The Last Days Of Ancient Egypt
Before we turned from Egypt to summarize the information, afforded by
recent discoveries, upon the history of Western Asia under the kings
of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, we noted that the Asiatic
empire of Egypt was regained by the reactionary kings of the XIXth
Dynasty, after its temporary loss owing to the vagaries of Akhunaten.
Palestine remained Egyptian throughout the period of the judges until
the fo
ndation of the kingdom of Judah. With the decline of military
spirit in Egypt and the increasing power of the priesthood, authority
over Asia became less and less a reality. Tribute was no longer paid,
and the tribes wrangled without a restraining hand, during the reigns of
the successors of Ramses III. By the time of the priest-kings of Thebes
(the XXIst Dynasty) the authority of the Pharaohs had ceased to be
exercised in Syria. Egypt was itself divided into two kingdoms, the one
ruled by Northern descendants of the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by
the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who reigned by right of inheritance as
a result of the marriage of the daughter of Ramses with the high
priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the first priest-king. The Thebans
fortified Gebelen in the South and el-Hebi in the North against attack,
and evidently their relations with the Tanites were not always friendly.
In Syria nothing of the imperial power remained. The prestige of the god
Amen of Thebes, however, was still very great. We see this clearly from
a very interesting papyrus of the reign of Herhor, published in 1899 by
Mr. Golenischeff, which describes the adventures of Uenuamen, an envoy
sent (about 1050 B.C.) to Phoenicia to bring wood from the mountains of
Lebanon for the construction of a great festival bark of the god Amen
at Thebes. In the course of his mission he was very badly treated
(We cannot well imagine Thothmes III or Amenhetep III tolerating
ill-treatment of their envoy!) and eventually shipwrecked on the coast
of the land of Alashiya or Cyprus. He tells us in the papyrus, which
seems to be the official report of his mission, that, having been given
letters of credence to the Prince of Byblos from the King of Tanis,
"to whom Amen had given charge of his North-land," he at length reached
Phoenicia, and after much discussion and argument was able to prevail
upon the prince to have the wood which he wanted brought down from
Lebanon to the seashore.
Here, however, a difficulty presented itself,--the harbour was filled
with the piratical ships of the Cretan Tjakaray, who refused to allow
Uenuamen to return to Egypt. They said, 'Seize him; let no ship of his
go unto the land of Egypt!' "Then," says Uenuamen in the papyrus, "I sat
down and wept. The scribe of the prince came out unto me; he said unto
me, 'What ail-eth thee?' I replied, 'Seest thou not the birds which fly,
which fly back unto Egypt? Look at them, they go unto the cool canal,
and how long do I remain abandoned here? Seest thou not those who would
prevent my return?' He went away and spoke unto the prince, who began
to weep at the words which were told unto him and which were so sad. He
sent his scribe out unto me, who brought me two measures of wine and a
deer. He sent me Tentnuet, an Egyptian singing-girl who was with him,
saying unto her, 'Sing unto him, that he may not grieve!' He sent word
unto me, 'Eat, drink, and grieve not! To-morrow shalt thou hear all that
I shall say.' On the morrow he had the people of his harbour summoned,
and he stood in the midst of them, and he said unto the Tjakaray, 'What
aileth you?' They answered him, 'We will pursue the piratical ships
which thou sendest unto Egypt with our unhappy companions.' He said unto
them, 'I cannot seize the ambassador of Amen in my land. Let me send him
away and then do ye pursue after him to seize him!' He sent me on board,
and he sent me away... to the haven of the sea. The wind drove me upon
the land of Alashiya. The people of the city came out in order to slay
me. I was dragged by them to the place where Hatiba, the queen of the
city, was. I met her as she was going out of one of her houses into
the other. I greeted her and said unto the people who stood by her, 'Is
there not one among you who understandeth the speech of Egypt?' One
of them replied, 'I understand it.' I said unto him, 'Say unto thy
mistress: even as far as the city in which Amen dwelleth (i. e. Thebes)
have I heard the proverb, "In all cities is injustice done; only in
Alashiya is justice to be found," and now is injustice done here every
day!' She said, 'What is it that thou sayest?' I said unto her, 'Since
the sea raged and the wind drove me upon the land in which thou livest,
therefore thou wilt not allow them to seize my body and to kill me, for
verily I am an ambassador of Amen. Remember that I am one who will be
sought for always. And if these men of the Prince of Byblos whom they
seek to kill (are killed), verily if their chief finds ten men of thine,
will he not kill them also?' She summoned the men, and they were brought
before her. She said unto me, 'Lie down and sleep...'"
At this point the papyrus breaks off, and we do not know how Uenuamen
returned to Egypt with his wood. The description of his casting-away and
landing on Alashiya is quite Homeric, and gives a vivid picture of the
manners of the time. The natural impulse of the islanders is to kill
the strange castaway, and only the fear of revenge and of the wrath of a
distant foreign deity restrains them. Alashiya is probably Cyprus, which
also bore the name Yantinay from the time of Thothmes III until the
seventh century, when it is called Yatnan by the Assyrians. A king
of Alashiya corresponded with Amenhetep III in cuneiform on terms of
perfect equality, three hundred years before: "Brother," he writes,
"should the small amount of the copper which I have sent thee be
displeasing unto thy heart, it is because in my land the hand of Nergal
my lord slew all the men of my land (i.e. they died of the plague), and
there was no working of copper; and this was, my brother, not pleasing
unto thy heart. Thy messenger with my messenger swiftly will I send, and
whatsoever amount of copper thou hast asked for, O my brother, I,
even I, will send it unto thee." The mention by Herhor's envoy of
Nesibinebdad (Smendes), the King of Tanis, a powerful ruler who in
reality constantly threatened the existence of the priestly monarchy
at Thebes, as "him to whom Amen has committed the wardship of his
North-land," is distinctly amusing. The hard fact of the independence of
Lower Egypt had to be glozed somehow.
The days of Theban power were coming to an end and only the prestige
of the god Amen remained strong for two hundred years more. But the
alliance of Amen and his priests with a band of predatory and destroying
foreign conquerors, the Ethiopians (whose rulers were the descendants
of the priest-kings, who retired to Napata on the succession of the
powerful Bubastite dynasty of Shishak to that of Tanis, abandoning
Thebes to the Northerners), did much to destroy the prestige of Amen
and of everything connected with him. An Ethiopian victory meant only
an Assyrian reconquest, and between them Ethiopians and Assyrians had
well-nigh ruined Egypt. In the Saite period Thebes had declined greatly
in power as well as in influence, and all its traditions were anathema
to the leading people of the time, although not of course in Akhunaten's
sense.
With the Saite period we seem almost to have retraced our steps and to
have reentered the age of the Pyramid Builders. All the pomp and glory
of Thothmes, Amenhetep, and Ramses were gone. The days of imperial Egypt
were over, and the minds of men, sickened of foreign war, turned for
peace and quietness to the simpler ideals of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.
We have already seen that an archaistic revival of the styles of the
early dynasties is characteristic of this late period, and that men
were buried at Sakkara and at Thebes in tombs which recall in form and
decoration those of the courtiers of the Pyramid Builders. Everywhere
we see this fashion of archaism. A Theban noble of this period named
Aba was buried at Thebes. Long ago, nearly three thousand years before,
under the VIth Dynasty, there had lived a great noble of the same name,
who was buried in a rock-tomb at Der el-Gebrawi, in Middle Egypt. This
tomb was open and known in the days of the second Aba, who caused to be
copied and reproduced in his tomb in the Asasif at Thebes most of the
scenes from the bas-relief with which it had been decorated. The tomb
of the VIth Dynasty Aba has lately been copied for the Archaeological
Survey of Egypt (Egypt Exploration Fund) by Mr. de Garis Davies, who has
found the reliefs of the XXVIth Dynasty Aba of considerable use to him
in reconstituting destroyed portions of their ancient originals.
During late years important discoveries of objects of this era have been
few. One of the most noteworthy is that of a contemporary inscription
describing the battle of Momemphis, which is mentioned by Herodotus (ii,
163, 169). We now have the official account of this battle, and know
that it took place in the third year of the reign of Amasis--not before
he became king. This was the fight in which the unpatriotic king,
Apries, who had paid for his partiality for the Greeks of Nau-kratis
with the loss of his throne, was finally defeated. As we see from this
inscription, he was probably murdered by the country people during his
flight.
The following are the most important passages of the inscription: "His
Majesty (Amasis) was in the Festival-Hall, discussing plans for his
whole land, when one came to say unto him, 'Haa-ab-Ra (Apries) is rowing
up; he hath gone on board the ships which have crossed over. Haunebu
(Greeks), one knows not their number, are traversing the North-land,
which is as if it had no master to rule it; he (Apries) hath summoned
them, they are coming round him. It is he who hath arranged their
settlement in the Peh-an (the An-dropolite name); they infest the whole
breadth of Egypt, those who are on thy waters fly before them!'... His
Majesty mounted his chariot, having taken lance and bow in his hand...
(the enemy) reached Andropolis; the soldiers sang with joy on the
roads... they did their duty in destroying the enemy. His Majesty fought
like a lion; he made victims among them, one knows not how many. The
ships and their warriors were overturned, they saw the depths as do the
fishes. Like a flame he extended, making a feast of fighting. His heart
rejoiced.... The third year, the 8th Athyr, one came to tell Majesty:
'Let their vile-ness be ended! They throng the roads, there are
thousands there ravaging the land; they fill every road. Those who are
in ships bear thy terror in their hearts. But it is not yet finished.'
Said his Majesty unto his soldiers: '...Young men and old men, do this
in the cities and nomes!'... Going upon every road, let not a day pass
without fighting their galleys!'... The land was traversed as by the
blast of a tempest, destroying their ships, which were abandoned by the
crews. The people accomplished their fate, killing the prince (Apries)
on his couch, when he had gone to repose in his cabin. When he saw his
friend overthrown... his Majesty himself buried him (Apries), in order
to establish him as a king possessing virtue, for his Majesty decreed
that the hatred of the gods should be removed from him."
This is the event to which we have already referred in a preceding
chapter, as proving the great amelioration of Egyptian ideas with regard
to the treatment of a conquered enemy, as compared with those of other
ancient nations. Amasis refers to the deposed monarch as his "friend,"
and buries him in a manner befitting a king at the charges of Amasis
himself. This act warded off from the spirit of Apries the just anger
of the gods at his partiality for the "foreign devils," and ensured his
reception by Osiris as a king neb menkh, "possessing virtues."
The town of Naukratis, where Apries established himself, had been
granted to the Greek traders by Psametik I a century or more before. Mr.
D. G. Hogarth's recent exploration of the site has led to a considerable
modification of our first ideas of the place, which were obtained
from Prof. Petrie 's excavations. Prof. Petrie was the discoverer of
Naukratis, and his diggings told us what Naukratis was like in the first
instance, but Mr. Hogarth has shown that several of his identifications
were erroneous and that the map of the place must be redrawn. The chief
error was in the placing of the Hellenion (the great meeting-place of
the Greeks), which is now known to be in quite a different position from
that assigned to it by Prof. Petrie. The "Great Temenos" of Prof. Petrie
has now been shown to be non-existent. Mr. Hogarth has also pointed out
that an old Egyptian town existed at Nau-kratis long before the Greeks
came there. This town is mentioned on a very interesting stele of black
basalt (discovered at Tell Gaif, the site of Naukratis, and now in the
Cairo Museum), under the name of "Permerti, which is called Nukrate."
The first is the old Egyptian name, the second the Greek name adapted
to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stele was erected by Tekhtnebf, the last
native king of Egypt, to commemorate his gifts to the temples of Neith
on the occasion of his accession at Sais. It is beautifully cut, and the
inscription is written in a curious manner, with alphabetic spellings
instead of ideographs, and ideographs instead of alphabetic spellings,
which savours fully of the affectation of the learned pedant who drafted
it; for now, of course, in the fourth century before Christ, nobody but
a priestly antiquarian could read hieroglyphics. Demotic was the only
writing for practical purposes.
We see this fact well illustrated in the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
temples. The accession of the Ptolemies marked a great increase in the
material wealth of Egypt, and foreign conquest again came in fashion.
Ptolemy Euergetes marched into Asia in the grand style of a Ramses and
brought back the images of gods which had been carried off by Esarhaddon
or Nebuchadnezzar II centuries before. He was received on his return
to Egypt with acclamations as a true successor of the Pharaohs. The
imperial spirit was again in vogue, and the archaistic simplicity and
independence of the Saites gave place to an archaistic imperialism, the
first-fruits of which were the repair and building of temples in the
great Pharaonic style. On these we see the Ptolemies masquerading as
Pharaohs, and the climax of absurdity is reached when Ptolemy Auletes
(the Piper) is seen striking down Asiatic enemies in the manner of
Amen-hetep or Ramses! This scene is directly copied from a Ramesside
temple, and we find imitations of reliefs of Ramses II so slavish that
the name of the earlier king is actually copied, as well as the relief,
and appears above the figure of a Ptolemy. The names of the nations who
were conquered by Thothmes III are repeated on Ptolemaic sculptures to
do duty for the conquered of Euergetes, with all sorts of mistakes
in spelling, naturally, and also with later interpolations. Such an
inscription is that in the temple of Kom Ombo, which Prof. Say ce has
held to contain the names of "Caphtor and Casluhim" and to prove the
knowledge of the latter name in the fourteenth century before Christ.
The name of Caphtor is the old Egyptian Keftiu (Crete); that of Casluhim
is unknown in real Old Egyptian inscriptions, and in this Ptolemaic list
at Kom Ombo it may be quite a late interpolation in the lists, perhaps
no older than the Persian period, since we find the names of Parsa
(Persia) and Susa, which were certainly unknown to Thothmes III,
included in it. We see generally from the Ptolemaic inscriptions that
nobody could read them but a few priests, who often made mistakes. One
of the most serious was the identification of Keftiu with Phoenicia in
the Stele of Canopus. This misled modern archaeologists down to the
time of Dr. Evans's discoveries at Knossos, though how these utterly
un-Semitic looking Keftiu could have been Phoenicians was a puzzle to
everybody. We now know, of course, that they were Mycenaean or
Minoan Cretans, and that the Ptolemaic antiquaries made a mistake in
identifying the land of Keftiu with Phoenicia.
We must not, however, say too much in dispraise of the Ptolemaic
Egyptians and their works. We have to be grateful to them indeed for the
building of the temples of Edfu and Dendera, which, owing to their later
date, are still in good preservation, while the best preserved of the
old Pharaonic fanes, such as Medinet Habu, have suffered considerably
from the ravages of time. Eor these temples show us to-day what an
old Egyptian temple, when perfect, really looked like. They are, so to
speak, perfect mummies of temples, while of the old buildings we have
nothing but the disjointed and damaged skeletons.
A good deal of repairing has been done to these buildings, especially
to that at Edfu, of late years. But the main archaeological interest of
Ptolemaic and Roman times has been found in the field of epigraphy and
the study of papyri, with which the names of Messrs. Kenyon, Grenfell,
and Hunt are chiefly connected. The treasures which have lately been
obtained by the British Museum in the shape of the manuscripts of
Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens," the lost poems of Bacchylides, and
the Mimes of Herondas, all of which have been published for the trustees
of that institution by Mr. Kenyon, are known to those who are interested
in these subjects. The long series of publications of Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt, issued at the expense of the Egypt Exploration Fund
(Graeco-Roman branch), with the exception of the volume of discoveries
at Teb-tunis, which was issued by the University of California, is also
well known.
The two places with which Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt's work has been
chiefly connected are the Fayyum and Behnesa, the site of the ancient
Permje or Oxyr-rhynchus. The lake-province of the Fayyum, which attained
such prominence in the days of the XIIth Dynasty, seems to have had
little or no history during the whole period of the New Empire, but in
Ptolemaic times it revived and again became one of the richest and
most important provinces of Egypt. The town of Arsinoe was founded at
Crocodilopolis, where are now the mounds of Kom el-Faris (The Mound of
the Horseman), near Medinet el-Payyum, and became the capital of the
province. At Illahun, just outside the entrance to the Fayyum, was the
great Nile harbour and entrepot of the lake-district, called Ptolemais
Hormos.
The explorations of Messrs. Hogarth, Grenfell, and Hunt in the years
of 1895-6 and 1898-9 resulted in the identification of the sites of the
ancient cities of Karanis (Kom Ushim), Bacchias (Omm el-'Atl), Euhemeria
(Kasr el-Banat), Theadelphia (Harit), and Philoteris (Wadfa). The work
for the University of California in 18991900 at Umm el-Baragat showed
that this place was Tebtunis. Dime, on the northern coast of the Birket
Karun, the modern representative of the ancient Lake Moeris, is now
known to be the ancient Sokno-paiou Nesos (the Isle of Soknopaios), a
local form of Sebek, the crocodile-god of the Fayyum. At Karanis this
god was worshipped under the name of Petesuchos ("He whom Sebek
has given"), in conjunction with Osiris Pnepheros (P-nefer-ho,
"the beautiful of face"); at Tebtunis he became Seknebtunis., i.e.
Sebek-neb-Teb-tunis (Sebek, lord of Tebtunis). This is a typical example
of the portmanteau pronunciations of the latter-day Egyptians.
Many very interesting discoveries were made during the course of the
excavations of these places (besides Mr. Hogarth's find of the temple
of Petesuchos and Pnepheros at Karanis), consisting of Roman pottery
of varied form and Roman agricultural implements, including a perfect
plough.* The main interest of all, however, lies, both here and at
Behnesa, in the papyri. They consist of Greek and Latin documents of
all ages from the early Ptolemaic to the Christian. In fact, Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt have been unearthing and sifting the contents of the
waste-paper baskets of the ancient Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptians, which
had been thrown out on to dust-heaps near the towns. Nothing perishes
in,, the dry climate and soil of Egypt, so the contents of the ancient
dust-heaps have been preserved intact until our own day, and have been
found by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, just as the contents of the houses
of the ancient Indian rulers of Chinese Turkestan, at Niya and Khotan,
with their store of Kha-roshthi documents, have been preserved intact in
the dry Tibetan desert climate and have been found by Dr. Stein.** There
is much analogy between the discoveries of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in
Egypt and those of Dr. Stein in Turkestan.
* Illustrated on Plate IX of Fayum Towns and Their Papyri.
** See Dr. Stein's Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan, London,
1903.
The Graeco-Egyptian documents are of all kinds, consisting of letters,
lists, deeds, notices, tax-assessments, receipts, accounts, and business
records of every sort and kind, besides new fragments of classical
authors and the important "Sayings of Jesus," discovered at Behnesa,
which have been published in a special popular form by the Egypt
Exploration Fund.*
* Aoyla 'Itjffov, 1897, and New Sayings of Jesus, 1904.
These last fragments of the oldest Christian literature, which are
of such great importance and interest to all Christians, cannot be
described or discussed here. The other documents are no less
important to the student of ancient literature, the historian, and the
sociologist. The classical fragments include many texts of lost authors,
including Menander. We will give a few specimens of the private
letters and documents, which will show how extremely modern the ancient
Egyptians were, and how little difference there actually is between our
civilization and theirs, except in the-matter of mechanical invention.
They had no locomotives and telephones; otherwise they were the same. We
resemble them much more than we resemble our mediaeval ancestors or even
the Elizabethans.
This is a boy's letter to his father, who would not take him up to town
with him to see the sights: "Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was
a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won't
take me with you to Alexandria, I won't write you a letter, or speak to
you, or say good-bye to you; and if you go to Alexandria I won't take
your hand or ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you
won't take me. Mother said to Archelaus, 'It quite upsets him to be left
behind.' It was good of you to send me presents on the 12th, the day
you sailed. Send me a lyre, I implore you. If you don't, I won't eat, I
won't drink: there now!'" Is not this more like the letter of a spoiled
child of to-day than are the solemnly dutiful epistles of even our
grandfathers and grandmothers when young? The touch about "Mother said
to Archelaus, 'It quite upsets him to be left behind'" is delightfully
like the modern small boy, and the final request and threat are also
eminently characteristic.
Here is a letter asking somebody to redeem the writer's property from
the pawnshop: "Now please redeem my property from Sarapion. It is
pledged for two minas. I have paid the interest up to the month Epeiph,
at the rate of a stater per mina. There is a casket of incense-wood,
and another of onyx, a tunic, a white veil with a real purple border, a
handkerchief, a tunic with a Laconian stripe, a garment of purple linen,
two armlets, a necklace, a coverlet, a figure of Aphrodite, a cup, a big
tin flask, and a wine-jar. From Onetor get the two bracelets. They have
been pledged since the month Tybi of last year for eight... at the
rate of a stater per mina. If the cash is insufficient owing to the
carelessness of Theagenis, if, I say, it is insufficient, sell the
bracelets and make up the money." Here is an affectionate letter of
invitation: "Greeting, my dear Serenia, from Petosiris. Be sure, dear,
to come up on the 20th for the birthday festival of the god, and let me
know whether you are coming by boat or by donkey, that we may send for
you accordingly. Take care not to forget."
Here is an advertisement of a gymnastic display:
"The assault-at-arms by the youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th.
Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival,
requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display. Two
performances." Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate of Oxyrrhynchus.
Here is a report from a public physician to a magistrate: "To
Claudianus, the mayor, from Dionysos, public physician. I was to-day
instructed by you, through Herakleides your assistant, to inspect the
body of a man who had been found hanged, named Hierax, and to report to
you my opinion of it. I therefore inspected the body in the presence
of the aforesaid Herakleides at the house of Epagathus in the Broadway
ward, and found it hanged by a noose, which fact I accordingly report."
Dated in the twelfth year of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 173).
The above translations are taken, slightly modified, from those in The
Oxyrrhynchus Papyri, vol. i. The next specimen, a quaint letter, is
translated from the text in Mr. Grenfell's Greek Papyri (Oxford, 1896),
p. 69: "To Noumen, police captain and mayor, from Pokas son of Onos,
unpaid policeman. I have been maltreated by Peadius the priest of the
temple of Sebek in Crocodilopolis. On the first epagomenal day of the
eleventh year, after having abused me about... in the aforesaid temple,
the person complained against sprang upon me and in the presence of
witnesses struck me many blows with a stick which he had. And as part of
my body was not covered, he tore my shirt, and this fact I called upon
the bystanders to bear witness to. Wherefore I request that if it seems
proper you will write to Klearchos the headman to send him to you, in
order that, if what I have written is true, I may obtain justice at your
hands."
A will of Hadrian's reign, taken from the Oxyrrhynchus Papyri (i, p.
173), may also be of interest: "This is the last will and testament,
made in the street (i.e. at a street notary's stand), of Pekysis, son of
Hermes and Didyme, an inhabitant of Oxyrrhynchus, being sane and in his
right mind. So long as I live, I am to have powers over my property,
to alter my will as I please. But if I die with this will unchanged, I
devise my daughter Ammonous whose mother is Ptolema, if she survive me,
but if not then her children, heir to my shares in the common house,
court, and rooms situate in the Cretan ward. All the furniture,
movables, and household stock and other property whatever that I shall
leave, I bequeath to the mother of my children and my wife Ptolema, the
freedwoman of Demetrius, son of Hermippus, with the condition that
she shall have for her lifetime the right of using, dwelling in, and
building in the said house, court, and rooms. If Ammonous should die
without children and intestate, the share of the fixtures shall belong
to her half-brother on the mother's side, Anatas, if he survive, but if
not, to... No one shall violate the terms of this my will under pain of
paying to my daughter and heir Ammonous a fine of 1,000 drachmae and to
the treasury an equal sum." Here follow the signatures of testator and
witnesses, who are described, as in a passport, one of them as follows:
"I, Dionysios, son of Dionysios of the same city, witness the will of
Pekysis. I am forty-six years of age, have a curl over my right temple,
and this is my seal of Dionysoplaton."
During the Roman period, which we have now reached in our survey, the
temple building of the Ptolemies was carried on with like energy. One of
the best-known temples of the Roman period is that at Philse, which
is known as the "Kiosk," or "Pharaoh's Bed." Owing to the great
picturesqueness of its situation, this small temple, which was built in
the reign of Trajan, has been a favourite subject for the painters of
the last fifty years, and next to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and Karnak,
it is probably the most widely known of all Egyptian buildings. Recently
it has come very much to the front for an additional reason. Like all
the other temples of Philse, it had been archaeologically surveyed and
cleared by Col. H. Gr. Lyons and Dr. Borchardt, but further work of a
far-reaching character was rendered necessary by the building of the
great Aswan dam, below the island of Philse, one of the results of
which has been the partial submergence of the island and its temples,
including the picturesque Kiosk. The following account, taken from the
new edition (1906) of Murray's Guide to Egypt and the Sudan, will
suffice better than any other description to explain what the dam is,
how it has affected Philse, and what work has been done to obviate the
possibility of serious damage to the Kiosk and other buildings.
"In 1898 the Egyptian government signed a contract with Messrs. John
Aird & Co. for the construction of the great reservoir and dam at
Shellal, which serves for the storage of water at the time of the flood
Nile. The river is 'held up' here sixty-five feet above its old normal
level. A great masonry dyke, 150 feet high in places, has been carried
across the Bab el-Kebir of the First Cataract, and a canal and four
locks, two hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, allow for the passage
of traffic up and down the river.
Showing Water Rushing Through The Sluices
The dam is 2,185 yards long and over ninety feet thick at the base; in
places it rises one hundred feet above the bed of the river. It is built
of the local red granite, and at each end the granite dam is built into
the granite hillside. Seven hundred and eight thousand cubic yards of
masonry were used. The sluices are 180 in number, and are arranged at
four different levels. The sight of the great volume of water pouring
through them is a very fine one. The Nile begins to rise in July, and at
the end of November it is necessary to begin closing the sluice-gates
to hold up the water. By the end of February the reservoir is usually
filled and Philae partially submerged, so that boats can sail in and out
of the colonnades and Pharaoh's Bed. By the beginning of July the water
has been distributed, and it then falls to its normal level.
"It is of course regrettable that the engineers were unable to find
another site for the dam, as it seemed inevitable that some damage would
result to the temples of Philae from their partial submergence. Korosko
was proposed as a site, but was rejected for cogent reasons, and
apparently Shellal was the only possible place. Further, no serious
person, who places the greatest good of the greatest number above
considerations of the picturesque and the 'interesting,' will deny
that if it is necessary to sacrifice Philae to the good of the people of
Egypt, Philae must go. 'Let the dead bury their dead.' The concern of the
rulers of Egypt must be with the living people of Egypt rather than with
the dead bones of the past; and they would not be doing their duty did
they for a moment allow artistic and archaeological considerations to
outweigh in their minds the practical necessities of the country. This
does not in the least imply that they do not owe a lesser duty to the
monuments of Egypt, which are among the most precious relics of the past
history of mankind. They do owe this lesser duty, and with regard to
Philae it has been conscientiously fulfilled. The whole temple, in order
that its stability may be preserved under the stress of submersion, has
been braced up and underpinned, under the superintendence of Mr. Ball,
of the Survey Department, who has most efficiently carried out this
important work, at a cost of L22,000.
AND RESTORATION, JANUARY, 1902.]
Steel girders have been fixed across the island from quay to quay,
and these have been surrounded by cement masonry, made water-tight
by forcing in cement grout. Pharaoh's Bed and the colonnade have been
firmly underpinned in cement masonry, and there is little doubt that the
actual stability of Philae is now more certain than that of any other
temple in Egypt. The only possible damage that can accrue to it is
the partial discolouration of the lower courses of the stonework of
Pharaoh's Bed, etc., which already bear a distinct high-water mark. Some
surface disintegration from the formation of salt crystals is perhaps
inevitable here, but the effects of this can always be neutralized
by careful washing, which it should be an important charge of the
Antiquities Department to regularly carry out."
This is entirely covered when the reservoir is full, and the
palm-trees are farther submerged.
The photographs accompanying the present chapter show the dam, the Kiosk
in process of conservation and underpinning (1902), and the shores of
the island as they now appear in the month of November, with the water
nearly up to the level of the quays. A view is also given of the island
of Konosso, with its inscriptions, as it is now. The island is simply a
huge granite boulder of the kind characteristic of the neighbourhood of
Shellal (Phila?) and Aswan.
On the island of Elephantine, opposite Aswan, an interesting discovery
has lately been made by Mr. Howard Carter. This is a remarkable well,
which was supposed by the ancients to lie immediately on the tropic. It
formed the basis of Eratosthenes' calculations of the measurement of the
earth. Important finds of documents written in Aramaic have also been
made here; they show that there was on the island in Ptolemaic times a
regular colony of Syrian merchants.
South of Aswan and Philse begins Nubia. The Nubian language, which is
quite different from Arabic, is spoken by everybody on the island of
Elephantine, and its various dialects are used as far south as Dongola,
where Arabic again is generally spoken till we reach the land of the
negroes, south of Khartum. In Ptolemaic and Roman days the Nubians were
a powerful people, and the whole of Nubia and the modern North Sudan
formed an independent kingdom, ruled by queens who bore the title or
name of Candace. It was the eunuch of a Candace who was converted to
Christianity as he was returning from a mission to Jerusalem to salute
Jehovah. "Go and join thyself unto his chariot" was the command to
Philip, and when the Ethiopian had heard the gospel from his lips he
went on his way rejoicing. The capital of this Candace was at Meroe, the
modern Bagarawiya, near Shendi. Here, and at Naga not far off, are
the remains of the temples of the Can-daces, great buildings of
semi-barbaric Egyptian style. For the civilization of the Nubians, such
as it was, was of Egyptian origin. Ever since Egyptian rule had been
extended southwards to Jebel Barkal, beyond Dongola, in the time of
Amenhetep II, Egyptian culture had influenced the Nubians. Amenhetep III
built a temple to Amen at Napata, the capital of Nubia, which lay
under the shadow of Mount Barkal; Akhunaten erected a sanctuary of the
Sun-Disk there; and Ramses II also built there.
BUILDING OF THE DAM AND FORMATION OF THE RESERVOIR.]
The place in fact was a sort of appanage of the priests of Amen at
Thebes, and when the last priest-king evacuated Thebes, leaving it to
the Bubastites of the XXIId Dynasty, it was to distant Napata that he
retired. Here a priestly dynasty continued to reign until, two centuries
later, the troubles and misfortunes of Egypt seemed to afford an
opportunity for the reassertion of the exiled Theban power. Piankhi
Mera-men returned to Egypt in triumph as its rightful sovereign, but his
successors, Shabak, Shabatak, and Tirha-kah, had to contend constantly
with the Assyrians. Finally ITrdamaneh, Tirhakah's successor, returned
to Nubia, leaving Egypt, in the decadence of the Assyrian might, free to
lead a quiet existence under Psametik I and the succeeding monarchs of
the XXVIth Dynasty. When Cambyses conquered Egypt he aspired to conquer
Nubia also, but his army was routed and destroyed by the Napatan king,
who tells us in an inscription how he defeated "the man Kambasauden,"
who had attacked him. At Napata the Nubian monarchs, one of the greatest
of whom in Ptolemaic times was Ergam-enes, a contemporary of Ptolemy
Philopator, continued to reign. But the first Roman governor of Egypt,
AElius Gallus, destroyed Napata, and the Nubians removed their capital
to Meroe, where the Candaces reigned.
The monuments of this Nubian kingdom, the temples of Jebel Barkal, the
pyramids of Nure close by, the pyramids of Bagarawiya, the temples of
Wadi Ben Naga, Mesawwarat en-Naga, and Mesawwarat es-Sufra ("Mesawwarat"
proper), were originally investigated by Cailliaud and afterwards by
Lepsius. During the last few years they and the pyramids excavated by
Dr. E. A. Wallis-Budge, of the British Museum, for the Sudan government,
have been again explored. As the results of his work are not yet
fully published, it is possible at present only to quote the following
description from Cook's Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan (by Dr.
Budge), p. 6, of work on the pyramids of Jebel Barkal: "the writer
excavated the shafts of one of the pyramids here in 1897, and at the
depth of about twenty-five cubits found a group of three chambers, in
one of which were a number of bones of the sheep which was sacrificed
there about two thousand years ago, and also portions of a broken
amphora which had held Rho-dian wine. A second shaft, which led to the
mummy-chamber, was partly emptied, but at a further depth of twenty
cubits water was found. The high-water mark of the reservoir when full
is ------ and, as there were no visible means for pumping it out, the
mummy-chamber could not be entered." With regard to the Bagarawiya
pyramids, Dr. Budge writes, on p. 700 of the same work, a propos of the
story of the Italian Ferlini that he found Roman jewelry in one of these
pyramids: "In 1903 the writer excavated a number of the pyramids of
Meroe for the Governor-General of the Sudan, Sir F. R. Wingate, and
he is convinced that the statements made by Ferlini are the result of
misapprehension on his part. The pyramids are solid throughout, and the
bodies are buried under them. When the details are complete the proofs
for this will be published." Dr. Budge has also written upon the subject
of the orientation of the Jebel Barkal and Nure pyramids.
It is very curious to find the pyramids reappearing in Egyptian
tomb-architecture in the very latest period of Egyptian history. We
find them when Egyptian civilization was just entering upon its vigorous
manhood, then they gradually disappear, only to revive in its decadent
and exiled old age. The Ethiopian pyramids are all of much more
elongated form than the old Egyptian ones. It is possible that they may
be a survival of the archaistic movement of the XXVIth Dynasty, to which
we have already referred.
These are not the latest Egyptian monuments in the Sudan, nor are the
temples of Naga and Mesawwarat the most ancient, though they belong
to the Roman period and are decidedly barbarian as to their style and,
especially, as to their decoration. The southernmost as well as latest
relic of Egypt in the Sudan is the Christian church of Soba, on the Blue
Mie, a few miles above Khartum. In it was found a stone ram, an emblem
of Amen-Ra, which had formerly stood in the temple of Naga and had been
brought to Soba perhaps under the impression that it was the Christian
Lamb. It was removed to the garden of the governor-general's palace at
Khartum, where it now stands.
The church at Soba is a relic of the Christian kingdom of Alua, which
succeeded the realm of the Candaces. One of its chief seats was at
Dongola, and all Nubia is covered with the ruins of its churches. It
was, of course, an offshoot of the Christianity of Egypt, but a late
one, since Isis was still worshipped at Philse in the sixth century,
long after the Edict of Theodosius had officially abolished paganism
throughout the Roman world, and the Nubians were at first zealous
votaries of the goddess of Philo. So also when Egypt fell beneath the
sway of the Moslem in the seventh century, Nubia remained an independent
Christian state, and continued so down to the twelfth century, when the
soldiers of Islam conquered the country.
Of late pagan and early Christian Egypt very much that is new has been
discovered during the last few years. The period of the Lower Empire
has yielded much to the explorers of Oxyrrhynchus, and many papyri of
interest belonging to this period have been published by Mr. Kenyon in
his Catalogue of the Greek Papyri in the British Museum, especially
the letters of Flavius Abinaeus, a military officer of the fourth
century. The papyri of this period are full of the high-flown titles
and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes.
"Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and
lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across
the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our
Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in
the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, great, and
beneficent Lord Flavius Heraclius (or other) the eternal Augustus and
Auto-krator, month x, year x of the In diction." It is an extraordinary
period, this of the sixth and seventh centuries, which we have now
entered, with its bizarre combination of the official titulary of
the divine and eternal Caesars Imperatores Augusti with the initial
invocation of Christ and the Trinity. It is the transition from the
ancient to the modern world, and as such has an interest all its own.
In Egypt the struggle between the adherents of Chalcedon, the "Melkites"
or Imperialists of the orthodox Greek rite, and the Eutychians or
Mono-physites, the followers of the patriarch Dioskoros, who rejected
Chalcedon, was going on with unabated fury, and was hardly stopped even
by the invasion of the pagan Persians. The last effort of the party of
Constantinople to stamp out the Monophysite heresy was made when Cyril
was patriarch and governor of Egypt. According to an ingenious theory
put forward by Mr. Butler, in his Arab Conquest of Egypt, it is Cyril
the patriarch who was the mysterious Mukaukas, the [Greek word], or
"Great and Magnificent One," who played so doubtful a part in the
epoch-making events of the Arab conquest by Amr in A.D. 639-41. Usually
this Mukaukas has been regarded as a "noble Copt," and the Copts have
generally been credited with having assisted the Islamites against
the power of Constantinople. This was a very natural and probable
conclusion, but Mr. Butler will have it that the Copts resisted the
Arabs valiantly, and that the treacherous Mukaukas was none other than
the Constantinopolitan patriarch himself.
In the papyri it is interesting to note the gradual increase of Arab
names after the conquest, more especially in those of the Archduke
Rainer 's collection from the Fayyum, which was so near the new capital
city, Fustat. In Upper Egypt the change was not noticeable for a long
time, and in the great collection of Coptic ostraka (inscriptions on
slips of limestone and sherds of pottery, used as a substitute for paper
or parchment), found in the ruins of the Coptic monastery established,
on the temple site of Der el-Bahari, we find no Arab names. These
documents, part of which have been published by Mr. W. E. Crum for the
Egypt Exploration Fund, while another part will shortly be issued for
the trustees of the British Museum by Mr. Hall, date to the seventh and
eighth centuries. Their contents resemble those of the earlier papyri
from Oxyrrhynchus, though they are not of so varied a nature and are
generally written by persons of less intelligence, i.e. the monks and
peasants of the monasteries and villages of Tjeme, or Western Thebes.
During the late excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple of Der el-Bahari,
more of these ostraka were found, which will be published for the
Egypt Exploration Fund by Messrs. Naville and Hall. Of actual buildings
of the Coptic period the most important excavations have been those of
the French School of Cairo at Bawit, north of Asyut. This work, which
was carried on by M. Jean Cledat, has resulted in the discovery of very
important frescoes and funerary inscriptions, belonging to the monastery
of a famous martyr, St. Apollo. With these new discoveries of Christian
Egypt our work reaches its fitting close. The frontier which divides the
ancient from the modern world has almost been crossed. We look back from
the monastery of Bawit down a long vista of new discoveries until, four
thousand years before, we see again the Great Heads coming to the Tomb
of Den, Narmer inspecting the bodies of the dead Northerners, and,
far away in Babylonia, Naram-Sin crossing the mountains of the East to
conquer Elam, or leading his allies against the prince of Sinai.