capital, and from thence held sway over the whole valley. They appeared to have destroyed much and built nothing, the state of barbarism into which they sank, and to which they reduced the vanquished, explaining the absence of any monuments to mark their occupation. This hypothesis, however, is unsupported by any direct proof. Even the dearth of monuments which has been cited as an argument in favor of the theory is no longer a fact. The sequence of reigns and details of the revolutions are wanting, but many of the kings and certain facts in their history are known, and we are able to catch a glimpse of the general course of events. The seventh and eighth dynasties are Memphite, and the names of the kings themselves would be evidence in favor of their genuineness, even if we had not the direct testimony of Manetho. The one recurring most frequently is that of Nofer Curie, the pranam of Papi II, and a third Papi figures in them, who cause himself Papi Sambu to distinguish himself from his namesakes. The little recorded of them in Ptolemaic times, even the legend of the seventy pharaohs reigning seventy days, betrays a troublous period and a rapid change of rulers. We know as a fact that the successors of Nitochris, in the royal Turin papyrus, scarcely did more than appear upon the throne. Nofer Curie reigned a year a month and a day. Noferus, four years, two months and a day. Abu, two years, one month and a day. Each of them hoped, no doubt, to enjoy the royal power for a longer period than his predecessors, and like the Ati of the sixth dynastie, ordered a pyramid to be designed for him without delay. Not one of them had time to complete the building, nor even to carry it sufficiently far to leave any trace behind. As none of them had any tomb to hand his name down to posterity, the remembrance of them perished with their contemporaries. By dint of such frequent changes in the succession, the royal authority became enfeebled, and its weakness favoured the growing influence of the feudal families and encouraged their ambition. The descendants of those great lords, who under Papi I and II made such magnificent tombs for themselves, were only nominally subject to the supremacy of the reigning sovereign. Many of them were indeed grandchildren of princesses of the blood, and possessed or imagined that they possessed, as good a right to the crown as the family on the throne. Memphis declined, became impoverished, and dwindled in population. Its inhabitants ceased to build those immense stone mastabas in which they had proudly displayed their wealth, and erected them merely a brick, in which the decoration was almost entirely confined to one narrow niche near the sarcophagus. Soon the mastaba itself was given up, and the necropolis of the city was reduced to the meager proportions of a small provincial cemetery. The centre of that government, which had wade so long and so heavily upon Egypt, was removed to the south, and fixed itself at Heracleopolis the Great. CHAPTER III The Principality of the Oleander, Nauru, was bounded on the north by the Memphite Nome. The frontier ran from the left bank of the Nile to the Libyan Range, from the neighbourhood of Rika to that of Medem. The Principality comprised the territory lying between the Nile and the Bar-Yusuf, from the above-mentioned two villages to the Harab Shent Canal, a district known to Greek geographers as the island of Heracleopolis. It, moreover, included the whole basin of the Fayyum, on the west of the valley. In very early times it had been divided into three parts, the Upper Oleander, Nauru Canidi, the Lower Oleander, Nauru Pu'i, and the Lakeland, Nauru Sheet. And these divisions, united usually under the supremacy of one chief, formed a kind of small state, of which Heracleopolis was always the capital. The soil was fertile, well watered, and well tilled, but the revenues from this district, confined between the two arms of the river, were small in comparison with the wealth which their ruler derived from his lands on the other side of the mountain range. The Fayyum is approached by a narrow and winding gorge, more than six miles in length, a depression of natural formation deepened by the hand of man to allow a free passage to the waters of the Nile. The canal which conveys them leaves the Bar-Yusuf at a point a little to the north of Heracleopolis, carries them in a swift stream through the gorge and the Libyan chain, and emerges into an immense amphitheater whose highest side is parallel to the Nile Valley, and whose terraced slopes descend abruptly to about a hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean. Two great arms separate themselves from this canal to the right and left, the Wadi Tamia and the Wadi Nasla. They wind at first along the foot of the hills, and then again approaching each other, empty themselves into a great crescent or horn-shaped lake, lying east and west, the Morris of Strabo, the Burkitt Curran of the Arabs. A third branch penetrates the space enclosed by the other two, passes the town of Shadu, and is then subdivided into numerous canals and ditches whose ramifications appear on the map as a network resembling the reticulations of a skeleton leaf. The lake formerly extended beyond its present limits, and submerged districts from which it has since withdrawn. In years when the inundation was excessive, the surplus waters were discharged into the lake. When, however, there was a low Nile, the storage which had not been absorbed by the soil was poured back into the valley by the same channels, and carried down by the bar Yusuf to augment the inundation of the Western Delta. The Nile was the source of everything in this principality, and hence they were gods of the waters who received the homage of the three nomes. The inhabitants of Heracleopolis worshipped the ram Harshafitu, with whom they associated Osiris of Narduph as God of the Dead. The people of the Upper Oleander adored a second ram, Kanumu of Hashmonitu, and the whole Fayyum was devoted to the cult of Savku the Crocodile. Attracted by the fertility of the soil, the pharaohs of the older dynasties had from time to time taken up their residence in Heracleopolis or its neighborhood, and one of them, Snufru, had built his pyramid at Medem, close to the frontier of the Nome. In proportion as the power of the Memphites declined, the princes of the Oleander grew more vigorous in enterprising, and when the Memphite kings passed away these princes succeeded their former masters and sat upon the throne of Horus. The founder of the Ninth Dynasty was perhaps Qiti I, Mirabri, the Axos of the Greeks. He ruled over all Egypt, and his name has been found on rocks at the first cataract. A story dating from the time of the ramicides mentions his wars against the Bedouin of the regions east of the Delta, and what Menetho relates of his death is merely a romance, in which the author, having painted him as a sacrilegious tyrant like Keops and Kefren, states that he was dragged down under the water and there devoured by a crocodile or hippopotamus, the appointed avengers of the offended gods. His successors seemed to have reigned ingloriously for more than a century. Their deeds are unknown to history, but it was under the reign of one of them, Nibkhari, that a travelling fellow, having been robbed of his earnings by an artisan, is said to have journeyed to Heracliopolis to demand justice from the Governor, or to charm him by the eloquence of his pleadings and the variety of his metaphors. It would, of course, be idle to look for the record of any historic event in this story. The common people, moreover, do not long remember the names of unimportant princes, and the tenacity with which the Egyptians treasured the memories of several kings of the Heracliopolitan line, amply proves that, whether by their good or evil qualities, they had at least made a lasting impression upon the popular imagination. The history of this period, as far as we can discern it, through the mists of the past, appears to be one confused struggle. From north to south war raged without intermission. The pharaohs fought against their rebel vassals, the nobles fought among themselves, and what scarcely amounted to warfare, there were raids on all sides of pillaging bands, who, although too feeble to constitute any serious danger to large cities, were strong enough, either in numbers or discipline, to render the country districts uninhabitable, and to destroy national prosperity. The banks of the Nile already bristled with citadels, where the monarchs lived and kept watch over the land subject to their authority. Other fortresses were established wherever any commanding site, such as a narrow part of the river or the mouth of a defile leading into the desert, presented itself. All were constructed on the same plan, buried only by the sizes of the areas enclosed, and the different thicknesses of the outer walls. The outline of their ground plan formed a parallelogram, whose enclosure wall was often divided into vertical panels, easily distinguished by the different arrangements of the building material. At Elkob and other places, the courses of crude brick are slightly concave, somewhat resembling a wide inverted arch, whose outer curve rests on the ground. In other places there was a regular alternation of lengths of curved courses, with those in which the courses were strictly horizontal. The object of this method of structure is still unknown, but it is thought that such building offers better resistance to shocks of earthquake. The most ancient fortresses at Abidos, whose ruins now lie beneath the mound of Qom-es-Sultan, was built in this way. Tombs having encroached upon it by the time of the Sixth Dynasty, it was shortly afterwards replaced by another and similar fort, situate rather than a hundred yards to the southeast. The latter is still one of the best preserved specimens of military architecture dating from the times immediately preceding the First Theban Empire. The exterior is unbroken by towers or projections of any kind, and consists of four sides, the two longer of which are parallel to each other and measure 143 feet from east to west. The two shorter sides, which are also parallel, measure 85 yards from north to south. The outer wall is solid, built in horizontal courses, with a slight batter and decorated by vertical grooves, which at all hours of the day diversify the surface with an incessant play of light and shade. When perfect it can hardly have been less than 40 feet in height. The walk round the ramparts was crowned by a slight low parapet, with rounded battlements, and was reached by narrow staircases carefully constructed in the thicknesses of the walls. A battle-minted covering wall, about five and a half yards high, encircled the building at a distance of some four feet. The fortress itself was entered by two gates, and posterns placed at various points between them provided for sorties of the garrison. The principal entrance was concealed in a thick block of building at the southern extremity of the east front. The corresponding entrance in the covering wall was a narrow opening closed by massive wooden doors. Behind it was a small plastam, at the further end of which was a second gate, as narrow as the first, and leading into an oblong court hemmed in between the outer rampart and two bastions projecting at right angles from it. And lastly, there was a gate purposely placed in the furthest and least obvious corner of the court. Such a fortress was strong enough to resist any modes of attack then at the disposal of the best equipped armies, which knew but three ways of taking a place by force. Vis, scaling, sapping, and breaking open the gates. The height of the walls effectually prevented scaling. The pioneers were kept at a distance by the brave, but if a breach were made in that, the small flanking galleries fixed outside the battlements enabled the besieged to overwhelm the enemy with stones and javelins as they approached, and to make the work of sapping almost impossible. Should the first gate of the fortress yield to the assault, the attacking party would be crowded together in the courtyard as in a pit, few being able to enter together. They would at once be constrained to attack the second gate under a shower of missiles. And did they succeed in carrying that also, it was at the cost of enormous sacrifice. The peoples of the Nile Valley knew nothing of the swing battering ram, and no representation of the handworking battering ram has ever been found in any of their wall paintings or sculptures. They forced their way into a stronghold by breaking down its gates with their axes, or by setting fire to its doors. While the sappers were hard at work, the archers endeavored by the accuracy of their aim to clear the enemy from the curtain, while soldiers sheltered behind movable mantelettes tried to break down the defenses, and dismantled the flanking galleries with huge metal-tipped lances. In dealing with a resolute garrison, none of these methods proved successful. Nothing but close siege, starvation, or treachery could overcome its resistance. The equipment of Egyptian troops was lacking in uniformity, and men armed with slings, or bows and arrows, lances, wooden swords, clubs, stone or metal axes, all fought side by side. The head was protected by a padded cap, and the body by shields, which were small for light infantry, but of great width for soldiers of the line. The issue of a battle depended upon a succession of single combats between foes armed with the same weapons. The lancers alone seemed to have been charged in line behind their huge bucklers. As a rule, the wounds were trifling, and the great skill with which the shields were used made the risk of injury to any vital part very slight. Sometimes, however, a lance might be driven home into a man's chest, or a vigorously wielded sword or club might fracture a combatant's skull and stretch him unconscious on the ground. With the exception of those thus wounded and incapacitated for flight, very few prisoners were taken, and the name given to them, those struck down alive, Sokiru Anku, sufficiently indicates the method of their capture. The troops were recruited partly from the domains of military fives, partly from the tribes of the desert Ornubia, and by their aid the feudal princes maintained the virtual independence which they had acquired for themselves under the last kings of the Memphite line. Here and there, at Hermopolis, Sheute, and Thebes, they founded actual dynasties, closely connected with the pharaonic dynasty, and even occasionally on an equality with it, though they assumed neither the crown nor the double cartouche. Thebes was admirably adopted for becoming the capital of an important state. It rose on the right bank of the Nile at the northern end of the curve made by the river towards Hermontus, and in the midst of one of the most fertile plains of Egypt. Exactly opposite to it, the Libyan range throws out a precipitous spur broken up by ravines and arid amphitheaters, and separated from the river bank by a mere strip of cultivated ground which could be easily defended. A troop of armed men stationed on this neck of land could command the navigable arm of the Nile, intercept trade with Nubia at their pleasure, and completely bar the valley to any army attempting to pass without having first obtained authority to do so. The advantages of this side do not seem to have been appreciated during the Mephite period, when the political life of Upper Egypt was but feeble. Elephantine, Elcob, and Coptos were at that period the principal cities of the country. Elephantine particularly, owing to its trade with the Sudan, and its constant communication with the peoples bordering the Red Sea, was daily increasing in importance. Hermontis, the A'u Nui of the South, occupied much the same position, from a religious point of view, as was held in the Delta by Heliopolis, the A'u Nui of the North, and its god Montu, a form of the Solar Horus, disputed the supremacy with Minu of Coptos. Thebes long continued to be merely an insignificant village of the Uesit Nome and a dependency of Hermontis. It was only towards the end of the Eighth Dynasty that Thebes began to realize its power, after the triumph of feudalism over the crown had culminated in the downfall of the Mephite kings. A family witch, to judge from the fact that its members affected the name of Montapu, originally came from Hermontis, settled in Thebes and made that town the capital of a small principality, which rapidly enlarged its borders at the expense of the neighboring Nome's. All the towns and cities of the plain, Madufk, Hufuik, Zorit, Hermontis, and towards the south, Aphroditopolis Parva, at the gorge of the two mountains, Gebelin, which formed the frontier of the five of Elkab, Cusit towards the north, Dendera, and Hu, all fell into the hands of the Theban princes, and enormously increased their territory. After the lapse of a very few years, their supremacy was accepted more or less willingly by the adjacent principalities of Elkab, Elephantine, Coptos, Kassar S. Said, Thinus, and Ekmim. Antuf, the founder of the family, claimed no other title than that of Lord of Thebes, and still submitted to the suzerainty of the Heracleopolitan kings. His successors considered themselves strong enough to cast off this allegiance, if not to usurp all the insignity of royalty, including the Eureus and the cartouche. Montapu I, Antuf II, and Antuf III must have occupied a somewhat remarkable position among the great lords of the south, since their successors credited them with the possession of a unique preamble. It is true that the historians of a later date did not venture to place them on a par with the kings who were actually independent. They enclosed their names in the cartouche without giving them a prenomen, but at the same time they invested them with a title not met with elsewhere, that of the first Horus, Horu-Tapi. They exercised considerable power from the outset. It extended over southern Egypt, over Nubia, and over the valleys lying between the Nile and the Red Sea. The origin of the family was somewhat obscure, but in support of their ambitious projects they did not fail to invoke the memory of pretended aliases between their ancestors and daughters of the solar race. They boasted of their descent from the Papis, from Ursiniri Anu, Sahuri, and Snowfru, and claimed that the antiquity of their titles did away with the more recent rites of their rivals. The revolt of the Theban princes put an end to the Ninth Dynasty, and although supported by the feudal powers of Central and Northern Egypt, and more especially by the lords of the Terabenth Nobey, who viewed the sudden prosperity of the Thebans with a very evil eye, the Tenth Dynasty did not succeed in bringing them back to their allegiance. The family which held the fife of Siut when the war broke out had ruled there for three generations. Its first appearance on the scene of history coincided with the accession of Akhtus, and its elevation was probably the reward of services rendered by its chief to the head of the Herakliapollitan family. From this time downwards the title of ruler, Hiku, which the pharaohs themselves sometimes condescended to take, was hereditary in the family, who grew in favour from year to year. Key to the first, the fourth of this line of princes, was brought up in the palace of Herakliapollus, and had learned to swim with the royal children. On his return home he remained the personal friend of the king, and governed his domains wisely, clearing the canals, fostering agriculture, and lightening the taxes without neglecting the army. His heavy infantry, recruited from among the flower of the people of the north, and his light infantry, drawn from the pick of the people of the south, were counted by thousands. He resisted the Theban pretensions with all his might, and his son Tefabi followed in his footsteps. The first time, said he, that my foot-soldiers fought against the nomes of the south, which were gathered together from Elephantine in the south to Ga on the north, I conquered those nomes. I drove them towards the southern frontier. I overran the left bank of the Nile in all directions. When I came to a town I threw down its walls. I seized its chief. I imprisoned him at the port, landing-place, until he paid me ransom. As soon as I had finished with the left bank, and there were no longer found any who dared resist, I passed to the right bank, like a swift hair I set full sail for another chief. I sailed by the north wind as by the east, by the south as by the west, and him whose ship I boarded I vanquished utterly. He was cast into the water, his boats fled to shore, his soldiers were as bulls on whom followed the lion. I compassed his city from end to end. I seized his goods. I cast them into the fire. Thanks to his energy and courage, he extinguished the rebellion by the council and according to the tactics of the jackal, Ua Pao Itu, God of Siut. From that time no district of the desert was safe from his terrors, and he carried flame at his pleasure among the nomes of the south. Even while bringing desolation to his foes, he sought to repair the ills which the invasion had brought upon his own subjects. He administered such strict justice that evildoers disappeared as though by magic. When night came, he who slept on the roads blessed me, because he was as safe as in his own house, for fear which was shed abroad by my soldiers protected him, and the cattle in the fields were as safe there as in the stable. The thief had become an abomination to the God, and he no longer oppressed the serf, so that the latter ceased to complain and paid the exact dues of his land for love of me. In the time of Kiti II, the son of Tefabi, the Herakli Apolitans were still masters of northern Egypt, but their authority was even then menaced by the turbulence of their own vassals, and Herakliopolis itself drove out the pharaoh Mirikari, who was obliged to take refuge in Siut with that Kiti whom he called his father. Kiti gathered together such an extensive fleet that it encumbered the Nile from Shash-Hapu to Gebel Abu Fada, from one end of the Principality of the Terabinth to the other. Vanely did the rebels unite with the Thebans, Kiti sewed terror over the world, and himself alone chastised the nomes of the south. While he was descending the river to restore the king to his capital, the sky grew serene and the whole country rallied to him. The commanders of the south and the archers of Herakliopolis, their legs trembled beneath them when the royal Eureus, ruler of the world, comes to suppress crime. The earth trembles, the south takes ship and flies, all men flee in dismay, the towns surrender, for fear takes hold on their members. Mirikari's return was a triumphal progress. When he came to Herakliopolis the people ran forth to meet him, rejoicing in their lord, women and men together, old men as well as children. But fortune soon changed. Beaten again and again the Thebans still returned to the attack. At length they triumphed, after a struggle of nearly two hundred years, and brought the two rival divisions of Egypt under their rule. The few glimpses to be obtained of the early history of the first Theban dynasty gave the impression of an energetic and intelligent race. Confined to the mostly thinly populated, that is, the least fertile part of the valley, and engaged on the north in a ceaseless warfare which exhausted their resources, they still found time for building both at Thebes and in the most distant parts of their dominions. If their power made but little progress southwards, at least it did not recede, and that part of Nubia lying between Aswan and the neighborhood of Korosko remained in their possession. The tribes of the desert, the Amamiu, the Mazayu, and the U'al Ayu, often disturbed the husbandmen by their sudden raids, yet having pillaged a district they did not take possession of it as conquerors, but hastily returned to their mountains. The Theban princes kept them in check by repeated counter raids and renewed the old treaties with them. The inhabitants of the great oasis in the west and the migratory peoples of the land of the gods recognized the Theban suzerainty on the traditional terms. As in the times of Uni, the barbarians made up the complement of the army with soldiers who were more enured to hardships and more accustomed to the use of arms than the ordinary fellaheen, and several obscure pharaohs, such as Manthapu I and Antuf III, owed their boasted victories over Libyans and Asiatics to the energy of their mercenaries. But the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty were careful not to wander too far from the valley of the Nile. Egypt presented a sufficiently wide field for their activity, and they exerted themselves to the utmost to remedy the evils from which the country had suffered for hundreds of years. They repaired the forts, restored or enlarged the temples, and evidences of their building are found at Coptos, Gebelin, Elkhab, and Abidas. Thebes itself has been too often overthrown since that time for any traces of the work of the Eleventh Dynasty kings in the Temple of Ammon to be distinguishable. But her necropolis is still full of their eternal homes, stretching in lines across the plain opposite Karnak at Draabu-Lanagah and on the northern slopes of the valley of Der El-Bahari. Some were excavated in the mountainside and presented a square facade of dressed stone, surmounted by a pointed roof in the shape of a pyramid. Others were true pyramids, sometimes having a pair of obelisks in front of them, as well as a temple. None of them attained to the dimensions of the Memphite tombs, for with only its own resources at command the kingdom of the south could not build monuments to compete with those whose construction had taxed the united efforts of all Egypt. But it used a crude black brick, made without grit or straw, where the Egyptians of the north had preferred more costly stone. These inexpensive pyramids were built on a rectangular base not more than six and a half feet high, and the whole erection, which was simply faced with whitewashed stucco, never exceeded thirty-three feet in height. The sepulcher chamber was generally in the center, in shape it resembled an oven, its roof being vaulted by the overlapping of the courses. Often also it was constructed partly in the base, and partly in the foundations below the base, the empty space above it being intended merely to lighten the weight of the masonry. There was not always an external chapel attached to these tombs, but a stelae placed on the substructure, or fixed in one of the outer faces, marked the spot to which offerings were to be brought for the dead. Sometimes, however, there was the addition of a square vestibule in front of the tomb, and here, on prescribed days, the memorial ceremonies took place. The statues of the double were rude and clumsy, the coffins heavy and massive, and the figures with which they were decorated inelegant and out of proportion, while the stelae are very rudely cut. From the time of the Sixth Dynasty, the Lords of the Syed had been reduced to employing workmen from Memphis to adorn their monuments, but the rivalry between the Thebans and the Heracleopolitans, which set the two divisions of Egypt against each other in constant hostility, obliged the Antoops to entrust the execution of their orders to the local schools of sculptors and painters. It is difficult to realize the degree of rudeness to which the unskilled workmen who made certain of the Aminti and Gebelan sarcophagi must have sunk, and even at Thebes itself, or at Abidos, the execution of both barreliefs and hieroglyphs shows minute carefulness rather than any real skill or artistic feeling. Failing to attain to the beautiful, the Egyptians endeavored to produce the sumptuous. Expeditions to the Wadi Hamarnat to fetch blocks of granite for sarcophagi became more and more frequent, and wells were sunk from point to point along the road leading from Coptos to the mountains. Sometimes these expeditions were made the occasion for pushing on as far as the port of Sao and embarking on the Red Sea. A hastily constructed boat cruised along by the shore, and gum, incense, gold, and the precious stones of the country were brought from the land of the troglodytes. On the return of the convoy with its block of stone, and various packages of merchandise, there was no lack of scribes to recount the dangers of the campaign in exaggerated language, or to congratulate the reigning pharaoh on having sewn abroad the fame and terror of his name in the countries of the gods, and as far as the land of Puanit.